Ideas To Improve Your Personal Finance This 2017

A new year is a new way to spend your money wisely. Money sitting at home -- which most did in 2016 -- is certainly a no-no. It's time to spend money in the right places.

Great Commitments Must Have Great Value

A rule of thumb: if the product does not last for more than 10 years, it's not worth a great financial commitment. Don't go for that big new Ferrari or something as simple as your daily Starbucks fix; instead, invest in your retirement as much as you want.

Manage Your Credit Card Debt Well

Credit scores are like report cards; they tell banks about your financial performance and if you do well, they can provide you the means to bridge the gaps in your financial needs. Manage your credit debt excellently and you can significantly lower interest  rates for future financial commitments.

Tech the Spreadsheets

Learn how to use software programs that help you manage your finances in macro. Learn how to use spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel to manage your finances. Apps such as GoodBudget allow you to see your financial spending. Nipping the issue in the bud is easier if you have a bird's-eye-view of everything you earn, owe and spend.

Is Your Fear Of Financial Worries Holding Your Back?

Financial stress is a part of life and a part of an employee's job description. Or maybe not too much.

Growing bills, the deflating values of currencies and plans that have failed due to financial disasters can impact an employee's work performance.

Research from Online Financial Planners SUM180 revealed that 29% of employees miss their work to deal with financial stress... or at least alleviate it by making plans.

While their sample is only limited to North Americans, the stress of 85% US adults in the middle to lower class earning categories rings true for the rest of the world.

Unplanned expenses are the main source of financial anxiety for most Americans. A larger number worry about the day-to-day expenses.

For most millenial Americans, credit card debt, healthcare and retirement are three of the biggest problems they face. With a failing jobs market and unhappiness levels due to underemployment, unplanned expenses are a huge source of stress.

According to experts, emergency funds would be essential in today's fiscal climate in the United States and for the rest of the world. Having at least six months' worth of expenses is crucial.

With such a safety net, it would be a great reduction of stress. Much focus can be placed at work for the need of better income sources and extending more effort.

Three Retirement Tips That Will Help You in 10 Minutes

Retirement is this year's hot topic. With UK's top corporations and chain facing trouble over immense gaps in defined-benefit pensions, retirees are left to discuss other options.

Clearly corporations pensions are out of the question while state pension could only do so much.

The best thing to do is to begin creating money for yourself through a personal pension plan.

Find a Suitable Plan

Always find a fund that favours the current trend at this point. Equities are going up. You could get yourself lifted up into the sun with proper equities.

Find a suitable plan. It isn't a hard thing to do. Consult with a financial adviser and see your options. Tourism and export industries are booming due to the low pound sterling.

Emergency Fund

Two years until your retirement and it may be important to up the ante when it comes to overtimes and work. Find alternative sources of funding.

You could take a simple job once you retire. Online works where your trade skills can cater is a very useful element to help you.

Tax Withholdings

Make sure to check these every year. You may need to owe higher or lower. But make sure you provide just enough as mandated. You could be paying for higher taxes where that money could have given you a greater investment elsewhere.

"The Balance" Is All About Millenials And Personal Finance

Millenials have more to say about money than their predecessors do. With career options dwindling and only creativity and resourcefulness becoming the weapon of choice to survive the harsh everyday of financial woes, millenials continue to fight on.

The Balance -- a new subsidiary of About.com -- focuses on helping millenials understand personal finance more in all angles. Even for students and newly-graduates finding it troublesome to manage their finances effectively, the 34,000 pieces of content from 70 writers under personal finance, investing, money hacks, career advice and small business trips can make it easy for the typical millenial to know more about money.

“There are plenty of personal finance websites out there that cover various parts of the market, but we don’t think anyone caters to the same market as we do,” said About.com CEO Neil Vogel. “Most of our competitors cater strictly to the highest net worth people, but we want to help everyone get better at earning, saving and spending their money.”

The reason for the new brand according to Mr Vogel is that millenials and other Internet users would not take a financial advice seriously from a website that teaches one how to sing and how to bake an awesome pie.

Lessons People Learn When They Win The Lottery

In 2002, it was Michael Carroll who won about £9.7m on his own. It was an amazing feat for anyone -- yet eight years later he finds himself bankrupt.

Way back further in 1997, John McGuiness had scored more than £10m in jackpot in the lottery. A failed investment in the Livingstone Football Club worth £4m and other debts worth £2 saw him bankrupt immediately in 2008.

