Browsing Category: "Finance"
On my post, Do You Balance Your Checkbook, there is a comment from Rattan that asks “what is the best way to balance a checkbook that has never been reconciled”. This is a really great question and one many may have, so I have decided to answer Rattan’s question in a new post so that I might cover it in a more complete manner than a responding comment would allow.
The simplest way to begin reconciling a bank account is to do so from the beginning when the account is first opened. However, you may have an account that has been open for a while and have now decided that it is time to reconcile it.
Lets start with the basic meaning of the word reconcile. According to the Free Online Dictionary, it means to become compatible or consistent. In terms of balancing your chequebook or bank account, this is a bit vague for most people. Basically the intent behind reconciling a bank account is to balance your understanding of what amount of money is available in your account with the bank’s at a given point in time. This is why I like to use the last day of the month. Personally I like to use the phrase balance as opposed to reconcile as it is one most people can relate to better.
If you have been keeping track of your monetary transactions, you are able to easily see which of those transactions have cleared your bank account and which remain outstanding. If you have also been keeping a paper or spreadsheet ledger of your transactions, you will be able to zero in on a specific balance on a specific date.
OK, confession time, do you balance your checkbook? Do you wait until the money runs out or do you wait until the end of the year? Or are you a weekly or monthly balancing type?
I confess that I really hate having to balance my checkbook. Not that it is as scary these days as it was several years ago when I became a single parent of three and there was always more month than money. When my kids were home, I only had to say that I was balancing the checkbook and they knew to give me a wide berth.
In those days, I didn’t have a computer, not that having a computer equals a new abiding love for the task, in fact, that is a love affair that is destined to never happen. But, in those days it was a daily, rather than a weekly or monthly chore, just to keep a tight rein on my finances. Instead of the computer, I used a columnar accounting book and noted each and every receipt. Not the sexiest way to keep track of finances, but it did the job.
The last few years have seen the emergence of a new generation savings accounts that offer unprecedented flexibility and competitive interest rates to investors – online savings account products.
What exactly are online savings accounts? Put simply, they are savings accounts with high interest rates that can only be managed online with no direct branch access. This saves the banks a lot of money in staffing costs and other overheads, so they can offer competitive interest rates and increased flexibility. In this article we focus on the chief benefits of online savings accounts.
Flexibility
Many standard high interest savings account products place all kinds of restrictions on what you can do with your money. Many demand minimum deposits, limit access to your funds and require frequent deposits. Online savings accounts are, for the most part, more flexible and some have no restrictions at all, leaving you free to access your money whenever you want.
FICO credit scores are changing, which may be a benefit or a detriment if you plan to refinance your mortgage or buy a home. Some borrowers could see credit scores change by up to 20 points. Here are 5 new credit score factors:
1. Amount of Available Credit
The ratio of account balance to the amount of credit available appears to have more influence on the credit score formula. The less credit available that a borrower has on credit cards, the lower the score would be. More available credit would mean a better score. This change could have a broad impact on credit scores used by mortgage lenders to qualifying borrowers, if credit card issuers implement more cuts on their maximum limits. A borrower’s credit score may drop if the available credit limit is reduced, whether an account has a balance or not.
Real estate investing probably makes you think of a number of things. You may think of real estate investing as real estate portfolios and real estate retirement plans, or you might focus on short sales, bulk reo investing and virtual real estate investing. You likely also are wondering how these things factor into real estate investors’ roles in the current economy.
There is a lot of information out there on real estate investing. The best way to get the most out of your real estate investing education is to be familiar with some basic information ahead of time. Short sales, bulk reo sales, virtual real estate and general real estate investor abilities all are improved by knowing some basics of real estate investing. Here are three main real estate investing concepts that many experts do not even know:
