Fortune Watch

Get real about money. Let’s face it: Most people spend way too much money on things they don’t really need. The more money we make, the more we tend to spend. This endless cycle of materialism has led many people to confuse the word “need” with the word “want.” As in, “we need a big-screen TV for our new home theatre.” Or, “I need a new pair of shoes to go with my new outfit.”

If you want to achieve your vocational passion, where every day you jump out of bed and can’t wait to go to work, then you need to re-order your priorities. Stay away from the purely material.

The pursuit of material success often is the root cause of burnout at midlife. In fact, a recent study found that people primarily motivated by the love of their work grow dissatisfied as they begin to make more money. The first step to breaking free from the materialism trap is to understand the difference between “need” and “want.”

We need food, clothing, shelter, reliable transportation, education, enrichment, and the technology necessary to do our work. Also, we need the occasional small indulgence to treat our children and ourselves.

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If you are like most people, you do not feel that you “deserve money”. The simple fact is that most people are broke. Most people are broke because they do not feel that they deserve money.

To be financially successful you must: save prodigiously, invest wisely, and act like an entrepreneur. If you don’t believe you are capable of financial success, figure out why.

OK, maybe now you are thinking, “I deserve money…right?” Well, here is the thing, if you have the thought that “It takes money to make money”, or “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer”, or “Money is the root to all evil”, then you do not deserve money…well, maybe not yet, but there is hope for you.

There are two sides to every coin, people can look at money as good or bad and often at times people look at money as bad to justify why they do not have any. I dont know, maybe someone with money or someone that was thinking of making money was with someone that did not have any and did not have any plans to make any. What they thought about having lots of money and they gave off one of the lame excuses as suggested in the previous paragraph.

Why do you deserve money? The answer is simple…because you deserve money! Look, making money is simply the result of exchanging your efforts or ideas for money.

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Credit cards can be an excellent tool to help you manage your finances. But sometimes we make poor choices, or sometimes the events in life take us beyond our expectations and we are left to foot the bill. Perhaps you have had a few months of extra, unexpected expenses that you are now paying for. What can you do?

Gather together all of your credit card bills and add up the amount that you owe. Factor in the extra expenses you haven’t heard on your credit cards since you receive those bills. Add to that about ten or twenty per cent, which is the “whoops, I forgot about that” factor. Then, with that figure, start shopping around for a loan.

Get the loan and pay off your credit card bills. If you think that you may still use your credit cards, you may want to hide them away so that you reduce the temptation to use them. Now, instead of having several credit card bills at a high interest rate due by the end of the month, you now have one bill that is due once a month at a lower rate. This is called consolidation. At first glance it may not seem obvious why you’d want to do this but there are two reasons:

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I was tagged by Vivienne Quek, who I truly believe is an entrepreneur. OK first things first let us find what exactly an entrepreneur is? The online encyclopedia Wikipedia defines it as “someone who establishes a new entity, to offer a new or existing product or service into a new or existing market. Entrepreneurs often have strong beliefs about a market opportunity and are willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue that opportunity”.

There are two schools of thought about what makes an entrepreneur. The first is that anyone can do it if they really want to, provided they put in the effort. The second is that you have to be a certain type of person and, if you are not that type, you are wasting your time.

This theory that anyone can become an entrepreneur is absolute nonsense. The ‘born or made’ question appears to be the basic argument between nature and nurture. Certainly if one is born with certain personality traits, they will assist in entrepreneurship. It seems fairly obvious that entrepreneurs are both born and made. Perhaps they also evolve.

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There is inflation every year. You cannot stop an increasing in living expenses as prices of consumer goods increasing all the time. Saving money becomes an extremely difficult task to do. Here are some solutions for saving a little so that you can still meet your needs and still find ways to trim off a little for the future.

Budget – Get one and stick with it! And set aside at least a small portion for savings while you’re at it; savings for your future, your retirement, your education, your vacation, whatever. Head to your local office supply store for planning workbooks or budget sheets to use. Or head to your favorite search engine and type in, “budget planning” for hundreds of sites with articles, free downloads, tips, ebooks and other resources to help with your budget setup and follow up.

Plan Ahead – Make sure to plan for emergencies and the unexpected, like an appliance break down or garage door malfunction. Even if you can only set aside $100 or so each monthly, place it in an account and earmark it for this “Miscellaneous” fund. Then when things go wrong, and they will – nothing is perfect – you’ll be better prepared.