This teaches readers a few things. First, the money you just won must not overwhelm you. Second, it is imperative you understand the investments you will place your money on.

It is normal to splurge for a bit. But before you take that Maldives vacation, assess carefully how much you need to spend. Don't go on a trip without a financial plan as you would normally do if you do not have enough cash on hand.

After knowing how much money you have left, make sure when you invest your money you have enough to live on. Yes, you have millions, but it doesn't mean it would span the rest of your life. Still look at the schemes and the risks involved with your investment.

If your heart's too set on your planned investment, make sure to think this is money you wouldn't get back. Once you detach from it, you could plan the money you have left better.

Female Finance Careers To Be Bolstered Into Senior Roles

The UK HM Treasury announced that a pledge for gender balance across the finance industry - The Women in Finance Charter - has about 72 companies on part of its initiative to help women elevate into senior roles in financial services.

The pledge focuses on helping ensure gender diversity to create a balanced workforce can be good for business and improve workplace culture.

The firms committing to the charter would create its own goals depending on their business. They will be required to report publicly to create any progress they make to deliver against these targets. 

Signatories will ensure this transparency will help them earn accountability for future changes to ensure gender equality in the workforce.

Companies signing the charter will agree to make sure the pay of senior executive team including bonuses and other executive remuneration reflects their delivery against the internal targets on gender diversity.

Commenting in a statement regarding the charter, a spokesperson from fintech startup Circle said: 

“As a young fast-growing FinTech company, innovation is vital but so too is our passion for people. 

We want the right people for the job, whatever their gender. Approximately 60% of people working in financial services are women across 20 global markets, however this figure sadly falls dramatically to 19% when looking at senior level positions.”

Mark Cuban Is Focused on Time Rather Than Money

Having sold garbage bags as a teenager to having sold several Internet ventures that had turned into huge profit, Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com was one that earned him about $5.7 billion in 1999.

Now, aside from his role in Shark Tank, owning NBA's Dallas Mavericks and film ventures,  Mark Cuban is becoming one of the richest men in America.

In an interview, he said that money is something he works hard to get and never takes for granted.

If there was one thing he could mend, he said, was that at a young age, he formed an idea of comparing himself and his assets to other millionaires. He forgot to use his money to create more time.

Indeed, we may lose ourselves looking for the best investments and no one can blame us; we're just looking for our backs in the near future once our bodies are unable to work for us any longer.

Like Mark Cuban, time is everything and is extremely important.

While Mark Cuban is quite great in terms of financial management, he has only a few charitable institutions he trusts. He believes that many of these charities have huge overheads and have their inefficiencies that prove to be bothersome.

In his interview, Cuban said he prioritises being liquid in case he needs money during possible emergencies.

Universal Banking: A Dream Come True

What if we told you in the future, your smartphone wouldn't need the apps of five banks you're working with.

Instead, you could have one account to store your money and distribute them at any time to your different bank acounts.

Today's bank account management, while efficient, can do so much more. The advent of information technology, which has made information dissemination quite easy for this generation and its businesses and companies, should have helped improve this sector.

Financial technology or FinTech companies have been working to make it convenient for people to manage their finances everywhere. Banks have worked with these companies to create apps that allow people to check their bank accounts, ATMs and even credit cards conveniently.

FinTech companies working on a universal bank account can make it easier to manage your finances at night and make real changes without having to spend time outside the office or the weekend to head to your bank.

According to FinTech VC Fund Life.SREDA Managing Partner VLadislav Solodkiy:

“The first customers were ready to bake a cake with disparate ingredients themselves, the mass customer wants to get a comfortable ecosystem of services with seamless integration allowing the customer to easily use data from one service inside the other and enjoy the benefits from their joint use.”

Financial product providers may also use information collected from your universal banking usage to allow them to present you the item or service you definitely need even before you head to their shops and establishments.

British Banks Will Meet Huge Shake-up Upon Possible Brexit

European banks can face apocalyptic trouble should Britons vote to exit the Union. According to analysts, funding costs could spread bond deals.

This would mean huge troubles and even deficits for many EU banks connected to the strong UK financial institutions.

The EU's regulation on UK banks will disappear. Along with these are EU-standard deals disappearing with the imposition of new regulations from British banks alone.

Many EU financial institutions will be forced to scale back their operations after cementing their presence inside Britain to reach further markets.

