5 Financial Life Categories

Do you know the most influential financial life categories to set your personal financial planning goals? In other word, the foundation stones of your personal financial planning life? In my experience, when planning to start personal financial plan, people found most worried about identification of goals. Such worries generally happening due to the ignorance of major factors that influencing most, to set financial goals. This article is the result of my effort to identify these categories to give you better awareness on where you required to put your time and work to identify and move with well set of financial goals.

Success of a personal financial plan entirely based on the goals setting by the person. What are those goals? How can I identify the goals? Work, work, work and work with right categories to identify the goals associated with its. But, how do you going to work without knowledge on what categories to work? So get ready to know the top five categories you should know to work on and identify your strengths and weakness to set right goals.

Personal financial planning totally depends on five most important categories.Identification of your Assets, Liabilities, Personal Risk, planning on Kids future and education and finally plan for your Retirement. The time you set your primary goals, any or more of this category will get involved to the success of your goal.

Assets - Assets have major role in budgeting along with your liabilities. You must identify your assets at the beginning of your personal financial plan. A person generally have assets like properties, automobiles, collectibles, house, investments, furs and jeweleries, income from salary, any secondary income etc. Through recording and identifying your assets, you are not in a position to set any goals but, you have reached to the half of your major milestone by knowing your affordability to set any goals through following categories.

Liabilities - When dealing with liabilities category, lots of efforts required identify and record liabilities spanning to various sub categories.As it is the most important category to identify the personal net worth, missing any sub category may have considerable impact in the future.

As a rough, each person required to create a worksheet to identify the liabilities which originally falling to three major categories.

- First, the 'long term liabilities' coming with auto, personal, eduction loans, loans against investments, life insurance fixed deposits, home mortgages, home equity loans.

- Second will be recurring home expenses like home rent, utility expenses i.e. water, telephone, gas, internet, cable etc..

- Finally personal expenses like toiletries, cosmetics, personal drugs, dry cleaning, clothing purchases, personal grooming, gifts, entertainments, vocations and travel, publications, club memberships, charitable expenses and other personal expenses etc.

Make sure you have recorded each of the liabilities intact in a separate workbook to identify your liabilities for a week, month and year.

The time when you finish the workbook by recording your assets and liabilities, you are reaching to the first mile stone of identifying your exact personal net worth or wealth by comparing both.

Once after identifying your personal capacity to plan for future goals, you will come to know whether you are able to achieve any goals if set for the future or not. Knowing your capacity protect you from setting any goals that you are not able to achive. Not only that, identifying exact net worth help you to plan your budget in a structured way to save and add more money to the fund which work for your future goals.

Personal Risk - No one free from the risks happening from property or causalities. Major risks can be expected from house and household items like furniture, jeweleries etc.., health, personal injuries, automobiles etc. The elements in each of this can be fire, natural calamities, war, burglary, accidents, critical illness, hospitalization of self or dependents etc...

Working to identify your risks help you to think about possible protection method by knowing the best quote "Prevention is better than cure". Naturally you will move to your first goal, safety from debt, incidents and any kind of possible loses.

Now, how do you feel about setting a goal to apply enough safety to yourself and family by possible insurance policies?

- Think about possible term insurance to protect yourself and thus your family from any future possible financial burdens.

- Think the method to protect yourself and family from health risks, risk to assets, automobiles, machinery and other valuables like jewelries, furniture, electronics items etc.

- Finally, if you have a home mortgage, think how your family will pay this in case anything bad happening to your life, to decide the requirements of insurance against home loans.

Kids Education - Kids are our major wealth. Each parent in this world working for the betterment of their kids. Being a loving parent, you must have a plan to meet the expense of their education and marriage in the future.

Starting of investments to achieve such goals and at the earliest is the best option for this. With this category, can you now identify the goals for the betterment of your kids?

Retirement - This is the category really having various secondary goals than any of the above. Any goals you have identified influencing by any of the above category are generally focused goals. But, with retirement category, only one focused goal involved. Required money for each month or yearly to lead better retirement life.

This category also have several secondary goals like, yearly pilgrimage, holiday plan, build a house, build a farm land etc..

The major difference with the focused goals and secondary goals is, focused goals cannot be dropped because your personal financial planning is totally based on focused goals. Secondary goals can be dropped at any time because it doesn't have any base relationship with your financial planning and totally depends on person to person.

Yes, personal financial plan totally intend to have a better life throughout your life, meet necessary goals like kids betterment in the future, be safe from debt and any incidents happening to self, family members or any of your assets and finally a well settled retirement life with a newly built home or yearly holiday package to foreign countries.

Do you still looking for any further information to work for set your goals?

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Best Indian Company To Invest - Procter & Gamble India

Today, with the Best Indian Companies to Invest In (BICII) series, I am introducing another Indian monopoly major, Procter and Gamble, a fully owned Indian subsidiary of the Procter and Gamble Company,US, known in India as P&G Hygiene and Health care Ltd. P&G have decade of experience in Indian market with number of popular brands. The specialty of P&G is, the company is not over diversified in the product side but, have focused with products that got huge attention in Indian market all the time.

Best Indian Companies to Invest InCompany and Product Analysis

"In historical terms Procter & Gamble's relationship with India dates back to when Vicks Product Inc. India, a branch of Vicks Product Inc. USA established in 1951, was engaged in the manufacture (under loan license) and sale of what is today India's Number One Health Care brand - the famous range of VICKS products".

In 1985, the name P&G originally appeared in India with an affiliation with previous company and starts its operation with its own name. within that time, Indian market totally influenced by their most famous brand 'Vicks' and 1989 they have launched the classic feminine product 'Whisper'. On 1991 it again launched Ariel detergent, was the most famous at the time.

P&G started manufacturing Vicks and Whisper through its factories at Goa and coming years, they have launched variants of Vicks like vicks Plus and Vicks Action 500 etc. P&G is the only company in India offered Money Back guarantee to a consumer product, when they offered the same for Whisper, for its female customers. They became very popular with its child health product 'Vicks VepoRub' providing relief from multi-symptom like cold, cough, blocked nose, body pain and head ache's on children.

On October 2005, Vicks celebrated Golden Jubilee of 50 years after its first launch and then launched New Vicks Formula 44 a unique, safe cough syrup to the Indian market. P&G enjoys superior monopoly with above products and till today, Indian market never seen a product that match to Vicks. It is a clear monopoly business and yes, the same what we where looking to invest on a company. Thus, P&G took a place with our list of wonderful Indian companies to invest through value investing criteria.

If we dig a little in the net, will come to know the best description about the company "P&G Hygiene and Health Care Limited is one of India's fastest growing Fast Moving Consumer Goods Companies that has in its portfolio P&G's Billion dollar brands such as Vicks & Whisper. With a turnover of Rs. 500+ crores, the Company has carved a reputation for delivering high quality, value-added products to meet the needs of consumers."

Its subsidiary called P&G Home Products also have numerous products ranging from Ariel, Tide, Pantene Pro V, Head and Shoulders, Pampers etc. Pamper is the famous word when kids wear coming to the picture. Head & Shoulders considered as world's largest selling anti-dandruff shampoo and Pantene is world's No. 1 beauty shampoo with and Rejoice, Asia's No. 1 shampoo.

P&G Home Products Limited is a 100% subsidiary of The Procter & Gamble Company, USA, that in India, has carved a reputation for delivering superior quality, value-added products to meet the needs of consumers.