Monthly Items – Work out a monthly payment for items that you don’t pay monthly and set this up in your regular monthly budget. For example, for items like annual home owner or renter insurance, quarterly water bills and life insurance payments and annual trash bills, take the amounts and determine what they would be monthly. Then list the items on your budget log and pull these amounts aside, saving them in your account for those purposes. This way, when the bills hit, you won’t be caught off guard and have to scrounge for the payments.

What works well, instead of handling multiple savings accounts for each company owed, is to use index cards and one savings account. Create one index card for each bill. Then simply log the amount you’re setting aside on the card and deposit it into your savings account. Keep the index cards with your savings passbook to remind you what the balance covers. The total of all your index cards should equal the balance in your savings account. Make sure to create an index card for your regular funds that you are saving each month in step one above and a card for your Miscellaneous fund in step two above.

The initial exchange gave way to a group of merchants who banned together to form the New York Stock Exchange. This initial assembly of men met every day on Wall Street to trade their stocks and bonds – an outdoor ritual that lasted through to the early 1900s, when commerce moved indoors. Today, investment on this scale has come full circle – operating outside the bricks and mortar of traditional trading. Today’s investors operate en masse through the Internet, buying and selling stocks online with the click of a mouse.

Buying and selling stocks online has become the new way of investing. In this chaotic world of long work hours combined with the juggling of frenzied family schedules, the computer has taken an ever-increasing role – giving us a place to work, communicate, and be entertained any time of day from the comfort of our homes. The computer has also taken an ever-increasing role in investing, offering consumers the opportunity to trade online. Several reputable companies have pioneered the online investment arena where they have kept pace with the changing needs of today’s modern investors.

In accessing stocks online, investors have been given access to a bevy of services previously only obtained through visiting brokers in the brick and mortar world of finance. Online investment through reputable brokerage companies requires investors to set up an account through the website. They can then access their financial portfolio at the touch of a mouse. Additionally, these companies will offer up-to-the-minute stock quotes, historical performance and forecasts for each stock, as well as in-depth information about each of the companies.

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If you have your card stolen or you think you have been the victim of credit card fraud, then you need to sort the problem out as quickly as possible.

Credit card fraud is becoming more and more of a problem, and if you are not careful then you could lose money to fraudsters. If you are worried about fraud but are unsure how you can protect yourself and your credit cards, then this article could help you. Here are some useful tips and advice about how to protect yourself from credit card fraud:

The methods and types of fraud are increasing as criminals learn new techniques and get improved technology. The most common methods of fraud today include: Copying and ‘cloning’ of cards, ATM fraud, Internet card fraud,PIN number stealing.

All of these methods are used more commonly than ever before to effectively steal your money. Obviously, it is impossible to totally eliminate the problem of credit card fraud, but there are things you can do to greatly reduce the risks.

Keep cards close. Make sure that you never let your cards out of your sight. Never leave cards unattended, and certainly don’t lend your card to anyone. If you are paying in a restaurant or shop, make sure you pay attention as to where your card is, especially credit card processing machines. A common method used to copy your card is to get the details whilst you pay, so keep an eye on your card at all times.

Whenever you get a receipt or a credit card bill, check that all the items and amounts are correct. If there are any amounts that you are unsure about, contact your card issuer immediately. Any paperwork that you throw away should be disposed of properly. Shred documents so that people cannot go through your rubbish and discover your card details.

Look behind you. When withdrawing money from a cash machine, make sure no one is looking over your shoulder to read your PIN. The easiest way for someone to use your card illegally is to see your PIN and then steal the card. Also, make sure you never keep a written record of your PIN, especially near your cards.

Use reputable firms. When buying on the Internet, make sure that you only purchase items from large and well-established providers. Small or unknown providers should be avoided as even if they are genuine, their security and encryption may be poor and allow fraudsters to access your details.

Keep contact numbers. If you have your card stolen or you think you have been the victim of credit card fraud, then you need to sort the problem out as quickly as possible. Keep all the contact numbers for your card issuer in a safe place so that you can call them up and sort out problems immediately. If you are careful and act quickly, you can limit the damage of fraud or prevent it occurring at all.

Most working people dream of this thing called financial freedom. It certainly sounds like something we’d all want. But have you ever stopped to really think about what it means? It can mean different things to different people, so before you spend time looking for it, maybe it’s worthwhile to examine what the concept really means to you. After all, it’s hard to find something if you don’t know exactly what it is!

