Signing The Bill V/S Typing Your Pin Makes A Huge Difference

As a customer, it might not make a difference to you weather you sign your debit card bill or type your PIN on it, but for the retail outlets this does make a big difference ! In a store like Walmart or Costco, if you sign the debt bill instead of punching your four digit pin code, the retailer has to pay up almost double the amount they’d have to as fees if the condition was otherwise. This is the reason these retail outlets are literally compelling the customers to type the codes, rather than put the signature. Some other retailers allowing the customers to sign but they are offering high incentives for those who’d opt to type in the Pins. Some of them still allow you to sign up the bills and it is a question to wonder why they would prefer that when they have a huge amount to pay up as a fees

Debit Card Companies Lure Banks With A Share In The Processing Fees

Banks issue debit cards and companies like Visa try to please the banks so that the banks issue more and more cards of their company. So, instead of trying to win over the customers or merchants, Visa concentrates more on pleasing banks. It promises to pay high processing fees by making the merchants cough up high fees through the swiping process. Nowadays, even PIN debit is costing more.

Bad Competition Of Debit Card Companies

Though companies make the debit cards, banks issue them. The banks, being the issuing authority need to be pleased and that financiers like Visa are all eager to do. If the debit card generating authorities would have directly issued cards to consumers, this fee would have been lifted off or lowered in value. However, this is not the case. To make matters worse, Visa also charges an interchange from the retailers which amounts to billions of dollars.

You, as a consumer, may think that you are not affected by the debit card fees, as it’s the retailer who pays it. But you should be aware that in the long run, the costs of these fees are going to be passed down to the customers in the form of high fees. So ultimately it’s you and I who are going to be affected by this.

You read a favorite book just once, but don’t you remember every detail about it? But how much of your school textbook contents do you remember if you read it just once? Obviously, not much! Otherwise writing examinations would have been a cake walk for many. Do you know why this happens? It is said that when you learn something with an open mind, you learn it better. So watching TV shows is somewhat like reading your favorite novel. While you enjoy the show, you also absorb the contents well. And if there is a useful lesson to be learnt, you’ll accept it readily.

Many youngsters hero-worship their TV idols and try to emulate them in real life. Whatever they preach is easily followed. These days many TV shows have wonderful lessons on finances to teach. So, if your high school or college-going kid is being a couch potato you can be assured that he is not wasting his time, but probably learning a lesson or two in financial planning and management.

However, some TV shows are unrealistic. Even the economically average seems to be living a posh life and has a lot of money at disposal. Young and urban characters seem to be spending a lot of money. But they are not seen saving. They swipe credit cards recklessly. It is dangerous for one to emulate the monetary behavior of these characters in real life because you hardly see their credit scores and history being scrutinized by the authorities. So the first lesson to be learnt is that never to blindly idolize these characters in their spending behavior.

In some TV shows you see some characters leading lives that are too good to be justified by their corresponding realistic standards. They portray main characters living beyond their means for maintaining a standard of living beyond that actually declared. For example, a middle class American is seen driving the best car in town. Emulating this kind of a lifestyle will eventually lead you into serious debts which will wreck your life! So, learn lessons in financial prudence from TV shows and live a financially effective life.

The woman of the house is conventionally designated the role of the homemaker who should know nothing about how much her husband earned and how he spent it. Eyebrows are raised when a woman enquires about the family finances. Surely the partners who are earning may feel that their finances are their private matter which they may wish not to reveal to their spouses. But when it comes to family fiancés it is always better for the other spouse to be made fully aware of the situation. What if your spouse has to run the family under some circumstances? Death is not the only situation in which the other partner has to shoulder all financial responsibilities of the family. Even when the earning member is busy with tremendous official work, the partner can help in running the house efficiently if she is made aware of the family financial infrastructure. You might expect your wife to visit a financial advisor for help, but she should know the correct person to approach for taking advice.

