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Smart Ways To Keep Your Finances In Check This January

January 3rd, 2017 Posted in Money Tips
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The festive season is a time of indulgence and luxuries, but in January it’s time to tighten the purse strings. Your finances might not be looking too healthy right now, but a bit of careful planning will mean you’re soon back on track. Here are a few things to consider for your finances this January.

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Tighten The Purse Strings

If you’ve overspent last month or accumulated some debt then now is the time to rectify this. Cut back on anything that’s not essential and use the money where it’s most needed, this will help you to quickly get back on track financially. January might be considered as a ‘clean slate’, but if you’re bringing through debt from Christmas, this should be addressed as quickly as possible.

Set Some Goals

We have a whole twelve months stretching out ahead of us. What are you going to achieve financially during this time? Maybe you want to pay off debt or save towards a summer holiday. Perhaps you want to start saving for a new car or a mortgage, or you just aim to plan your money better each month. Whatever it is, write down what you hope to achieve and then break each goal down into smaller and easy to achieve chunks. For example, if you want to plan your money better you could begin by writing out all of your income and expenditures and invest in a calendar or budgeting app to plan everything out. If you want to be debt free by December, you could work out exactly how much you’ll need to pay off each month.

Protect Yourself From Injury

The last thing you need after a financially draining Christmas is to be injured and out of work. Sometimes accidents and incidents are out of your control, but there are lots of precautions you can take against others. The start of the year is particularly bad for these kinds of things since the cold weather can lead to hazardous snow and ice. When travelling by road, you can drive safely and carefully- making sure your car is as safe as possible. Checking all of the fluid levels and switching the tyres to winter snow and ice tyres are some of the ways you can go about this. When walking in public in winter, ensure you are wearing sensible footwear with a good grip to prevent slips. If you’re injured due to the neglect of a company, putting in a personal injury claim will mean the compensation covers any medical expenses and time taken off work, so you don’t end up out of pocket. Companies like BHP law can provide experienced personal injury solicitors if you end up in this situation.

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Make the right decisions now, and you will set yourself up for a happy and prosperous new year. When it’s cold outside, and the weather is bad, it’s the perfect chance to tighten the belt and make cutbacks anyway. By the spring, you should be in a much better position financially.

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Penny Stretching: Making the Most of Your Money in Every Situation

January 3rd, 2017 Posted in learning about money, Money Tips
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Let’s face it, we’re all trying to look for a bargain and make our hard earned money go as far as possible. In almost every situation where we spend money, there’s probably some way to get more value out of our purchases. Whether it’s bargaining at a market stall or grabbing a multi-pack deal instead of a single item, here are some of the best ways to stretch every penny that you spend.

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Open a Savings Account

There’s no such thing as being too frugal. Opening a savings account with interest rates is a good way to get money passively and stretch your pennies. It’s an easy method to get the most out of your money, but it’s a very slow process. It’s kind of like investing, with the exception that you aren’t risking your money because it’s just a savings account. However, it is undoubtedly slow and if you aren’t actually saving large sums of money, then the interest you get will be rather low. Stashing your money in a savings account is a good way to practice frugality and you’ll have a nice sum of money in case you run into emergencies.

Enter Various Competitions

Most competitions are free to enter and can offer some very big cash prizes, such as Maria Casino’s Discomfort Zone. You simply register to the competition, vote or do whatever the competition asks of you, and then you’re entered in for a chance to win prizes or money. There are hundreds of competitions that you can enter online, in local stores, newspapers or magazines. Just remember to read the fine print and make sure it’s not going to cost you more to win or receive your prize than it does to just buy the item. Many people operate scam competitions so be sure to search for information online before you apply.

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Look for Deals

There are several websites on the internet that list the best bargains that people have found. They’re usually a mix of brick and mortar store sales and online bargains. You can find almost anything for sale on a megastore like Amazon or a marketplace such as eBay. Second-hand or refurbished electronics are a good place to start if you’re looking for a quality piece of equipment that’s backed by manufacturer guarantees and eBay’s buyer policy. Just make sure to read the fine print on eBay listings because some people will add sneak clauses such as “This item is damaged. You are buying a damaged item.” just to try and trick people.

Use Those Coupons

Some people find it embarrassing to walk into a store and hand the cashier coupons for money off—but there’s absolutely nothing embarrassing about being frugal and using “free” money. There are some sites on the internet that will give you coupon codes for cheap items, offers on restaurant bookings and activities such as waxing or even skydiving at discount prices. If you sign up for supermarket store cards, they usually reward your spending by sending you coupon codes. Make the most of these, and you’ll find yourself saving hundreds a year on groceries.

