Is Forex Trading Hard to do?

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

What is Forex Trading?

If you have travelled abroad on holiday or a business trip you may have needed to buy some foreign currency to use at your destination. More than likely you will have used your home currency to buy currency for your destination country. Foreign Currency exchange or Forex trading as it is more commonly known is based on this buying and selling of currency pairs, the currency pair being the two currencies that you wish to exchange. Through the buying and selling of currencies at opportune moments it is possible to make a profit. Fundamentally Forex trading is quite easy to understand but that does not mean it’s easy to do profitably.

If you want to start Forex trading the first step would be to find a reputable broker. This article lists the top 25 Forex brokers in the UK ranked by their trust score.

Is Forex Trading Hard?

The majority of Forex traders are not making a profit and this is because of a number of reasons including; a lack of understanding of the complexities of international currency markets, a reluctance to exit a bad trade in the hope that it turns around, poor risk assessment and management, allowing greed to take over and emotionally driven trading. If you are to avoid becoming another failed Forex trader, I recommend the following steps:

*Start trading with a practice account before using any real money.

*Keep a record of all yout trades as you build up your experience.

*Understand the importance of setting up stop loss orders and apply them to your trading procedures.

*When you start, pick currency pairs that are familiar to you.

Create a daily routine that is conducive to good trading practices, sleep, exercise and nutritious food are likely to lead to better trading decisions.

In answer to the question in this post’s title, Forex trading is not hard to do but it is hard to do well. Beware of ‘Fake Gurus’ oversimplifying Forex or offering you a foolproof trading system because it is likely that they are only being successful by selling their ‘system’ rather actual trading success in currency markets.

Next Steps

Are you interested in Trading Forex ? Have you started already? Let me know in the comments section below. Also, get in touch if you would like my help. My email address is mike@learnmoney.io

Grammarly Writing Support

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What’s the Best Strategy for Clearing Debts?

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My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

Image credit: pexels.com

 Is-Forex-Trading-Hard-to-do-pin

The Lifecycle of Love and Money

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

For this blog post, we’re going to discuss something almost everyone wants. It can bring great joy or great pain, but it can be awkward to talk about. We’re of course referring to… wait, is this post about love or money? Oh, both? Yeah, it’s both.

Money

Every couple is going to have a different financial journey, but there are some major milestones that most couples will encounter at some point. Here are some tips for when you’re dating, when you’re committed, and when you decide to tie the knot.

 

Dating

 

It’s fine to leave conversations about money until later, but if you decide you’re comfortable enough, you can open up a financial discussion as early as the first date. Who pays for dates is (somehow) still a hotly contested topic, according to the findings of a 2015 sociological study. *There’s no clear consensus regarding who should pay for what, and some people have complex feelings toward splitting the bill, so bringing up the subject can be a way to get a money chat rolling.

 

After you’ve spent some time with someone and you’re considering whether you want to be in a serious, long-term relationship with them, it’s a sensible idea to make sure you’re financially compatible first. A survey commissioned by Ally Bank found that when people were asked to name the biggest source of stress in their relationships and marriages, money was the most common answer.** Try to head off fights before they happen by checking if you and your partner have similar financial behaviors and goals. If you want to save for a vacation together while your better half wants to start investing in rare tropical fish, that could lead to an argument later.

 

Moving in Together

 

By cohabiting with your significant other, you’re taking the first major step toward building a financial life together. Now you’re relying on your partner to help pay for food and rent, which means their financial habits have a more direct impact on your wellbeing. Starting to think of your finances more as a duo while setting clear boundaries to make sure no one feels smothered can help keep both parties happy.

 

Unfortunately, the first step to co-planning your finances can be the hardest for a lot of people: divulging your financial history. That includes the accounts you have, your savings, and most importantly, your debts. One way you can ease into this is to make a budget together, which can act as a neutral conversation that puts you both on the same page. If you’re still anxious, psychological research suggests that honesty is an important part of building strong relationships,*** so sharing your financial situation with your partner may bring the two of you closer together.

 

You’ll also need to talk about how to split shared living expenses. Two main ways of doing this are to split things evenly or equitably. An even split means you and your partner divide costs 50-50. This may not really be fair if you and your significant other have vastly different incomes, but it can help both of you feel more equal since you’re paying the same amount, and it’s easy to figure out who should pay what.

