How To Save Money In Retirement

Saving Money In Retirement

First Published Date : October 28, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

As you get older, you are going to want to think of ways that you can save money in retirement. Saving money is very important because you will not have as much of an income coming in and you need to prepare for a lot of costs, including medical. While you may have a lot of money in the bank, that does not mean you should spend it without thinking.

So, how can you save money in your retirement so your savings go a long way?

1.   First, you need to determine how much money you need each year. This should include your insurance costs, travel costs and the cost of day-to-day activities.

2.   Calculate how much money you have coming in from investments, your pension, your tax-deferred income like IRAs and more. You will need an income that equals about 75 per cent of your current pay, which means that if you made $100,000 a year, then you will need $50,000 to $75,000 a year.

3.   Keep in mind the rise of inflation, which can vary between one to five per cent per year. The money you have now will not go as long of a way as it will in 20 years.

4.   Talk with a financial planner about how much money you are going to need and ways that you can make your retirement savings grow over time. The financial planner will cost you money, but it will also earn you and save you money.

5.   Cut back on anything you do not need to spend money on. Go through your expenses and determine what you can cut back on. This is very important to do because you want to save money anywhere you can. If you do not need a second car in retirement, then sell the car and put the money into your retirement funds. Do you need the house you have or can you move to s smaller one?

6.   You should also determine ways that you can bring extra money in. This does not include your investments or pension, but doing hobbies that will earn you money. If you enjoy working with clay, wood or stone, then you can make things that you can sell at a market. It is something you can do to fill your spare time, which you have a lot of, and you are not working a full time job.

When you want to save money in retirement, you need to determine what you can cut back on, where you can make money and how you are going to live. Retirement is not like the rest of your life when you are dealing with money coming in at a regular basis. You do have money coming in, but it will not be as much money as you are used to, and that means you have to make adjustments in your life to meet that new requirement within your life. Retirement can be fun, you just need to know how to manage it properly.

Acer Aspire Timeline 13.3 Laptop Review

Acer Aspire Timeline Review

First Published Date : October 31, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

I bought my new Acer Aspire 13.3 inch laptop about a month ago. This is my second product in the Acer series. My first Acer Netbook is still working fine and never had any problems. Today, I am going to do a short review on the Acer Timeline 13.3 inch Ultra-portable notebook.

Specifications

– Intel Core i5 – 430M processor 2.26 GHz 3MB L3 cache
– 500 GB Hard drive
– 4 GB DDR3 memory
– 13.3 inch True Cinematic View Acer CineCrystal LED Back-lit 18:9 HD Display
– ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 graphics card with 512MB dedicated memory, Up to 
  2138 MB HyperMemory
– 6-cell Li-ion battery Up to 8 hrs battery life
– Dolby Home Theater Virtual SurroundSound
– Ultralight, Ultra-portable

Cons

– Does not have an optical drive
– Bilingual keyboard can cause trouble. Sometimes I have difficulty using inverted come
  and some other characters because I think French characters keep popping up. There
  should be a separate French model.
– Given the fact that this is a high-performance laptop, its 1.3-MP cam just does not
  integrate well into it. There is room for improvement in future models.

My Take

Most likely, you will not find the features and performance that this Acer 13.3 inch Timeline provides at a price like this anywhere else. The built materials look excellent, not cheap like Dell or Toshiba. This is an excellent buy and I am happy that I decided to buy this over anything else. If other manufactures do not come up with great products at cheaper prices like Acer, they will have difficulty competing with Acer in the future.

The Role Of The Chinese Government In The Economy

The Chinese Government and The Chinese Economy

First Published Date : November 4, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

The Chinese economy has grown immensely in the past few years, and a big part of that is because of the government and the changes it has made in the economic structure of the country.

In 1949, the country became a socialist country, which means that the government has been responsible for planning and managing the national economy. In the 1950s, the government monopolized foreign trade and became the owner of all the domestic enterprises. The government set the price for all commodities and controlled distribution of investment funds, output targets and more. This caused the economy of China to be stagnant and slow and it was not until 1978 when economic reforms were put in place.

