Every day you come across hundreds of articles on budgeting your expenses. Financial advisors also give you numerous strategies to budget your expenses. You make your own plans for spending money and call it a budget. What does this word called ‘budget’ which has assumed colossal importance in the present economic times mean to you? Different people use different tools to make their budgets. I simply jot down my money plan in a notebook, but my friend uses Mintblog financial tools to make his budget. Ultimately what matters is not the tools that you use for designing your budget but what you have intended to spend on and what you have actually spent on. Spending without budgeting is like eating without keeping a track of how much you eat. Just like a diet plan, you need to create a budget [...]

The end of this decade has come and 2010 marks not only the advent of a fresh year but a fresh decade ! With this decade ending in a massive financial depression for the world, especially America, you can expect to see financial changes( or reforms as the politicians might want to call them). Though apparently for the good of the American, some of these ‘reforms’ are introduced with the intention of political gain for winning votes rather than for the real welfare of the people. Here are 7 changes that are expected to come in the next decade. So get geared and find out which changes are going to be beneficial for you and which are not going to be beneficial for you. Lowered Commission on Investments Here’s some good news for investors. Now you don’t have to pay up huge amounts of [...]

Gone are the days, when a budding genius from the slums could dream of becoming a Nobel laureate, by putting in hours of hard work in study under the street lamp when the world around him is fast asleep. Education no longer comes to those who have only a penchant for learning. You need to have your pockets full too to pursue it. ...That might sound too hypothetical. Let’s take the example of our neighborhood high school and college students. Even their parents are finding it difficult to finance their education. Well, after this recession, when they are already not very comfortable in running the household, how can they think of giving good education to their children, especially when it has become very costly? If you think only the course fees are high, you are in for a not so pleasant [...]

The custody of children is a major issue that needs to be resolved well before a couple actually goes for divorce. The custodial guardian gets tax benefits on the child. But then deicing upon the custodial parent and the tax benefit can be quite a complicated task. If you are one of the parents going for a divorce, here are certain things that you should keep yourself aware of. As a rule of thumb, the custodial parent, the one with whom the child stays for the major part of the year and whom the child is dependent is the one who gets tax benefits. But sometimes, the child might also be considered a dependent of the non-custodial parent when the custodial parent has to give him/her the right to take charge of the child. During that period, the non-custodial parent gets the right to claim [...]

Not children, not values, not social obligations and not good emotions are strong enough to keep together a couple who decide to part. But fall in real estate prices seems to be doing what no other reason seems to have done in the present times! It is keeping couples together - at least for the time being! Last year, as reported by the National Marriage Project the rate of divorce fell by 4 % in comparison to the year before when it had risen to 7 % in 2007. This might seem like good news to all those who want families to remain together rather. But just wait, this fall in divorce rates is not indicative of couples wanting to remain united in the true sense of the word. They might be actually waiting for a more favorable time to file their divorce petitions. But, I sincerely wish that the delay [...]

Christmas is just round the corner and I hope you must be all geared up to make the festival a big hit! One of the prime features of Christmas is of course the Christmas tree and most families try to spend quite a bit on that. This year the sale of the Christmas tree seems to have bounced back from the low sales of last year owing to the economical depression. So what’s your budget for the Christmas tree? Are you spending the usual $100? Well, you could also do with some cost trimmings. You could save up to 50 % even though there are just a couple of weeks left. If you’ve been observing market trends, you can find that as the date of a festival nears, the retailers slash the costs of their wares more and more. Settling for a Christmas tree at half the usual price does not mean that you’re [...]

The year has come to an end and you must be worried about the forthcoming tax issues. Understandably you want to save up on taxes. But you are not equipped with the best strategies to slash the taxes. You could think of your own way of saving up on taxes, but here are 3 ways in which you can let less amount of your precious money to slip away as taxes. These are particularly effective for owners of small businesses. Buy A Huge Sports Utility Vehicle This might not appear very palatable for you, but buying a Sports Utility Vehicle can actually help you in saving up on taxes. If you have a lot of business transportation you can always buy this vehicle. You can use it. If its cost and maintenance were the only issues of concern to you, here’s some good news for you. SUV’s used about 50 % [...]

With online shopping being as popular as store shopping with the holiday shoppers, today one has no dearth of alternatives to the conventional method of going to a retail outlet physically and buying the things he/she wants. Either you visit a shop, select goods and buy from there or otherwise order whatever you want to from an online store and get it delivered at your doorstep. Many big stores are offering to ship your goods free of charge. Wal-Mart, Borders, Radio Shack, and Payless Shoe Source are some of the big stores that are offering to ship your goods for free to your house after you order them online. Your online orders get delivered to the stores from where you collect them. Naturally you may wonder why stores like Wal-Mart and Borders are being so generous? What have they got [...]

Nowadays, the news of the economy recovering and the recession being finally over seems to be bombarding us very much. But has the economy really recovered? Think about the huge percentage of unemployed people in the country. A few months ago, it shot up to about 10 % and has remained there till now, when the year has almost come to end. With so many people not able to earn their livelihood would you call this recovery in the true sense of the word? A Mintblog infographic finds out why there is a disparity between the official numbers of unemployed people and the number actually unemployed. An interesting observation is that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics you may not be counted amongst the unemployed heads if you’ve lost your job during the economic depression because you [...]

Christmas is just round the corner and you must be busy shopping around to fill Santa’s bag. It’s not only you, but the retailers too who are eagerly trying to push things into Santa’s bag by promoting themselves to their hearts’ content. Apart from print media, they are using internet technology to the maximum to entice you with compelling offers! One of the most widely used methods to draw your attention is to send sale mails to your inbox. Nowadays, when I open my mail box, I usually come across dozens of mails with attractive discounts suggesting that I buy this and I buy that. Though in one way, I like these mails as they keep me informed about the best deals without my having to physically visit malls to find out on my own, at times these tend to get on my nerves- owing to [...]