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  • Setting up family budget
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Get 3-in-1 Credit Report to Help You Monitor Your Credit Health Online

Because in US there are three important credit bureaus – Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian – it is necessary to verify your credit report on a regular basis from all of the three credit report bureaus. A complete credit report must include a complete credit report from all the three credit bureau in a way that is easy to read. The credit report must also include the credit scores along with tips for improving it.

The information presented in the credit report must be presented in a way that it can be compared. Furthermore, it is important to get information, which will help you manage your credit scores and improve your credit situation along with assistance from the ones that have offered you the credit report.

The information contained in your credit report will influence lenders to decide if you will get the credit or not. The credit report includes how prompt you are in paying bills, collections information, and bankruptcy. If your credit report contains errors then it will determine the sum you will pay for your mortgages or car loans. This information will also affect the time in which you might get a job because employers check your credit report when applying to a job. For these several reasons and for others it is important to make sure there is absolutely no mistake in your credit report.

The only way you can know if your credit report is correct is to check it regularly. The government gives you the right to get a free credit report from each of the credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) every year. You can get your free credit report very quickly by accessing the Web. As an example, Equifax offers 30 days free trial to get your FREE 3-Bureau Credit Report and FICO Score of your nationwide credit reports and receive alerts within 24 hours of key changes.

After you obtain your credit report, you have to check it for errors. If there is something wrong in it, you have to contact the credit report agency that provided the inaccurate information and ask them to correct it. Add to your demand your address to be easily identified. To sustain your affirmation send them proofs like the copy of the documents that indicate the correct data. Explain to them why you want your correct information to be filled in and ask them remove or correct the false one.

 
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How to Make Extra Money from Your Old and Unused Mobile Phones

Do you want to get extra money without breaking a sweat? I do. I know you do, too. No, it doesn’t involve anything related to stealing, robbing, scamming or blackmailing :) Rather, it does involve something from your forgotten belongings in the attic.

Now where did I put that thing?

Do you know what one of the most important stuff you have right now is? You guess it right: your mobile phone. Just admit it – Today, life and work without mobile phone would be misery, if not a disaster. Most likely than not, you are also ‘required’ to upgrade your mobile phone to allow you to be more effective and efficient in doing your work (and socializing.)

One question I should ask you: How many mobile phones do you have at home? Your answer might be one, but I’m not sure there isn’t more. Aren’t you forgetting something? Have you check your drawer, shed, attic or somewhere else in your house where you stash your unwanted belogings (a.k.a. junks)?

You might find this cluttering your house: your old mobile phone(s.) Many, including me, have their old (and obsolete) mobile phones at home. Why? Because throwing them away is such a waste of money. Moreover, throwing them away to the garbage bin can damage the environment and get you into trouble with the laws (not enforced in all places of the world, though.)

Logically, you would want to sell your mobile phone, instead of keep it or throw it away. You could make extra money from selling your old mobile phones. But how do you sell them, and where?

One solution: sell mobile phone online.

Where to sell your old mobile phones at the best prices?

There are actually several mobile phone recyclers to where you can sell your old mobile phones. Your problem would be on how to know that the money you receive is the best you can get out of your sales. Finding out is not an easy task, and it could very well be time consuming.

This is where mobile phone comparison sites, such as SellMyMobile.com, step up.

SellMyMobile.com, currently serving the United Kingdom market, allows you to compare and get the best prices for your old mobile phones. You can sell mobile phones on the site easily, following these 4 steps:

  1. Enter the make and model of your mobile phone – e.g. Nokia 6300
  2. You will be presented a list of prices offered by the recyclers, with the best prices listed on top – Naturally, you should sell to the recycler offering the best price.
  3. Upon your selection, you will be given forms to complete and you will receive instructions on how to send your mobile phone via freepost.
  4. Just wait for 1 to 3 days to receive your payment via cheque sent to your address.

How can this site a solution in your personal finance endeavor?

Your personal finance endeavor involves managing your life better, aside of the obvious: financial planning. You should find a way to turn any liabilities (yes, your old mobile phones lying around are liabilities!) into something good, in this case, extra cash. In some part of the world, disposing electronics – including mobile phones – require you to pay a certain amount of money – another strong reason why you should sell your old mobile phones.

Do you want something a bit more creative? If so, you can start by collecting old, unused mobile phones from your colleagues, family and friends. You can also get old mobile phones on a dime in garage sales, if you prefer. You can then send your collected mobile phones to SellMyMobile.com to receive some nice amount of money. A great idea, isn’t it? All you need to do is to make sure that there are recyclers accepting the mobile phones model and make you have, otherwise you pile yourself with ‘junk.’

