Ten Timeless Personal Finance Tips By Financial Author Ahmed Dawn

Ten Timeless Tips For Financial Success

First Published: ADawnJournal.com December 1, 2009

The financial crisis is making a lot of people realize that they don’t know how to manage money.  Unfortunately, this is not taught in our schools, but Canada’s Personal Finance Blog – A Dawn Journal is here to help you. This article will teach you all the basics you need to become financially successful. Visit A Dawn Journal regularly for more articles like this.

1. Spend less than you earn. If this is something you can’t do, make arrangements to bump up your income by taking a part-time or an additional job. This number one tip is the most important, timeless financial tip ever. If you can’t do it, all or any other financial tips will be meaningless.

2. Track your spending. I don’t believe that a dollar-for-dollar budget works. However, you should have a rough idea of how much you spend on certain categories. Keep track all of your expenses and adjust necessarily among various categories, i.e., if you see you are spending too much on entertainment, take steps to reduce your expenses. At the end of the day, your expenditures have to be lower than (as mentioned in point 1) your earnings. Use free personal finance software to keep track of your expenses.

3. Pay yourself first. Set aside at least 5-15% (do 5% if you have loans, do more than 5% if you don’t have loans, credit card balances etc) of your gross income into your investment account, savings account, RRSP, TFSA or so on every month. Set up an automatic plan to do it regularly.

4. Have an emergency fund. Have six months’ worth of living expenses in a high interest savings account for emergencies.

5. Set goals. Know exactly when you want to pay off your loan, buy a car, buy a house, and when you want to retire.

6. Pay your credit card balances in full every month. If you already have credit card debt, pay it off first. Credit cards charge the most interest. It is a good idea to pay off credit card balances with a line of credit account, which charges half the interest.

7. Try to avoid buying a car. If you still need to buy, buy a used car. A new car depreciates about 35% the moment you drive it off the lot.

8. Pack your lunch. If you eat out every day, your approximate cost would be as below:

Weekly Cost = $10 * 5 = $50

Monthly Cost = $50 * 4 = $200

Yearly Cost = $200 * 12 = $2,400

$2,400 annually is a lot of money. If you are in a 42 % tax bracket, for example, you keep 58% of each additional dollar you earn. When you consider all the taxes and costs associated with earning that after-tax $2,400, saving $2,400 annually means actually saving $4,000 in pre-tax savings (all figures are approximate). Let’s put it another way – if you can brown bag your lunch, think of it as you are giving yourself a $4,000 raise annually.

If you can’t pack every day, pack at least two to three times a week.

9. Start investing. Investment is nothing but a discipline; it has to be orchestrated with great passion and care. Investment is not like going to the shopping mall and buying a few things impulsively. Start investing for the long run, and keep adding money every month or every week. Stay invested for the long run-through good times and bad, through market ups and downs. If you don’t know how to start investing, I recommend reading Invest Now. Anyone can become a successful investor by following three simple and practical steps mentioned in this book. If you are not comfortable investing on your own, seek professional help. I recommend fee-only financial advisors.

10. Review your progress at least once a year. If you are not satisfied with achieving your financial goal, change or modify your financial roadmap. If you are not sure what actions to take, consult a fee-only financial planner.

Australia Travel Blog: In Sydney Downtown

Sydney Travel Blog: Part 3

Devere Hotel, Potts Point, Sydney

Sydney Travel Blog: Part 2 First Time Taking Sydney Metro Subway

My hotel, Devere Hotel at 44-46 Macleay Street, Potts Point, should be within walking distance. I asked a random person on the street for direction. I didn’t feel like opening my GPS. To my surprise, the guy walked me a couple of blocks just to show me where the hotel is, which was totally unexpected. That was my first experience of how friendly Australians can be right on my first day.

The hotel was rated 3.5 stars and very old. I was relieved my room reservation was still good, as I was a little late. There was only one person at the counter who checked me in.

I took a very old elevator to my room. My room description was “single room with view”. However, it was so small that I barely could move. I could not find any in-room safe box. I had my Chromebook with me and didn’t want to leave it in my bag, so I kept my laptop at the front desk safe-deposit box.

Also, I had to pay for the Internet, which I haven’t done in a long time. But I was able to get a deal after requesting it; sometimes just asking for things nicely does the job.

One good thing about the room was that it had a very nice view of the bay and the many sailing boats exploring its waters. The view made my stay in that tiny room OK. Everything in the room was too old and showed its age. Even the air conditioner was so loud that it found it difficult to sleep. It was so hot that I had no choice but to keep it on.

The Sky Is the limit for India China Trade Relations

China and India Trade Relations

First Published: ADawnJournal.com December 3, 2009

In the recent past India and China have continued to show a willingness to continue enhancing their relationship, and especially when there are possibilities of signing a free trade agreement. It is not too long ago that these two Asian giants agreed amongst themselves to leave no stone unturned in resisting any powers bending their elbows to force them into a deal regarding green house gas emissions. It is an open secret that with the cooperation of India and China in many areas of common interest the whole area in general is going to reap huge benefits. However, analysts believe they need to do things faster than they are happening now for their mutual benefit.

