Get Saving and Build a Healthy Happy Family
Start saving.
There are three steps to saving.
Firstly you need to save your money. Decide on how much you want to save to be able to pull yourself through difficult times for example disasters, accidents, deaths etc. Then instead of falling into the trap of buying something you think you need now on credit, rather wait, save and buy it later on cash. Anything that you buy on credit ends up costing you much more than the original price was.
Secondly draw up a budget, it helps you see your expenses against your income and helps you not to spend your income erratically.
Thirdly educate yourself about financial services and choose the most efficient and cheapest option. Learn about the best products and services through financial service providers. And learn about the different banking methods available that you can use.
Some more very useful saving tips for the whole family to build a healthy happy family this year.
Change your mindset. You need to go from being comfortable with debt to being in control of your finances. Commit yourself to being debt free in three, six or twelve months.
Put aside money for any medical or other emergencies, as well as for car and house maintenance.
Pay off your debts with the highest interest rates first, and do not borrow any money from anywhere to pay debts. If you are one of us that finds yourself in uncontrollable debt because of more than one credit card, destroy one card at a time and settle the debt. Do not get new cards once you have paid off the debt. Keep a list and write down all your purchases in order to keep track of unnecessary spending. Ensure each purchase is necessary and not a “show-off” item or goods.
Start a savings club with friends or colleagues, or a rotating savings club. This way, members contribute a specified monthly sum to the club, and each member receives all the contributions when their turn in the rotation arrives. Build a healthy happy family and teach your children the value of money and of saving. Most banks have tailor made accounts when with above average interest rates for teenagers.
Reduce the insurance on your car every year because your car decreases in value each year. If you have not been doing that, your premiums have increased while your car’s value has decreased. It is your job to keep your premium down by regularly informing your insurer to decrease your sum insured. There are also other ways that you could save besides in your bank account. Join your employer’s pension or provident fund or invest in unit trusts. Make informed decisions and good choices on large purchases by shopping around and comparing prices.
Keep your financial goals for your family in mind throughout the year, even as the excitement wears off. Your reward will be a happier, healthier richer family. Start today to build your healthy happy family.
Secured and Pre-Paid Credit Cards
Normally, the cardholder should deposit between hundred percent and two hundred percent of the sum amount of the credit desired. Therefore, if cardholder puts along $1000, she or he will be set credit up to $500-$1000. Sometimes even on the protected card portfolios few credit card issuers provide incentives. In this situation the credit needed may be noticeably lower than the needed credit limit, as well as can be very low, say, up to ten percent of the desired credit limit.
These deposits are held in very unique saving accounts. Issuers of credit card provide this when they notice the delinquency has notably lessened when the purchaser thinks that he has a bit to drop if he will not pay back his balance. A secured credit cardholder can make regular payments like she or he would do with that of a regular card payment. But should she or he default on the payment, the credit card issuer can recover the price of the acquisition rewarded to the traders away from the deposits.
The greatest advantage of having the secured credit card for any individual with no credit or negative history is what many companies report often to the main credit bureaus. It allows for building positive credit card history. Secured credit cards allow a customer with no credit or bad credit history to possess a card otherwise it may not be available. They offer these cards more often so that customer’s can re-build their credit again. Secured credit card is available with MasterCard and Visa having both logos on the credit cards. Service and fees charges for these credit cards frequently go beyond those charged, which are for simple non-secured credit cards, but for customers in specific situation, these card are sometimes less costly in comparison to unsecured cards, even if you include deposit security.
A prepaid card is not actually a credit card, no credit is provided by the issuer of the card. This prepaid credit card is having a MasterCard and Visa credit card brands with them as well as they can be operated in same ways. Many people want an appropriate solution to rebuild their credit; latest changes have permitted few companies of credit card to provide prepaid credit cards in rebuilding the credit. They are very hard to get and have huge interest rates and huge APR fees.
After the purchase of the card, cardholder can fill the amount they want in their cards and can use the card for their purchase. These cards are given to minors because no credit lines are involved. The great advantage of this card is that you do not required huge amount say $500 or much to start your account. Without borrowing any amount it will charge you rate of interest. Usually many more fees are applied to prepaid card.
Unclaimed Bank Accounts
Unclaimed property is defined as any financial asset left inactive by the owner for a very long period. It includes bank accounts, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, matured or terminated insurance policies, payroll checks, and more.
All states in the United States have laws governing the reporting and claiming of unclaimed assets. The law states that the unclaimed property should be turned over to the state if the financial institutions or pubic agencies have no contact with the owner.
Also known as a dormant bank account, unclaimed bank accounts are defined as those accounts that lack transactions for a specific time period. To be more precise, the bank accounts are considered unclaimed or abandoned when the account holder fails to make a deposit or withdrawal over a period of time, basically from two to five years. They include deposits in the form of savings accounts, bank drafts, certified checks, and more.
After two years of dormancy, the bank at which the funds are located will try to contact the account holders with a notification made either by mail or by publishing the names in newspapers. If there is no reply from the owners, another attempt is made after five years; if there is still no response, the accounts are removed from the bank and are turned over to the government. Unclaimed money is held by the government until claimed.
In order to register claim, a claimant must provide personal information such as name, social security number, and proof of the current and all previous addresses, and proof of ownership. Even if the passbook is lost or destroyed, an account holder can recover an insured bank account that is left dormant for certain time span. If the owner is deceased, then the account can be claimed by a relative or a creditor.
Today, there are several private recovery agencies, tracers, and other third-party companies that offer help in recovering unclaimed properties .A fee is charged for their valuable services.