Investment Suitability Analysis

For a value investor, P&G is an excellent pick by considering its ability to meet first value investing criteria 'Monopoly Business and Products'. To meet the most important criteria, Debt part, P&G is a company with Zero debt for years. P&G has an excellent management team to lead the company to new heights and able to sustain its leadership position in the market by taking time to time innovations.

Considering its present per share earnings of 47.54 with price of Rs. 920, as on the end of June 2009, P&G providing an initial rate of return of 5.17% if you buy now. It is wise, waiting to reach the stock price between Rs. 670 to 720 to buy and get an initial rate of return of 7%. With its defensive nature, an investor should wait patiently, to buy this fantastic business when reach to the right price.

When look into the profit side, P&G recording considerable year to year growth on Sales, net profit and Per Share Earning. As a debt free company, it is a good dividend candidate too, to enjoy timely returns from your investments.

All over considering the business and performance, P&G is a right value investing candidate if one buy the stock in the right price, as mentioned above.

I hope you have enjoyed the report and appreciated if you give your valuable comments and suggestions.

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Speed Linking - TMM Gold Series 4

Posted on February 09, 2009, a classic post on Term Insurance Plan titled 'Benefit of buying a term insurance policy' got little attention from TMM visitors due to TMM's 'new' status in the personal finance and investing blog world. In this article, I took special care to not miss any features and advantages of the Term Insurance Plan. Today, Personal Financial Planners recommending Term Insurance as the first step to start their clients financial planning by knowing its power to provide safety and security to the family members in the absence of their bread winners. Today, I am introducing this article through speed linking to archive to provide all required information you need to know on this wonderful product. Here is the link to this article for you.

I value and appreciate your time. While adding a comment, you are not only appreciating my work but, also providing knowledge to your followers.

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Core Points of Personal Financial Planning

Building a personal financial plan required lots of effort. Most of the time, people even don't know where to start and what will be the important points to keep in mind when planning their finance. In this context, knowing the core have importance to not miss any major points when one moving with her financial planning. Here is the core for personal financial planning for your knowledge and update.

1. Pay Your Bills: Never hesitate or default to pay all your bills. It make you free from debt and losing money as penalty for making any late payments. Have a better practice of paying bills immediately after getting the same to your hand.

2. Be Debt Free: Debt always drag a person from building wealth. Remember, debt always increasing in a compounding manner and any of your investments or savings will be useless later, once if you have huge, increasing debts. The better advice here is, start saving or investing immediately after paying of all your debts and being a debt free person. If your investments and savings grow with a 10% annual rate but your debt increasing in a 14% annually, there is no point of saving any money at the end other than paying your debt later.

3. Build An Emergency Fund - I have posted various article in the past, emergency fund is a must requirement to any person who required to plan finance properly. An equal amount of your 6 months salary can be kept in a separate account will meet this requirement. This money will protect you from the occurrences of any emergencies, that can happen from any angle, simple or severe, in the future. Practice to not touch on this fund as it is only for your emergency requirements. Also, remember to build the amount to the previous level once after the fund used as full or partial, in the future.

4. Protect Yourself, Your Family and Major Assets: Have necessary protection through insurance from self, family and assets. Applying term policies, with an insurance equal to 6 to 8 times of your annual salary. This will ensure your family will be safe from financial burden in case you are not with them in the future, by happening anything bad to your life. Protect your family through enough medical insurance cover to escape from huge monetary requirements happening due to falling sick or accidents. Protect all your major assets using enough insurance. Home and valuables inside it, Vehicles, ornaments all should come under this insurance umbrella to avoid huge money loses in the future. Here is the guidelines to select worthy insurance.

5. Save and Invest For Future: Remember the golden rule of early saving. Early saving has major role in long term wealth creation. Money required time to grow but gradually. Have a practice of saving money from the day one of your job or business. Practice required money saving tips and methods to have secondary income than main. Power of compounding will come close to you as your best friend if start saving early. One should plan to save and invest majorly for for kids future and retirement. Anything others will come next than said as a secondary goal from these two main goals. Here is an interesting article says 'Making more money does not guarantee financial stability'

Above 5 are the core of personal financial planning. Even though, a person still required to have some soft skills to be succeeded. Common sense plays important roles all over the financial world. Skills to analyze things are most important. Also, it is must to provide good knowledge to your kids about money and teach them to build a right habit of saving than spending. Never loose temper at any stage of your financial planning life but, required to face any issues with patience and prudence.

Your valuable response or comments on this article shall be highly appreciated.

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Make Money Teaching Online

Today's money tip featuring an interesting idea to make money through teaching online. Of course, lots of people doing this business but, the possibility to start this business as your own is not limited. The major advantage of this endeavor is, it required little investments than any other business. Anyone can effectively start online teaching as a home business to earn extra money as a side income. This business is highly suitable for housewives who really interested to work hard at their free time and have good skills on the subject they want to teach others online.

As we know, online teaching becoming popular everywhere. Students from all over the world eager to have multiple language skills, add immense possibilities to any language expert housewives to set up online teaching solution to earn pretty much money.

A computer or laptop with internet connection and a web cam would be enough to teach students online at the beginning. Once you are getting any student, you can spend less than a or two hours per day to conduct online classes. You can send notes via e-mail, teach students using yahoo messenger or similar chatting tools, voice chat facilities etc..

A person who start teaching any subject ideally required to have any industry certifications to expose her knowledge. Once you have any such certification, can start searching for students. You can post your information on various available sites and reply to the 'teachers wanted' queries posting by students in forums and various web sites.

Once after getting students, you should offer them very competitive fee package that less than what others are offering. Remember, getting reputation as an online teacher should be your first preference. Once if you succeed to achieve a good reputation between students, referrals from your existing students will to better for you to get more and more students.

One major point to remember is, like any other business, online teaching business also required passion, dedication and patience. Time is the most important factor to get success and willpower can win over any factors that forcing you to move back in case of any happening difficulties.

For your guidance, I suggest a guide from Amazon to read. This guide have better information for beginners to start online teaching business and make money.

Best wishes to all of you who read this article and thinking to start any such endeavors to create income utilizing internet possibilities.

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BICII - Best Indian Company To Invest - Nestle India

best Indian companies to invest in
With this series of BICII - Best Indian Companies to Invest In, TMM introducing another classic business, Nestle India, to our readers. Nestle is the Indian arm of Swiss multinational Nestlé S.A., operating in Indian market since 1961. The relationship with India originally set up from 1912, before the independence of India.

best Indian companies to invest inWhen coming to Nestle, saying anything more about the company required because of its popularity in Indian market with clear monopoly in the segments of child cereals. In an other word, each Indian kid has direct affection with Nestle due to tasting any of its baby foods immediately after they born.

best Indian companies to invest inWhen come to the vast range of product portfolio, our journey starts with Nestle Nan the classic baby cereals available each and every corner in India. Starting with its milk and nutrition product brand 'everyday', the journey going through the fantastic food product 'Maggi Noodles', various chocolate products like KitKat, Polo, Munch, Milkibar and many chocolate products along with its super drink brand Nescafe, bringing Nestle one of the top layer company in India with clear monopolistic position with number of products.

