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Don’t Let This Golden Chance Slip Away From Your Hands.

Well, mistakes are the best teachers, as the lessons learned are ingrained by the outcome of our failures. Finances in the same way let you learn what to do and what not to do. To achieve financial goals even a single financial mistake may be a detrimental one.

This post in intended to highlight some common mistakes that need to be avoided for a better financial planning:

No Proper Financial Plan: Lack of a financial plan, and not setting any financial goals can bring a lot of financial problems. A properly written plan with all short-term and long-term goals surely results into success. Reevaluation of the plan and tracking the progress often are basic ingredients of a proper financial planning.

Improper or No Insurance: A financial plan is incomplete without adequate life insurance plan. One major goal of a financial plan is to maintain the life style of your family whether you are with them or not. A common mistake we make is buying life insurance policies such as endowment plans or money back to save tax, also hoping to reap returns. Returns from such policies are much less compared to traditional investment products such as stocks, mutual funds, gold or real estate.

No Diversification: Do not put all eggs in one basket. This mistake arises when a major part of  portfolio is invested in a single or same type of financial instrument which increases risks resulting into high losses/profits. The right portfolio should be built by optimum allocation into different asset classes.

Tax Saving Without Consideration: Many taxpayers try to withheld too much from their paycheck for income taxes. They think of it as a way to save. Investing in different financial products on the consideration of tax saving without evaluating other parameters of financial products  is one of the major financial mistakes.

Idle Money: Money lying idle in cash or saving bank accounts generates negative returns. This is one of the biggest financial mistakes which we often make by ignoring the effect of inflation on the money invested. Insufficient funds in the saving bank account for emergency purposes.

No Investment: Spending money blindly and not considering about any investment is another bad money idea. Increase the investment amount as your income increases. Don’t wait for a lump sum amount to be accumulated to invest and don’t try to time the market. Develop a regular and disciplined investment approach.

High Debt: Small amounts of debt, or house mortgages and auto loans may be comfortable but realize that these can be hard to handle if money is tight. If you do acquire new debt, do so cautiously and after researching the best loan options. Always prepare a plan to keep a tight leash on personal loans and credit card debt.

The reason behind moving your money is that the big banks don’t care about people, small businesses, and community. Smaller, community banks are supposed to be more responsible and personal because you know the bankers personally. The organizers believe that a mass movement to smaller banks will force the big banks to be more responsible.

If you are also thinking about moving your money to a nearby small bank, then it is advised do some research before stepping further as there are some factors in favor and not in favor of this.

Favorable Factors:

Control: The biggest advantage of moving your money is the feeling of control over the situation that you’ll receive from sticking to a small bank.

Support to Small Business: A small bank nearby, supports local organizations and lends to small businesses. Being in a small community, they become a part of the community.

Personalized Services: A bank with just a few branches and clients provide better personalized service when you have some problem related to your accounts. Moreover they charge less fees for their services.

Unfavorable Factors:

Inconvenience: Local banks have a limited number of ATMs that may also be far from the place where you work or live.

Over-leveraging: Big banks are bailed out for excessive leverage but smaller banks fail in much higher numbers because they over-leverage and make risky loans.

Higher Risk: Most of the community banks are failure prone. Before placing your money in a small bank, you should verify its ratings.

The decision about moving your money depends totally on you. You have to decide whether switching to a smaller bank is right for you and your financial habits.

Mobile financial services are very likely to become the next big thing that will attract millions of consumers all over the world. There are three kinds of mobile financial services:

Mobile Banking: It enables customers with existing bank accounts to get connected to their bank or financial institution over the mobile network. They can use standard banking services such as bank account management (check balance, view transactions, etc.), credit / debit card management with it.

Mobile Payment: Enables customers to make credit card payments and bill payments any time anywhere, from either a bank account or a mobile wallet.

Mobile Money Transfer: Transferring Money via international or national remittance hubs from and/or to a real bank account or a mobile wallet. It is is a peer to peer form of mobile payment mechanism which is most successful among other kinds of mobile transactions.

As the use of Internet is expanding day by day, consumers are becoming more comfortable with using their handsets for increasingly sophisticated purposes, which also leads towards adoption of electronic channels for financial services. Today’s successful payment services have been built using certain mobile-specific channels that even basic handsets could support. Moreover access to the Internet will enable providers to offer solutions that do not depend on the security solutions offered using the SIM card in the phone. The growth of the mobile Internet may cause a boom in a new generation of branch less banking providers, raising substantial questions about risks to consumers, as well as the future shape of the competitive landscape.