Central Bank planning would be the one most hard-hit. According to analysts, the huge staffing changes in European and British banks could see the removal of EU banks' London-based operations.

However, JPMorgan Chase's CEO Jamie Dimon believes the situation isn't for the worse.

"One can reasonably argue that Britain is better untethered to the bureaucratic and sometimes dysfunctional European Union," he wrote in his annual letter to shareholders earlier this month. "The European Union began with a collective resolve to establish a political union and peace after centuries of devastating wars and to create a common market that would result in a better economy and greater prosperity for its citizens. These two goals still exist, and they are still worth striving for."

Three Ways To Detoxify Yourself From Your Finances

Let's face it, finances aren't the easiest thing to deal with. You've got to take care of your responsibilities at your job, manage your time effectively and all you crave when you get home is to get to spend that money you made on things that you want.

Unfortunately, things we may currently want, like travel, new gadgets and even investments, can be priced exorbitantly.

 

To help you take care of your finances, here are a few things you can do!

Have A Short Term Goal

De-stressing starts with direction. What's your life-end goal with your finances? That is your long-term goal. 

Your short-term goals include things you would like to buy with your profit. These may also be problems solved by monetary gains. Determine your short-term and long-term goals first.

Don't Just Budget

When we want something, budgeting is our first reaction. This isn't a bad reaction at all. In fact, it's an efficient use of time and resources.

Perhaps limitation is the only problem budgeting causes. Limitation that you're cash-strapped with your current job yet you are unable to tell yourself to try other investments or invest your time in things that would help you gain more for your money.

Be Your Own Financial Planner

Be your own financial planner. Plan your finances carefully and efficiently. Be informed with the risks your investments bring. The Internet is a huge place to find client reviews to product sales and stock performances.

Always be in the know!

Americans Failing Financial Literacy Education

With states in America growing lower by the numbers of students requiring high school students to complete an economic course and a bludgeoned personal finance education course seeing a huge list of failures, the biennial Survey of the States by the US Council for Economic Education publishes some troubling figures.

About 20 states have mandatory high school economic courses. About 16 states require testing, which was down from 25 in 1988.

The COEE President Nan Morrison said:

"We were disappointed to see that no additional states require courses in personal finance to be taught."

Financial education varies depending on state. Some states require economic education to be a requirement in primary school. Some merely offer the programs, which the students and parents can easily ignore.

Morisson added:

"To be successful, most kids don't need to learn about collateralized debt instruments, but they do need to know how to open a bank account, how much they need to save each month to reach their goals and, if they borrow this amount of money, how much money they will need to earn to pay it back."

The US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's Investor Education Foundation said that high school students taking personal finance courses have received better average credit scores in their young adult age.

Three Ways To Prove You Can Handle Life-Altering Financial Decisions

The biggest and scariest financial decision I've made to date as I'm now 30 is going for a hundreds of thousands of pounds in a mortgage loan for my new home in Edinburgh. Yep, it's a huge financial commitment. With the economy's troubles and a fearful me scared of 

running out of online marketing projects, you know it's going to be my biggest enemy.

But then again, I have three things to prove to myself I can handle life-altering financial decisions. Maybe these three can help you too if you're going through the same.

A Master Of Stability

Stability is the most important focal point of your decision. But it is also what renders most investors stagnant.

I understand conservative investors who don't want to lose much for their investments. But sometimes, you have to lose some to get some.

Depending on stability alone is unstable. I learned this the hard way when I lost money in the stock market. But then again, I never lose completely when I decided to stay and see where my money takes me.

And lo and behold, this company I was holding on to just grew up by 15% in the last three 

years. Hurrah!

Looking For New Investment Opportunities

I was never really satisfied with earning just through my job as a writer and marketer. I have to raise two kids and it's never easy when you've got a new mortgage and you have someone to help you with the expenses. I went into the stock market for these new investment opportunities.

But the stock market isn't the only place to go. Banks can offer you several types of funds where you could invest your money and get some huge double back for yourself!

Knows How To Wait Out The Storm

Again, why item number 1 in this list went well is because I decided to bank on this little company. While I won't disclose its name right here, three years ago, it was down the slumps in London's Stock Market. It wasn't doing very well and I was kicking myself repeatedly for having invested in such a faulty endeavour.

But I anticipated the industry to become prominent in the next three years. And I was luckily correct.

A great financial-decider knows how to wait out the storm and when to set sail!