If come to the management side to consider the efficiency level, Nestle has one of the most efficient and excellent management team to lead the company to further. They have enough ideas and innovations time to time to close with economy changes. The Company continuously focuses its efforts to better understand the changing lifestyles of India and anticipate consumer needs in order to provide Taste, Nutrition, Health and Wellness through its product offerings.

best Indian companies to invest inWhen coming to the performance side of Nestle, I don't think much more deep analysis required. Nestle is a clear candidate meeting all required set of value investing criteria by being a zero debt company, consistently raising net income, sales, lest cost to sales, management efficiency etc. Company has no limit for time to time innovations and strict on maintaining excellent product standards. It has consistent per sharing earning for years and solid dividend history support the company to select as a fantastic value investing candidate.

best Indian companies to invest inWhat else more, investing to Nestle at present is little costly because of its high price and P/E ratio compare with industry. If you invest with today's listed price, you are going to get an initial rate of return that not more than 3.5%. It clearly tells you to wait further to reach the price near to Rs. 1000 to get a minimum initial rate of return of 6% compare to its last informed Per share Earning of 59.25.

No doubt, Nestle is a value investing candidate. It meet almost all the criteria except the buying price. As a value investor, we have to wait little more to reach the price to a comfort level.

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Intereview With GetRichSlowly.org

I am glad to say “Get Rich Slowly” is one of the most established, elegant personal finance blog I have ever visited. Your blog is a must visit for all personal finance bloggers and readers. I am very happy to introduce you and this fantastic blog to all TMM readers as one of the most successful blog available in the personal finance space today. As the very first to beginning this interview, I express my sincere thanks for the time you have spent for me.

Sherin (TMM): In the context, yes you have a lot about you in the blog itself, but, we really like to know little more personally about you than what have mentioned there. Also, could you share the major factors that influenced you to get into the personal finance blogging space?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I'm pretty much just an average guy. I went to college to study psychology and English, but when I graduated, I went to work selling cardboard boxes for the family business. I also developed a debt problem. For over a decade, I struggled with debt. When I finally started to get my finances in order, I wrote about it on my personal blog, and that story proved to be very popular. On a whim, I started Get Rich Slowly. I actually thought mine would be the very first personal-finance blog. I was wrong!

Sherin (TMM): Anyone who visits “Get Rich Slowly” certainly turn as your fan with the quality of articles and influencing by your fantastic knowledge. I seem to struggle sometimes to come with different articles in my blog. How do you updating yourself to provide most relevant and updated information for readers through unique articles, time to time?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): While your words are kind, I don't possess fantastic knowledge. What I have is curiosity, a love of writing, and a willingness to share what I learn with other people. I spend a *lot* of time reading and doing research. I spend nearly 60 hours every week on Get Rich Slowly, and much of that time is spent researching. I read a lot of things that aren't relevant in order to arrive at the things that are.

Sherin (TMM): Can you share your most interested subject inside the personal finance and how your blog influenced to your own personal finance?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I'm most fascinated by an area of personal finance known as "behavioral finance". That's the study of the intersection between psychology and money. Because I have a psychology degree, this probably shouldn't be surprising. So much personal-finance advice is written as if we humans are robots, capable of making perfect decisions every time, or living in a perfect world. That's not how things are. We're emotional creatures, and our decisions are influenced by a whole host of variables. Behavioral finance explores this. As for how Get Rich Slowly has influenced my own finances: it's had a huge impact. I've learned a lot, not just from my research, but also from the contributions of my readers. The blog has helped me to get out of debt, establish good habits, and begin to build wealth.

Sherin (TMM): Are you a full time blogger? Per day, how much time do you spend for blogging or its related activities?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): Yes, I am a full-time blogger. I spend about 10 hours a day on the blog during the week, and probably another 5 hours a day on the blog during the weekend. This is my calling, my vocation.

Sherin (TMM): Can you share with us any awards or special recognitions you have received?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): Get Rich Slowly has not won any awards that I know of, but you can see the press mentions. Two of which I'm most proud are being named the "most inspiring money blog" by Money Magazine in May 2008, and recently having The Wall Street Journal point at the high quality of the discussions at the site. I really do think Get Rich Slowly has some of the best readers on the internet, so it makes me proud to have other people notice it, too.

Sherin (TMM): Do you manage any other blog than ““Get Rich Slowly” and do you have published any books?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I actually write several other blogs. I write a blog about fitness called Get Fit Slowly, a personal blog, a blog about animals called Animal Intelligence (that hasn't been updated in a while!), and soon hope to start a blog called Vintage Pop, which will be about American popular culture before 1950. I have not published a book yet, though my writing appears in a couple by other authors. I hope to have a book deal soon.

Sherin (TMM): Can you share the links of some best articles in your blog for our readers? Other than “Get Rich Slowly” blog, is there any other place our readers able to read or hear your advices in a regular basis?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): Two popular articles from the Get Rich Slowly archives include How to get out of debt and the best online high-yield savings accounts. Two of my personal favorites have nothing to do with money: How to build confidence and destroy fear and Luck is no accident.

Sherin (TMM): Do you share some of your most interested and influenced website and books as a reference for TMM readers?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I've actually written about my favorite books a couple of times. Here's my first reading list and here is my second reading list. My favorite personal-finance blogs include The Simple Dollar, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Five Cent Nickel, and Bargainnering.

Sherin (TMM): Do you have any advice for new bloggers from personal finance space? At present personal finance blogging space filled with tons of new bloggers. In my experience, most of them stop blogging after a short span of time due to two major reasons. First, they generally stop blogging by not getting enough readers as expected. Second, most of them want to generate revenue from the very first day and if the result is negative, they are losing their interest and stop blogging. In this context, could you share your major experiences as a startup personal finance blogger to know us how did you manage yourself to succeed by overcoming all the obstacles like establishing blog, creating your network, income generation etc…?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): If you're starting a blog because you want a lot of readers or because you want to make money, you're starting a blog for the wrong reasons. That's not why I started Get Rich Slowly, and that's not why most of the successful personal-finance bloggers started their sites. I had been blogging for five years before I started writing about money, and I had a very small audience and had never made a cent from my work. I didn't expect either to develop from Get Rich Slowly. It was mere good fortune that made this turn into a full-time career. You have to write about money because you love the subject, because you have something you want to share with others. You can't do it just to make money. You can't do it just because you want a lot of readers. You have to have another goal. In my case, that goal was to learn enough about money to dig myself out of debt. I hoped to share what I learned along the way. That seemed to resonate with a lot of people.

Sherin (TMM): How can you rate yourself in the context of meeting your goals with “Get Rich Slowly” and what are your future plans or goals?

J.D. (Get Rich Slowly): I've far exceeded my original goals for Get Rich Slowly. To be honest, the site is in a state of flux. It's evolving. I believe it's very likely that there will be another writer at Get Rich Slowly by the end of the year, and that there will be more frequent guest articles. That's disappointing for some people, but it's also a necessity. My interests are shifting, and I'd like to focus on writing a book or two. To do this, I need to spend less time with the site. We'll see. I'm still in the early stages of deciding what's next.

TMM express our most sincere thanks for the time J.D from GetRichSlowly.org for the time he have spent for our readers.

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Speed Linking - TMM Gold Series 3

With this speed linking to archive, TMM providing a rapid link connection to one of our classic article which giving a chance to our readers to know the best options to create an Emergency Fund to meet any unexpected situations that can always expect to our life.

Raising Emergency fund to head off a crisis is an article originally posted with TMM on February 17 of 2008 introducing nine possible, simple ideas to create an Emergency Fund to head off any crisis.

This is considered as one of the best article with TMM in similar kind and I have not added such article afterwards because it provide all the necessory information that a person need to know.

If you have any queries on this article, comment here or send the query directly to me.

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Debit vs Credit Cards

Here is a guest post by peter from the creditcardsassistance.com comparing debit card with credit cards. Creditcardassitance.com is a right source providing all the necessary information a person required to know about credit and debit cards.

Debit or credit cards, both constitute alternatives to carrying large amounts of cash upon you, plus taking benefits from the certain good offers. Certainly each type of card is designed for the same purpose: being able to pay using a card. But the background, the terms and conditions and other aspects differ at these two types of cards.

A credit card is good especially when you do not have a good savings account, but you would like to have access to cash and be able to pay your debts. In order for a credit card to be called advantageous, it should show at least the following options:

* Have a low annual percentage rate. Anything below 13.99% is considered a fair APR for a credit card. Certainly the lower the interest you have to pay for, the lower the overall cost of your loan

* Reasonable amount of credit. Too much credit is not good as it will lead you into the temptation of spending too much, while a too small credit is not enough for your needs. Also, many times it is not worth having a credit card with a very small credit, as the extra charges (interest rates, penalty fees and other) will raise the overall cost so much, it is not worth it.

*Introductory rates. This is a very god feature of a credit card, as it will allow you a period of 6-12 months interest free. Beware however of the interest rate that is charged after this introductory period is up.

*Low penalty fees. It will be hard to find a credit card offer that will waive low fees for being late with your payments, but these fees generally range $10-$40, so make sure you chose the lowest one.

Credit cards in general are a good option if used responsibly, which means paying on time in order to avoid accumulating too much interest payments. Credit cards are considered the unsecured type of lending, meaning there is no collateral backing up the line of credit. This is why a credit card is generally more costly than a debit cardamong others. With a credit card, if you avoid making payments, there is no collateral the lender can repossess, there is no banking account linked to it where from the necessary funds can be withdrawn in order to repay your debt.

Debit cards, on the other hand do require a sort of collateral, and this is most of the times having your banking account directly linked to the card itself. This basically means, you can pay with your card using funds from the account. Whenever there are no more funds, the card is unusable. A debit card is a good option for those who want to avoid falling into the pit of debt, but do have an active account where there are sufficient funds. It is really up to you, the consumer, which type of card will best suit your interests. Below is a comparison with pros and cons for both credit and debit cards:

* A debit card accesses your own money, while the credit cardaccesses bank funds

* It is a misconception that you can actually pay merchants only if you have a credit card. A debit +credit option card will do as well.

* With a credit card you accumulate quickly debt; a debit card does not allow that

* A credit card carries more extra charges and fees than a debit card

* ATM cash withdrawal using a debit card may cost you nothing

* ATM cash withdrawal using a credit card may cost you a significant percentage of the withdrawn funds

* With a fair credit rating, but no savings account, you can access a credit limit on reasonable terms from a bank

* With a bad credit rating, you are eligible for very costly credit limits

* Interest rates charged play the major role in debit vs. credit cards controversy

* A credit card may solve cash needs in emergency situations

* In emergency situations when there are no sufficient funds, a debit card will not do

* Used smartly, credit cards can bring advantages (rewards, points, airline miles, and so on)

* However you use it, a debit card is “alive” only until you still have funds in your account

* Responsible use of a credit cards helps re-build your credit rating and thus become a trustworthy borrower in case you need it in the future.

TMM expressing our sincere thanks for such nice article written to our blog and hope this will give all the required information to our regular visitors and other readers as well.

guest writers blogAbout Guest Writer
This post was written by a guest writer. If you'd like to add a guest post in Money Hacker, please check out Write for Us page for details about how YOU can share your knowledge with our community.

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Investing Life Cycle To Wealth

Article written by Sherin Dev; Follow me in Twitter or Facebook . To get latest news and articles Subscribe for free!

wealth life cycleIn this article, I intend to go through various stages of wealth creation through investing. For any investor, the time he fixing a goal in mind, his investing life cycle starts. Rest of his activities going through each stages of his cycle and end the journey at the time he is achieving the goal by selling the stocks. With knowledge or without knowledge, no investor would be able to avoid any stage of this process. A through awareness on each stages of this life cycle, help investors to have a quick self checkup and rectify any possible errors possible with any of these stages.

Generally, process of creating wealth through investing on stocks moving through various stages:

Investing Goals >>> Acquiring Knowledge >>> Identification and Analysis of business >>> Time of investment >>> Holding Period > >> Identification of selling time

Each of the above mentioned stages providing a chance to write article separately on each cycles. To get a fast and clear awareness, you can read below, the simple explanation on each cycles.

Investing Goals

This is known as the the preliminary stage of this cycle. It clearly tell us the important requirement of setting goals to achieve through investing. Any value investor, not turn as a right investor if he or she is investing to businesses without any goal. A goal setting is the core of your investing life cycle. Investors generally set goals for short, medium and long terms but, for a value investor, who believe the rule of long term wealth, generally set long term goals by considering the nature of stock investing profit possibilities. Any one who have short or medium term goals, I cannot advise investing to stocks by going these rigorous steps instead, should identify parallel methods.

Acquiring Investing Knowledge

No investor is perfect if he doesn't have enough knowledge on investing. For a value investor, one should first have required skills to analyze the qualitative and quantitative parts of any business to identify the suitability to invest. Through having quantitative analysis skills, one can easily identify the earning potential of a business for a period. Through having qualitative analysis skills, one can identify best businesses to proceed with measuring this earning potential and to invest.

Identification and Analysis of business to invest

This is the most critical stage in our investing life cycle. This cycle can decide whether an investor able to meet the goals or not. In this cycle, an investor required to identify the right business to invest to meet his goals. Any possible happening mistakes in this stage can be costly to any investor by not providing any intended result or lose of money. Nature of such importance made this cycle as the most important one among others. To avoid possible mistakes happening to this stage, an investor should earn excellent skills with previous, 'Acquiring Investing Knowledge' stage and well apply these skills to identify the suitability to invest on a business.

Time of Investment

Deciding the right time of investing to stock have ultimate importance. By remembering the rule "What you paying to buy, always decide your rate of return", an investor should aware whether he required to buy a stock in a particular time or need to wait some more time. To overcome the problem of deciding or understanding right time to buy, keep an eye on macro factors that have influence to decide the movement of any stock market up and down. As I have mentioned with number of my previous articles, an investor should have good awareness on the factors influencing the stock market trends. Some of the examples for this are, economic recessions, industry recessions, temporary bad news on a company, major events in the nation like general elections etc..

Holding Period

If you take the word from Warren Buffett, his holding period is forever!! Most of the investors who heard this word today, may laugh because of the foolishness of holding a stock for long, long time. If you are the one among them and laughing, then you are just forgetting the third stage of this life cycle "Identification and Analysis of business to invest". If the businesses selected by Warren Buffet are capable to give enormous wealth through out the holding period, whether it is short or long, why should Warren sell such stocks? To have high success with this cycle, an investor required to select the businesses that able to give wealth throughout your holding period. The time you identifying such company, you can just move to further stage of this life cycle because, there will not be any question of selling such stocks.

Identification of selling time

Identification of selling time is the most crucial part of investing life cycle. This is a stage can really test the patience and personal qualities of an investor from the very next moment of investing to a stock. As a value investor, one should possess with necessary information on selling time and possibilities. Reading great investing guides from Benjamin Graham and Philip Fisher will help you to identify the exact time to sell a stock.

If you like this post, comment and inform me your opinion. If you have a queries on any of these points, never hesitate to inform me.

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Woman's Money Saving Tips - 4 Best Money Saving Hobbies

Today's 'Woman's Money Saving Tips' featuring an interesting money saving idea, the money saving hobbies or how to save money by having some hobbies, will be discussed. This is an example to know even our simple hobbies can be easily converted to save or earn huge money. Having hobbies with enough passion, is always a great idea to get relaxations and intelligently save or earn money. Read some of the possible ways to save money through your simple hobbies.

1. Sewing

Sewing and stitching found as the great hobby among women and housewife. Through this hobby, a women can save lots of money. If you are in a family with school going children, chances to happen damages to their dresses are high. Your sewing hobby helps to save money by not taking any damaged dresses to the nearest tailoring shop. Instead, can patch the damages self to save money. The amount saving through this hobby may seems little but, for a long term this would come to a considerable amount.

If a women undergo for some training for make own clothes, kid's clothes, linens and more, a possibility to set a home business and earn money also exists.

2. Walking

Walking being a favorite hobby among considerable number of women. Those who have walking as a hobby, can easily avoid public transport or calling cabs to go for shopping, places like banks, government offices, for any daily activities. Thus, a women can save good money at the end of each month. Walking hobby not only provide you great satisfaction but it give you an opportunity to have healthy body and mind as well as good social networking with others.

3. Gardening

Gardening considered as one of the wonderful hobby for housewives. It give us a chance to save huge money along with huge earning potential. Gardening considered as the best solution to have relaxation to our mind and turn it as a source to generate money as a second income. Those who have open space around their home or having open terrace, can easily start gardening as a hobby.

You can maintain a vegetable garden or a flower gardens or both, if you have time to spend with required passion. Those who maintaining a good vegetable garden, never required to buy vegetables from outside and thus getting an opportunity to save huge money. They can even sell the surplus vegetables to the nearest shops to generate income from this hobby. Because of having the ability to collect required vegetables directly from the garden, when required, you are giving relaxation to refrigerators and again saving money.

Maintaining my flower garden is my most favorite hobby. It doesn't give more opportunities to save money except to those who have habit of buying fresh flowers daily. Flower gardening as a hobby giving enormous opportunities to earn money by selling flowers. A women who have trained for flower arrangements or making bockey, have huge potentials to earn nice money from this hobby.

4. Cooking and baking

Maintaining a hobby of cooking and baking helps women to save huge money when it come to a family. This hobby is best to save money by avoid buying items from outside for any forthcoming family functions and parties. Drawback of this hobby is, it required passion, skill and time. If it come to the real life, a women can prepare daily required items like breads, cakes, pies, cookies etc. to her family and which will help to cut food bills to great extend.

I feel you may have interested to read Woman's Money Saving Tips for Routine Travelers too.

Send any tips that you feel similar to the above and useful to save money. You can either comment here or send directly to me.

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Maximize Wealth Through Intelligent Fund Switching Practice

Those who aware about Unit Linked Insurance Products might have heard about fund switching. Fund switching is a facility providing by insurers to its subscribers to switch any previously selected fund or funds between different funds associated to a ULIP product, depends on the requirement. Unlike any traditional insurance policies, ULIPs performances directly related to stock market by investing subscribers money to stocks through various associated funds. With this feature, ULIP products offering a great opportunity to its subscribers to intelligently manage their investments between various funds to maximize wealth considering various factors. In this article, I have intended to reveal a secret of intelligent fund switching to tap maximum profit from Unit Linked Plans.

While applying to ULIP, a subscriber will be presented with options to select one or more combination of funds to invest her money. Upon her fund selection, company would invest her money by buying the units of selected funds to her accounts. For example, if you are selecting a fund that investing 100% of the money to stocks, and the price per unit at the time of selection is 17, and your invested amount is 2000, you are going to get 117.64 units. Suppose the fund value was 10 per units, you suppose to receive 200 units.

With this scenario, now we will move further to know how increase and decrease in stock prices will affect to your investment capital. We will take a look with our first scenario of 117.64 units purchased when the unit price was 17. When the per unit price move to 23, the total amount in her account to be increased to 2705.72 (117.64 units x 23 = 2705.72). She is getting an increase of 705.72 in her wealth. In the same time the total investing value of a person who bought the units at the price of 10 will be 4600 (200 units x 23). An increase of 2600 to her invested capital.

What happens if the situation coming to reverse gear? Let us see what will happen. Suppose the price per unite coming down to 12, the total investment value of the first person with 117.64 units, will be shrinking to 1411.68. In the similar time, the person who have 200 units with a buying price of 10 per units, should still have a total investment value of 2400. That is 400 profit.

Considering the above two scenarios, the golden ULIP fund selection rule for each and every ULIP investors is, select equity oriented funds when the stock market is down. Through doing such, you are getting more units with less price and zoom your wealth when the fund value raising by stock market up trend.

Prior to the selection of any associated equity funds as the part of her ULIP product, a ULIP subscriber must know how stock market up trends and down trends influencing to her funds and what are the necessary actions required to maximize the profit from such trends. Once comfortable with it, a person can move to the next part to know how one can switch fund intelligently to maximize wealth.

With my personal experience, it is simple to zoom wealth with various associated fund if you pay little attention. Now you know stock market is the major influencing factor to equity funds associated to your ULIP. You also aware why I am saying to select equity funds when the market is down. This theory can be applied in the future to zoom your wealth. To do such, you should know the happening up trends and down trends of market as well as the price per unit of your funds. Stock market information can be received from local channels and unit value can be received by contacting the customer care of your insurance company.

Now wait for the next stock market new heights. Of course it is not happening frequently and need to wait for long time. Once you find the stock market is its all time high, it is your time to act. Approach your insurance office and fill the necessary forms to switch your entire investments to well protected, guaranteed debt funds. Ensure your funds has been moved to debt funds. Sit free till the next market down turn. When you feel the market is down to the maximum, again approach to your insurance company and fill necessary form to switch back all your funds to the equity funds to get maximum benefit from the next stock market rally. Continue this process until the end of your policy term.

The switching method I have mentioned above, is a tested and succeeded method from personal life. You should not treat a ULIP product like any traditional plan to buy and forget. Instead, it required time to time monitoring and action.

If you have any doubts or queries, inform me here as comment. Send any tips directly to me that you feel helpful to TMM readers.

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BICII - Best Indian Companies To Invest In - Glaxo Consumer Care

This week, with BIICI (Best Indian Companies to Invest In) library, I have a fantastic candidate for Indian value investors, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Health care, which generally known as GSK Consumer Care. GSK is a world class brand name operating in India since 1919, with nutritional drink and OTC segments. Virtually no other companies in India to consider as their competitors and GSK is a best example for a company with clear monopolistic business, with multiple products, that any value investor love to have.

Best Indian Companies To Invest InGSK consumer care equipped with extra ordinary product portfolio. Started on 1920, its classic product Horlicks, never left any room for its competitors and still enjoying its monopolistic position as the top nutritional brand in India. Another brand 'Boost', a chocolate nutritional drink, is the example for another product from GSK with monopolistic position in Indian Market. With its vision to expand business to new segments, GSK introduced two biscuit brands, boost and horlicks biscuits, to Indian public.

The most interesting factor that support value investors to consider GSK Consumer Care to invest is, it is a Zero Debt company with no existing loans but enough surplus amount in hand. When coming to the management efficiency side, GSK has well dedicated and innovative management team to lead company to new heights. Company recently introduced Women’s Horlicks, first health drink designed specially for women population in India.

Best Indian Companies To Invest InIf you move further to the product portfolio of GSK Consumer care, we can find various brands of Horlicks like Junior Horlicks, Mothers Horlicks, Womens Horlicks and various favors within it. If you take a look into another nutritional product Boost, India's leading malt-based Health Food Drink in a chocolate flavor, still maintaining its monopoly intact with malt-based Health Food Drink in Indian market from 1975, when it launched as first to market. GSK Enjoying its top position with other brands like Viva and Maltova as well.

When go further to the OTC product portfolio, we can see three major OTC products, Crocin, ENO and Iodex, with GSK's OTC portfolio. If you are in India, an introduction not necessary with these products. These are so famous brands in its kind compare with similar available products in our market today.

A well disciplined multinational with network all over India, operating for last 80 years, having fantastic portfolio of monopolistic products and zero debt status made GSK is a true value pick. Its year to year growing sales, profits, per share earning, surplus and status as one of the best dividend payer, support our thoughts to move close to GSK and invest it when the shares reaching to the right price level.

When Glaxo prices reached to Rs. 451 some months back, it was showing an initial rate of return as high as 11%. Now when the prices reached to Rs. 923 the initial rate of return went down to 5.6% compare with it present per share earning Rs.51.28. As a value investor, we should wait further to get this fantastic candidate in a price level of Rs. 550-600 to confirm getting an initial rate of return of 8 to 9% compare with its 2008 EPS Rs.51.28.

Of course, GSK Consumer is a best buy for value investors with long term focus. By considering all the supported factors with value investing criteria, GSK has a defensive nature and take enough time to grow your investments to the next handsome level if you keep invested in.

GSK Consumer Care is the second company analyzed under the series of TMM's BIICI (Best Indian Companies to Invest In) series. You can access the BICII calendar to know about the forth coming companies in this series.

If you have any queries or recommendations, never hesitate to inform here as a comment or send directly to me using the above contact form.

Note: GSK Consumer Care is the sole owner of any logo or product featured in this article.

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Speed Linking To Archive- TMM Gold Series 2

Today, TMM linking our readers to a classic article in our archive titled as "Points To Remember When Managing Financial Resources", originally written on 2nd of February 2008 with four major points to remember when managing financial resources as the part of personal financial planning. Have a look into this article to get most required knowledge that have important role into ones personal financial planning.

Points To Remember When Managing Financial Resources - is the article from TMM archive, written in the early years with an intention to introduce four most important points for any one who planning their personal finance. This article focused to Medical requirements, Kids planning, Retirement planning and Secondary Financial Planning Goals with short but simple explanation to each.

TMM Gold Series is a new initiative to introduce excellent articles that have posted to TMM blog at its early years and have not received much attention due to new blog status. Through linking to our early time articles, readers are getting a chance to easily navigate to the best articles in our archives.

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Type Of Businesses To Be Avoided By Value Investors

I have received number of queries from readers asking the type of businesses an investor should avoid to investing in. Here is your master checklist to understand the nature of sick businesses to avoid invest in. Following are the most common and important characteristics of sick and failed business types. One of the interesting fact of such business is, such sick companies always turning to be the favorite candidates for short term investors and traders by its nature huge price volatility, that a trader really required for gambling, compare with strong companies with excellent business models.

Here is your reference on sick business models and natures:

Penny Stocks - Penny stock investing considered as the most riskiest and dangerous investments today. Due to highly illiquid and uncertainty about the future of such companies, investing to penny stocks are similar to gambling with huge money. When someone buying penny stocks, there will not be any guarantee on his invested money or profit. The only certainty when investing on penny stocks are 'the lose of invested capital always exists'. One who practicing value investing strategies should avoid penny stocks to invest in and even don't look into such cheap businesses.

Commodity Type Business - With my previous articles, I have clearly informed the dangers associated with companies that have commodity type of business. Due to not having a monopolistic position in the market with any products but, presence of considerable number of competitors in the segment with similar products, makes any company vulnerable by forcing them to reduce the prices of their products to compete with others. If such happens, the profit between manufacturing cost and product price come to negative to bring the company to considerable debt. Such companies gradually fall to huge debt and finally come with heavy lose. Certainly, those who have invested on these companies will lose their capital to a great extend. The two important characteristics of commodity type businesses are, its huge and increasing debt and reports with irregular year to year earning numbers. Being a value investor, your first law should be identifying and avoiding businesses falling to commodity business category. Read this article for further reference

Business with huge or increasing debt - One of the golden value investing law is, never invest on any company that have huge unmanageable debts more than one and half of its yearly net profit. Consider this example; If an individual with lots of personal debts and not able to pay off the same using his present income, naturally he will look into another source for money to pay off his debts. This may finally lead him to borrow money from other sources and thus his debt base will increase further and gradually the situations worse more. Such situation certainly put him to deep trouble by not having enough money to meet day to day expenses of himself and family. By losing the financial rhythm, he finally go to bankruptcy.

Status of any company with bad debts, are not different from this scenario.If a company have huge bad debts and always struggling to pay off these debts, where would be the possibility to give profit to its investors? As a best practice, identify the debt part of any company before investing into it. Value investors should set an investing criteria on any company that have debt less than one year of its annual net profit or as a maximum of its one and half or less. Be alert when companies issuing additional shares to public or adding any of its businesses to parent companies, dropping any projects etc.. Remember, financial sector generally shows huge debt figures due to its business of lending money to public and organizations. Analyzing cash flow from financing activities can give more clear picture to understand the source of debt.

Hot and fast booming sectors - I am sure, most of us have not forgotten the huge market crash happened in US immediately after the internet business boom and related over investing activities to such companies. Those who had invested to such companies to be rich instantly, later went to bankruptcy due to huge lose and lost their own home too. As a value investor, one should always learn from experiences, to avoid any such mistakes himself in the future. In this context, never select and invest to any company from hot or fast booming sector. If I say by considering present situations, I am totally against to investing on real estate and construction businesses considering its weak fundamentals. Never commit the mistake of investing any companies by seeing temporary stock price hike. Instead, consider investing on companies with strong business models and strong fundamentals.

Companies frequently do acquisitions - Companies have habit of frequent acquisitions, must be avoided by a value investors by considering increase in debt base and the fund required from parent company to stabilize the business of new candidate. Generally company doing acquisitions with other who running in lose and have weak fundamentals. It add additional burden to the acquirer to pump enough fund from their profit to the new company. If you look into the report of any company who doing frequent acquisitions, you can realize the huge debt base. Avoid such. As a result, frequent new share issues and loans can happen and this the investors become huge losers. Avoid companies have habit if numerous acquisitions. Remember, most of the time the most looking ratios like PE ratio, will be attractive with such companies. This nature can mislead PE ratio savvy investors by assuming the company prices are attractive and lots of room available for profit.

Companies with huge cash flow from investing activities - Investing on any company have huge cash flow from investing activities, should be avoided by considering the huge operating expenses to maintain its business. Telecommunication companies are first in this list. They required to maintain all their assets, that required time to time maintenance for retaining operating efficiency, and spreading across locations. If operating expenses are high, naturally the profit margin will be less or none. If any company, from this category, concerned about investors money, they would be forced to get money by applying for new loans or cash from other sources. It could add their debt burden further and finally affect investors badly. As a value investor, one should know the operating expenses of the company to identify whether it is higher than expected or considerable low to add wealth to investors. Read this article for further reference

Regular new share issues public - Stay away from companies have practice of issuing new shares to public regularly. I have already point out all the bad effects of this bad habit from bad companies. Regular issuance of shares to public shows company not having sufficient fund to manage their business or have weak business model or in the debt trap. New issues not only reducing value of the shares investors have and also giving them huge lose later. Refer the article I have written on 'How Stock Buy backs adding wealth to investors' to get wonderful idea on this area.

Remember, more over knowledge to numerals or calculations, common sense plays major role to avoid big mistakes. Have a best practice of keeping an eye on actions from companies. Any such action have some intention behind it and that could affect to investors either directly or indirectly, as bad or as good. Identifying such, considering as a main task for a right value investor. Through using right sense, one can easily avoid huge mistakes.

As a reader, you might have similar ideas or queries on this article to express. If such, don't hesitate to comment here or sending to me.

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BICII - Best Indian Companies To Invest In - Britannia Industries

Today we are analyzing the qualitative part of Britannia Industries, the Indian biscuit major. I have selected Britannia Industries as the first to this series by considering their monopolistic business position in India and operating efficiency to keep their head up all the time. Whether the economy going through inflation or deflation stages, business of Britannia will be intact and also growing consistently by the support of above qualities. If you go through any business news paper, you can understand the innovations Britannia Industries taking to manage their leadership position in the market intact. Of course, there are other companies operating to the same segment but, Britannia made it difficult to beat them in India.

best Indian companies to invest in-Britannia IndustriesTo identify the popularity of Britannia products, just move to the next shop, anywhere in India, whether it is rural, remote or in a city, you will be able to find their products there. Yes, the network of Britannia enjoying similar or more efficient than India Post. They never failed to mark their presence in each and every corner of India and make people aware about their products time to time, through excellent advertisement ventures.

Taking the debt part of this company, investors are in safe side because, Britannia Industries having debt less than one year net profit of the company. It indicated, company not even required to spend its one year net profit to pay off all its debts to be a zero debt company. If you look into the sales part, you can feel tremendous year to year sales growth. Net profit, per share earning and book value also shows strong year to year growth to support meeting major value investing criteria. Through its defensive nature and consistent dividend history, company being more and more attractive for investors from India or abroad.

Britannia Industries have well dedicated management team to efficiently lead the company always to the next level. Recently introduced tiny biscuit packs are the best example on their timely, innovative approach by considering the possible market changes. In other words, they better know the nerve of Indian market. Such efficiency certainly helps Britannia to hold their leadership positions in the market for long term.

Leading by Britannia's ever top brand TIGER, company enjoys number of well known biscuits brands for Indian public. They also have various monopolistic brands like 50-50, Good day, Bourbon, Marie Gold to spice up their product portfolio. The biggest honor to Britannia from Indian public is, It is difficult find a person in India without having tasted any of the Britannia products. This honor supporting Britannia's monopolistic position in Indian market and thus it meets one of the most required value investing criteria of having any monopolistic brands.

Their product portfolio also includes milky bar, NutriChoice grain products, NutriChoice Digestive Biscuit, Treat Fruit Rollz, New Britannia Milk Bikis, Time Pass, Little Hearts. They have considerable presence to the milk products, ice scream and snacks segments. Through their overseas network with all the middle east countries, they are able to export their products to these countries and thus adding revenue from overseas operations.

As one of the India's biggest, most favorite brand for any type of people, Britannia became one of the most respected company with more than Rs. 2000 crore revenue. Investing on Britannia Industries at the right time, help investors to create wealth over long run. Compare with its present EPS of 75.51 with today's NSE price Rs. 1,643.00 per share, buying Britannia stock giving an initial rate of return of 4.3% and it shows the price of Britannia stock is high. An investor required to wait until the price reach to the level of Rs. 1250 - 1300, to enjoy 6% initial rate of return when buying. You are required to re-calculate the initial rate of return after declaring their annual result for previous year.

No doubt, Britannia can be a best candidate to your portfolio. As mentioned above, company meets all the qualitative criteria for value investing. Investors required to wait and buy the stocks when it reach to the right level to buy.

This article is a part of TMM Monday series "Best Indian Companies To Invest In". Visit TMM-BICII Post Schedule Calendar to know all the companies in this series.

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BICII - Best Indian Companies To Invest In - TMM Post Schedule Calendar

Value investing practices required two types of analysis skills, Qualitative and Quantitative, to identify the best businesses to invest for long term wealth creation. Any individual, who plan to invest using value investing principles and practices, must know the qualitative part as the first and prior to move with quantitative side. Through this new initiative, TMM kick-off a Monday series named TMM-BICII (Best Indian Companies to Invest In), introducing the 10 carefully selected prominent Indian companies for our readers to know and analysis under value investing approach.

My analysis on the companies in this series is more focused to qualitative factors than quantitative. To kick- off this new initiative, here is the calendar schedule for you to know when we are posting the article on each companies.

TMM-BICII Post Schedule Calendar

08-June-2009 - Britannia Industries Posted
15-June-2009 - Glaxo Consumer Care Posted
22-June-2009 - Nestle India Posted
29-June-2009 - Proctor & Gamble India Posted
06-July-2009 - United Spirits Limited
13-July-2009 - ITC Limited
20-July-2009 - Hindustan UniLever Limited (HUL)
27-July-2009 - ICICI Bank
03-August-2009 - Asian Paints
10-August-2009 - Blue Star India

The essence of my analysis intend to know you why the company falling to the value investing basket. Even though, by remembering the first law of investing, "never invest upon advise from uncle Sam', as a reader and investor, you are highly required to do your own study prior to make any move.

Remember, any numbers I may use within any of this series may have received from third party sites or from the company websites. You are still requested to have your own study than just believing what I am saying here. This will help you to avoid any possible mistakes and mentioning here for other readers to avoid those mistakes.

I am sure, this series help you to identify best companies. Never forget to subscribe this articles. Through subscribing, you can ensure, not missing any part of this series.

You are always welcome to ask questions or queries at any point of this series. If you know any fact, more than what I am mentioning here and about any companies in this series, requested to comment here to inform such to other readers too.

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Interview With Moolanomy

If you are interested to Personal Finance, you might have heard about 'Moolanomy', one of the best blog to Personal Finance space. When I visited 'Moolanloy' first time, I really impressed to the quality of its contents and knowledge of Pinyo, the 'Moolanomy' blogger. Such impression lead me to schedule this interview with Pinyo to introduce him and the Moolanomy blog to TMM readers for getting a chance to read best personal finance contents.

Pinyo, I am glad to say “Moolanomy” is a fantastic personal finance blog with ton of extremely good personal finance articles for people from any age to benefit well. You have built your own network around “Moolanomy”, as the epic center, for personal finance bloggers as well as readers. As a thorough follower of your blog and network, I am very glad to utilize this opportunity to interview you for TMM to giving better idea on “Moolanomy” and you to TMM readers. As a beginning to this interview, I express my sincere thanks for the time you are spending for TMM.

Sherin (TMM): In the above context, yes you have mentioned a lot about you and “Moolanomy” in the blog itself, but, we really like to know little more personally about you than what have mentioned there. Also, could you share any major factors that influenced you to get into the personal finance blogging space?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): First, thank you for this opportunity. I don’t think there’s anything special. I am just a guy in his mid 30s, married, and has a one and half year old son. I do work full-time for a Fortune 500 company, so blogging is strictly a part-time affair for me, but sometimes it does feel like a second job.

