Managing personal finance is a very critical and crucial task and needs to be carried out consistently for financial stability over a long run. However, though it is a difficult task, but by adopting certain essential habits of managing personal finance, people can easily save few bucks by the end of the period in consideration. Regardless of the amount of money which is earned every month, it is very vital to manage the amount so that all the essential needs are fulfilled. It is not important to earn huge pay package, spend on high end luxuries and own expensive cars in order to become happy. These things are just methods of luxuries and there is no end to luxury. However, if individuals aim to live a comfortable life and well manage their personal finances they can easily lead a happy satisfied life.

Some quick tips to manage personal finance –

• The first essential step towards efficient management of personal finance is to keep proper track of day to day expenditure. By maintaining a regular record, you can check the various heads on which you are spending and to what kind of use is your money being used.
• The second step is to evade the use of credit cards. Credit cards are small devil cards, which compel you to initiate avoidable expenses. People should develop a habit to just use credit cards just for the sake of convenience and not to attain a lifestyle which is beyond affordability.
• The third effective step is to pay yourself before you discharge various expenses. This simply means that individuals should keep some amount of money aside as savings.

155,200,000 is the total labor force

$48,000 is the gross domestic product

20% of households have received practically all of the wage increases since 1975

$810 billion is the merchandise trade deficit

35.5% of Americans work in managerial, professional, and technical fields

24.8% of Americans work in sales and offices

22.6% of Americans work in manufacturing, extraction, transportation, and crafts

3.892 trillion kilo watt hours is the electricity consumption of the country

8.457 million barrels of oil are produced every day

20.68 million barrels of oil are consumed every day

$1.377 trillion is amount of exports per year

49.0% of this is in capital goods like transistors, aircraft, motor vehicle parts, computers, telecommunications equipment, etc.

21.4% is how much trading the US does with Canada, it’s largest trade partner

11.7% is how much trade the US does with Mexico

163.2 million is how many main telephone lines there are in the country

255 million is how many cell phones are in the country

14,947 is the number of airports in the US

4.06% of GDP is how much is spent on military expenditures

59,413,358 is the number of males age 16-49 fit for military service

59,187,183 is the number of females age 16-49 fit for military service

6,465,799 km is the total amount of roadways

2,255,964 km of which are unpaved

82.1% of the country speaks English

10.7% speak Spanish

51.3% consider themselves Protestant

23.9% would say they are Roman Catholic

67.1% of the country is between the ages of 15 and 64 years old

36.7 years is the median age

78.14 years is the total life expectancy in the US

81.13 years if you’re female

0.883% is the population growth rate

If you get a chance check it out the site. A few of the good bits are as follows:

What is an IVA? – explains the process.

Letter of full and final settlement sample – something to send to your creditors if you’re in debt.

How to negotiate an IVA - as it sounds.

I’ll try updating more often with website of interest like this in the coming days. Hope everyone is doing well!

Apparently a new survey done this year shows that 1 in 5 Canadian homebuyers feel ok with their current debt levels – but another increase in interest rates could make things tough for a lot of Canadians.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation ended up surveying over 2,500 people about things relating to Canada home mortgage levels. These surveys were done before three consecutive hikes in interest rates. Interest rates went from around 5.2 – 6.2 % in less than a month.

That’s a pretty quick increase. I guess we’ll see how things go from here.

We can’t help but feel so thankful for all the hard work by our web designer John Hendricks. Thanks again John for being so patient with us as we upgraded this site, we really appreciate all your hard work and couldn’t be happier with the way the site turned out.

There is information about credit cards, general money topics, family life, debt consolidation, bankruptcy, personal finance, mortgages, and savings. If you get a chance head over there today.

Erasing Good History

If you close a credit card account, even if you have found an alternative best credit card deal, any good history associated with the old card is kept on your credit report for ten years.  If you did not cancel the credit card, then the account history stays on for twenty years on your credit report.  Notice that if you had any bad credit history, it stays on your report, even if you do cancel the credit card.  Therefore, this scenario does not work both ways.

Cutting Down Your Debt to Credit Ratio

Another way that closing a credit card account can have a negative effect on your credit score is when you have a zero balance on the credit card.  What this can do is reduce your debt to credit ratio by whatever you could have charged to that credit card.  This is a simple fractions problem.

Are there any reasons why you should close a credit card?

Without a doubt, closing a credit card will lower your credit score.  This may not be reason enough to keep an inactive credit card account open.  Here are some good reasons for closing a credit card.

For most people wanting to curtail their credit card usage, freezing the cards in water or cutting them up is usually enough.  Nevertheless, for those who truly have a hard time not charging more than they can pay, closing a credit card can help.  Before closing a credit card, consider calling the company and asking them to reduce the maximum limit on the card. They do not want to lose you as a customer.  If you tell them you are considering closing the account, they may work with you, and offer you a better credit card deal.

Another reason to close a credit card is if you have one that actually charges you an annual fee.  Call the credit card company to see if you can get them to stop the annual fee.  Otherwise, it is not worth it to continue to pay an annual fee for a credit card if you do not use it.

Another reason people like to close inactive credit cards is to minimize the amount of overhead involved with managing your credit cards.  Consider for example the problem of identity theft or if somebody were to steal your wallet or purse.  One less credit card account means one less credit card account information you have to maintain or protect from the wrong people.

The biggested drop was in Vancouver. Surprise, surprise. I guess that’s what happens when your entire city is paying attention to one of the world’s largest sporting celebration (hint: the Olympics).

The CREA The average resale price rose 18 percent from a year ago to C$335,655 ($329,330).

Yikes, that’s going to add up.

“Housing markets are becoming more balanced,”  said CREA’s Chief Economist. The release went on to say “Further expected supply increases will continue to take the steam out of housing markets as the year progresses.”

The last few months have shown Canada’s mortgage and remortgage rates are getting ever more close to the lowest since the Korean War. This has increased home sales and prices as the country emerges from a recession. We’re doing quite well compared to some countries in fact. We shall see how things look going forward.

This means that the government may make it possible for no reviews to be made by foreign takeover unless the stock value of the company is more than $1 billion. Right now it is only $299 million. That’s a pretty wide margin if you ask me. $1 billion means that most of Canada’s high tech companies (and lots of non high tech) could be sold without any review here in Canada.

I’m not sure if it’s a good thing. It seems like half our companies are already foreign owned. Even that beer is foreign owned…what’s it called again? Oh yeah, Molson Canadian.

If you get a chance, also check out Andrew Salmon‘s profile. Great stuff.

CIBC is out as far as I’m concerned. This was a foolish move to say the least.