Time and money are inversely related. This means that in most cases, one can be traded for the other. And if you think of how that applies both to your everyday life and to the way business is conducted, it’s true. For example, you can spend your own time cleaning your house or mowing your lawn, or pay someone to do it for you, and free up the time for yourself. You can spend time researching on your own, or you can pay some money for someone else’s specialized knowledge in that same field.

With that idea in mind, financial freedom may be defined broadly as reaching the point where you no longer have to trade your time for money in order to provide for what you want in life. There are two key phrases in that idea – “no longer have to trade” and “what you want”. These are what you have to define for yourself, in order to determine what financial freedom means to you.

To many, financial freedom means just not having to work for a living. They dream of stepping off the treadmill of going to work everyday to pay the bills. Some may want to escape the stresses of the job itself, unpleasant working conditions, commuting, boredom, and so on. Others may just value more time to be with their families and pursue their own interests. For most people, it’s some combination of those.

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Obviously the answer lies somewhere in the middle– but where? We take pride in making responsible choices for the future instead of thinking only of today, but do you ever feel like you’re going too far? Not appreciating the present enough?

I hear that suggestion a lot regarding how much money frugalites and penny-pinchers spend: that we’re not enjoying life enough because we’re not willing to spend much money. The thing is, I don’t think that spending more money would make me noticeably more happy! I mean, certainly there are some things that I could spend more on and enjoy– probably more expensive vacations, maybe going out to eat more and/or at fancier places– but in general I’m very comfortable with the way things are. I find ways to enjoy myself that are just good values for the money… and if there’s something that comes up that’s expensive but would be really wonderful, I weigh it carefully but am pretty good about letting myself go for it if it’s worth it.

However, it’s the flip side that concerns me. The amount you save is a combination of how much you make and how much you spend, so it follows that to save the most for tomorrow you need to make as much money as you can today. A lot of personal finance bloggers like to stress the importance of increasing your income as much as possible.

For me personally, while I’m not earning as much as I could if income was my only priority but I’m still doing a job I like and one I feel is good for society. The thing is, I’ve never really envisioned myself following a standard “career path”. Yet most of the other options will likely pay substantially less, in some cases perhaps as little as half as much. So the question is, how long should I stay at a good-paying job that I’m fairly but not completely happy with? I definitely want to try other work, but don’t I have plenty of time for that later on?

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A huge debate arises when it comes to marriage and money about whether or not spouses should have a joint checking account or separate checking accounts. One popular thing that people do nowadays is they keep one joint account to pay the bills from and then they keep a separate account for each of them to spend money on “personal” things. This is a total cop-out when it comes to managing money with your spouse. A marriage is not a joint venture. You cannot pick and choose which things that you want to share as a couple and which things not to share. You must be handling money as a team.

My opinion is that there is only one way to handle your bank accounts. You keep one joint checking account and one joint savings account. You write a budget together, stick to that budget together, and talk to each about making purchases over $50 dollars, unless you are going to make 10 different $50 purchases in one day, then you talk it over with your spouse!

Common Arguments: “My spouse is worse at handling money than I am”. This is why you got married, to help each other, not avoid each others weaknesses. It is okay for one of you to be more financially savvy, but you both need to create a budget together, and not sharing your incomes will only bring more division. If your spouse had a problem with drinking, would you totally abandon them or try to help them? In the same way, why would you totally abandon your spouse if they had a problem with handling money?

“It is easier to keep track of the money”. No it’s not harder, it should be simpler because you are dealing with less bank accounts. What account do you use when you go out to dinner? I can hear it now “No, you pay this time; I have to pay for the dentist tomorrow”. If you are communicating about your purchases, and balancing your check book together each week, it should be easier to keep one joint account.

“I make more money than her, and I don’t want her spending all of it”. You make more money than her? Well, does she cook for you? Does she wash your dirty underwear? Yeah, exactly. You cannot put tabs on your salaries, or else resentment, jealousy, and division will destroy your marriage.

Handling money is extremely important in a marriage. And just like everything else important in a marriage, communication is key to keeping your money handling healthy. If one of you wants to spend all the time and the other wants to save all the time, come to an agreement. Set aside some “Blow” money to use for having fun and blowing it without any worries about what it gets spent on. Set aside money that will be saved for long term and short term. Also, remember to set aside money to pay off debts. Never settle for just paying the minimum payments on credit cards or paying off a car or house in 20 years.