The Value of Increasing a Young Investors Savings Rate
While investment returns are an elemental component of accumulating wealth they are neither the only factor, nor the most important for young investors. I would like to suggest that for college-aged individuals the most important component of wealth building is in fact the savings rate of the individual. Thus I encourage my peers to focus on saving more rather than reaching for extra returns (through excessive risk).
What seems like a rather simple concept of setting aside money for long-term goals rather than short-term consumption is in fact difficult to achieve. To calculate a simple representation of your saving rate, divide your total savings by your total income. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis the United States, saving rate was at 4.8 percent as of December 2009.
In order to see the benefit of increasing your savings rate consider the following example. If College Saver One saves $2000.00 per year and received an eight percent annual return after twenty years he or she will have $100,845. College Saver Two saves $1,776.5 per year and receives a nine percent annual return for the same twenty year period, he or she will also have $100,845
This means at this savings level, annual return and time period a one percent increase in rate of return per year is equivalent to $223.50 per year in additional saving. Personally I feel that it is in the best interest of my wealth to strive to increase my savings rate rather than adding more risk to my portfolio.
Often while perusing personal finance and investing blogs intended for young investors I see authors encouraging and recommending financial behavior that is extensively risky. While I am a firm believer in respecting others decision to use alternative means of building wealth, I cannot help but cringe at some of the recommendations offered. I personally do not believe that extensive trading and the use of leveraged funds or margin accounts is necessary for the average young investor to build wealth. In fact I tend to believe that these practices can instead be damaging to the individuals long-term wealth.
I am not indicating that we should construct our portfolios out of certificate of deposits and government bonds just that we assume risk in a manner that is calculated and well-planned.
What is the Difference Between a Current Account and a Savings Account?
Over the years I’ve never fully understood what the girl meant when she asked me if my account was a “current account”. I remember thinking, “well if I’m currently using it then I guess it’s my current account”, but I was never rude enough to say that. I never used to have a savings account, because I lived by the day and never had any savings to keep in it.
Since I’ve settled down and got a steady job I’ve began to wonder the differences between a current account and a savings account, and what a savings account had to offer me. Let’s start with the basic differences – a savings account gives you a better rate of interest for your savings and a current account gives you more services to use with your account. A current does accumulate interest, but at a fraction of the interest that a savings account does, plus the money doesn’t sit about long enough in a current account to accumulate much interest. If you would like to save a bit of money every month to keep for a rainy day then a savings account is the way to go. You won’t have easy access to your money like a current account, so it’s not so easy to spend, and it will gain good interest, and so grow for you for the future.
The main drawback of a savings account is the benefit I just mentioned: with a savings account you don’t have ease of access to your money that you would have with your current account. By this I mean you may not get a bank card for your savings account, so you cant withdraw money at a bank machine; or you may have to give like 3 or 5 days notice to withdraw money from your savings account.
I have a Barclays’ current account for my wages to be paid in to, but with bills, paying off debts such as credit cards, and the general cost of living there was never any surplus money there for me to call “savings”. Now that I have paid off most of my debts and can start to see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel I have began to thought about doing a bit of saving for the future.
For more information on current accounts and savings accounts you can visit Moneynet’s bank account comparison page and find out what different types of accounts, from different banks and institutions, have to offer you.
Disclaimer:
All information contained in this article, is for general information purposes only and should not be construed as advice under the Financial Services Act 1986.
You are strongly advised to take appropriate professional and legal advice before entering into any binding contracts.
How Do Multiple Checking Accounts Affect FICO
Many of us have more than one checking account with one or more financial institutions. For example, joint checking, business checking, personal checking and more. But can having numerous checking accounts affect your credit score?
The good news is that “no” is the simple answer. Banks do not report checking activity with credit bureaus.
However, the bad news is that your behavior and financial management of multiple checking accounts can get you in trouble with your credit score if you do the wrong things.
Keep those statements clean
Consider for a moment that you are applying for a home loan. Your mortgage broker says to you that the loan underwriter needs to see your bank statements for the past 2 to 6 months. After you gather the statements and get them in order you review them and notice there were a few times when you errantly made purchases with insufficient funds. The statements may show a negative balance and an overdraft fee in those instances. What will the underwriter think of this? It is a negative outcome indeed.
Even though the insufficient funds do not appear on your credit score your loan underwrite may take the overdrafts into consideration when evaluating your creditworthiness. Your documentation of bad financial management could make a difference in the interest rate offered to you, or whether or not you are approved altogether.
Closed for Cause
Your conduct with multiple checking accounts can be a challenge for your financial management if you are not careful. With numerous accounts comes the responsibility to assure that there is sufficient available funds, and you need to assure that you abide by the checking account rules agreed upon when you set up the account.
If you do not fulfill a checking account agreement with a bank they may close your checking account “for cause” and report it to the ChexSystems banking reporting system. These reports remain for 5 years and could prevent you from opening a new checking account, and even cause your other banks to close your current checking accounts.
If your checking account was closed due to poor financial management and with a negative balance, the balance will probably be transferred to a collection agency. If that happens, you can be assured that the checking account fiasco will show up on your credit report and lower your FICO score.
Any one of these cases of poor financial management with checking accounts can affect your creditworthiness. A “tarnished” checking account doesn’t have to show up on your credit report in order to deny or limit a loan application. If you currently have multiple checking accounts, or are planning to open additional accounts, be sure to review them each month. Your ability to fix or solve any checking account financial management issues with your bank before they appear on a loan underwriter’s desk will help your chances of getting a loan in the future.