Cash Crunch for Ads? Look at Printing Prices

Economic downturn affects not just individuals but also businesses. Tough financial times require tough decisions to be taken. For businesses, the focus shifts to reducing costs. An across the board cost cutting is not advisable which means certain sections would face a more severe cut than some others. But the most important point to note is that regardless of what expenses you cut and how much you curtail, you cannot afford to neglect your customers. You cannot afford to bring down the quality service that you deliver to existing clients nor can you stop scouting for newer clients.

Talking about attracting new clients, advertisements are the best tools to make your presence known in the market. Hence, that is one division that you must be very prudent while cutting costs. Obviously advertisements cost money – loads of money – so they are prime contenders for cost cutting. If you do plan to reduce ad expenditure, make sure that you do it in a proper manner. At no time should you go out of your potential client’s radar. Today the world is a lot more competitive than it has ever been before. If you drop your guard, someone else may pounce on the opportunity. Capturing lost market in such testing times can be a huge challenge that is worsened by the cash crunch. Hence, you must make all efforts to retain your market position.

Sometimes it may not be possible to continue your aggressive ad campaigns for long. In such cases, tone down your ads but don’t get rid of them completely. After sometime once your financial position improves you can go all out with your ads again. Always remember to come back stronger if you have to back down at any point. A grand re-entry leaves telling impression on your clients which is beneficial for you.

Your focus should not be stop advertisements completely, but to tone them down. This would require some introspection, analysis and serious budgeting. Look at your target market and target advertisement media. The television medium is one of the most expensive forms of advertisement. So if significant part of your ad budget is being used for broadcast medium, you may want to shift that spending to another medium like print.

Printing prices is an excellent medium that can give your products and solutions very good coverage and exposure. Besides they also cost you a lot less than broadcast medium. What’s more you can also achieve economies of scale if you try to market on a large scale. Print medium has alternatives like offset printing that work well in large scale. With offset printing the initial set up is the primary cost. Once you invest in that setup, you can print your banners at fraction of the cost of any other form of printing. So look to exploit the technology with a grand print-based ad campaign. It would have a similar impact on your clients at much lower cost than broadcast medium.

Thus, the print medium can help you bringing down your marketing expenses and still give you an extensive coverage comparable to broadcast.

How Secure is Your Bank’s Online Banking System?

Online banking has become a blessing for many. Imagine the convenience of sitting at home and paying all your utility bills. If you avoid automatic payments and like to have a look at the bills before paying and yet want to do that from your couch, online banking is your answer.

It is not only a simple way of paying your bills; you can also access your account information and study your finances properly. You don’t have to keep going to the teller to get these simple details. Most banks allow you to download soft copies of your bank statements online, so if you misplace your paper statement, you can still get a genuine copy online. Besides, you can also give instructions for certain monthly payments, certain type of deposits, etc that would be carried out automatically.

But there is a major problem with online banking: online security threat. There are many hackers online that are working hard to break into your online accounts and steal away all your money. It is a lot easier than having to break into your house. Hence, banks are investing loads of money to secure their sites. Given below are some basic checks that you can follow to ensure that your bank’s online banking is really secure. Though it is not comprehensive, it is a pretty good checklist.

1. Secure Web Pages
   Ensure that the bank website has all the pages secured with SSL security. This can checked by looking for https:// at the start in place of the usual http:// (the additional ’s’ after http). Many browsers have different ways of displaying it. Some have a lock symbol at the bottom; others use a different color on the URL bar at the top.
2. Password Rules
   Your online banking passwords must be strong and the bank site should mandate that you enter a strong password. Typically the first password that the bank gives you is pretty good, but tough to remember so we tend to replace that with something more simple like our name or just date of birth, etc. A strong password should be alphanumeric with both upper and lower case alphabets.
3. Virtual Keyboard
   The bank website should have provision to enter your password on a virtual keyboard. There are many malwares that detect the keys that you type on your keyboard which is a major security flaw. Hence your bank must have a virtual keyboard to plug this security hole.
4. Multi-Point Authorization
   Bank with good online security will not use a single mode of password distribution. They would send you the password through postal mails, SMS, etc. Besides, they may also have separate security codes apart from your regular online banking password for various transactions. Lastly, most of the e-mail communications with the bank would be carried out on their own mail. Once you log in, look for a ‘Mail’ link on your secured banking page. You should be able to send and receive mails from the bank exclusively from this mail ID. This ensures that sensitive information is not circulated on the public (generally free) email services.