 

An equitable split, though, means sharing costs according to each person’s ability to pay. This is arguably more fair than an even split, since you’re both paying an amount you can manage while still leaving money to cover personal expenses. However, it can potentially cause tension if the person paying more feels like their bigger contribution should give them a greater say in the relationship, and uses their economic advantage to push the other person around. Remember that you don’t have to commit 100% to an even or equitable split, so you and your partner can find a balance between these that works for you.

 

Marriage

 

Once you get married your partnership isn’t just recognized by your friends and family, but by the big G… that’s right, the government. The United States General Accounting Office has identified over 1,000 federal provisions in which marital status influences your legal benefits, rights, and privileges,**** and that’s not even getting into each state’s laws. If you have questions about how getting married will affect your rights (such as your property rights), the safest person to talk to is a qualified attorney.

 

Additionally, now’s the time to start thinking about how you want to organize financial accounts with your partner, if you haven’t already. In general, combining your money using joint accounts can make it easier to pay household expenses and save for mutual goals, but it also may reduce how independent you feel since you have less money to yourself. The exact method you choose is really up to what you and your partner are the most comfortable with. For example, you could keep your separate financial accounts active while opening a new joint bank account for shared expenses, adopting a “yours, mine, and ours” split. Or, you could consolidate all of your money into one person’s account and add the other person as an authorized user. It’s also still valid to keep your money completely separate.

 

At their core, all of these steps really boil down to communicating and compromising with your significant other. If you’re able to do that, you have an advantage in building a financially healthy and stable partnership.

 

This article originally appeared on Earnin and appears here at their request. 

Next Steps

If you’ve enjoyed this post you will also like Are you and your partner financially compatible?  Have you already established a joint budget with your partner? Let me know in the comments section below. Also, get in touch if you would like my help. My email address is mike@learnmoney.io

Grammarly Writing Support

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Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

What’s the Best Strategy for Clearing Debts?

Investments: Why Saving is Not Enough 

My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

 

Image credit: pexels.com

References:

*https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244015613107

**https://media.ally.com/2018-06-12-Money-Causes-the-Most-Stress-for-Couples-According-to-New-Ally-Survey

*** https://www.psychology.uwo.ca/pdfs/SONA/articles/13-campbell.pdf

*****https://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf

What are the Benefits of Cashback Credit Cards?

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Regular readers of this website will remember this post that I wrote. 4 Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit Score  .If you are planning to use credit cards strategically, you first need to set your objective. If your objective is to earn cash rewards instead of improving your credit score your choice credit cards would be very different.

Why Use Cashback Credit Cards?

Earn Rewards

If you pay for mandatory expenditure using a cashback credit card you have an opportunity to earn rewards that would not be available to you if you simply used a debit card. If you use this approach, you must remember to pay of the credit card balance in full each month otherwise the interest that you will have to pay may negate the value of any rewards earned.

Sign Up Bonuses

Many cashback credit cards have new customer sign up bonuses and exclusive shopping offers. Providing that you are disciplined with your spending, these could be good opportunties. Imagine a scenario where you can earn tangible items that you could sell for cash.

Warning

“Know thyself.” – Socrates. If you do not have the financial discipline to use cashback credit cards and remember to clear the balances each month – do not go near them. You could end up creating problems for yourself.

What are the Best Cashback Credit Cards in the United States?

To review some of the best performing cashback credit cards in the United States click here and remember that past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

Next Steps

Are you interested in cashback credit cards ? Do you have one already? Let me know in the comments section below. Also, get in touch if you would like my help. My email address is mike@learnmoney.io

Grammarly Writing Support

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

What is Ethical Investing? 

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My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

Image credit: pexels.com

Accommodation: 5 Ways to Reduce Your Largest Monthly Expense

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Image credit: https://www.ukuni.net/

For most people, accommodation remains their largest monthly expense. In earlier posts, I have mentioned this point. If you haven’t read, How to Create a Budget That you can Stick to, please read it today. It naturally follows that if you can reduce your largest monthly expense you will have more freedom within your budget to save more and to invest. These are two activities that will move you closer to financial freedom. The focus of this post is to explore 5 ways that you will be able to achieve this reduction in accommodation costs.