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How and When to Teach Your Children About Money

Many parents think that discussing with their children about money is not a good idea, or that doing this from an early age will take something from their childhood. Actually teaching children about the value of money will inflict a sense of responsibility in them. The question we might ask as parents is what and when to teach them about money.

It is a good idea to present children the evolution in investing and market trading. I remember my first approaches to this subject were at eleven yeas old. At that age, I used to hate everything that was about money, but many of my childhood friends were enthusiastic about receiving money as a gift. My parents explained me that they had a job because they needed money to pay the bills and to sustain family needs.

As parents, you need to teach your children to spend money wisely. Likewise, as parents, you should offer your children options – options to seek their paths to take to be self-sustained; Paths to seek ways to be financially independent – and ultimately, financially free.

Those being said, regardless what you do as parents, you need to teach your children the world of jobs and entrepreneurship. Some of you would say that jobs are better than starting out businesses, some would say vice versa. Again, the key is, no matter which one you perceive better, you should teach (and allow your children to learn) about both worlds.

Children must know from early age that in our world, everything that we do has a price, but there are also things that you cannot buy with money such as friendship, loyalty and others. I would teach my children that someone gets money when he works on something for it, and the money are the payment for what he does – no work, no pay. I would also teach my children that someone can also gets money if he/she makes his/her money to “work” on themselves – this can be achieved through investing (and yes, I truly think that saving in banks is NOT investing – it’s little or no return on investment and I’m not sure why people think banks would care enough to give you more from your savings.)

The key is this: As parents, you need to encourage an environment where your children can learn and talk about money as much as they want. I do understand in some culture that money is not something to talk about over family dinner, but this has got to be change – People fall into debts because they lack of understanding about how money and investing work – they make careless money-related decisions. All start from one situation: no-talks-about-money-subject policy.

You wouldn’t want to get your children in such position, are you?

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Do You Need Help of A Bookkeeper for Managing your Personal Finance?

Just like any business outfit your personal finances require adequate planning and organization. You need to set the budget for the year, track all expenditure and retained earnings. Buying bookkeeping or an accounting package to help you do this or even consider taking a course in bookkeeping, instead of hiring a bookkeeper.

Hiring a bookkeeper is resource-intensive. Unless you are a wealthy person in need of help to manage your personal finance, you should consider to Do-It-Yourself your personal finance management. Moreover, hiring an ‘outsider’ would put you in a risk of plenty of personal interference that could emerge.

If you really want to avoid the monthly payment to the bookkeeper then it all starts with knowing where you are and you can easily determine where you are going. All this financial planning stuff can be done with some paper or using a template with your favorite spreadsheet package.

Nevertheless, plan your personal finance yourself requires a few processes.

First establish a yearly and monthly household budget. Take record of all your expenses whether daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. It will shock you as to the length of things or items you expend money on.

Next keep track of all the actual spending and income against the budget you developed earlier. It will help you determine the seasonal aspects of your expenditure. Then over a period of time you would be able to streamline these aspects to assist you maintain a respectable cash flow. The plan is that have money in the bank to pay your expenses but still leave some as your retained earnings. The bank money is for the payment of bills and the one left acts as a cover in cases of emergency spending.

The account at the bank is so crucial that you have to keep track of activities on it. Have a bank register which records all deposits, withdrawals from the bank, ATM, debit machine and check withdrawals. Then do a reconciliation of the register with your monthly bank statements so that you know any differences. It also helps you determine the exact amount of money you have at the bank.

Also take note of your spending through credit cards and other lines of credit. Be very diligent in having one or two credit cards but not multiple. Make a breakdown of all your transactions to separate the normal expenditure from unexpected occurrences.

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Good Debt vs. Bad Debt

There are many people out there with little or no knowledge on good and bad debt issues. The point is that many people encounter debt problems on daily basis and should need better information. To this effect, you stand to enjoy this piece of reading since for some important ideas.

The transfer of money between two parties simply describes what debt is all about. It is always accompanied by terms which determines the period for repayments. The mode of payment is also enshrined in them. Debt is always accrued whenever an item is bought. What actually happens is that we don’t seem to recognize this debt if the cost of the item is small and we readily have the capacity to pay.

However, in the event that it requires some bigger amount where we may be unable to pay, there will usually be some long-term debt repayment. Whiles some may require a few months, several others can take you many years. One can’t discount the fact that debt appears an inevitable thing even though many people out there feel just uncomfortable because of the repayment that will be required of them.

