Controlling your money

Sound familiar? For many of us it does. But contrary to popular opinion, financial security can be based on a very modest income and saving money can be much easier than you think. What it comes down to is knowing how you spend and learning how to spend less than you earn.

Little Things Add Up

Many of your large monthly expenses are probably fixed, such as your rent/mortgage, car or student loan payments. But it's the variable expense category that can easily get out of control. It's so easy to pick up a daily coffee and bagel, magazine, or a new DVD because individually they don't cost much.

But if you pick up a coffee and bagel every day for $3.00, over the course of a year that $3.00 could grow to almost $90 monthly and $1,100 annually. The little things can really add up and cost more than you realize.
Everyone Can Afford to Save Money

Finding money to save is easier than you think. If you decided to make your own coffee and bagel in the morning, you could save that $3.00 a day and put $90 dollars into your 401(k) or IRA account monthly. The sooner you start, the faster it all adds up.
Control Your Money

Of course, no one is recommending that you eliminate every indulgence, because some of these small expenses enhance your enjoyment of life. But everyone has some purchases they could reduce to help reach their financial goals. Here are some ideas that can help you control your money:

* Write down each expense. Try it for a week and keep a record of absolutely everything you spend. You'll begin to see how the little things add up.

* Only pay cash. It's a lot harder to hand over cash than it is to use plastic. This helps cut down on impulsive purchases.

* Wait a day before buying anything over $100. If you really want it, then you'll go back to the store and buy it. But there'll be times when you decide not to make the purchase and you'll save yourself $100 or more.

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Managing your money

Chapter 1: Set Goals

Setting financial goals is exciting – it is your opportunity to decide what you truly want to do with your money, and to achieve those goals without having to borrow for them.

Set specific goals
Financial goals are specific rather than vague. Before you start to save, determine exactly what you want, when you want it, and how much it will cost.

There are three basic goal types: short-term (achievable in under a year), mid-term (achievable in two to five years), and long-term (achievable in five-plus years). If you have multiple goals, you may choose to work toward them all at once, or concentrate on one and then move to the next. Calculate the amount you need to save:

For short and mid-term goals, the calculation for how much you need to set aside each month is simple: the cost divided by the number of months you have to save.

Example: The laptop computer you want is $800, and you would like it in six months. To reach that goal, you will need to set aside $133 per month ($800/6 = $133).

Long-term goals are a little more complicated because of something positive: you can deposit your savings into an investment vehicle and earn interest, which will help you achieve your final savings goal. Use a financial calculator and plug in the numbers:



Example: Your goal is to save $10,000 in ten years for your child’s higher education. If your annual rate of return (interest) averages eight percent, you will need to set aside just $55 each month.

Note: The interest you can earn depends on the investment product you choose. The higher the reward, though, the greater the risk. Never enter into any investment arrangement before researching and understanding it completely.

Be flexible
When saving for goals, be flexible. If you simply can't manage to put away the amount you thought you could, don’t give up. Consider extending the goal achievement date, reducing the goal amount, or increasing your income so you can save more.

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Australian Agricultural Sector Make a Profit

Michael Whitehead, vice president of food and agribusiness research with Rabobank’s New York arm, said possible negative pressure on agriculture could include a drop in consumer demand, however this may be offset by ongoing global population growth.

There are also other factors that would contribute to the relative strength of the Australian agribusiness sector, Whitehead said.

For example, a reduction in the use of fertilizer by some farmers may see fertilizer yields drop. The risk of drought in China and political and climactic problems in South America may also cause a fall in the production of grain, which would see upward pressure on prices.

“The Australian agricultural sector will also benefit from the likely continuing lower currency, with the US dollar expected to stay strong,” Whitehead said.

Whitehead, who is currently visiting Australia, said while 2009 would be tough, Rabobank believes the long-term fundamentals for farmers with good operations remain sound.

Whitehead added that global demand for grain from the bio-fuels industry – particularly under the new US administration – shows few signs of abating.

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Invest Your Money, but How?? read this

How to invest $20
Let's start with $20. We're going to assume that you've already paid off any high-interest debt and that you have some money stashed in a safe place (like a savings or money market account) that you can get to quickly in case of an emergency expense. Now you find yourself with a little extra dough, and you want to begin investing for your future.

Is it even worth it to invest such a pittance?

Heck yeah it is! One of the best ways to invest small amounts of money cheaply is through Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRPs), also known as Drips. They and their cousins, Direct Stock Purchase Plans (DSPs), allow you to bypass brokers (and their commissions) by buying stock directly from the companies or their agents.

More than 1,000 major corporations offer these types of stock plans, many of them free, or with fees low enough to make it worthwhile to invest as little as $20 or $30 at a time. Drips are ideal for those who are starting out with small amounts to invest and want to make frequent purchases (dollar-cost averaging). Once you're in the plan, you can set up an automatic payment plan, and you don't even have to buy a full share each time you make a contribution.

Drips may be one of the surest, steadiest ways to build wealth over your lifetime (just make sure you keep good records for tax purposes). For more details on Drips, see "What if I can only invest small amounts of money every month?"

How to invest a couple of hundred bucks
So you've weeded out all the wooden nickels from your spare-change jar and have tallied up a few hundred bucks. Instead of blowing it on snack food and Elvis memorabilia, consider investing it in an index fund (the only kind of mutual fund Fools like). An index fund that tracks the S&P 500 is your ticket to an investment that has traditionally returned about 10% per year.

