Master Personal Finance Basics

Managing your money effectively provides incredible rewards in your life, including more free time to pursue your interests, better means to help your loved ones, travel etc. Yet I am constantly surprised at how many people have not been taught the rudiments of finance, the personal finance basics that if followed undoubtedly lead to increase and wealth. Let's cover some of these personal finance basics that will serve you well as you begin your life of healthy financial management.

The first rule of personal finance and most basic precept that must be absorbed for successful money management is to believe that managing your money is important and deserves focus and energy. You are capable of managing your own money, and making sound financial decisions with your own given common sense. Finance and money management is not magic, it is not so complicated as necessitating a high paid expert to tell you how to spend your money. Develop your own common sense money instincts and then follow them over the advice of any others, ultimately you are responsible for your personal finances.

The next personal finance rule is to focus on spending less than you make and earning more than you do today. Personal finance basics are all about discipline, and setting yourself on a long term track for growth with sound financial habits. Set yourself up for success with a constant focus on reducing your monthly spending and increasing how much you make. This should be a constant, lifelong, focus and worth of your effort. Learn the use of budgeting and projecting as tools to help you understand your financial present, past, and future.

The next basic rule of personal finances that will lead to your success is to make understanding how money works important in your life. Dedicate a little time in your life to understand the various financial instruments, investment tools, and successful business practices that exist today. In creating wealth you will have extra savings in need of investment and you should know what the options are available to you. Mastery of personal finance basics will lead you to more advanced financing techniques, constantly expand your capabilities.

Finally, it is essential to give back, and learn the power of giving. A tried and tested staple of personal finance is the incredible rewards of giving. Create excess in your life and then freely help those in your life you can, when you can, with money, charitable donations or other tools. Why it works, this article on the basics of personal finances is too short to cover, but giving 10% of what you make each month will bring back much more.

In summary, master the personal finance basics, your life depends on it.

Personal Budgeting - Four Simple Personal Finance Categories and How to Manage Them

Finance categories make it simple to manage your cashflow and to keep more of your money for investing and for using toward securing financial freedom. Many clients who I speak to have tried budgeting and have set up finance categories which were far too complicated to keep up with when life started to get busy. In this article, I'll be showing you four simple personal spending categories which you can use to achieve financial freedom starting right now.

The Four Simple Personal Finance Categories

Most likely you have seen the budget spreadsheets which are 60 feet long and which contain numerous personal spending categories. The problem with these is that they are far too numerous and complex to live on and even if you do succeed, they take all the fun out of your life. You can become more involved with the budgeting procedure and lose site of the intent of budgeting. When it comes to succeeding with your personal spending, you need to keep things simple. Here are the four personal finance categories which I found to be the most basic when it comes to managing personal cash flow:

1. Living expenses
2. Giving
3. Cash Reserves (for planned spending or for emergencies)
4. Investing

Every kind of spending that you do can be narrowed down to one of these four categories. By keeping track of your spending in these areas and planning your cash flow management according to them, you will have a much easier time getting control of your financial life. Let's look at a simple way for managing these categories...

The Order of the Four Personal Finance Categories is Key

Making the four personal finance categories work is all about allocating your disposable income according to what your highest priorities are. Here's an example:

1. Investing of 10%

2. Giving of 10%

3. Cash reserves of 10%

Once you've made these three a priority, the remaining 70% is usually more than enough to pay your expenses. Of course, this can be difficult to believe if you've been living paycheck to paycheck, but just try it for a month. Even if you think you cannot allocate the percentages above, choose a lesser amount, which you can allocate consistently until an increase can be made. If you manage your spending according to these four personal finance categories, you'll discover that you have more money than you thought and having more control of it will help you get more value out of it.

Business and Finance - Thinking of Buying an Online Store?

Are you thinking of starting your own business, say purchasing your own website store? I did just that six months ago and thought it would be helpful to write about and share my experiences with you all.

