Posts Tagged ‘Manage’
5 Action-Ideas To Manage Your Personal Finance
Posted by admin in Personal Finance on December 27th, 2009
It’s unbelievable that schools does not teach us everything that we have to know but left out one important subject, that is Personal Finance Management. No wonder we see rising cases of people with bad debts and bad credit.
Here are 5 ideas to better manage your personal finance.
Build a savings account
Your money is something that you work very hard for. If you want to build a savings account for yourself, and for your family, you can do it – but perhaps a little slower than you might like. You can get started by saving all the change you get from shopping at the grocery store, from the gas station and from anywhere else you might go. Putting all this change into a container, you can then fill the container, day by day. As the container is full, roll the coins and deposit this money into your new savings account. You might be surprised, but in just two weeks it is possible you saved twenty dollars, or even one hundred dollars. Your savings account will grow, and you will be managing your money at the same time!
Paying bills on time
Paying your bills on time is going to be a something you need to make a habit for your entire life. Your credit report, your credit rating and your personal credit worthiness is going to depend on how often you are on time when paying your bills. Paying your bills on time is important for a solid financial future. As you pay bills on time, you are less likely to pay higher interest rates, you are not going to pay late fees, and you will build a good credit rating at the same time. To pay your bills on time, all the time, use a system that will have all your bills put into a pile in the same place. Put the bills that are due first on the top of the pile. Put the bills that are due at the end of the month in the bottom of the pile. Look at the pile every day, or at very least every other day. When you have the money, pay the bill on the top of the pile and work your way through all the bills for the month, and then you can start on the bills for next month!
Building good credit
To build good credit you want to pay your bills on time, and avoid paying those higher interest rates. If you have good credit, you want to keep it. What some people do not realize is that you can hurt your credit if you are moving often. Moving every month, moving every year, and moving more than needed it going to lower your credit score. If you live in the same house, the same apartment for over five years this is going to help your credit. Avoid moving when possible. Get a copy of your credit report; review the addresses that are listed for you. Remove addresses that are not applicable to where you have lived in the past.
Use coupons and save money
If you are not using coupons now, you should be. With the price of everything going up, and up, you need to learn to make your money ‘go further’. To make your money last longer, and to get more for your money seek out coupons for the goods and services that you always purchase. The secret to using coupons is this: don’t use, clip or keep coupons for items that you don’t usually use in your home. Coupons are enticing to get you to try other items, and sometimes can cost you even more money. Clip coupons from the Sunday paper, from the Internet online coupon sites, and look for coupons on the products you already purchase. This is going to give you the best savings possible, stretching out the money you have, and that you want to make last much longer for your household budget.
Money management involves working for a living
Money management is a budgetary thing, meaning you need to know how much money you have, and how much money you can spend. If you are spending more money than you are earning, you are most likely relying on your credit cards just way too much. If you are relying on your credit cards, your payments are going up and you will never pay off those credit cards. Money management involves your earning money, and spending the money you earn, and not more than that. If you need more money in your home budget, you can do a few things: get a new job with better pay, ask for a raise, get a second job, or build a business of your own. Relying on others for handouts, making minimums payments on credit cards you can’t afford, and living beyond your means is only going to come back to cause you trouble later in life.
Financial Managers to financially manage projects – who needs them!
Posted by admin in Financial Management on November 30th, 2009
As more and more businesses seek to reduce costs – one area that is a likely candidate is that of the financial staff supporting projects of work.
As centralisation and outsourcing continues to be a key driver in cost reduction in many large firms, what is often cut is what is seen as the “non-adding” value staff. The issue arises is that these staff are usually the ones who are out of site of the head finance managers, work numerous hours on assisting in the delivery of projects and yet are not really seen by the “latest” re-organisation as adding value. They will insist that a light-touch financial management from a central finance function will do just as well.
The Project Financial Accountant or Financial Manager is one such staff member. Before I launch to the project accountants defence it has to be noted that having the wrong finance manager in charge of project financial matters is as good as having nobody and therefore is “no value added”, and should go. The problem is that senior management has either little care or little knowledge about what it is like to correctly financially manage a large programme of work. They consider their FX manager – controls £250m worth of foreign exchange in the year – we only need one of him or her, so why for a £50m programme of work do we need a full time accountant. Possibly you don’t – however that is another debate for another day – you will at least need part of one!!!
The result is that all the financial management of the programme is handed over to the Programme Director – who will in turn hand it over to their Programme Manager. Both may or may not have sat through the half day session on project finance within Prince or PMI, and both will be of reasonable intelligence – so what is the worry – the finances are in good hands!!!
