Archive for July, 2009

manage-stress-and-anxiety-attacksThe physical symptoms of anxiety attacks can be devastating. The shortness of breath. The feeling of terror and panic. The high blood pressure, chest pains, and headaches. And nothing you are doing is preventing these attacks. You react to stress with panic and anxiety. This is not good, is it?

Having a strict self examination or self assessment tool to see how effectively you are dealing with stress can be the best way to manage stress and prevent panic attacks. By using self examination to alleviate or prevent the panic, you will in fact be better looking! Those dark circles under your eyes from lack of sleep will disappear. That weight gain from not attending to your diet will melt away. Your smile will return.

Here are 5 ways to use self examination to manage stress and eliminate panic and anxiety attack symptoms:
1. Know your emotional and intellectual strengths. Know the internal resources you have to draw on, to attack stress. Use frequent self-examination to see what strengths are most effective in different situations.
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personal-finance-situationIt is important: understanding your current personal finance situation is something that every person needs to do. By understanding what is going on with your personal finances you will be able to better control them. This can be one of the best ways to avoid money problems and debt.

Getting started is the hardest part. It can seem almost impossible to figure out where to begin when tackling finance issues. The best place to start is to simply look at expenses and income.

As the staples of a good budget, something every person should have, expenses and income are the main financial issues a person needs to understand. To begin you should gather all the relevant information. You may want to get bills, pay stubs and anything else that could help you list out your expenses and income.

The first thing to do is to track your daily expenses. This includes eating out, shopping and gasoline. You want to include these on your expenses list. You may need to gather receipts or actually keep a log for a week to be able to come up with an accurate account of your daily expenses.

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to-avoid-a-personal-financial-crisisWith the current financial crisis not going away anytime soon, many are getting worried about the possible negative implication to their finances. Some will end up retrenched, some will have pay cuts, and some will not even get that increment or bonus that they worked so hard for. How we plan our finances during this crisis will depend largely on our individual situation. I have always maintained that it is not wise to have only one main source of income. For most people, their main source of income is their job. Some would focus on it during the day and even bring it home during the night. In my opinion, this is an unhealthy work style and it also distracts you from also focusing on your other sources of income.

If anyone mentions that this financial crisis will not affect them or their company, they are in for a big surprise. According to IMF, this crisis is one of the worse since World War 2 and it may prolong well into 2012. As for any right minded individual, eking out a living from their job, this becomes a problem. As times gets bad, people will spend less. When people spend less, companies will earn less. When companies earns lesser and lesser, retrenchment and pay cuts are inevitable in order to maintain the percentage of profits that their shareholder demands. This is a vicious cycle where employees who are consumers themselves are forced to “tighten their belt” and reduce their expenditure. Thus, further worsening the financial crisis.
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budgeting-tips-for-financeAll of us would like to make our wealth-stocks grow by suitably adjusting our income-streams. Indeed, household budgeting is crucial for guaranteed financial independence and security for any family. This is where personal finance planning comes into the picture. Planning one’s finances and budgeting money and other assets generally refers to the creation of a plan in which these assets should be utilized. Personal finance issues can often become rather complex, particularly if proper financial planning has not been done.

Professional financial planners suggest several steps for effective personal finance planning. Following these steps in a prudent manner can easily help individuals to add to their wealth-stock, and prevent them from the pitfalls of debt-traps. Some of these steps for managing personal finance are:
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financial-planning-at-the-time-of-recessionThe current recessionary phase in the global markets is said to be worst since the days of Great Depression in the 1930s. In such a scenario, it is only normal that the common investors should be worried about the effectiveness of their financial planning procedures. Financial recession lowers the value of money, affects liquidity in the market and can bring about severe credit crunch situations in the economy. Thus, careful strategy-making, matching the dictates of an investment recession economy, is called for. If investors are indeed able to revise their finance plans according to the market conditions, they can still reap rich rewards from their investments.

Most financial planners agree that there are specific ways in which finances need to be planned out at the time of recession. Let us now discuss some of the ways to avoid the potentially adverse effects of financial recession in the markets. These methods can be listed as under:
Preparing well in advance – Just like a booming financial market, investment recession is also a probable situation that might prevail in the economy. As such, investors need to be prepared for such economic downturns. Strategies should be in place to combat such recessionary conditions, and that too, well before recession actually sets in the market,
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how-inflation-and-deflation-affects-youBefore you can understand the what impacts inflation has on you, you have to understand exactly what inflation and deflation are.

Personal Finance – Deflation and Inflation

Deflation is generally defined as falling prices while inflation would be rising prices. This is called price inflation. Every month the price for some goods and services rise while others fall. The rate of inflation is based on a complicated mathematical formula of both the rising and falling prices.

Personal Finance – What is Happening Now

Today’s economy is in a unique situation. Both inflation and deflation are in play. On the inflation side there is unprecedented money creation by the Federal Reserve, while on the deflationary side the dollar is devaluated in comparison to other country’s currencies. This is causing the prices for food and energy to rise.
Also on the deflationary side the sub-prime mortgage crisis is drastically reducing the amount of money banks and other financial institutions have to lend to businesses and consumers. This sub-prime fiasco is the leading factor in the falling house prices.

Personal Finance – How This Affects You

With both inflation and deflation occurring at the same time you are being affected in several ways.

First, if you own a home, that home has decreased in value, in some cases, home prices are now lower than what some people owe on them.

Secondly, you are able to pay off debts with cheaper dollars. As you borrow money, the value of the money you have borrowed goes down so you are actually working less hours to pay off the debt.
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