Since then, the government’s role in the economy has fallen greatly, while the role of private enterprise has grown. That being said, the government still maintains an active role in the urban economy and has policies in place with agriculture procurement. The government’s management of the economy is involved through a top-down chain of command with hundreds of ministries, commissions, administrations, bureaus, academies and corporations.

Economic policies established by the National People’s Congress and the State Council and moved on to the economic organizations that work under the State Council. The State Council then implements the plans into various sectors of the economy. Direct control of the economy by the government is done through designating physical output quotas and supply allocations, while indirect control is done through affecting market incentives.

Over the past 30 years, companies within China have begun to gain more and more independence from the government in a range of activities. Large-scale construction, as well as important industries and services are still managed heavily by the government through direct management, but the rest of the economy has gained a great deal of independence. That being said, one-third of the GDP of the country is still generated through government-controlled industries.

The government these days does not heavily control consumer spending and the market forces of income levels and the cost of goods and services determine spending. Before 1978, goods and services were rationed when they were in short supply, meaning the government had more control over what people bought.

The Ministry of Commerce, customs and the Bank of China and the Chinese banking system’s foreign exchange division, which controls access to foreign currency that is required to do imports, currently manage foreign trade. Although even the restrictions on foreign trade are beginning to fall greatly as government restrictions lessen.

China has the fastest growing economy on the planet and it is expected to be the strongest and largest economy in the world by the mid-part of the 21st century. It is a growing force and it all began in 1978 when the government made the decision to lessen the restrictions in place and bring in more free enterprise into a socialist country, a model many other countries are now looking at.

How To Lower Your Credit Card Interest Rate

Lower Credit Card Rates

First Published Date : November 6, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

If you are dealing with debt and you want to try and get your head above water, then one of the best things you can do is to look at lowering your interest rates. Since credit card debt is one of the most common forms of debt, you should look at lowering your interest rate with this. It is quite easy to do, and all you have to do is follow the instructions in this article to lower your credit card interest rate.

Many people do not realize that you can lower your credit card interest rate through something as easy as a phone call. Remember, if you default on your credit card, it costs the credit card company money. The credit card company does not want that, so they will work with you to help you pay off your credit card. Therefore, all you need to do is call the credit card company and call them, asking that they convert your credit card to one with a lower interest rate. One good thing to do is to show them that you have always paid your credit card, and been a credit card customer for a long period of time. This will help them lower the credit card interest rate in your favour.

If they do not, then you can search for a credit card company that provides a better interest rate on their cards. Look for cards through local banks and contact them to get a credit card. Once you have contacted them, you will get a credit card application. Then, fill it out, send it off and when you get your new credit card, you just need to transfer the balance of your current credit card to the new credit card.

It is important to point out that when you do get a credit card and do a transfer, you will be subjected to a transfer fee, but usually it is just a percentage of what you are sending over to the new credit card.

If you think that credit card interest rates are not that big of a deal, then look at it this way. If you have a credit card with $10,000 on it, and your interest rate is 19 per cent, then you will end up paying $1,900 in interest per year. However, if you are able to lower your interest rate down to nine percent, you save $1,000 per year in interest. That little bit of a decline will save you a lot of money and that will help you get out of debt much sooner. Sometimes it is as simple as just asking for a new interest rate, but if that doesn’t work, then you have to do a bit more work and yes, get a new credit card. Although when you get your new credit card and transfer the balance, you can then cancel the old credit card, thereby eliminating that bad interest rate forever.

What is Globalization?

A Brief History of Globalization

First Published Date : June 29, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

A concept that is becoming more and more important in the 21st century is globalization. Globalization is something that has been going on for thousands of years, but it is only now we are truly seeing the effects of a global society, rather than one based on separate countries competing for resources. Globalization is the process where economies, societies and various cultures are connected through various networks that include trade, communication and transportation across the planet. Economic globalization follows along these same lines, in which economies become connected through investment, migration, trade and flows of capital.

