Accounting Tips Guides

It seems to me that, for large swathes of the public, the two “fiscal rules” that govern economic expenditure are, if not totally incomprehensible, at least too shatteringly dull to care about. One states that borrowing should not exceed the bracket of 40% of GDP whilst the other, the ‘golden rule’, refers to the balancing of the budget over the economic cycle.

It’s not exactly Bad Boys II is it? For the past 11 years these Brownite commandments have largely gone undisturbed. However, with financial storm clouds gathering overhead, it looks like they might not be as perennial as people thought.

The problem with this, naturally, is that if someone starts moving the goalposts, it somewhat throws the match into disrepute. The Conservatives, as one might expect, are practically queuing up to attack the Treasury over the issue. “The last nail in the coffin for Brown’s reputation for prudence” they’re calling it. The shadow chancellor George Osbourne, for example, rather sniffly referred to Brown “giving the prisoner the keys to their own cell”

A couple of rather adroit analogies aren’t they? Well, yes, until you read what Cameron said about these ‘fiscal rules’ at his party’s economic summit only two days previously:

“I don’t believe it’s impossible to try to get some political consensus [with the government]…about tight rules on fiscal policy”

That’s how he decided to phrase his intentions for steadying up the economy. Elsewhere he claimed that he wanted to “Reform the fiscal architecture” Which sounds remarkably like the way Kevin McCloud might describe Labour’s policy of ‘relaxing the fiscal rules’

Of course, as the old saying goes, the duty of the opposition is to oppose, but to describe Brown (and invariably it is Brown and not the Treasury or Alistair Darling… I wonder why?) as some prodigal cad and then hint at proposing the exact same measures is pretty rich isn’t it?

Many financial commentators have described Brown’s cabinet as standing at a crossroads with this issue. Either, they tighten their belts, raise taxes and feel the brunt of public unrest, or they slacken their belts, throw caution to the wind and indulge in a little more borrowed cash. The choice, clearly, is a tricky one:

ROCK: Oi! Brownie! How can you justify sticking to a set of outdated rules that will unnecessarily burden the public?

HARD PLACE: Oi! Gordon! where do you get off talking about borrowing more money when the financial situation is in such trouble?

Still, I suppose either of the two main positions are better than what Nick Clegg’s thrown into the mix. His ‘fair tax’ party has done somewhat of a u-turn of late and are now saying that they can solve the sticky economic climate by… lowering taxes.

Mmmm…? Well, we’d all like to see how that plans out wouldn’t we Nick? Sure you’ve thought this one through? Because I find it very hard to believe that every other economic advisor has dropped the proverbial clanger and forgot to add up these huge sums of money that are secreted around the different nooks and crannies of public spending. Brown doesn’t keep a penny jar does he?

So what have we learnt? That the government is in trouble; that the opposition will belligerently scratch and claw at everything the cabinet say, and that Nick Clegg could feel the benefit of a nice sit down. Well what’s new? Of course, detractors will rally around to call this the ‘end of the Brown era of economics’ but that only matters if you believed in such short-sighted spin in the first place.

Samantha is a London theatre fanatic and regular West End theatregoer. She writes and researches some of the biggest London shows you can view examples of her work here Oliver and Show and Stay.

Hurricane Katrina’s showed us very clearly that we are very susceptible to any major halt or reduction in oil production. With prices souring since the Katrina tragedy the term “cheap gas” is as extinct as the dinosaurs. The Hurricane Katrina cutoff came from a natural disaster, of course, but the larger threat is a political.

Amazingly enough, two-thirds of the world’s established oil treasury lie in and around the Persian Gulf area; these countries, led by Saudi Arabia, now supply about a quarter of today’s oil. This flow could be interrupted at any time for a wide range of reasons — terrorism, war, domestic upheaval, deliberate cuts, just to name a few. Many other major oil exporters are equally unpredictable: Russia (the No. 2 exporter), Venezuela (No. 5) and Nigeria (No. 8).

More than 60 percent of our oil use goes for transportation, subjugated by in large by road travel. It’s a fable that encouraging more fuel-efficient vehicles means that we will all have to drive the smallest of autos. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Fuel efficiency isn’t dictated by the size of your auto but by the performance of its engine. We will not go back to having cheap gas until we utilize the technology to make more efficient automobiles.

The introduction of “hybrid” vehicles — combining internal-combustion engines and electric motors — promises fuel efficiency gains of 10 percent to 50 percent based on accessible technologies. But it’s also a myth that simply issuing tougher fuel standards will bring instant relief. We have to look at the efficiency of the cars we are driving and that will determine how much or how little fuel we use. And, of course that does determine if we will be buying cheap gas in the near future or not.