Here are certain things that you need to do to train your spouse in managing family fiancés well:

• Make a list of all your financial contacts. Your list should include the names, contact numbers and addresses of all financiers, banks, creditors, financial planners, attorneys, insurance agents etc. This will help your spouse to approach the correct people during any financial crisis.
• Tell your spouse the location of your assets. Your spouse should be made aware of all your assets and where you have held them. Your bank account details, Will Document, estate papers, insurance accounts, other property and money documents should be made known to your spouse so that she is not in trouble due to lack of information or funds. Most importantly, reveal about any personal loans that you owe to other individuals or companies so that she makes preparations to pay up the balance amount if required.
• Discuss your family financial status with your spouse from time to time. Decide upon managing the finances jointly so that both of you work towards the financial growth of your family together.
• The assets that should be tapped first for meeting financial needs should be told to your spouse so that she does not put futile efforts in accessing money from accounts that are difficult to liquidate. These are generally savings account balances, money market mutual funds or certificates of deposits.
• Put your spouse in any financial literacy self-learning or tutor-facilitated courses if her financial knowledge is very low.

According to Reuters, at a recently held G20 meeting, global heads were debating on how the economically well off countries should aid the poorer ones in fighting the climate change. Well, I think even you and I can do some thinking on this and make the job of the ministers a bit easy with sensible answers which you can post in the comment box below. For now let us see what this climate change funding is and how it works.

Essentially the climate change project has come up with a number of alternatives to reduce or nullify the emission carbon dioxide and other polluting gases into the atmosphere in the developing countries. Carbon dioxide emission is one of the major causal factors of global warming as it traps atmospheric heat causing global warming.

The governments and the rich of the developed countries are being coaxed to fund high quality carbon dioxide elimination schemes in the developing countries because these schemes are costly and the developing countries do not have enough finances to fund for themselves. Also, in developing countries where satisfaction of basic life necessities is a prime issue of concern, can you expect combating climatic change to get high priority? These countries are still largely engulfed in poverty and lack of education though they’ve made considerable progress. A significant portion of the masses don’t even know that climatic changes are occurring and these changes are harmful.

You might say what about some cheap alternatives to combat the problem. All those have been tried and they failed. The entire project is expected to cost 100 billion Euros, a fifth of which is going to be funded by the rich and the government of developed countries. Profit driven investments from the private sector are also being considered over non- profit driven companies.

The money will go directly to the developing countries or it might go via the UN for the purpose of funding the environmental issue. The funds might also be used in crediting companies that have succeeded in lowering the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere provided they can prove it.

You might feel that when private investors can run the show, why is government involvement necessary. The reason is very simple. The effects of climatic control are too widespread to be experienced or managed by private investors alone. When the plan is so good, where does the problem lie now? The problem is that though the EU has taken a firm stand on its contribution towards combating climate change, the US and Japan though convinced about the project, don’t seem to have come out with a clear idea on how much they would contribute. Understandably in the case of US, the economic scarcity caused by the recession maybe proving to be a hurdle in their extending a helping hand wholeheartedly.

In any case, my advice to rich countries who are sulking for being made to pay for the developing countries is to cheer up as they are contributing for a major cause of concern of the present times and effects of the climatic rectification will be felt by many.

Today, every school and college student needs to be educated about the proper usage of the credit card and maintaining a proper score. Maintaining an optimum credit score of 850 for example, is a must and kids should be given the information and advice on how they should proceed towards that. They should be taught the importance of maintaining the optimum credit score. They should be convinced that maintaining an ideal credit score is important as that forms the prime basis on which they’ll be given financial aid in future by the lending organizations. With the lending rules becoming more and more stringent, you cannot expect to get financial aid if your credit score is below 580. So just try to maintain that. Lenders are asking for a 740 optimum to lend money and you’ll be charged additional fee if you have a score lower than that.

Maintaining a good credit score involves good spending, balance clearance behavior and a good credit history. Therefore teaching the skills necessary for this is of utmost importance to children as they’ll be able to learn how to use their credit cards properly. A child should learn to not to give in to the temptations offered by the credit card companies which literally encourage you to spend more. They should be taught that modest living college is much preferred to leading a luxurious life which is financed by parents. They should learn to control their impulsive expenditures.

Parents might assume their children to know things that they feel are obvious. You might know that you should credit only the amount that you can repay at convenience. But your child might not be aware of that. He/she might be driven by impulse to credit more money than you could obviously pay back and then get into massive debts. Many college students dropped out due to high credit debts. Tell your child when to use cash and credit card.

Generally people retire at the age of 65 and they barely have enough money to meet both ends meet, especially if they are not dependent on their children. Such heavy medical expenditure is something that they might not be able to cope with well. Medicaid for the elderly covers emergency and major hospital treatments. Fine, you get that very urgent cardiac bypass surgery done. But what about the costs that you’ve got to bear after the operation? The rehabilitation services are really very expensive. The nursing care, the medicines all cost a lot. What has the health care reform got for covering all these expenditures? Well, Medicaid has got a plan for covering long term care, but our elderly have to have assets less than $2000 for availing that. When will the government realize that its not only those who are dirt poor but also those who are called the middle class deserve some financial aid for living their lives? The middle class of any country is the most unfortunate lot. The rich have resources for covering costly expenditures, while the poor are covered by government policies. The middle class are the people who are totally unprotected – neither by personal wealth or by the government!

Medicaid comes with another twist. The elderly patient needs to be hospitalized or be in nursing home treatment to avail the perks of the medical scheme. I don’t have the means to put my 90 year old grandma in a hospital. For psychological reasons she doesn’t want to stay there. I’ve arranged all medical care for her at home. I have doctors and nurses visiting my home and I always regularly arrange for her saline drips and energizers. Medicaid doesn’t cover the costs of her treatment.

Many times there have been demands for making home medical care the primary option for the elderly, and Medicaid be used to cover this, but every time this has not been encouraged much.

It looks like you’ve got to search for other sources of financial aid, like your general insurance etc. and your revenues to finance the medical ex Medicaid doesn’t cover the costs of treatment expenditures of the elderly.

As Seton Hall University South Orange Professor Christopher Sharret says, “It’s only a matter of time before video is relegated to cyberspace, subscription services and on-demand cable TV, ” , I feel the that its high time we shifted to the bigger satellite and on demand cable TV networks for viewing our favorite movies. You pay monthly subscription and request your movie with the click of your remote. Video rental stores don’t want to bear the cost of keeping a sufficient stock of movie videos or DVDs with them. According to Sharret, many people who are technologically not well versed, and those who hire movie videos once in a while are the worst affected.

With new exciting movies being released by the day, not having the proper facilities to watch them is a tease. I simply cannot stop watching movies because the video stores have decided to shut down. There should be a way out of this. If you’re a movie buff like me, you can consider some of these options.

Stay Loyal To Blockbuster or Search for A New Store

Blockbuster has not exactly specified the stores that it would actually close down. The chances are that if you are a regular at blockbuster, you can still go there. But you might also have to search for another store. These days, rental movie videos come at high prices. For older titles you pay $4 and for new ones you pay $5.

Go For Movie Rental Kiosks

You know those movie vending machines right? According to NPD survey, they’re flourishing these days with a 19 % share of the movie rental market. Just compare that with last year when it was only 2 %! Could have been due to recession, could have been due to unawareness. It’s very popular with the younger generation. According to Alex Camera(VP NCR entertainment), “Where a [Blockbuster] store might close, certainly we would look to place kiosks there.”

The biggest advantage for rental kiosks is that they are available everywhere. You don’t have to specifically visit any store for renting movies. The rental charges are cheap and you get to watch the latest and most popular.

Mail Delivery Systems

Subscribe to movies via e-mails and get them delivered to your home. At present Blockbuster and Netflix have these services.

Downloading Movies

This is not all that popular yet but is fast catching up. You really don’t have to wait for a subscription service to tell you about new movies. Also old and less popular ones are available for your viewing.

So these are the options available for you. Whatever option you choose, enjoy your movie!

The study reveals that companies with higher debts have CEO’s who have debts on personal properties. These companies had 4 % more debt than those companies whose CEO’s have not taken any mortgage loans. According to Anil Makhija, finance professor Fisher College, who was a part of the study team, “It’s not just the characteristics of the firm or the industry that determine a company’s debt choices. Our findings suggest that you have to also look at the personal characteristics of the CEO to fully explain these financial decisions,”

The study involved 1351 CEOs out of which 67 percent were on mortgage loans for purchasing their properties. The CEOs on an average bought properties worth $ 1.65 million and loaned about 66 % of the purchase price. According to the researchers how the CEOs handled financing their houses is the best way you can get to know their loan resistance levels. Of course commonsense does tell one that a person in the habit of loaning will always do so in every context whether personal or non personal. A CEO who has handled his personal finances with the least loans will always try to apply his debt resistance and control skills to his company money management.

Interestingly the study has deduced this result after considering a lot of factors that you may consider unique for each situation. For example, you might say that it’s not necessary for the personal finances of the CEO to be as good or bad as his company finances. But here, it might be that though the amount of finances may be different, the approach to managing money and towards loan and mortgage might be the same. The co-relation shows remarkable coincidence.

