Organize Your Money!

Organization is the key to a balanced life! Organization saves you time, energy, frustration, and confusion. To be organized means to be efficient in the way separate elements are arranged into a consistent structure. In other words, everything has its place, find the place, and when you're done put it back. In all my years of counseling people in the area of personal finances, one of the biggest issues that cause money woes is the lack of organization.

When you are not organized life feels chaotic, excruciating, and out of control. You can actually feel your sanity slipping away. But like everything else in life -- you need to admit that you have organization issues, and that you want to change. Next, you need to make a commitment to get organized, and get your life in order. Then come up with a plan. If you're too overwhelmed to get started, have a friend or a professional help you get organized. Your life and financial future depends on it.

Organize your time -- Use a calendar, palm pilot, or organizer to manage your time. Think of your time as money. When you waste your time you are throwing away money, so plan and schedule your time.

Organize your files -- Start a paper filing system. Get manila folders to organize statements, bills, letters, and other important papers. If it's important it should have a place to go.

Track your money -- Know exactly how much money comes in and out of your household each month and year. Whether it's regular salaries, bonuses, part-time, or business income keep track. What are you spending your hard-earned money on? Track all your outgoing expenses for 30 days by keeping receipts and writing down expenses. Put the receipts in an envelope and label it by the month. Categorize your receipts and add each category up to get a total. This will give you a good idea how you use your money each month.

Pay your bills on time -- Keep all your bills in one place, separate bills by due dates, come up with 2-3 days of the month to write out and mail bills, and pay bills 4-5 days before due date.

Automate your savings/investments -- Organize your time and money by having a certain amount taken out each month, and put the amount in certain savings/investment accounts. This accomplishes three things: a) eliminates time on your part, b) you don't have to see, feel, or touch the money, and c) you are being consistent in saving.

File your taxes -- If your files are organized it will make it easier when tax time comes around to get your numbers together. You won't have to be scatter-brained trying to find old tax forms, pay-stubs, or documents. Every document will have a place.

Organizing your life will help grow your money. Organizing cuts down on duplicating inventory, supplies, clothes, products, food, information, and time! Do you want more money? Start getting organized!

Sunday, December 28, 2008

How to Build Residual Income 2009

We all want to retire in style and comfort. After all, who would not want to just rest after working for many years. Unfortunately, the amount of work that you do in your lifetime is not a guarantee of just how comfortable you will be when you retire. That is why a lot of people are trying to look for ways to build residual income so that it can trickle in even when they are no longer working anymore.

The residual income that you build refers to the money that comes in even when you are not doing any work for it. This often comes from interests earned from the investments that you have made through the years. These investments will earn interests that will serve as your income for years to come.

Putting your money in long term investment products such as bonds and mutual funds are the best and easiest way to build your residual income for your retirement. Just make sure that you choose products that give income on the long term as these can support your through your retirement. Other investment products that you can purchase are insurance and retirement funds. These are products that you can pay for in small amounts when you are young and enjoy when you are already retired. These are residual income that you can rely on for many years especially when the product you purchased covers your whole lifetime.

Another way to build residual income is to join multi-level marketing which you can earn from even after the sales have been made. To those who are not familiar with the term, multi-level marketing or what is often called network marketing is a business structure that makes use of people as main distributors of the product. Similar to direct selling, multi-level marketing goes directly to consumers but instead of just selling, agents and representatives of mlms are also encouraged to look for people who can also sell the products. These new recruits will then form part of her team that would sell the products. Commissions are often based on the total sales of the whole group and also the position of the agent in the structure. The more people you have under you, the higher the commissions that you will have.

Another way to build a strong residual income is to utilize your personal website for income. Believe it or not, you can earn a lot from a simple website. But of course, you need a lot of information for it to maintain a constant number of hits and a steady flow of traffic. IF you have a website that is already getting thousands of hits in a day, take advantage of the traffic and start putting Google Adsense. Every time any of the people visiting your site clicks on the ads, you will earn a certain point that you can convert into cash.

Another source of residual income that you can build over the years can be found in affiliate programs. Affiliate programs help sell products over the internet. You will partner with companies who are actually selling the product. They will use your site as a portal to advertise their products. Often, the products that you can feature in your site are those that are related to your site's content or targeted at your site's readers.

-Terez Dunn


Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Managing Your Money With Personal Finance Software

When you start managing your own money, you begin to realize how much there is to organize, especially if you have a variety of assets on top of your regular checking, savings and credit card accounts. A money manager has to be able to keep track of loans and investments, as well as spending and income. One way to make this easier if you are managing your own money is to use personal finance software.

Using the computer to manage your money

Personal finance software is designed to help you keep track of your income and expenditures, but many programs are also designed to help you organize your investments and other financial transactions. It is possible for you to update your accounts and reconcile them when statements arrive, and to make changes when you do something new. The computer can make money management much more efficient and organized.

Backing up your financial information

Computers, of course, are fallible. Sometimes they crash, and information can be lost. If you use personal finance software to help you manage your money, it is a good idea to back it up when you make changes. You can do this by putting the information on disk, or on an external drive, like a zip drive, external back up drive or a flash stick. It is important to back up your financial information so that it is not lost if your computer has problems. It only takes a few seconds, and it can save your hours of work re-entering all of the information.

If you want to be your own money manager, it can be done with a little education, and some help from a personal finance software program.

Find more information about Personal Money Management at MoneyManagement123.com. Also, visit Money Management 123 to find more information about Personal Finance Software.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Get Me Organized Now

First let me ask you something:

How much time do you think you will save if you get organized?

I can tell in my situation a lot, I need to do a lot of things daily, from the morning until the evening, and also at night, I used to go to sleep around 2 a.m. waking up at 7 a.m., so not much time to work with there.

After some time, I got tired of it, so I started to go to sleep early, and it felt really good, trust me. The problem now was I never had enough time to do them all, each day I had more things to do than I had time for, and I never knew how others could do so much things, in such little time, so I started to think:

What if I get organized?

In my mind I thought that would be very easy, because well, anyone knows how to do it, you just get a pen and write down what you have to do for the day, and you follow your schedule. So I took a piece of paper, and wrote down on it what to do:

- organize storage closet

- organize closet color

- organize photos for scrapbooking class

- organize kids closet

- organize bedroom teenager

- battle of the bands organize

- organize my camping gear

- easily organize your digital photo

- dvd organize software

After doing this, I started work, and did all on the list, one by one, so it took me some time, but I was doing it happy that I am finally organized.

What I did not think about was that by doing that I ignored my work, and I left it behind, so basically I did all of these, which probably tomorrow will get back to the old state, and I lost a whole day of work!

Feeling sorry is never an option for me, so I went to my best friend in the world, the computer and searched the Internet for organizing tips, because I needed to find a solution to the mess I was in. What I found was this:

http://lightb.wordpress.com

It seems a person has been thinking about it a long time, and she made a huge e-Book about it, what I found in this book, I have never seen before, it contains everything from how to organize my bedroom to showing me the best way to organize refrigerator contents. The price was pretty cheap for what it contained, around $20, but for that price, I found there, and I’m not lying, everything you need to organize your home in every aspect and detail!

I did not read it all, because it contains much more than I need, basically the book contains stuff that I have never heard of, but whenever I have a new thing in the house I do a search in the book, and I find the answer, this saves me a lot of time, and now I can proudly say I am an organized person!

George Has.

P.S. The web site I am telling you about has organizing books for everything from home, office and holidays, I am very sure I will buy the “Organize Your Office” book, because I want to save time at work now.


Sunday, July 27, 2008

Can You Make Money Without Money?

When I ask why you don't start your own business, I always hear, "I don't have money to start a business."

This is a common excuse people give for not starting their own business.

There is truth in the statement. You actually need money to make money or to start a business. But the question is "Do you need a lot of money or little to start a business?" and "Whose money do you use?"

Yes, I admit that it does take money to make money but it doesn't need to be your money!

Recently, one of my friends closed his restaurant business due to staff problems. But he quickly jumped to another business opportunity.

The business idea is so good that I want to share with you.

He is now running a training company. He focuses on corporate training. Basically, what he needs to do is to bring in famous trainers to his workshops. Market and promote the workshops and get people sign up for the workshops.

How much money do you think he needs to invest to organize one workshop? From getting the speaker to marketing, from selling tickets to renting a venue?

It will definitely cost a lot of money! Even if you only talk about marketing.

You know how much money my friend put in to organize a workshop? Close to zero!

How could that happen? How on earth that he doesn't use his own money to organize a workshop but all the profits go into his pocket…

Here is how.

He got the idea to look for sponsors for his workshop. After a few rounds of searching and corresponding, he managed to get big companies to be the sponsors for his workshop.

For companies to become my friend's sponsors, they need to contribute money to promote the workshop. This single idea helps my friend to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing.

Not only that, his sponsors also help him to market and sell tickets for his workshops. He also can leverage on the sponsors' client databases.

Of course, my friend doesn't mind to give some commissions to the sponsors from the sales of tickets. It's only a small fraction of the whole profit.

By making such an arrangement, a lot of work is off-loaded from my friend. It's like having a well-oiled machine working for you without much of your involvement.

My friend doesn't need to invest a big sum of money for his workshops. Someone else will pay for his workshop expenses.

Does this sound like an excellent business idea? Of course, it does.

This is what I call ideas at work. Making money does not necessarily require huge capital, it's all about coming up with ideas that other people are willing to invest in.

As Napoleon Hill once said, "One sound idea is all that you need to achieve success." And also stressed by Robert Kiyosaki "Money is an idea."

Abel Cheng offers small and medium enterprises exclusive global profits insider tips in his free publication, Abel Cheng's Business Diary. To officiate a bi-weekly subscription, please go to http://www.abelcheng.com/diary.html

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Organize Your Money!

Organization is the key to a balanced life! Organization saves you time, energy, frustration, and confusion. To be organized means to be efficient in the way separate elements are arranged into a consistent structure. In other words, everything has its place, find the place, and when you're done put it back. In all my years of counseling people in the area of personal finances, one of the biggest issues that cause money woes is the lack of organization.

When you are not organized life feels chaotic, excruciating, and out of control. You can actually feel your sanity slipping away. But like everything else in life -- you need to admit that you have organization issues, and that you want to change. Next, you need to make a commitment to get organized, and get your life in order. Then come up with a plan. If you're too overwhelmed to get started, have a friend or a professional help you get organized. Your life and financial future depends on it.

Organize your time -- Use a calendar, palm pilot, or organizer to manage your time. Think of your time as money. When you waste your time you are throwing away money, so plan and schedule your time.

Organize your files -- Start a paper filing system. Get manila folders to organize statements, bills, letters, and other important papers. If it's important it should have a place to go.

Track your money -- Know exactly how much money comes in and out of your household each month and year. Whether it's regular salaries, bonuses, part-time, or business income keep track. What are you spending your hard-earned money on? Track all your outgoing expenses for 30 days by keeping receipts and writing down expenses. Put the receipts in an envelope and label it by the month. Categorize your receipts and add each category up to get a total. This will give you a good idea how you use your money each month.

Pay your bills on time -- Keep all your bills in one place, separate bills by due dates, come up with 2-3 days of the month to write out and mail bills, and pay bills 4-5 days before due date.

Automate your savings/investments -- Organize your time and money by having a certain amount taken out each month, and put the amount in certain savings/investment accounts. This accomplishes three things: a) eliminates time on your part, b) you don't have to see, feel, or touch the money, and c) you are being consistent in saving.

File your taxes -- If your files are organized it will make it easier when tax time comes around to get your numbers together. You won't have to be scatter-brained trying to find old tax forms, pay-stubs, or documents. Every document will have a place.

Organizing your life will help grow your money. Organizing cuts down on duplicating inventory, supplies, clothes, products, food, information, and time! Do you want more money? Start getting organized!

Sharman Lawson is the President of Freedom Concepts USA, a debt and financial coach, speaker, and author of the book 12 Steps to Eliminate Debt Forever! Visit her website at http://www.freedomconceptsusa.com

Sharman Lawson - EzineArticles Expert Author