The one issue that may need to be addressed soon by those who are involved is the large gap that exists in the China India trade. Whereas the Chinese were able to push exports to India worth $31 Billion, India on the other hand managed only a paltry $9 Billion, which is close to only one third of their counterparts’ trade volume. There many Indian business people and analysts who are a little concerned and they want the issue handled not only amicably but fast also. Because there also fears in some quarters that Chinese goods could have been dumped in India, there are measures being put in place to check just that.

It may appear as if more than half of the total Indian exports to China have basically constituted of unprocessed iron ore, may be due to the fact that China has a large manufacturing base that is hungry for iron. This ends up leaving a large gap for the Indian Business people to try and put in manufactured goods that should get a good market in China as well. Some of the areas that are being considered include IT, where India is known to have a real niche and the news is that some Indian IT companies are actually setting base in China. The Chinese continue to enjoy a wide market in India for their machinery which has enjoyed good patronage over time.

There already seems to be a good wave of cooperation between manufacturing companies in both countries who discover they can be of mutual benefit to each other. Several Indian IT and pharmaceutical companies are already enjoying the benefits of cross border trade and if truth was to be told, they are seeing a good return on their investment. Some of those that have stories to write home about include companies such as Infosys and Ranbaxy among others. However they still need to pull up their socks in order to gain all the potential benefits that await them.

On the other hand there success stories from China in India and the case of Huawei Technologies comes to mind very quickly. Their investment has brought such a boost to India communication industry, especially through their fiber optic cables investment. There are of course a few teething problems that need to be addressed sooner rather than later, if this encouraging trend is going to see the light of the day and experience some exponential growth. Both governments then need to clear the path for their thriving business communities and only time will tell how far they both will go.

MEET CANADA’S PERSONAL FINANCE AUTHOR AHMED DAWN AT THE GLADSTONE HOTEL

Meet Financial Author Ahmed Dawn At The December 2009 Toronto Small Press Book Fair

First Published: ADawnJournal.com December 5, 2009

The December 2009 Toronto Small Press Book Fair will take place at the Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto M6J 1J6 (Queen Street West & Gladstone near Dufferin; Public Transit: TTC Queen Streetcar (the stop is right in front of the Gladstone Hotel). From 10 am-5 pm on Sat, December 12, 2009.

I will be participating in this event. This year we will be celebrating our 22nd year with a fair at the fabulous Gladstone Hotel. This is a great opportunity to meet Canadian authors under one roof. Just stop by to say Hi. Hope to see you there.

The Toronto Small Press Group meets twice a year, and I always participate in these fairs. I will be posting video clips and pictures of The December 2009 Toronto Small Press Book Fair later on. Don’t forget to check out The Toronto Small Press Group website.

Things We Have Learned From The Global Financial Crisis

Lessons From The Global Financial Crisis

First Published: ADawnJournal.com December 6, 2009

The world has once again found itself in a terrible financial meltdown that has gone to affect the whole world and the consequences are only now trying to reach the ends of the planet, with each nation getting to a feel its share of the pain. This has been a long way in coming since the last such crisis which was somewhere just at the end of the Second World War. Even though there a signs of a recovery from a distance, we are yet to get out of the woods and one would say that the developing countries in particular are going to be hardest hit for reasons that they get affected by things that happen in the first world, even when they are mere spectators most of the time.

A good many people have this feeling that the current crisis was directly caused by the poor macroeconomic policies of the United States which must have led to the decline of local saving rates because of an extremely lenient money policy. This it is noted resulted in a housing boom in the US and most of the developed world and because of poor lending standards, the downfall was not too much for anyone to predict and so obviously in a little while the credit crunch was upon the Americans. It did not take long before the ramifications got to be felt in the rest of the world for the simple reason that the world is now so interconnected financially and otherwise.

It may appear that we have reached a point in time when supervision and proper regulation needs to be considered extremely carefully if we are to get out of the current crisis, leave alone avoiding a similar one any time in the future. In many countries we saw the rise of a shadow financial system for long time, which included mutual funds in the money market, private equity and hedge funds. The challenge was the use of this short term measures to fun long term investments which may not have been the wisest thing to do in a generation that is so informed like ours.

Banks will also need to get back to their standard and regulated practices, because the trend they got into of trying to compete with the smaller financial institutions which have no regulations whatsoever was a great contributor to the plague of unplanned lending worldwide. This automatically led to the over leveraging of the world’s financial system in the US in particular but also the rest of the world in varying degrees. In a little while confidence went under and it brought an abrupt stop to funding which led to the systematic collapse of structures as we know them.

We are going to need to work out fresh new forms of financial management which are going to encompass not only local financial challenges but those that will have to look at the big picture of the global financial market. The new forms of financial engineering will need to be those that are going to look at credit risk in a completely new way which is a basic requirement in any healthy financial market.