Some index funds require as little as $250 for you to call yourself an owner. This low minimum is usually restricted to IRAs (Individual Retirement Accounts). After your initial investment, you can add as much money as you like, as frequently as you like, with no additional costs or commissions. You purchase index funds directly from mutual fund companies, so there are no commissions to pay to a middleman.

If you have a few hundred dollars to start with, then this is a great, low-cost way to establish an instant, widely diversified (500 companies!) portfolio.

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Learn From Kiyosaki

When Kiyosaki was nine years old, he approached the father of his best friend, Mike, to teach him how to make money. The dad gave the young Kiyosaki a menial job in one of the convenience stores he owned. It was not exactly what Kiyosaki had had in mind. After three weeks of dusting cans and making just ten cents a week, Kiyosaki told his friend’s dad he wanted to quit. Kiyosaki had not learned how to make a fortune, but what he had learned was a lesson far more valuable, said the father. At the age of nine, Kiyosaki was beginning to understand the futility of working a job he hated for a meager salary that would not get him anywhere in life.

That lesson formed the basis of Kiyosaki’s later career, and is one of the major components in his teachings. Kiyosaki did not get to where he is today by going to work every day, being frugal, and saving his money. Instead, Kiyosaki learned to take risks – managed risks – and make his money do the working. “The poor and middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them,” says Kiyosaki. “The rich buy or create assets that work for them so they don’t have to.”
According to Kiyosaki, key to achieving financial security is in understanding the difference between an asset and a liability, and learning to leverage that difference. “An asset puts money in your pocket and a liability takes money from your pocket,” he says. “The rich understand the difference and buy assets, not liabilities.”
In his very blunt words, “Savers are losers.” Kiyosaki sees money just sitting in a bank account as money wasted. Your financial goals should not be to save money, get out of debt, or invest for the long term, unless you are content being one of the middle class, he says. But, if you want to be a part of the rich kids’ club, that kind of thinking is obsolete.

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Budgetting Can Make Your Money Works

Budget (from French bougette, purse) generally refers to a list of all planned expenses and revenues. It is a plan for saving and spending. A budget is an important concept in microeconomics, which uses a budget line to illustrate the trade-offs between two or more goods. In other terms, a budget is an organizational plan stated in monetary terms.

In summary, the purpose of budgeting is to:

1. Provide a forecast of revenues and expenditures i.e. construct a model of how our business might perform financially speaking if certain strategies, events and plans are carried out. (can make you money works..!!)
2. Enable the actual financial operation of the business to be measured against the forecast.

A personal budget is a finance plan that allocates future personal income towards expenses, savings and debt repayment. Past spending and personal debt are considered when creating a personal budget. There are several methods and tools available for creating, using and adjusting a personal budget. A budget allocates or distributes expected income to expected expenses and intended savings.
The following tools are helpful to have for constructing a personal budget. Regardless of the tool used, a budget's accuracy is only as good as the accuracy of the individual updating budget data; an old budget that does not reflect actual income or expenses is of little use to a current budget. Computer generated budgets have become commonly used as they replace the need to rewrite and recalculate the budget every time there is a change.

Pencil and paper

A simple budget can be written on a piece of a paper with a pencil, and optionally, a calculator. Such budgets can be organized in three-ring binders or a file cabinet. Simpler still are the pre-formatted household budgeting or bookkeeping forms that creates a budget by filling in the blanks.

Spreadsheet software

Spreadsheet software, like Microsoft Excel, iWork Numbers or OpenOffice.org Calc, helps to arrange budgets according to need and performs calculations easily with rudimentary formulas. For example, budget spreadsheets are used to keep track of income and expenses. The major reason most people discontinue using budget spreadsheets that don't offer date-shifting is that the information needs to be reentered or moved at the end of each month. Spreadsheets are still excellent for complex budgets and planning.

Money-management software

Some software is written specifically for money management. Products such as Quicken, Microsoft Money and GnuCash are designed to keep track of individual account information, such as checking, savings or money-market accounts. These programs can categorize past expenses and display monthly reports that are useful for budgeting future months.

Spending-management software

Spending-management software such as You Need a Budget (YNAB) are a variation of money-management software. Unlike typical budgeting that allocates future personal income towards expenses, savings and debt repayment, this type of software utilizes a known amount of money, the cash you have on hand, to give the end-user information regarding what's left to spend in the current month. This method eliminates some of the guess work associated with forecasting what a person might receive for income when it comes to allocating jobs for budgeted money. Like money-management software, some spending-management software packages can connect to online bank accounts in order to retrieve a to-the-minute status report of the current monthly budget.

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The Most Effective Way to Make Your Money Work

There are many people doesn't want to spend all their time just for earn money, but they want to have more time to spend it with their family. Nowadays many ways to make your maoney work for you, but actually there are only 3 Top ways to realize you dream with your money. They are, Budgeting, Saving Your Money, and Getting Out Your Debt. These three way was recomended by many expert in economics.

1. Budgeting, When you are budgeting you are making your money do what you want it to. By assigning each dollar to a category you are controlling where your money goes and what it does. This will help you to begin to reach your financial goals.
2. Saving Your Money, There will be a point when the money you have will earn more than you do in a month. This takes quite a bit of money, and in order for this to happen you need put a large amount away each month. Once you have a six month emergency fund saved, you will need to begin investing your money. This how you can grow your wealth the most effectively.
3. Getting Out Your Debt, Debt often becomes a burden and limits the choices that you can make. It is important to realize that by applying your extra money to one debt at time, you will significantly speed up the debt repayment process. If you work hard you will be surprised at how quickly you can pay off your debt, One of the best things you can do with your money is to get out of debt and stay out of debt!

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