It’s going to take a long time; you’ve got 225 million vehicles out there. It may take as long as 15 years to turn over the entire fleet of automobiles on our highways. In fact, the math is worse than that. From 2008 to 2025, the number of vehicles may grow by 50 percent, projects the Energy Information Administration. The swell reflects more people (from today’s 297 million to 351 million in 2025) and potential higher incomes. To keep total gasoline utilization stable, average fuel efficiency must improve by approximately 50 percent.

We should be able to do this. Car companies can shift decisively toward hybrids and it is now very easy to convert your existing auto into a hydrogen from water hybrid very cheaply. Regardless of the hype, annual new hybrid sales will amount to a meager 234,000 sales out of about 17 million.

If companies are to be pushed toward building more hybrids, they have to be assured of strong demand, because there’s a downside. On average, hybrids cost $3,000 to $4,000 more than conventional cars. Again, as of late, many people are finding it much cheaper to convert their own vehicles to hydrogen hybrids for less than a couple of hundred dollars.

The traditional U.S. car companies — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — are unfortunately the least prepared for change. They tied their fortunes to the biggest SUVs and pickups and right now the smaller foreign car producers seem to be leading the push toward hybrids. Cheap gasoline can come from two areas, at the pump or by how much, or more precisely how little fuel that auto uses.

Government needs to cultivate a market for fuel efficiency, although the consumers are no longer waiting for the government to act. With the public becoming more aware of the water for fuel technology people are starting to make the shift on their own. Americans now know that the era of cheap gasoline is history and are now purposely looking for more cost efficient ways to travel.

It’s not a national tragedy for someone to trade an Expedition for a Taurus. Some drivers will want to turn to a hybrid versions of their present vehicles; others will downsize. Cheap gas may be history, but greater fuel efficiency is the mark of the future for us all.

Michael Littles is a big supporter of the continued development of Hydrogen as a fuel source and provides a free video for all those who want to learn more about this technology in order to save 35% to 50% on your fuel costs. Get your free video by visiting: http://www.h2o-n2fuel.com

This is a short list of ways you can save money and begin to acquire wealth. It’s really not about how much money you make, it’s about how much you save.

1) Sock some money away. Okay this one seems obvious, and it is. But if it is so obvious, why do most people ignore it?

Well, the truth is that life is expensive and problems or emergency situations arise that drain our bank accounts.

It doesn’t matter how little you decide to put away for the future. For young people, the biggest factor on your side is time.

Small amounts of money add up over time, and if you factor in compound interest, the twenty bucks a paycheck you put away can turn into a nice chunk of money.

A smart and easy thing to do, if you have direct deposit through your work, is to have some money automatically diverted from your paycheck into a savings account.

2) Pay off your credit card debt. The interest rate on credit cards can be up to 22%. That means if you carry $100.00 on a bill over into the next month, you will now owe the credit card company $122.00. In that situation, you would have lost yourself $22.00.

No matter how much those credit card commercials claim they can improve your life and make it more enjoyable, the credit card company is not your friend. They want your money. So pay down your debt as soon as you can and before you put money in savings.

If you are paying 15 percent interest on a bill to a credit card company and at the same time are only earning a 3 percent return on money in your savings account, it makes sense to pay off your debt first. The amount you owe will easily eclipse what you are earning.

If whatever interest you earn is less than the 15 percent I use as an example, then whatever you are earning is not really earnings. Your net profit will still be negative. Get rid of credit card debt so you can start really saving money.

3) Use your credit card wisely. A credit card is essentially a card that allows you to take a loan out of a fixed amount of money, your credit limit. Credit cards are also a good way to build up your credit. If you have a record of paying off your credit card bill in full and on time every month, then your credit score should get better.

Another advantage of paying off the bill in full and on time is that you will be able to avoid paying any interest on the money you borrowed. If you pay attention and are careful with how you use your credit card, then it can be a good tool to help improve your credit.

Try putting one purchase a month on a credit card and paying the bill on time consistently. Some credit card companies even offer incentive programs like airline miles or cash back on certain purchases.

The credit card I use credits me a certain percent of all the money I spend at certain gas stations each month. Getting money back is even better than saving money.

4) Okay, here’s another obvious one. Control your spending. Live below your means. Do not spend more than you make. Smaller expenses like going out to eat or to the movies can add up quickly when put on a credit card.

Try making your own coffee in the morning instead of going to Starbucks to get your buzz. Or make your own coffee several days a week and reward yourself with that Latte on Friday. Maybe carpool to work a couple days a week to save money on gas.

I am not claiming that eliminating these minor costs will make you rich, but it is important to understand how all the smaller expenses add up. And they do add up. It is important to think about what you do with your money and make choices on how you spend it.