Let’s look at it from a more realistic direction – why you need a strong Project Financial Manager:
A Project Manager is not a Financial Manager – they are fully responsible for their project – however financial control is not their key skill. Most companies will require some form of upwards reporting of the project monthly financial results – these are always complicated ways – again not the usual world for your PM. Financial management (no matter how financially astute they are) will always play second fiddle to “project delivery” on a project managers “to do” list. The loss of detailed analysis and review by financial staff results in missed opportunity and cost avoidance. As a real life example CJM Project financial Management Ltd recently worked with the Project Director of a global programme – reducing the original estimate of an IS consultancy and development firm by £350,000. It was a good day at the office. These large projects are in the scale of FTSE 350/250 companies yet many companies and public bodies will only provide a light touch financial support to them – we would not expect such a company to run without adequate financial support – why do we allow projects. Management decision-making is impeded, as there is no financial support to produce robust, relevant and detailed reporting to the steering group or other management teams. Minimal financial support during business case creation can result in initial budgets being wrong – resulting in over / under estimates of funding in the financial year. Relationship building and being part of the project enables greater understanding and greater control and provides the Programme Director access to specific financial direction and advice – light touch removes this ability. Dedicated finance managers provide a faster reaction to issues, which may have financial implications. This can be done via creation and delivery of project financial risk and opportunity trackers – this approach mitigates risk and drives opportunity.
All in all – analysis on hiring the correct Project Accountant as part of the core project team will, if hired correctly and with the correct skill set behind them always deliver a project, business or government department considerably more benefits than their cost. Think before you cut that project financial accountant from your headcount – you will regret it. Light touch is sometimes as good as no-touch.
How to Manage Your Personal Finances Efficiently
Posted by admin in Personal Finance on November 29th, 2009
With national debt spinning out of control, inflation rates reaching ever higher past previous records and unemployment once again manifesting itself as a result of current conditions, the finance world seems to be in a world frequently assaulted by turmoil each time things take a turn for the worst. And if you have kept your eyes on recent events, it does seem like they are about to get a lot worse before they get better. However current trends for those not so badly affected by the recent financial chaos seem to carry on pretty much the same – perhaps you pay a little bit more interest on your credit card, but you can adjust to it.
Taking Control
The reality of the matter is that this is the ideal opportunity to take control of your own finance. And doing this can be a life changing experience for many people who previously went idly through their daily lives without a care for the future. Think about your own future, the things you want and the things you may want later in life such as a family or children. Key to the matter, and a lesson learned by so many people in a relatively short time recently, is that turning toward debt as a solution to the above is a quick way to invite potential disaster into your life. Now if you agree with the above then the following might be of interest.
Personal Finance Management
Personal finance management is a lot like business finance management: save where you can and spend where you must. For anyone just starting out in personal finance management, it is advised to draw up a list of where your money goes each month. This can be done by taking the yearly salary and dividing it by 12 to represent the monthly amount. From that, deduct federal and state taxes as well as medical fund payments and other obligatory amounts. Next up make a list of things that need to be paid like rent, power, phones, cell phones, cable, etc. How much is left at the end? What do you do with that money?
Many people dream of becoming millionaires but never do. The reason behind this is not because it is hard, but because they never forced themselves to have some small measure of discipline. Saving money where you can and then applying those savings to investments that have bigger returns is something fairly easy done over a certain amount of time and will have a great effect on your finances. But what matter is that you always have a clear concept of what your current financial situation looks like and where those finances go.
The moral of the story is that having a lot of money can be easy for those who are willing to face the fact that they are probably spending too much and are willing to do something about it. Personal finance management teaches us that it is not about changing or restricting your lifestyle, but adjusting your perception by differentiating between the things you need and those things you don’t.
Learning to Manage Your Personal Finances
Posted by admin in Personal Finance on November 14th, 2009
Let’s face the facts; one of the hardest things to manage is, of course, your personal finances. However, a lot of people do not know what it means to manage their personal finances. The good thing about this is that you can ask yourself four main questions that will be able to answer this for you. These are questions that can help you see if you have managed your personal finances the right way. Learning to do this is one of the hardest things that you can do. However, if you get to the point where you can do it, then you will live a very happy life.
The first question that you have to ask when looking at how to manage your personal finances is, can you meet your living means without using a credit card? This means, can you get by month after month without having to have a lot of credit card debt? If you can not, then you have not learned how to manage your personal finances the right way yet. This is something that people have to learn how to do. You have to learn to be able to break away from the credit cards and live debt free. Only then are you going to be able to handle your personal finances.
Then next thing that you have to look at is if you have any money saved up? Usually people do not get money saved up until it is late in their life. However, thinking about saving money up is a good way to get your Personal Finance in order. Remember, you need to make sure you can meet your living needs first. As soon as you can do that, then start saving money. After all, you can not start saving money before you meet your living needs. The sooner that you start saving money, the sooner you will get your personal finances in order.
The most important thing that you have to look at when you are trying to manage your personal finances is your job. You need to look at if you have a steady job that has reliable income. Now this is something that can be hard to do. That is because if you work in retail, you never know when you could get let go. So to have a steady job you have to be with a bigger company or your own boss. This can really help you get your personal finances in order. Your personal finances are the main thing that you need to be worried about. Get those in order first before you worry about other things.
The last question that you need to answer when dealing with Personal Finances is, do you have emergency funds? This means if something goes down, do you have the money to cover it? If you do, then you have your personal finances in order. Of course, this is a thing that goes hand and hand with saving. Keep all of these keys in mind when you are dealing with personal finances, and you will be on the road to financial freedom.