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Early Learning: How to Teach Important Business Concepts to Your Child

January 3rd, 2017 Posted in financial education, kids and money, learning about money
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It can be difficult trying to teach our children how business works, but it’s a necessary eye-opening experience that your child needs to understand. It will help them make decisions in the future, and they’ll learn to appreciate how the economy works which can be a great boon to their learning ability in the future.

Here are some of the most important concepts to teach your child, and examples of fun activities to help them understand it. These shouldn’t be aimed at children who are too young. Ideally, you’ll want your child to have a basic understand of maths first because there are a lot of numbers involved in business. You also want to have a couple of toys or video games laying around to use as “products” to demonstrate these concepts.

You’ll also need some sticky labels (that can easily be removed) and a pencil, better yet some colored pencils and paper to write things down.

How to teach business concepts to your child - young girl studying image

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Supply and Demand

To teach your child this simple concept, bring out a bunch of their favourite toys or video games and grab a couple they don’t use anymore or don’t want. Set them out like a shop, and then give your child some fake money (such as monopoly money) and offer them to your child. Set a price for each one, making sure that your child’s favourite toys are more expensive, then offer to “sell” them back to your child.

To teach them supply and demand, tell your child that their favourite toy is in high demand and that the price has increased from what the label says. Then, tell them that their other toys are cheaper because they aren’t in demand. They’ll start to understand that products that are highly sought after will cost more because they are in demand, but because there isn’t much demand for their other toys, your child can “buy” them back from you for a cheaper price.

Trading

You can teach your child to learn forex trading which will give them an insight into the trading industry and also how foreign currencies interact with home currencies. A simple way to do this is to use online programs and trial accounts. If those programs are too advanced for your child, then a simpler method is to set out a bunch of toys or games that they like to play, much like the supply and demand example. Play a simple game of trading with them. The objective is to tie in supply and demand with the toys that you have set out.

Give your child a couple of toys and set values on them. Next, tell your child which toys are in high demand (use your imagination here!) and give them reasons. For example, perhaps the latest Pokemon game came out and, as a result, Pokemon toys that your child owns have gone “up” in value, so they can be sold back to you for more money because they are now high in demand. Teach them to read how the market is going so they can buy and sell products to gain profits.

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Why Get-Rich-Quick Schemes Never Work: Lessons For Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs

January 3rd, 2017 Posted in learning about money, millionaire mindset
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People are drawn to the idea that it’s possible to get rich quickly, especially kids. It’s a basic mammalian instinct: we want to get the most resources for the least expenditure of energy possible.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of get-rich-quick schemes don’t work, and our grand plans end up falling through. There are some good reasons for this.

Getting Rich Quick Means Being In The Right Place At The Right Time

News reporting on successful people has a tendency to bias our perspectives on how to generate wealth. The news only reports on the small cadre of individuals who made a fortune overnight, giving us the impression that building wealth is something that can happen in a matter of months. What we don’t see, however, are the millions of people who didn’t get rich quick and are working in regular businesses for regular incomes.

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Often, the people who get super rich, like Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg, did so because they were in the right place at the right time. Larry Page was perfectly positioned in the late 1990s to launch his search engine, Google. He had the right skills, and technology had just reached the stage where internet search was possible. The same goes for Zuckerberg: he just happened to have the right skills at the right time to implement his social media technology. These were freak events, but they’re the ones we hear about all the time in the press.

Success Takes A Long Time

There’s a joke floating around that says it take 15 years to be an overnight success. And even some of the biggest names in the business community agree with this. Many of them, including Twitter CEO, say that they had overnight success – it just took them a decade of work beforehand.

This makes a lot of sense. To build anything substantial takes a lot of time and dedication. Nothing that was complex or truly useful to other people was built over a weekend – especially in the modern world. Instead, new products and services require a long ramp up and even then they may not be accepted by the market.

Success Is Never Risk-Free

Success often means going into debt or taking on unsecured personal loans to finance a business venture. In other words, there’s an element of risk involved. The more risk, the fewer people who are likely to want to undertake the project. This is one of the reasons why we see so many people setting up their own accounting businesses (because the risks are relatively small) compared to people creating their own space companies (because the risks are much larger).

Get-rich-quick schemes like to pretend that they are risk-free: a sure bet to make money. But if they claim this, then it almost certainly isn’t true. Entrepreneurs are constantly looking for the lowest risk enterprises to sink their money into. The chances that somebody else has found one of those opportunities and wants to share it with you is next to nothing.

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