People often feel burdened by their lack of money and feel that they spend it before they have it. Most of us spend everything we have. Just when we’ve managed to save a little bit of money, we want to buy new clothes, or take a trip somewhere.

It is not easy to save money, but is well worth it. Thinking about where your money is going and making a few minor adjustments can help you save.

Chris Crowe runs a website about improving your home security. Learn about how to install a wireless home security system at his website.

Firstly, what do I mean by a financial goal? For most of us, that would generally be a goal to either increase income or reduce consumer debt. Of course there may be times in our lives where we want to increase consumer debt to acquire goods and services sooner or to reduce our income as a trade off to have more time but in this article, let’s set those situations aside. In particular, let’s look at the scenario of reducing consumer debt by 50% in six months.

My standard formula for goal setting is to select a coach, have the required resources in place and to have a plan-A and a plan-B in place so let’s see how a financial goal fits in with this.

Selecting a financial coach these days is difficult indeed. Most financial advisors will only try to sell you products, thereby limiting their own risk in a highly litigious environment. If your goal is to reduce your personal debt by 50% in 6 months the financial advisor might be dismissive if there is no chance of selling a product into your situation.

Similarly, a debt financer will try and sell you a product that appears to reduce your debt but in fact does very little. Finally there are educators, who provide information but are prohibited by law to give financial advice. While they can give illustrations or tell you what they did, they cannot specifically advise you what to do and therefore cannot really be your coach.

I am aware, however, of some wealth creation companies that provide ‘integrated’ solutions providing all of the required professionals in a single meeting. By nature, however, the cost of this service is out of reach of many. One solution might be to use self-help websites and software to help resolve this situation, in conjunction with education and perhaps a visit to a financial advisor if necessary.

What resources do you need to reduce personal debt? Well first of all, you must be able to measure and control what you are spending. Yes, I am talking about the dreaded budget. With internet banking and plastic cards, it is relatively easy to download transactions from all of your banks and put them into a spreadsheet. I believe that the most important tool, however, is the banking system itself. With high interest-earning no-fee accounts available it is possible to use the banking system and the utilities to do a lot of the budget accounting for you.

The Plan-A is what you will do if you are on track to achieve your goal. Is there some kind of reward for achieving your goal? Clearly to reduce personal debt, you must have a system to control what you spend, so at a minimum a separate card account and bills account but more likely around 9 high interest no fee accounts and one card account per partner, preferably a debit card (or secured credit card).

The Plan-B is to identify the biggest risk and what to do if it happens. If, for example, you think that your car might need $1,000 of repairs but you can’t set aside that much money over the next 6 months, what will you do? Will you change the deadline, or cut costs in other areas? Can you do without a car?

Finally, tracking a financial goal and measuring the level of success is straight-forward when you have the right tools in place, such as internet banking.

Glen Smith aka Glen The Goals Guy has been running both goal-setting and budgeting workshops.
Visit http://QuickStartGoals.com or http://BillBanisher.com

Do you have a burning desire to achieve in a sport, hobby, talent or business venture but you never seem to have the time or money to achieve it?

Today I am going to talk about the importance of budgeting in relation to goal setting. For years and years I have set goals but I never used to fully fund the goals.

Before I had a home loan it was pretty easy actually, I would make a list with my family of all the things we wanted the following month. The purchases were prioritized and purchased as funds became available each week. Once I had a home loan, which obviously was one of the goals on our list, I found that our finances were a lot tighter than what they were before and it became a lot harder to set aside funds for the other things our family wanted to have and do.

So what tended to happen was the money was consumed immediately and for longer term goals there was no funding whatsoever. One of my goals was to go motor-racing, and there always seemed to be something more important to do than to put aside money for a go-kart, for example.

It took me years and years to get around to actually buy a go-kart; we would buy this or that or there was something else which needed doing. To actually have a lump sum available, $4000 or $5000 to buy a go-kart never seemed to happen. I think I ended up getting it from a tax refund.

However, what we do now is set aside some money on a regular basis for our longer term goals. Even if this does not fully fund your goal, let’s say you wanted to buy a go-kart for $5,000, maybe you put aside $100 a week and in a year, you’ve got your $5,000; maybe you can’t afford $100 a week, maybe you can only afford $50 a week, then at the end of the year you’ve got $2,500, and then you go and finance the balance of $2,500 some other way.

Without putting aside funds, things go from bad to worse and your goal will never happen. Let’s say your objective is to get to the national championship of your sport and that every week without balancing your budget you find that you run out of money. Most people will start doing overtime for example, to make more money. If you start doing more overtime, then you might have less time to put towards your sport or your hobby. So instead of training five nights a week on your sport or talent, all of a sudden or it could be practicing a musical instrument or that, you find that you start cutting your time down and spending less and less time on your goals and more and more time on trying to make ends meet.