Cutting Accommodation Costs

I have spilt this list of five ways to reduce your accommodation costs into two mini lists. The first is for homeowners and the second is for tenants / lodgers who rent accommodation.  The resources that I have linked to are for the United Kingdom because that is where I live. If you are reading this post outside of the United Kingdom, there may be comparable opportunities and resources in your country too.

Homeowners

Take in a Lodger

If you have enough room, take in a lodger to live with you at your main residence. Following a UK government initiative first introduced in 1992, homeowners are permitted to earn up to £7,500 tax free as part of the rent-a-room scheme. Technically this does not reduce your accommodation cost but it does reduce your financial burden because of the additional income that the lodger provides. Click here to read more about the rent-a-room scheme.

Move to a Cheaper Area

If you are living in a desirable area, more than likely that desirability comes with fairly high accommodation costs. One possible solution that most homeowners do not think about is this one; rent out your home and move to a cheaper area.

Let me explain with some sample numbers. You are currently living in area A and your home could be rented out for £2000 per month. This is more than you are paying for your mortgage which is £1500 . If you move out of your home and rent in a cheaper area (area B) for a cost of £1400 per month, you will be reducing your accommodation cost plus receiving £2000 in rent for the house that you still own.

An added bonus is the increase in equity associated with your property during the period it is being rented out. Please note, you will need to take all necessary steps to comply with the terms of your mortgage and to ensure that your property is in suitable condition to be rented.

Tenants/  Lodgers

House Shares

Renting a self contained flat or apartment can prove expensive, particularly in desirable areas. One surefire way to reduce your accommodation cost is to move into a house share.  Sharing amenities brings the costs down. This website, spareroom.co.uk caters exactly for the house share market. Once settled into a house share, you can look forward to the positive impact that it will have on your finances.

Team up and Rent

Team up with a friend also looking for accommodation and rent a place that caters to both of your needs. This opportunity is not only available for twenty-somethings, an increasing amount of people find themselves heading one parent households and this is a good opportunity for them to reduce costs too. This website provides a forum for potential flatmates  to meet each other with a view to finding a place together.

Move Back Home

This is not an option that is available for everyone for a number of reasons. It could a good temporary solution for some millennials. Moving back in with your parents could allow you time to reduce your accommodation cost and to recover financially. It should not be considered as a permanent solution.

Have you managed to reduce your accommodation costs recently? Which method did you use? Let me know in the comments section below.

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My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest

 

 

Personal Finance: How Should You Prepare for Brexit?

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Image credit: https://www.irishnews.com/

For those of you not living in the UK, Brexit is a word coined to mark the Great Britain’s intention to leave the European Union. This decision was the result of a national referendum in July 2016 in which the electorate voted to ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain.’  The United Kingdom was very divided; 52% voted in favour of leaving and 48% voted to remain. Those who voted to leave did so without any real understanding of the repercussions of such a decision; they were encouraged by politicians who were economical with the truth. Now in December 2018, UK inhabitants find themselves heading towards Brexit and what looks like a self-inflicted recession.

Businesses and consumers have been heavily impacted; consumers are not spending as much as they used to and business people lack of confidence about the future. Businesses are currently less likely to invest in new equipment or staff and according to the GFK consumer confidence Index the current score for the UK is – 13. To give that some context, in December 2015 the confidence index score was +2. Significantly 2015 was the first time the index had remained positive for an entire calendar year since records began in 1974.

Prepare For Brexit

From a personal finance perspective, how can you better prepare yourself for the reality of Brexit? Below I have listed 4 practical steps you can take that will help.

Revisit Your Budget

Take a look at your current monthly budget and re-evaluate all of your expenditure. If there are opportunities to cut back – take them. For example, a lot of people have unmetered water bills even though in many cases a metered water bill will work out cheaper; read this post for information, Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money Down the Plughole?  There may be other opportunities for you to cutback.

Assess Your Employer & Job Stability

In financially challenging circumstances many companies suffer and some go into administration. In the UK, we have seen this with the demise of Maplin and Toy R Us.  

The task for you is to dispassionately assess how well your employer is doing and how likely/unlikely it is that you be made redundant. Do not rely on any  assurances from the management team at your company; do your own independent research. If you think that you could be made redundant save more money into your emergency fund.