Such people will always try to make upfront payment when they buy items. It would be good of you to pay for school fees, drive a used car and even rent your apartment so long as the money is available. Depending on your lifestyle, there are a lot of debts that may come your ways.

You should also be in the know that everything bought either appreciate or depreciate in value over a given period of time. For instance, just the moment after buying a brand new car and taking it away from the dealer’s parking lot, you could lose a significant percentage of value. In such a situation, if the car is sold, the money you will accrue might not even be able to pay for the remaining of your auto loan balance.

At other times, you might have used the car for years before finally selling it off. The value may not be enough in order to cover the actual loan. To this effect you may have to take a loan in addition to make sure the original auto loan is covered. This is a typical example of bad debt. Good debt will rather allow you to make extra money after sales since the item is expected to appreciate over time.

So, to sum it up – Good debts put money in your pocket, bad debts take money out from your pocket (as taught by Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!)

Image by svilen001.

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Fit Printing in Your Budget with the Help of Discount Printing

Do you print a lot? I do. I print my own business cards, greeting cards, calendars, to-do lists, organizers, and many more. Do-it-yourself (DIY) does save a lot. Or does it?

I just realized a while ago that one of the biggest misconceptions in your personal finance’s cost-cutting endeavors is DIY. DIY is thought to be less-expensive than buying printed products in stores or buying/hiring someone to print for you. In fact, in some cases, DIY is a bad practice in budgeting for your personal finance.

In printing, you might get things at lower cost by doing DIY, but quite often you forget to consider your time, energy, electricity and other materials for the DIY purposes. Quite often, discount printing service such as PsPrint can offer you a better overall resource-saving that is budget-friendly.

Printing stickers for your kids’ school project doesn’t always come cheaper by DIY. Instead, ‘outsource’ your sticker printing to printing services can save a lot of time, even money, on your side. More examples: If you are going to send greeting cards to your friends and family with your pictures in them, it is probably better for you to get your printing job done with the help of discount printing service provider that can offer you low-quantity printing solutions. For your business needs, you can also ‘outsource’ your Business checks printing with the help of a discount printing service.

Let us consider Pareto’s 80-20 law – DIY can cost you 80% of your time for only 20% result, whereas getting the job done by a discount printing service can get you 80% job done using only 20% of your time – Just think about this and you’ll realize how much time we waste in order to minimize our spending.

All in all, following some common sense can avoid you from unnecessary uses of your limited resources.

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Budgeting Tools to Help You Manage Your Personal Finance

To make your budget more effective and work efficient, you must know about the budgeting tools.  You can maximize your savings and earnings with the effective means of budgeting tools.  Here is how to seek for the right budgeting tools and software for you.

About budgeting tools

If you are preparing your personal budget, you require a budget tool that would help you to figure out what are your expenses on monthly basis. For example payment of rent, electricity, water, internet, phone bill, groceries, shopping for clothes, fuel for your car, movies and DVDs.

On the other side, the budgeting tool will also give you an account of your earnings in the form of salary, property income, investor income or any other income.  So, this tool will help you in making an assessment of your earnings on one side and expenses on the other side. This is a personal budgeting tool.

Another budgeting tool which will help you to manage your finances and this tool would detail your expenses, savings, credit card bills and a complete list and pattern of your spending.   With the help of this tool, you can assess where you are spending more and can make suitable changes in that area. Controlling your expenses is also a budgeting tool that that helps you to make an assessment about monthly expenses.

Budgeting software and online tool

There are plenty of web sites on Internet which will guide you to download budgeting software programs. Once you install the budgeting tool software in your computer, you can work on it by entering your income, expenses and savings.  This work sheet will help you to identify where exactly you are spending more money and how you can lower your expenses and stay within your budget limit. One personal budgeting software Money Estate recommends is Money Tree.

Another type of budgeting tool is online budgeting tool. Some of the best budgeting tools available online is free to use. Money Estate’s choice for this online budgeting tool is Mint.com. Mint.com downloads and categorizes your balances and transactions on daily basis – automatic – and present them in graphs and stats for getting a better view on your personal finance.

It will also help you to cut your costs and would give a clear picture of your personal finances.   So next time when you are working on budgeting tool search for software that suits your needs and that helps you to maintain your budget.

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Practical Tips to Help You Get Out of Debt

None of us would like to stay in debt. Because when debts mount,  our good hours of sleep are disturbed and we are of the opinion that we must work some how to get rid of debt. So we would like to work on ways and means to plan and find good ideas to get rid of debt.

There are plenty of reliable and good sources available to help you to get rid of debt. Whatever may be the reason of debt, if you have your lost job because of job layoff or any other unforeseen factor, you can easily come out of the problem.