Globalization History

Globalization as we know it goes back to around the Hellenistic Age, when urban centers were the center of Greek culture and held sway from Spain to India with its culture. As time went on, various other empires helped push globalization closer and closer to a reality. The Roman Empire, Han Dynasty and Parthian Empire are all given as examples of empires that were globalized based on the world that that time. A good example of this is the fact that 300 Greek ships a year sailed between Rome and India, sending 300,000 tons of goods.

When Islam came into being, globalization took another step forward as Jewish and Muslim traders created sustained economies that spread across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Ideas, technology and food all began to be traded and spread over vast distances. The Mongol Empire continued this when they had an empire that stretched from Korea to Europe, helping to spread technologies across Europe and Asia. Thanks to the Mongol Empire, trade along the Silk Road greatly increased, leading to Marco Polo to make his famous journey to China.

Once the Age of Discovery began, globalization moved into the New World as European powers like Portugal, Spain, France and England began to take advantage of the glut of resources North and South America provided. When the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th and 19th centuries, globalization took another step forward, leading to the world as we know it. Vast trade in resources helped connect countries and cultures across the planet.

Following the Second World War, politicians began to break down borders that hampered trade so that interdependence and prosperity could increase and therefore prevent a future global war. Organizations like The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, along with free trade, helped to spread wealth and capital across the world. Some of the ways that economists have achieved this global trade concept through globalization include:

·   The creation of free trade areas and the elimination of tariffs.

·   The reduction of transportation costs.

·   The elimination of capital controls.

·   Creating subsidies for global corporations.

Globalization Effects

Globalization has had many different effects across the planet. These are both good and bad. A good example of the bad effects includes sweatshops and the loss of jobs as companies go to cheap countries where labour laws are relaxed. However, in terms of good effects, we have the following:

·   Foreign products have spread across the planet with the movement of goods through international trade. Since 1955, international trade of goods has increased 100 times from $95 billion to $12 trillion. A good example of this is the fact that China’s trade with Africa rose by seven-fold between 2000 and 2007.

·   Roughly $1.5 trillion is traded in national currencies on a daily basis thanks to globalization and the emergence of worldwide financial markets.

·   Thanks to globalization, the United States has enjoyed great power since the 20th century because of its massive amount of trade. China is now catching up on the United States and will soon become the leading world power.

·   Information is traded through globalization thanks the Internet, television and other mediums like telephone and radio.

·   Globalization has helped to harmonize languages. The most widely spoken language on Earth is Mandarin with 845 million speakers, while Spanish and English come in second and third with 329 million and 328 million speakers. Roughly 35 percent of all mail is in English, while 50 percent of the internet traffic is in English and 40 percent of radio programs are in English.

·   Globalization has led to greater travel and tourism, with as many as 500000 people on planes at any one time and 922 million international tourists moving about each year. Immigration has also increased and multiculturalism has become extremely common throughout the world.

Globalization is happening all around us and many do not even realize that they are experiencing it every day. A good example of this follows:

A man wakes up in the morning and dresses in clothes that were made in Southeast Asia and China. He gets coffee from his kitchen, with the coffee coming from Africa and the coffee cup coming from Europe. He has a breakfast made up of fruit from South America and milk from Canada. He gets in his car, which was made in Japan, and fills it up with gas that was originally oil extracted from the Middle East. As he gets to his office and uses furniture made in Sweden and electronics made in Asia, he surfs the net, hitting websites located in 15 different countries.

This is just a brief example of how one person, in the first few hours of a day, can be using items that come from all over the world. While globalization has received a lot of bad press, the good it has done is unmistakable. It has spread prosperity across the planet and helped get people out of poverty. Less than 12 percent of the world lives in extreme poverty now, down from over 40 percent 30 years ago. In addition, more people have food, more people are making money and more people can live the lives that they want. There are downsides, including the effect on the environment due to global trade, but overall globalization is leading to a better world and we should be happy we live in a world where the world is interconnected.