Reduce Discretionary Expenditure

In personal finance circles, there is a lot of discussion around how much impact cutting out daily Lattes will have on the path toward better financial health. That’s a choice that you are best placed to make. However, what is sensible is to rein the dining out occasions and perhaps replace them with entertaining friends at home. Beyond entertaining, holidays are another area that you should review. Choosing a more cost effective destination or changing an international holiday to a UK based ‘staycation’ will give you greater financial comfort. Also, do not go overboard at Christmas.

Review All of Your Financial Products

Review all of your financial products including savings, mortgages, investments and pensions. Assess the impact on Brexit in each case and evaluate whether you should continue with your current provider. If appropriate, change to better performing products with other providers to maximise your returns.

How are you preparing financially for Brexit? Let me know in the comments section below.

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My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest

Take This Free Financial Literacy Course Today

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Image credit: https://vdc.edu.au/

One of the goals I set for myself for this blog was to help people improve their level of financial literacy.

What is Financial Literacy?

‘Financial literacy is the confluence of financial, credit and debt management and the knowledge that is necessary to make financially responsible decisions – decisions that are integral to our everyday lives.’

Kristina Zucchi, a contributor to www.investopedia.com

With each blog post, I have intended to spread financial awareness and increase the knowledge base of my readership. The feedback I have received suggests that this has been appreciated. Thanks to all of you that took the time to feedback. Another way of spreading financial literacy is by sharing details of a free financial literacy course. Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I have been searching for a free resource that I could share with my readers.  I have now found a suitable course and this course is the focus for today’s blog post.

Free Financial Literacy Course

This financial literacy course provides a good introduction to personal finance and money management. The course is supplied by Alison.com the free online learning platform set up as a For Profit Social Enterprise in 2007 by Mike Feeric. Alison.com was started in Galway, Ireland and now has over 12 million students from 195 countries. The course that I have selected has been studied by sixty nine thousand students and has a rating of 4.1 stars. The course will take approximately 6-10 hours to complete.

Click here to be taken to the course landing page.  

Continual Learning

As we continue on this journey towards financial freedom, I will share other helpful resources with you. I hope that you find this course useful. I believe that it is important for us to continue learning and improving our knowledge base.

Have you taken any financial literacy or money management courses before? Let me know in the comments section below.

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Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

Should you Combine Pensions?

What’s the Best Strategy for Clearing Debts?

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My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest

 

4 Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit Score

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

It is very unfortunate that the people who most need credit are the least likely to receive it. People with low credit scores are deemed the greatest risk by the bean counters in banks and other financial institutions who determine who’s loan application will be accepted or denied. When you are being considered for any credit agreement, one variable that carries a lot of weight is your credit score. This is expressed as a number; fortunately, it is a variable that you can positively influence over time.

What is a Credit Score?

Definition:  As a consumer, your credit score is a number based on information from your credit reports at the three major credit reporting bureaus – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

Definition from Investopedia.com

Your credit score* is based on your performance against a number of factors including, how much credit you are currently using, whether you have missed payments for credit cards and loans, whether you are a home owner or rent the property that you currently live in.  According to Experian, a poor credit score is between 300-579, 580-669 is described as fair, 670 -739 is labelled good, 740-799 is very good and 800 to 850 is exceptional. People with poor credit scores are often turned down when they apply for credit.

experian-good-score-range

Image credit: https://www.experian.com/

How can you Improve Your Credit Score?

There are a number of ways of improving your credit score, for the purpose of  this blog post, I will focus on one. You can Improve your credit score by applying for a specialist credit card, using it responsibly and building up positive data points and your financial reputation. ‘Using it responsibly’ in this context means paying off your balance each month and making payments on time.  Credit cards for people with low credit scores are a niche within the credit card market; providers are more flexible than traditional lenders and charge a higher interest rate for outstanding balances and purchases.

Below are 4 credit cards that you can apply for, if you have a poor credit score and want to improve it.

Which Credit Cards can Help You?

Capital One

Click this link to be taken through to the website. 

Vanquis

Click this link to be taken through to the website. 

Aqua

Click this link to be taken through to the website. 

Ocean Finance

Click this link to be taken through to the website. 

If you do apply for any of these credit cards, please read all the terms and conditions carefully and pay particular attention to the APR that will be applied to your card. Use your new credit card responsibly and in a few short months your credit score will improve. As your credit score improves, you will be able to borrow at much more competitive interest rates.  You can find out your credit score for free here. 