According to Makhija, “Our study suggests that we have to also look at the personal traits of CEOs, because they can tell us important information about the financial policies of the firms they manage. Past research has generally ignored these traits in explaining how firms are financed.”

Well, I do agree with this study to a certain extent though not fully. I agree because, after all, your financial strategies and approach remain the same, whether it’s personal or business finances. But I disagree with this study in that the company debt or other financial decisions do not depend solely on the decisions or the financial management skills of the CEO alone. They are interplay of external conditions and joint decisions taken by the company officials.

According to a CNN Money report, the fines that most of us don’t like seem likely to be imposed making health care a mandatory issue. The middle class might have to pay a penalty up to $3,800 for not being insured. But the government says, they’ll get tax credits which will help them in paying up for the health care insurance. For convenience of enrolment in insurance policies Web based insurance exchanges will be set up. You just log in from the comforts of your home and apply for insurance. There’s no need for you to go to any offices for that. The bill is going to higher Medicaid and also it’s going to standardize the eligibility criteria for Medicaid. According to John Desser, of eHealthInsurance.com, the Medicaid reform is a pendulous one. Now the standardization of eligibility has resulted in the formation of non profit health care cooperatives as this throws out the public access option.

How Health Care Co-Operatives Work?

They are welfare organizations like any other. They enable you to get wide coverage at a lower cost. You as the patient elect a board for governing you. Any profits that are got by the co-operatives are used for patient health care and improvement of hospitals. The cooperatives hold meetings where health care and health care insurance issues are dealt with. These co-ops are expected to cover about 12 million people as opined by Senator Kent Conrad. This health care reform bill and its mandatory rule are expected to get a contribution of $ 6 billion from tax payers on the whole.

How Are You Impacted By The Health Care Co-Ops?

You’ll be dealing with the co-ops the same way as you’d with your personal insurance companies. You get to visit the doctors associated with the co-ops and you pay up the premiums and any other fees to the co-ops on a regular basis. Len Nicholas, New America Foundation, feels that paying up for coops is going to cost you much less than private insurance amounts, but its not always necessary that the co-op payments should always be less than the private insurance amounts.

The Group Health Care Co-op system seems to have become the ideal design on which the health care co-ops are going to work. This Group Health Care Co-op system is one of the oldest existent co-ops of Washington. Though the group health care premiums are lower in comparison to the other premium schemes, they can be in no way said to be very less. There’s been a 12.3 percent increase in premiums in the last nine years annually.

From your point of view the disadvantage is that your trusted doctor might not be a part of the co-op network in which case you’ve got to change your doctor. But you may not be comfortable with it. However, with a mandatory bill do you have any other option, but to go for doctors in the network?

Financial fitness is akin to physical fitness and only by following a fiscally disciplined lifestyle; you’re going to become totally fit. According to Business Matters, a discussion was held at the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce by the Professional Women’s Forum and their conversation orbited around the factors that determine financial health. According to Cecilia Homison, CEO, Florida Commerce Credit Union, mainly three factors contributed to financial health- a good credit score, improving upon present savings, and saving for retirement. So, if you need to be financially fit start your fitness regime now. Here are some exercises that I’m prescribing for you like a financially fitness trainer. Follow the regime religiously and you’ll be a model…oops! Not one with a great body, but with great finances!

So welcome to my financial gym! Lets take tour of my gym and see how you can work out for that financially fit you:

I would like to take you first to the credit score improver.

Credit Score Improver

The credit score improver is going to suggest a set of exercises that you need  to tone up your credit score. Here are those exercises:

• Don’t let your payments get delayed by more than 30 days because 35 % of your credit score is calculated on your debt history beyond 30 days. Keep it within this time range and you are safe.
• Don’t cancel your card, however old and/or unused it may be because it is integrally linked to your credit history. Also, keep your account open as that’s going to show your debt/credit statistics. About 30 percent of your credit score is dependent on this.
• Don’t let your credit card rust – you might take pride in the idea of not taking a single item on credit and you always pay with cash. It’s nice to know of your financial power. But this does not ensure you of financial fitness. If you simply take a credit card and not use it, you are not esteemed in the eyes of the lender. In fact they take it as an example of bad credit and that lowers your credit score. Better use it occasionally and make payments within the permissible period.
• Don’t apply for credit cards at random as it creates a bad impression about your financial health. You might be blissfully ignorant about the fact that applying for too many card at a time shows about your buying capacity and hence good financial health. But this is not so. On the contrary it might send the wrong message that you’re in a big debt and applying for loan from more than one source.
• A good way to build up on your credit scores is to buy a card for a family member and use it efficiently. Now, with entire America screaming about financial literacy for children, don’t you think you can avail this opportunity to teach your child how to use the credit card properly-something that most school and college kids don’t know about? Go and get your child a low-limit credit card today, so that he doesn’t get the access to big money which he might misuse owing to his tender age and at the same time he gets a lesson or two in money management.
• Please don’t check your credit scores at any online portal- at least the free credit reports ones as they don’t yield reliable results. Always go to the credit offices to check out your score or visit government authorized websites.