My reasons for buying a website are irrelevant in that they matter only to myself. It's what happens after you've bought your website that's the issue and more importantly whether or not you make your website work for you. Make no mistake, as with any business you must put in the time and effort to drive your business forward.

Having said that, it is not easy and if things don't work out as quickly as you'd hoped or were led to believe, it's very simple to become more than a little disheartened. Which is the stage I am at now. I can honestly say that I have never worked so hard for no pay in my entire life. To say that I am frustrated and angry and in desperate need of motivation (but preferably an income) at this point is an understatement.

The initial information I was given, or sales pitch if you prefer, seemed to me to be quite hopeful perhaps even optimistic. Who would, especially in this time of recession (or maybe depression?) turn down the opportunity to work from home for only 2-3 hours per day in order to be financially rewarded within 2-3 months and to make more money doing this than you ever did or could in a mainstream 40 hour per week job! Well not me, obviously!

Initially I was very excited about starting my online business and couldn't wait to get cracking with it. The online training provided helped me to get my website set up and linked with certain organisations and companies which sold my particular niche products so that I could download them to my site. What I wasn't told at the outset was that there was a limit to the number of products you could download so unfortunately I fell into this particular trap quite early on so I would urge you not to repeat my mistake (although as far as I'm concerned it wasn't my mistake).

As I had never done this type of thing before I was totally unaware and unprepared for just how much writing of things such as articles, web content and press releases it required in order for my website to attract online traffic and eventually rankings through the use of good key phrases, which are in themselves rather problematic in the beginning. It is possible to pay someone to write all these articles for you, in fact you can even pay someone to get your website ranked and save you all the bother. However, if finances are somewhat tight I would recommend that you persevere with this yourself. Plenty of time to do this once finances are stable enough to allow you to outsource these things.

The worst part of writing an article is choosing a title which will stand out and make people want to read it. I haven't so far managed that yet. The next thing is the beginning of the article. How do I start? I'm still having problems with these issues even after six months. I am of course hoping that it will get a lot easier.

It's a surprise to me but I have had other people like my articles and a few have even subscribed to them so I guess I must be doing something right.

Social networking is another obstacle you have to overcome. Until I bought my website I had never been involved with this in my life so far and could have gladly proceeded through the rest of it without this association too. I use it quite often now for business purposes but still don't understand the point of it at all.

What has the last six months taught me? That there's so much information to take in and digest and lots of new skills to master. That I have to try and be patient (not an easy task at the best of times) and trust in all that I hold dear that the paltry fifty pence I have accrued thus far will increase a hundred-fold, preferably in the next five minutes (told you I wasn't the most patient person in the world didn't I).

From the outset I had many hopes and dreams for a successful venture and maybe if I'd known sooner that it would take much more of an effort and time than I was led to believe I'm almost certain I wouldn't have purchased this business in the first place. But there's no point dwelling on that now. I took the risk and I just have to keep working at it and trust that all my hard work will eventually pay off. I'm always being told these days that if it was that easy everyone would be doing it! Unfortunately that doesn't make me feel any better.

Now, after robbing Peter to pay Paul I have paid off my initial investment but at what cost to me only time will tell. The business is now entirely mine and if nothing else it gives me something to keep me occupied during the day. Will the risk pay off - I really don't know. At this moment in time it doesn't look like it to me but I'm determined to try and be optimistic because basically I have nothing else. It has to work, there's no two ways about it. So I am stuck with it. Would I do it again? Probably not, although if I wake up one morning and find zillions of pounds (mind you I'd settle for zillions of pence at this point) in my bank account then my answer would almost certainly be a lot more positive.

So to all you prospective online store owners reading this I hope it has helped with your decision making process and has prepared you in some way for what may be about to come. Personally I wouldn't attempt this unless you have another source of income. In my experience it is foolhardy to pin all your hopes on the success of this type of venture and most certainly if you can't afford to lose your investment my experience should at least make you think twice about doing it at all. Whatever you decide good luck and I wish you every success!