Tips to get out of debt

Here are some practical tips that can save you from the threat of personal bankruptcy:

  • This is the must-do in getting out of debt: create a monthly budget for your expenses.
  • After receiving your salary, sit at your desk and prepare a neat work sheet which lists monthly bills, purchase of groceries and your daily expenses.
  • First consider paying off all those balances on your credit card which are carrying higher interest rate.
  • Try to cut down unnecessary expenses which may include dining out frequently or some other luxury expenses.
  • Always use cash in small amounts instead of using credit cards.  Use it only when you have to buy jewelry, car or a television set or such other product items which are more than four figures in amount.
  • Try to maintain your credit card limit. See that your paychecks are directly deposited and keep a limit of withdrawal for each week or month.
  • Evaluate your expenses and earnings and maintain an account.  The more careful you are in using your earnings, the more good for you in savings as well safe to get out of debt.

If you need help in getting out of debt…

Firstly, you should find out the sources of companies, agencies who give you proper guidance and support for you.

Secondly, approach them with honest presentation and with a sincere request to help you to get out of debt. Discuss and put forth all the necessary information that they require but ensure that you are with good and friendly people who would be willing to help you with the best remedy.

The remedy they provide should be useful to you and must not create any further debt problem to you. Therefore, you must make a good selection of debt relief company for the present and for your future financial plans.

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Financial Planning: How a Financial Planner can Help You Plan for Your Financial Future

Financial planning is a very crucial subject for every individual, company and industry. This is to ensure that our funds are managed well and we maintain our income, earnings and profits.

Financial planning is essential, even crucial. Therefore, if you are unsure about what you are doing in financial planning, you might need help from a financial planner instead of doing it yourself.

Learn about Financial Planning

Financial planning has to be learned from fundamentals.  If you are planning to buy a home in a span of five years from now,   you need to have your financial planning so that you can have savings in your bank account to help you to buy your own home. In order to make more savings, you need to cut your expenses wherever possible.

Financial planning for your taxes, retirement and business are special and unique in its importance and each category of financial planning requires a specific planning. Some of the needs (often disguise as ‘investment’) can be postponed and those that can purchased now which are required for the present needs, can be purchased. All of those need proper handling, and doing it wrong today can lead you to opportunity losses in the future.

Therefore, again, if you do not have much knowledge about financial planning, you should consult a financial planner who would be able to give you proper advice and suitable guidance on your financial planning.

How can a Financial Planner help you

The job of a financial planner is to give you the best guidance and support to help in your wedding, buying you a perfect home, see that you have sufficient money in your savings account when you retire from your employment. If you are in business, financial planner would help you with various models of financial planning.

Therefore, always hire an efficient financial planner who can give you an excellent financial planning schedule which helps you to increase your finances and also keeps you safe from financial situations. While discussing with your financial planner about your financial planning, be honest and sincere in your presentation and that will help your financial planner to guide you properly with a professional advice and suggestion.

You also need to go by the advice of the financial planner for financial planning, and you can deviate from the plan as it will increase your expenses and may not help you further.  Therefore you must know that the financial planning is an effective tool that will help you to stand ahead of your situations.

Image by koyochi.

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Best Credit Cards Deals Available

If you want to find the best credit cards around today, you need to know why you want a credit card in the first place.

That might sound a bit daft but there are plenty of reasons why you might want one. You could transfer a balance, make purchases on an interest free basis or simply collect points towards free items whenever you spend any money on it.

Each type of card will have a number of providers offering the best credit cards in that sector. The best credit cards for balance transfers will be 0% interest cards with the lowest transfer fee rate. In contrast the best credit cards for purchases will be those with a 0% interest rate for purchases for a set number of months.

As you can see finding the best credit cards is reliant on you knowing specifically what you want that card for. If you want to use one card for all three purposes you won’t get the best deal each time you use it.

But there is one rule that does apply to all the best credit cards. They should all suit your needs and involve paying as little interest as possible. If you always pay off the whole balance then you need to look for the best credit cards to reward you for that fact. Don’t just dodge the interest – make sure you can earn points off your shopping, AirMiles or perhaps even free gifts. The best credit cards will offer you something in return that you will eventually use.

The best credit cards are all easy enough to find online. You can usually apply online too and receive a reasonably quick decision on whether you will be accepted for one of the best credit cards on the market today. Once you have explored all the options and chosen the ideal card with the best rate for you, you can look forward to reaping the rewards.

Credit Cards at MoneyExtra.com

Image by tnimalan.

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