Do you know your credit score? Have you had to take steps to improve it? Let me know in the comments section below.

Grammarly Writing Support

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Should you Combine Pensions?

What’s the Best Strategy for Clearing Debts?

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Investments: Why Saving is Not Enough 

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My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest

*If you were wondering about the difference between a credit score and and credit rating, individuals usually have credit scores whereas businesses or governments have credit ratings. Credit ratings are expressed as letters with A being the highest as opposed to the numbers used for credit scores.

Image credit: https://upgradedpoints.com/

What to do if you are Made Redundant: 5 Steps

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Image credit: https://recruitingtimes.org/

There may come a time during your career when you are made redundant, in the United States the term used is Laid off. It is not usually a pleasant experience but it can prove to be a springboard to new opportunities. Having been through the experience myself, my advice is to take the steps that I have outlined in the post below. The Retail industry is an example of an industry that seems more susceptible to redundancies than others but the truth is that it can happen across the board an in many sectors. Once you have taken time to understand the practical implications of being made redundant, you should then create a financial action plan that will keep you focused on your financial goals.

If You Are Made Redundant

Emergency Fund

If you have an emergency fund, assess how much is in it and how long you will be able to cover living expenses after you receive your final salary cheque. Be as detailed as possible because this will determine the maximum time you have available to find another job.

Monthly Budget

Revisit your monthly budget, are there any areas that can be reduced? Rather than wait until you are in a desperate position, cut back on entertainment and other discretionary expenditure now. You will be able to reintroduce them when your employment status improves.  Consider your approach to food and increase the number of home cooked meals you make instead of visiting restaurants or buying takeaways. It will surprise you have much can be trimmed off your expenditure in this way.

Looking For Employment

Search for new roles as soon as you are informed that you will be made redundant. Search for career relevant jobs and side gig / second jobs at the same time. You will find that these side gigs/ second jobs often have a more urgent need and a faster turnaround time. The main benefit of this is that you will be able to get money coming into your account sooner than if you rely solely on career relevant jobs that may have a lead time of 2 -3 months. Keep a spreadsheet of jobs that you have applied to.

Transport

Assess your vehicular needs, do you need a car? If you have two, could you manage with one?  I recommend that you consider these questions dispassionately; don’t be concerned about what the neighbours will think. In the major cities of the UK and other cities around the world, it is possible to hire cars on hourly basis. You could hire a car for a few hours and then return it.

There are quite a few car sharing companies in London, for example, Enterprise Car Club, Easy Car and Zipcar. Ensure that you read the terms and conditions before signing up. Renting cars rather than having your own to maintain and run could save you a significant amount and buy you more time whilst looking for another job.

De- Clutter and Sell Unwanted Items

If your emergency fund is going to run out soon or if you don’t have an emergency fund start to de-clutter your home. Selling unwanted or unused items via websites such as Gumtree or Ebay will help you raise additional funds that can go into your emergency fund. This will buy you more time whilst you are searching for a new job.

Have you ever been made redundant? Did you get your financial house in order? Let me know in the comments section below.

DSX The Professional Crypto Exchange

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How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

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What’s the Best Strategy for Clearing Debts?

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Investments: Why Saving is Not Enough 

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Save Money by Switching Energy Supplier Every Year 

My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

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How to Control Your Cashflow With a Bill Payment Schedule

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In another post on this site I have written about how important it is for you to have a budget for your monthly expenditure. It is also important that you manage your bill payment schedule. Poor management of when bills need to be paid each month can create cash flow headaches, these are times when you have a bill to pay but no available money to pay it. It is worth creating a bill payment schedule as an Excel document and thinking about how dates on the schedule can be altered to create a better cash flow position for yourself.

Good management of bills will enable you to avoid late payment charges or a reliance on credit cards to get you through to the end of the month.

Bill Payment Schedule

Your Action Plan

Go through all your bills and record on your spreadsheet and make a note of when each bill needs to be paid. When you have finished, you should have a list of regular bills and dates covering accommodation, mobile phone and electricity etc.

Bill-Payment-Schedule-

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Ask yourself, is there a regular time in the month when you seem to have more bills than cash? It may be that by week three of each month your available cash is particularly low. If this is the case, and you get paid once a month it would make sense to move payment dates from week 3 to closer to the start of the month, i.e. just after pay day.