The reason I got into personal finance blogging was mainly to help my family maintain a positive cash flow. About two years ago, my wife was pregnant and we knew that my income alone wasn’t enough if she needs to take a few months off from work. That got me thinking about how we can supplement our income. I’ve had several web sites before so I know I can make some money if I start a new site. I thought for a while about what I want to do and decided on a personal finance blog, because it was what I am most passionate about.

Sherin (TMM): Anyone who visits “Moolanomy” certainly praise the quality of your articles and knowledge. I seem to struggle sometimes to come with different articles in my blog. How do you updating yourself to provide most relevant and updated information for readers through unique articles, time to time?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): Don’t worry, you are not alone because I struggle from time to time too, and that’s one reason I don’t write daily. If I don’t have anything good to write, I just don’t. It’s better to write good articles once in a while than mediocre articles on a daily basis.

As far as ideas, just keep your eyes open and observe what happen in your life and in other people lives around you. You can also read magazine, blogs, web sites, tweets, etc. Even watching TV or listening to the radio can result in article ideas.

The important thing is to not just regurgitate existing information. Make sure you add your personal touch and convey your thoughts and feelings.

Sherin (TMM): Can you share your most interested subject inside the personal finance and how your blog influenced to your own personal finance?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): The subject that interests me the most is how to increase my income through alternative income sources. Specifically, how can I make more money from sources that are not tied to my main job. The essence of financial freedom is to be able to pay for your expenses without depending on your main job, so the sooner I can replace my job income, the sooner I can reach the state for being financially free.

Sherin (TMM): Are you a full time blogger? Per day, how much time do you spend for blogging or its related activities?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): As mentioned above, I am not a full-time blogger. However, I do spend a lot of time on my blog and other web sites. I probably spend 4-5 hours a day on my web business activities. I could probably do everything I need to do in 1-2 hours a day; however, I tend to get side tracked a lot and usually go on tangents.

I am not sure if blogging full time is in my future. If it is, it’s probably a few years away.

Sherin (TMM): Can you share with us any awards or special recognitions you have received?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): No, I haven’t received any award or special recognition for my web business. However, I have been mentioned on high profile blogs and web sites a few times. In any case, I am always thankful when someone finds my blog valuable enough to mention.

Sherin (TMM): We have found that you are managing various personal blog networks along with “Moolanomy”. Could you tell as the core idea behind such move?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): I do have a couple of sites in addition to Moolanomy. Even Moolanomy itself is not a typical blog because it has many features, including, a finance directory, a questions and answers section, financial dictionary, and more. Most of these networks, sites and ideas are nothing more than experiments to satisfy my curiosity. Sometimes they work out well, but sometimes they end up being nothing more than a failed attempt.

Sherin (TMM): Can you share the links of some best articles in your blog for our readers?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): I always find it tough to judge my own work. Picking something out as the best is definitely not my strong suit. However, these are probably some of the better known articles on my blog:

* 40+ Alternative Income Ideas and Resources
* How To Save Money - The 1,001 List Of Money Saving Tips And Ideas
* Ultimate Guide To Asset Allocation

Sherin (TMM): Did you publish any books? Also, could you please share some of your most interested and influenced website and books as a reference for TMM readers?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): No, I haven’t, but that’s one of my long term goals. Right now, I am working on a financial planning series which I am planning to turn into an eBook before the end of the year. I have a lot of content on my site, but it would be a monumental task to organize them into a book. I don’t know if I have the time and mental stamina to pull that off right now.

As far as books that I like, I particularly enjoy books written by Larry Swedroe and Suze Orman. For example, I like Larry’s Wise Investing Made Simple and The Only Guide to Alternative Investments You'll Ever Need a lot. I also like Suze’s The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke. More recently, I have been very impressed by Jim Randel, The Skinny On series – they are easy to read and entertaining.

Sherin (TMM): Do you have any advice for new bloggers from personal finance space? At present personal finance blogging space filled with tons of new bloggers. In my experience, most of them stop blogging after a short span of time due to two major reasons. First, they generally stop blogging by not getting enough readers as expected. Second, most of them want to generate revenue from the very first day and if the result is negative, they are losing their interest and stop blogging. In this context, could you share your major experiences as a startup personal finance blogger to know us how did you manage yourself to succeed by overcoming all the obstacles like establishing blog, creating your network, income generation etc…?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): As far as advice, just network, network, and network. Personal Finance space is filled with a lot of nice people that are willing to help. All you have to do is show that you can produce good content and you’re serious. If you can accomplish that, you just have to get to know other people in the space and get to know them.

As far as your observation about why blogs fail, you hit the nail right on the head. Although some blogs do get readers and make money right away, that is not the norm. For example, I put in at least 6 months of hard work before I see any kind of consistent readership. As far as making money, I was losing money during my first 6 months to pay for domain names and web hosting. So the advice here is aim high, but also be realistic. If you’re not sure what you can expect, ask!

As mentioned earlier, I own a few sites before Moolanomy so I have some experience. But if you’re brand new, the easier way is to sign up a Twitter account and start following a few personal finance bloggers. Get to know them and observe what they do both on Twitter and on their blogs. You can learn a lot by observing them, and don’t be afraid to ask.

Sherin (TMM): How can you rate yourself in the context of meeting your goals with “Moolanomy” and what are your future plans or goals?

Pinyo (Moolanomy): As far as goals, I think I exceeded my original expectation when I first started. However, I have been aiming higher as time goes by, so it seems like I am never there yet. I guess I can take a lesson from my own book and actually write down specific and realistic goals, instead of aiming higher over and over again.

Again, thank you for inviting me to this interview. I appreciate the opportunity to share my story with your readers.

Excellant work Pinyo. TMM thanking you specially for the time you have spent for us to participate in this interview. Our readers really honored by the time you spent for them. TMM take this opportunity to not only thanking you but also, informing our readers to visit and subscribe Pinyo's classic personal finance blog 'Moolanomy" at the earliest. I am sure, Moolanomy waiting for our readers to provide most beautiful advises on personal finance and investing.

Finally our best wished to meet all of your goals at the earliest and all the success to your future endeavors.

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Speed Linking From Archive - TMM Gold Series 1

Here are two beautiful articles from TMM blog archive, each from personal finance and investing. When these articles originally posted to TMM blog, it doesn't got much attention from visitors/readers due to the 'new' status of our blog. Through this initiative, I am re-introducing the best articles by speed linking to our achieves. I am sure, these are the best articles in its kind by remembering a law, gold never find easily. Have a look.

1. Seven Steps to a Structured Financial Plan - Originally posted on 1st of February 2008, "Seven steps to a structured financial plan" is a collection of simple steps that each person should know when planning for their personal finance. Steps mentioned in this article generally known as the core of financial planning and cannot be avoided when planning your personal finance.

2. Creating Personal Investment Policies - An article, originally posted on 6th of February 2008, with an intention to help individual investors to provide support to their personal investment policy creation process. A detailed view on the 'asset allocation side considerations' and ' requirements of portfolio re-balancing' can be found here.

As the status was new when this articles posted, these excellant articles might have received less attention than what I am posting in these days. Through linking to our early time articles, readers are getting a chance to easily find best articles from our old days.

You can comment here to inform me if you have any questions or queries.

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