It is estimated that there will be more and more people within the reach of wireless communications in next few years. Devices like mobile phones, which require less energy than PCs and ATMs and which can be recharged by windup or solar power, would play an increasingly important part in mobile finance.

Financial planning Stage1: This stage is about tracking where you are now. What is your income, your assets, debts and expenditure? How stable is your income? Does it remain constant, or is it dependent on factors beyond your control? And what about prospects, are you in an occupation where you can reasonably expect your income to increase year on year?

Financial Planning Stage 2: The next stage is about identifying your goals which depend upon your age, circumstances and individual tastes. For example, the young will probably be concerned with purchasing their first home, the early middle-aged with paying their kids college fees, and the late middle-aged with providing sufficient retirement income.

Goals: Goals exist within different time frames. These can be short term that might be to save enough for next year’s vacation, a medium term which may be to pay off your mortgage and the longest term one may be building a decent pension fund.

Step1) Identify and write down your financial goals.

Step 2): Break each financial goal down into several short-term (less than 1 year), medium-term (1 to 3 years) and long-term (5 years or more) goals.

Step 3): Learn through a money magazine, or a book, or surf the Internet, for how to take wise decisions that will increase your net worth many times over. Then identify small, measurable steps you can take to achieve these goals, and put this action plan to work.

Step 4): Evaluate your progress by reviewing your monthly, quarterly, or at any other interval progress to determine if your program is working. If you’re not making satisfactory progress on a particular goal, re-evaluate your approach and make changes as necessary.

Finances can be improved by by saving money and investing carefully without any specific targets but it is a good idea to have some general goals.

For this you need to to follow or try at least these things:

Improve your vehicle’s efficiency:

Keep your tyres correctly inflated and get correct amount of pressure in tyres as low pressure needs more fuel.

Clear out junk from the boot to make it lighter in weight and reduce less effort to speed up.

Turn on air conditioner only when required otherwise turn it off to save a large amount of fuel

Fill only the adequate amount of fuel.

Drive smoothly and efficiently:

Accelerate slowly to stay under 3,000 revs. Remember ‘the harder you press accelerator, the more fuel you spend.’

Always apply the correct gear.

Let your car slow down naturally to use its stored momentum rather than using the brakes always

Take care while filling up the fuel:

Do not overfill the fuel tank so much that petrol nozzle ‘clunks’.

Always refill at least fifty miles before the tank is empty.

Fill up at night when it’s cold and you get some extra bit of fuel.

Pay Wisely:

Always try to pay with a cashback/fuel credit card to get some of your outlay back.

Check out for the new petrol schemes and promotions regularly to get worth out of a single penny.

Use a combined service: These days many companies are offering combined services for cable, internet and telephone that not only cost less, but also provide you the convenience of a single bill.

Slow down your internet service: It may sound strange, but you can save up to $15 per month and you wouldn’t notice any difference when surfing internet.

Read stuff online: You can save money and paper as well by reading books, magazine and other stuff online. You can get a lot of stuff online and can save on your spending. Even some magazines now offer their content for free online.

Buy products over the internet: Almost each and every product whether it is for commercial or household use, can be bought online. This would save your petrol cost your should have spent in driving to market for shopping. Moreover, various discounts are also availed if you buy products online.

Use internet phone service: By doing so, you can save a substantial amount of money. Internet telephone service costs as little as $9.95 a month and service providers offer the best price to you.

Swap books online: You can very easily swap the books you’ve read via the internet with others. Various websites are providing this service which can help you exchange and trade your collection with others online.

Use revenue-sharing websites: These websites serve as portals to other shopping websites. When you make a purchase at one of the listed sites, the revenue-sharing sites make a commission off of each sale and share the commission with users. In this way, you can earn refunds by making ordinary purchases from online retailers.

Running Your Office

• Outsource few services to avoid increase of headcounts.
• Negotiate with vendors to save even 5% of the total money.This can turn into big saving in the year-end.
• Keep a check on stationary utilization and ask for discounts from the vendor.
• Watch at utility bills and don’t let computers, lights or air conditioners running overnight.
• Reuse the paper by printing double-sided to save cost on paper.
• Install electric hand dryer in wash rooms, as paper towels prove more costlier.

IT & Finance

• Buy reasonable PCs, they work similar to the expensive branded HP and Dell desktops. If purchasing laptops, don’t fall for expensive warranties offered by the supplier at the time of purchase.
• When we can get decent functionality from free open source operating system like Ubuntu, Star office for free, then why we pay for a costly softawre license for each system?
• Use VOIP services like skype for making long distance calls.
• Go for specific schemes for taking the service of cellular phones like corporate schemes are comparatively cheaper.
• Make negotiation with the banks you deal, for better rates on your FDs.
• Give food vouchers to your employees. This way you can give them more after-tax income even if you are paying them lower salary.
• Avoid overspending on your credit cards or incurring overdrafts.