If you get paid weekly, it could be advantageous to alter payment dates so that all bills are paid just after you receive your weekly wages. Individual circumstances will vary of course, the objective is to avoid having no cash left and still having bills to pay.

Simplicity is the key, it’s fairly easy to forget about a bill and then fall behind or miss a payment completely. Once you have altered payment dates, automate them with direct debits and standing orders so you don’t have to spend time thinking about them each month.

Ensure that you check how competitive all of your suppliers are once a quarter. If you can switch to a more cost effective supplier without being penalised, you should do so.

Do you have a schedule of bill payments? Have you created your own system?  Let me know in the comments section below.

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If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

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My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

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Credit Cards: How to Make Balance Transfers Work For You

This post may contain affiliate links please read our disclosure for more info.

Image credit: https://www.creditcards.com/

If you have ever had more than credit card and realised that the payments you are making are mostly going to pay off interest only, a balance transfer might be a good solution for you. A balance transfer occurs when you open a new credit card account and transfer the balance from an existing card or cards to the new card. This can work out well for you if the new card offers you a 6 month 0% interest free period. You will then have the opportunity to pay off more of your credit card balance because you have 6 months to make payments without accruing interest.

This is the primary advantage of balance transfers, the interest free period. Before taking out a new balance transfer credit card read the terms and conditions and find out what the interest rate will be after the 6 month period. Financial institutions offer balance transfer credit cards because they know that many people will not be able to clear their balance within 6 months and as a consequence they will then have to pay interest to the financial institution. This is when they are able to make money from you; sometimes there is a fee for balance transfer. Usually financial institutions will also make money if you make any new purchases or cash withdrawals too, so try to avoid any new transactions altogether on the new card.

Make Balance Transfers Work For You

*Use an online comparison tool to find out which are the best balance transfer credit cards for your requirements and check your eligibility. Do not apply for too many cards because your applications will be recorded on your credit record and you do not want to appear desperate.

*Balance transfers are not offered to everyone, if you have a poor credit rating this opportunity might not be open to you. Click on this link to find out more about credit ratings.   If you are can get a new balance transfer card, sign up and use it.

*  If your application is successful, transfer your balance or balances to the new card and continue to make regular payments to reduce the amount that you owe. It will make your financial life simpler and more manageable.

*Calculate your desired repayment amount and set yourself the goal of clearing your new credit card by a specific date. Ideally this will be within the interest free 6 month period.

*Consider this strategy that I have used personally, when one 6 month period is about to finish it will should still be possible to transfer to another new balance transfer card and in doing so gain another 6 months at 0% interest. More time to clear your balance will help you make faster progress clearing your debts. Read this post for more information on clearing debts, What’s the Best Strategy for Clearing Debts?

What Should You do?

If you follow the approach listed above, balance transfers can become an excellent strategy for rapid debt reduction and will move you closer to being debt free

Have you used balance transfer cards to reduce your debts? Would you use them again? Let me know in the comments section below.

DSX The Professional Crypto Exchange

If you have enjoyed this post you will also like the following posts:

Should you Combine Pensions?

What’s the Best Strategy for Clearing Debts?

Save up to £300 per year by Changing Broadband Supplier

Investments: Why Saving is Not Enough 

How to Stop Emotional Spending

Water Bills: Are you Pouring Money down the Plughole? 

How to Stick to Your Budget During Summer: 5 Tips 

Does Your Choice of Supermarket Matter? 

Save Money by Switching Energy Supplier Every Year 

How to Stop Impulse Buying – 10 Ways

Have you Found all of Your Dormant Accounts?

Can you live off a Cash Budget for a Week?

Has the Cryptocurrency Bubble Burst?

Why you Should Drive and Old Car and Pay of Your Mortgage Early

Make Money By Being Part of a Focus Group

My aim with each blog post is to help you move to a better financial future. I believe that there is not enough financial education in the national curriculum and I intend to share anything helpful that I have learned along the way. I am by no means a financial expert. None of the information on this website constitutes financial advice and is provided as general information only.  This is my personal finance blog; my marketing blog is over here and I have been blogging there since 2010. I hope you have found this information useful. Thank you for reading.

Best regards,

Mike

Follow me on Pinterest