US Finance World

Before opening a savings account, you need to make sure how this type of deposit account works. Here are some of the most important things that you need to know about savings accounts.

1. Most savings accounts today come with FDIC insurance of up to $250,000 for every depositor, provided that the bank or financial institution offering them is insured by the FDIC. Make sure that as you go through your options, you would be checking if the accounts are FDIC-insured.

2. Unlike checking accounts, savings accounts generally do not require a minimum deposit amount when you open them; however, there are some which do set a minimum amount for initial deposits so it would be best to check beforehand. Savings accounts also do not usually have a minimum maintaining balance that needs to be in the account not like checking accounts.

3. While savings accounts do not usually cost anything to be opened, it would still be important to check with the bank or financial institution whether or not there are any fees or charges associated with keeping and maintaining the account. Read more…

If your small business sells knowledge or services, its tough to repossess what youve sold once its gone if the client decides not to pay the bill.

At least once a week, I hear from a small business owner who is fighting to get the money they deserve from some deadbeat client who has decided not to pay.

Thats why, no matter what, you always need some sort of written agreement with your clients. It doesnt have to be a full-blown contract, a letter of agreement will do. Just make sure that it spells out what you will provide, when and how your client will pay you.

Your best bet is to write up an agreement you can use as a template when selling your work. Make sure you have your attorney take a look at it. It will be money well spent.

Or you can check out some of the free forms and consulting agreements that are available at Rocket Lawyer where all legal documents are free to try. Look around, you may find exactly what you need.

Good news if you are about to retire! Pension incomes are at a two-and-a-half year high.

If you’re about to retire, I have some good news for you. Pension incomes for many new retirees are on the up. However, you’ll still be worse off than many folk who retired in the 90s.

I should add that the recent good news only applies to people who have defined contribution pensions. This is where you and/or your employer make contributions to a pension pot during your working life. That pot is then used to buy you a pension when you retire.

Let’s imagine you’re a 65 year-old man and you retired this month. You’ve paid £100 a month into a pension fund for the last 20 years. All of your contributions have been invested in a pension fund that invests in a mix of shares and bonds.*

Based on average figures from Moneyfacts, your pension pot would now be worth £41,964. If you had

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It used to be that retirement was an attainable vision for just about everyone in the U-S-of-A.

Definition of Retirement: sit around the home, read the paper, play some golf, drive around town in a Cadillac, catch the early bird special at the local diner, watch some TV, go to bed, and do it all over the next day. Mix in an occasional RV or European vacation to take some photos and all was right in the world.

Retirees had a simple financial formula for achieving that dream:

1. Hit age 65.
2. Stop Working.
3. Collect your pension check, replacing the majority of your annual income before retirement.
4. Collect your Social Security benefits to fill in the rest.
5. Rely on your retiree health benefits from your employer.
6. Collect your medicare benefits to fill in the rest.

Those days are all but over. Why?

1. Pensions are dead our generation wont get them, and if you are lucky enough to get one, good luck keeping most of it.
2. Most individual investors fail miserably at investing.

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After years of turning down all but the best borrowers, banks and other lenders are now extending credit to a surprising group of customers: former homeowners who defaulted on their mortgages.

In another sign that borrowing is easing up, some banks are extending credit beyond the best borrowers to include those with significant blemishes on their credit reports, says James Chessen, chief economist at the American Bankers Association. At the moment, borrowers who have defaulted on their mortgages — but are current on all other loans — are among the attractive candidates for new loans. Between February 2009 and August 2010, 64,500 borrowers who had defaulted on a mortgage received a consumer loan, according to a study released last week by credit bureau TransUnion. The majority secured credit cards, but almost 40% got car loans or a personal loan or line of credit, according to TransUnion’s study.

And while more recent data isn’t available, experts say the number of loans granted to mortgage defaulters has likely continued to grow.

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Several years ago, I hired a summer student enrolled in university for some general office administration. Before the start of the next summer, she called and asked if I was hiring for that summer. For a variety of reasons, we did not need help that summer. However, I asked her if she could forward her resume to me in case someone I knew was looking for help. In such an event, I could quickly pass her resume along with a kind word.

She said no.

This to me was a head-scratching move. Summer jobs are hard enough to come by even if you know the employer. But to turn down a chance to have a resume passed along with a reference is tantamount to ensuring your summer spent unemployed or in summer school. Not surprisingly, I have not heard from this summer student since.

We often use the phrase it is not what you know but who you know to emphasize (both positively and negatively) that your network is sometimes more important than your credentials.  Yet, when confronted with an opportunity to expand ones network, some of us turn down these opportunities.

The notion of human capital, often called the most over-looked aspect of personal finance, is traditionally seen as an output of education and experience.

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Running a business can sometimes be a very lonely affair. Decisions are always on the to-do list, having someone as a sounding board can be an invaluable asset to every small business owner.

Business mentors are one group of people who can be your sounding boards. But what is a business mentor and what can you expect from a business mentor?

Maybe we should start by talking about what a business mentor is not. A business mentor is not a business adviser or business coach, they do not charge for their service, in fact they are often volunteers. This is an important fact about mentoring, no money changes hands. With money the whole relationship changes and it is no more considered mentoring.

Business mentors can be other business people you know or even former bank managers, who can help you to understand how to deal with banks. It is important to understand that business mentors should be trained for the job, volunteers or not.

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They say it takes a village to raise a child and Ill add it takes a campaign to make your marketing stick. Ill never forget a meeting with a small business owner who had just dipped her toes into the advertising world for the first time. We got together to discuss her marketing efforts for her small business and when she arrived at my office, she was just beaming.

First on my agenda was to find out exactly what she had done to market her business so we could figure out together what would be most effective going forward.

She grinned as she pulled out a section of the newspaper to show me her ad.  It looked like thousands of other small business ads Ive seen over the years business name and logo at the top, along with her company tag line, phone number and website address.

I asked her how many times the ad had run and what her response had been. Only once, was her reply. No calls yet, but Im sure well get some.

Sadly, she was quite wrong.

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