After your workout at the credit score improver, you can move over to the next set of equipments of my financial gym – just the way you move from the treadmill to the abdominal toner in a physical fitness gym . Welcome to the Frugality machine!

The Frugality Machine

You might have come across hundreds of articles that tell you how to save up on your money. You might have already asked your financial expert about the different ways in which you can save up money. Well, all those tips are there and I think more than anything else, you’ve got your commonsense to work up your own money saving strategies. But here I’d like to talk about the process of budgeting itself.

• Make up your individual strategy – Many times I tried to follow my friend’s style of budgeting and slashed up my expenditure exactly on those areas that she did. The results were disastrous- the reason being simply that both of us are different individuals with different psychological make-ups and lifestyles. During this recession she unemployed her domestic help and did all the households chores herself. I followed her example and did the same. But I could not manage because being a working woman with children and not being of a very robust constitution health-wise. I could not manage the show at home.  Well, this is just an example. I know many of us don’t employ domestic helps out here.
• Budgeting does not mean slashing out your expenditure on every thing and anything. That’ll make your life miserable. Good money saving is all about focused budgeting which involves identifying two key areas where you spend the most and cutting expenditure in these areas. Spend normally on other areas. Why you need two and not one or three key areas for budgeting is because, if you have only one area, you might come across an inevitable expenditure in that area and all the budgeting you’ve done till then will go down the drain! On the other hand, more than two is too much!
• Lastly, don’t cut down upon entertainment entirely as then you’ll only be depressed.

I know you must be already sweating with this work and let me congratulate you on that because you’re on your way to complete financial fitness. Just one more exercising system to work on and you are all set for sound financial health!

Meet the Retirement Saving Machine!

The Retirement Saving Machine

Old age and retirement are inseparable companions. Most of us take this phase as the gloomier side of life and don’t even want to think about it because we think that during this period as our capacity to earn ceases, we have to lead a dependent life. In today’s world where morals and virtues are ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘obsolete’ concepts being financially dependent on other people can be the worst thing that can happen. Even if your children promise to take care of you and you don’t find the need to save up for your retired days, I’ll say that it’s better to be self reliant. So go ahead and plan for retirement. Here are some ideas, even for late beginners.

• Planning for retirement is pretty simple. You don’t need to be a financial geek to get your retirement figures right. Just sit back and think about your present lifestyle and how much money you’re spending a month to maintain such a lifestyle. This should give you an estimate of how much money you’ll need after retirement to maintain your present lifestyle. Then use a retirement calculator to make all those calculations and get your accurate figure.
• List out all your income gateways other than your salary. It can be your social security income, insurance benefits or tax benefits. Sum the total external sources of income and make a realistic estimate.
• Just work up on your targets and try to reach them as soon as possible.
• If you are covered by a 401(k) or 403(b) schemes by your employer try to hike your contributions by the maximum permissible limit set by the financial and legal systems of your country/place.
• You might be already aware of the Roth IRA schemes. Just try to avail them as they are tax deductible in addition to your 401(k) and 403(b) contributions.
• Investing in stocks and mutual funds from reasonably authentic sources is something even a 40-plus year old can start with.
• Last, but not the least, clear yourself of all your debts. Start making full payments on your credit cards while the sun is still shining on the haystack. Get out of the habit of paying minimum  balance or postponing your payments because that will only add up to your final debt which will show up after you retire and then all your retirement savings will be directed towards paying up those bills.

That completes the set of modules that you’ve got to take up in the financial fitness gym. Just try! Initially, you’ll find it hard just like in any other gym but don’t stop. You know that even if your calves pain initially, you’re going to get used to the exercising regime and make yourself financially fit. Step out into this world as confident and as cheerful as ever.