Business Travel

• When travelling for work, look for options where you can stay, with your relatives, friends or if you want to stay in hotel, look for options that are located nearby your meeting location.
• If possible travel during noon, as air tickets are often cheaper this time.
• If you can, get a hotel industry association discount card from your friend or anybody you know. This will give you discounts in hotels and restaurants during your stay and meal respectively.

Official space

• Ask relatives and friends if they provide you a free space to set up your business. This would save your money on office rental expenditures.
• While designing your office, do not really hire a fancy interior designer when a carpenter at your neighborhood can do the trick.
• Design a frugal office with the use of sub standard flooring, as expensive carpets require high maintenance cost, more use of glass rather than having wooden partition, etc.

• Shutting down your PC

If suddenly you have to being off your PC for nearly an hour or more, shutting it down would be a good idea. Normally, we keep our computers running 24/7, not necessarily we use them all the time. These will not only help you save electricity but will also protect your environment from the heat coming out of it. It has been observed that a room wherein computer is placed has temperature higher by 3 or 4 degree as compared to other rooms.

• Keeping your closet doors closed

Is there a point wasting money and electricity in keeping your closet warm? I don’t think so. You do not often use your closet for dressing up there, do you? Then what is the need to waste electricity in order to maintain the temperature of that few extra square space of your home? Keeping your close doors will not only save money on electricity but also keep your clothes away from absorbing door from outside like odour of pets, smoke, etc.

• Replacing your Bulbs

Yes, it is a good idea and true too. Replacing your older bulbs with new compact fluorescent light will definitely help you save big amount of money. Buy one CFL every time you go shopping. This may add little to your monthly grocery budget but trust me, over a period of time you will be able to change all the bulbs of your home and in the long run, will be able to save a significant amount of money on your electricity bills.

• Keeping your appliances maintained and clean

When things are clean, they tend to work with more efficiency.  Same applies with your appliances also like oven, gas, fridge, exhaust line of your dryer or any other appliance. Keeping them clean on frequent interval of time improves their efficiency and increases their lifespan. If you are using appliances from over a decade, better to replace it with new ones. The modern appliances sold today are more energy efficient than those made years ago.

• Planting few vegetables in your kitchen garden

Well, this is also a good way to retain few bucks in your pocket. Think about the veggies you and your family consume most and are easy to plant. To grow few vegetables do not require much care on regular basis. You can develop different rows for different types of vegetables and useful herbs. This can be the easiest way of saving money if you love gardening and is a justified use of area left unused at your home.

• Total Balance: The total balance tells you about the balance you owe in total. This constitutes everything from unpaid balance of previous month, to new purchases, cash advances or any other charges such as annual fee, late fees or finance charges of current month.

• Total Credit Line: This tells you how much you owe in total or maximum balance your card can carry.

• Statement/Closing Date: The last date when your billing cycle ends. The statement is generated after calculating the interest for the whole period.

• Available Credit Line: The amount of credit available in the card which is not used by you. This is the amount equal to the amount used subtracted from Total Credit Line.

• Post Date: This is the date when a purchase is made or cash advance, service charge or payment is received on your credit card.

• Amount Over Credit Limit: This term is used when any combination of purchase, cash advance, fee or finance charge exceeds over your credit line. An extra fee will be charged for amount that has crossed the limit.

• Cash Advance Limit: This tells you about the maximum amount of money you can withdraw from your credit card account.

• Purchase/Advance Minimum Due: The smallest amount you can pay on your purchases and cash advances by the Payment Due Date and still meeting the terms of your card agreement.

• New Balance: The amount includes any unpaid balance from last month, new purchases, cash advances and any other charges such as annual fee, late fees or finance charges, you owe the issuer.

• Minimum Amount Due: This shows the minimum amount you can pay by the Payment Due Date, by meeting the terms of your card aggreement. This is shown at two places in the statement.

• Periodic Rate: The interest rate described in relation to a specific time period. Likewise, the monthly periodic rate is equal to the amount charged per month and the daily periodic rate is the amount charged on daily basis.

• Annual Percentage Rate (APR): The term tells you about the total cost charged on your credit borrowed for over a year, after calculation. APR can be a nicer way to compare the interests charged by diferent credit cards. The lower the APR calculated, the lesser the interest you will need to pay.

• Payment Due Date: This tells you the last date by which your payment must be sent to the issuer. If the payment is not made by this date, an extra fee is charged which is called late fee.

• Grace Period: A definite amount of time you have until no late fee is charged.