Wouldn’t it be better to have a balanced budget in the first place, to make sure that you have got enough money coming in to cover your expenses, and sure you might have a national trip coming up and say I need $6,000 to go on an overseas trip to go to the international championships and maybe you debt finance a part of it. Still, we are talking about planning and spending as opposed to spending and planning.

Since we’ve started having a balanced budget, I have found is that it is a lot easier to hit those goals that we’ve been aiming for, and still have enough for all those things like Christmas and holidays and replacing cars and all that sort of thing.
In fact, my wife told me the other day that she’s made $500 of interest on the money she’s spent this year. It goes to show that once you get your budget balanced, that money can start working in your favor instead of against you. Now that’s not an overnight thing and I don’t promote the idea of just going to try and pay off your credit card all in one hit, or pay off all of your debts in one go.

It is more important to get the habit right than to get the actual debt paid off because it really takes some discipline and practice to establish the habit and you really need to set aside the funds that you need so that when your bills come in, you can afford to pay for them.

Once I set up my automatic payments for my big goal, I also set up high yield interest earning accounts and set aside funds for other known events such as holidays and gifts, car registration and repairs and I set up automatic payments for those things that my family uses weekly such as utilities. My wife and I have separate card accounts for day to day things and I know that I can spend all of the money in the card account without blowing the budget and my big goal.

Disclaimer: This document is educational and should not be considered advice. If you are in financial difficulty please get professional advice.

Glen Smith aka Glen The Goals Guy has been running goal setting courses for 13 years. Visit http://GlenTheGoalsGuy.com or http://BillBanisher.com

The thought of putting yourself and your family on a budget can often feels overwhelming for many. The truth of the matter is that not having a budget, operating with financial blinders on, is much more overwhelming than creating and sticking to a budget.

Before you even get started thinking about a budget, you’ll probably want to spend some time assessing your attitude to money. Money is not an evil or a bad thing. In fact money is wonderful! Money enables you to have a roof over your head, to feed your family and pets, to keep you and your family healthy, and to wear the clothes that help you tell the world who you are and what you’re about. Money buys education opportunities, cultural experiences, and money enables you to help others in need. Think positively about your money. You certainly wouldn’t think money was bad if you were giving it to Katrina victims or the parents of a child with a debilitating disease.

Once you’re ready to approach your budget with a smile on your face, here are a few steps to get started:

Step 1. Find a pre-formatted budget worksheet. You can find these online. They generally include the basic expense categories like:
1 Home
2 Utilities
3 Food
5 Family
6 Medical
7 Transportation
8 Debt
9 Entertainment
10 Pets
11 Clothing
12 Miscellaneous
13 Investments and Savings
14 Donations

Step 2. Spend a few minutes reviewing the categories listed in your budget worksheet. Do they make sense for your lifestyle? What categories can you eliminate? What categories will you need to add? You can find this information by reviewing your credit card statements, checkbook register and your bank accounts for the past three months. Take a look at each category that is right for your lifestyle and add sub-categories. For example, under “Entertainment” you might have the following sub-categories:
1 Movies
2 Dancing
3 Books
4 Bowling

Step 3. Determine your income! If you receive a regular pay check, go ahead and calculate your monthly take home pay before taxes. You’ll account for your taxes in your budget and this information will help you at year end when you’re doing your taxes.

Step 4. Before you jump in and begin a budget, take a month or two to track your spending using the various categories you’ve already determined. This means keeping track of all your spending, keeping receipts and not letting any dollar go untracked. This is the most important aspect of starting a budget; you need to know how much you spend on everything. You need to know where your money goes. The point to this step is to gather information, not to limit your spending or spend less than you normally do. If you normally go out to dinner three times a week, don’t all of a sudden go out to dinner just once a week simply because you’re tracking it. Doing so will set you up for budget failure and we want you to succeed.

Step 5. After tracking your expenses for one to three months you’re ready to set some goals. A budget won’t do you any good if you don’t have some financial goals. Do you want to save money for a vacation? Retirement? College fund? Financial goals are two part: how much time do you have to save the money and how much do you want to save?

Now you have absolutely all the information you need to create a budget. It is important to know that a budget isn’t set in stone. If you find after a month or two that you’re spending more on utilities than you expected but much less on food, then adjust your budget. The most successful budgets are budgets that reflect your life, are realistic and are easy to access. To keep an eye on your spending and make it easier to stick to your budget, keep your information in a location that is easy for you to access.

Eddie Lamb owns LiveMortgageFree.com a website devoted to helping homeowners, first time buyers or tenants. You’ll get your own exclusive access to the program and bonuses that will get you on the road to living Mortgage Free and will change the way you view money forever. For more information visit: LiveMortgageFree