These are the basic checks that you can run on your banking website to see how secure they are.

Stolen Credit Card? Protect Yourself.

Credit cards can be your most convenient means of making payments. The explosive growth in credit card usage and the host of plans that are available in the market today are a testament to its popularity and comfort of use. The use of credit cards was for the elite class at one point in time, but today it has cut across all social strata with almost everyone using a credit card for the regular purchase. Not just adults working in regular jobs but even students in colleges and universities can now avail a credit card service. This obviously helps them develop the habit of using credit card for their regular purchases. Besides, starting early they can learn the good habit of paying the credit card bills on time and improve their credit history.

The convenience that credit cards provide also come with some risks. They can be easily stolen and misused. This is a major concern for anyone and everyone. The risk is heightened with students as they tend to be relatively more carefree at the young age. Hence along with good spending and bill payment habits they must also inculcate the habit of securing their cards.

The first point is to keep the card in a easily accessible yet safe place. Typically it is the wallet or the purse. The students must ensure that they always have their credit cards close to them, under their supervision. If they have to leave it somewhere then they must keep it in a secure place – like a locker. This precautionary habit must become second nature to them and it is best to start early.

Despite all your vigil, there are chances that you lose your card. Sometimes it may get misplaces when you are worked up or even get stolen in a crowded place. Regardless of how you lose it, you must immediately report the lost card to the credit card company. Let them know that you lost your card and would like to stop all payments with that card. This basically helps you limit the damage if someone else starts using your card.

However, blocking the payment is not your only tool for damage control in case of stolen card. Almost all credit card companies offer a liability cover which means that irrespective of the unauthorized amount spent with your card, you are liable to pay only a fixed amount. For adults this may be somewhere around $50, while for students they may even get a $0 liability – meaning they don’t pay anything for unauthorized expenditure.

Stolen credit card is not the sole source of unauthorized spending. Phishing is another source where you could end up giving your credit card numbers unknowingly to thieves online. A good protection against this is exercise caution while disclosing your information online. Always look for the https at the start of any website link before entering your credit card information. Fortunately many of the modern browsers have special address bar colors and indications for the secured site. Be well versed with these to make online transactions easier and safer.

Your credit card is linked to your credit history which is more important than the money that you spend with the card. Hence, a stolen credit card is not just monetary risk, but also tantamount to stolen identity. Identity thefts are very serious crimes that can affect the individual adversely. Hence, this is another important reason that your take good care of your credit cards.

Money Saving Tips for Teens

Saving money is important for everyone. However, it is not something that always comes naturally. A large portion of this habit comes from the coaching that the child gets from the childhood. Hence, if you start early you can inculcate this habit. If you know how to save and practice it diligently, you should not face a lot of financial problems in your life. Of course no one can predict what can happen in future, but at least under normal circumstances you can enjoy financial freedom. So if you are a teen you are at the perfect age to start learning to save. It is the age when you first start dealing with your own money and have your expenses. If you learn to balance these two, you can have a secure financial future.

The practices are not difficult, they are more logical, so you won’t find hard to connect with them and implement them.

Avoid unnecessary spending

Spending on things that you can do without, or buying on impulse must be avoided. This has two benefits:

1. You save the money you would have spent on something unwanted and
2. The impulsive buying habit can become an addiction causing greater financial loss in later stages of life.

You can avoid this by planning your purchases in advance. Before you leave to buy anything, make a small list of items you need and carry approximately the amount that you would spend. This way you would not have extra cash to buy those extra things. An extension of this logic is that if you are just going out for fun with nothing to buy, don’t carry any cash. This way even if there is an impulse, you don’t have the money to nurture it.

Save on Utilities

This may not affect you right now, as your parents may be paying for them, but it is a still a good habit to inculcate. Shower when bathing and avoid the bathtub. Bath tubs use lot of water which amounts to water wastage and also bigger water bills. Secondly, try to save electricity. Switch off any unwanted light, turn off computer monitors, TV screens, etc when not in use. Also make it a habit to put your computer on standby, if you are not using it for a short time and shut it down if you don’t use it for long. It is a good idea to shut down the computer, for example before sleeping.

