Money & Finance

One of the most common New Year’s resolutions out there is, simply, ‘save money’. It’s something that many of us tell ourselves we’ll do every year and yet… a couple of weeks in, we give up and put it off for another year. This year, though, is the year it’s going to work. From hunting out the best 0% balance transfer credit cards to starting your very own tips jar, read on for some top tips on how you could save money in the New Year.

Have an in-house audit

The word ‘audit’ might not be the most exciting, but reviewing your household expenditure is a very worthwhile thing to do. This is for two main reasons: it helps to highlight areas of waste, and it helps you work out what your budget should be. It might take a bit of work to begin with, but getting the hard bit out of the way in January should set you up for the rest of the year.

Switch your credit card

Are you getting the best possible deal on your credit card? Even if you’re fa Read more…

Selecting a credit card can be a daunting task, but the benefits can be huge if you research the market and choose in a wise manner. With simple and secure online applications today, the process is very easy. You need to define if you want to get a rewards credit card or a balance transfer credit card.

From gas and grocery discounts to travel and cash back incentives, rewards credit card offers provide cardholders an additional benefit in exchange for their expenses. While the rewards can be attractive, there are some points to consider.

You need to avoid additional charges or keep them minimal.

Read more…

NEW HORIZONS

Project financings for infrastructure have always had their ardent admirers. Noncyclical, reliable and perceived as virtuous, the performance of infrastructure project ratings underlines the sector’s versatility in even the toughest of markets. But the one-size-fits-all days of bank-driven infrastructure finance are long gone, and new projects will need to use alternative forms—and sources—of funding.

Demand for infrastructure in emerging markets will triple to $1 trillion annually until 2030, according to a recent RBS report—The Roots of Growth: Projecting EM Infrastructure Demand to 2030. But at a time of a dramatically rising demand, banks are finding it increasingly difficult to make the loans that have been the traditional lifeblood of the sector. This could

Read more…

If you are unprepared when an emergency occurs, you may find yourself having to resort to expensive debt to handle the problem.  This can quickly lead to financial devastation and great difficulty repairing your finances for years to come.  It is better to prepare yourself financially ahead of time so that you can handle any emergency that occurs without having to resort to borrowing money from anyone.  Here are some steps that you can take to prepare yourself.

Start A Savings Account

The best thing that you can do to be prepared for financial emergencies is to start a savings account and begin diverting money into it from your paycheck.  This will provide you with a financial cushion that can be used when unexpected expenses arise that are more than your regular paycheck can handle.  Having the savings available will ensure that you do not have to use a credit card to handle the issue, where interest charges and financing fees can cost you tons of money before the balance is paid off.

Keep Financial Records

Keeping accurate financial records will help you keep track of how much money you are spending and whether spending can be cut anywhere to provide more money for saving.  All financial transactions into and out of your bank accounts should be noted with the date, the amount, and a label for the transaction.  Tracking your transactions shows you where money is being wasted so that you can formulate a plan to turn those wasted dollars into saved money.

Create A Budget

Creating a budget will help you get a handle on your finances quicker than any other method of financial management.  The budget should include all of your expenses for the month and the amount that you are paying for each expense.  This will decrease the risk of you overspending in any category and may even identify areas of saving that you did not identify before.

LONDON — Europe’s banks and regulators are at odds about how financial institutions should increase their capital reserves.

Authorities want European banks to tap existing shareholders and reduce employee bonuses to find a combined $147 billion to increase their core Tier 1 ratios, a measure of a firm’s ability to weather financial shocks, to 9 percent by June. Citigroup estimates that Europe’s financial institutions, minus the Greek banks, had raised at least 40 billion euros, or $51 billion, as of the fourth quarter of 2011.

Banks, however, would prefer to sell or write down unprofitable operations, as well as adjust their balance sheets, to free up cash to meet the new requirements.

One solution could be to increase capital reserves through rights offerings, which allow existing shareholders to buy new stock at a discount. But vol

Read more…

Like the chart says :

This is due to the observed effect that the job market lags the general stock market by around 6 months. The S&P 500 (aka SPX) is used as the benchmark stock index here since it is a broad-based index. Since the SPX has fallen quite a fair bit from its high of 1219.80 in Apr 2010, the clock is now ticking for prospective job-seekers. Now, 6 months is not quite a hard-and-fast rule, it’s probably that, give or take a few weeks, and it has proven to be a pretty good rule of thumb historically.

As for the kind of defensive sector referred to, this could be among some of those that I have mentioned earlier, such as government, military, education, healthcare, utilities, consumer staples and so on.

Read more…

In the major democracies, central banks are free from direct governmental influence as they go about their business of trying to keep the economies growing whilst holding inflation in check. The broad idea is that cheap money supply will stimulate economic growth, but this is counter-balanced by inflation which can rise under a loose monetary policy.

The ECB has decided that rates will stay on hold at 1% this month following on from two months of cuts instigated by the in-coming President of the organisation, Mario Draghi. The cuts had been instigated to spur economic activity within the 17 member Eurozone block. Business sentiment has been suffering from concerns about the seemingly intractable problem of Eurozone sovereign debt and a slowdown of demand in the wider global economy. At a news conference, the President remarked that the economy of the Eurozone block was continuing to experience “high uncertainty and substantial downside risks”.

Read more…