Grow your Savings

Always make it a point to save a part of your earnings. You may not have a source of income, but any gifts, monthly allowance that you get, make it a point to save a part of it. Typically a 10% savings is good enough. Ask your parents to start a savings bank account for you and deposit these savings in that account. At the start it may not seem a lot, but eventually when you grow big you would have a decent amount there. Besides, having seen it grow with you, the chances are that you would want to destroy your hard work and spend all that hard earned money immediately. That is the indication of a saving habit that you have been practicing.

Thus as teens there are many small ways by which you can save and learn to save. This is a vital survival habit that you must learn to live a life with fewer financial challenges.

Cleaning your Credit Record After Foreclosure

The general belief is that any foreclosure of your bad debt would remain on your credit record for a minimum of seven years. This is not true, in fact unless it leads to collections, the derogatory information on your debt would remain there for a maximum of seven years. You can actually get it knocked off the record earlier than that too.

First and foremost, you must understand that putting a missed payment on the credit history is completely left to the lender. Hence, if you have had a good track record or share good relations with the lender, your missed payment may not even feature in your record. Since the lenders have the right to foreclose your bad debt, they also have the right to get rid of it.

While looking to clean up your credit record, it is always good to try and strike a deal with the lender. Try and negotiate a deal with the creditor where you pay up the remaining amount under some mutual understanding and in turn the lender knocks off the record from your credit history. This would get you in the good books of the lender as you repay the loan and it also boosts your credit ratings. Even if you avoid this lender in future you can get other loans easily and on better terms, hence this is always worth a try.

You can also try to dispute the foreclosure with the credit bureau. Some of the common causes of disputes are:

• A fully repaid debt still shows in your
• Debt was not raised by you in the first place (identity theft)
• Information in the record is incorrect, etc.

These are valid reasons if you have the documentation to support your claim. With the proofs you must send the dispute letter. Typically, your first request would be rejected as invalid or due to insufficient documentation. Don’t get disappointed, these are typically tricks played by the credit bureau to get you off their back. Investigating these records is time and money consuming and the companies don’t want to be doing that. But you need to be persistent and keep following up. Most times you should be successful and they would carry out an investigation. If your claim is right your credit record would be rectified. Sometimes, if you are lucky, with the large number of defaulters due to the housing loan crisis, even a faulty claim may get accepted and you benefit from the exercise. But never bank on that to save you always.

If despite your best efforts it does not work, you need to look at credit repair alternatives. If you spend sufficient time on understanding the various concepts of credit ratings, you can repair your record yourself. A simpler alternative is to approach an expert – a credit repair lawyer. They are trained professionals that know the rules and laws of credit reporting very well. If there any chance of cleaning your report, they should be able to do it. Being well versed with the changing rules and credit laws, these lawyers can help you in many ways. If your case is genuine they can even go to the court to help you get the foreclosure off your credit record.

So you see, your bad debt foreclosures need not be on your credit records forever. With initiative from your side you can clean your records.

Section 529 Savings Plans for Your Child’s Education

Educational savings plans are a buzz word today. With soaring education costs, securing the child’s education expenses is a concern for every parent and every grandparent. Unfortunately when they look out for one, they get inundated with so many options that it is pretty easy for them to get lost in the maze. There has been a growing trend among people to go for the Section 529 savings plan while initiating a educational savings plan for their children or grandchildren. If you are one such confused grandparent, you too can look at this alternative.

However, understand that Section 529 education saving package is not 529 prepaid tuition packages. Though they look so similar they are quite different. So you must be clear about your goals and match them with which 529 plan suits you the most.

There are no restrictions on who can take a Section 529 Savings plan. You probably are one of those that have burnt their fingers in savings bonds that promised a lot and fell short and hence are eying these plans with skepticism. Your concerns are justified, but be rest assured, that Section 529 Savings plans are quite different. These plans assure your grandchildren economical support when they start their college. What’s more your finances in these plans are tax exempt meaning that the government would not eat into your gift to your grandchild.

Besides, you are allowed to start one plan for every child per state. This gives you the freedom to secure the education of not one, not two but all your grandkids. If you love them all equally, why should you prefer one over the other when it comes to securing the most important phase of their life.

Another important point to understand is that while saving for your child or grandchild, with the 529 Savings Plans you can actually decide who, how and for what your money can be used. This is very important because you want gift you children a safe and secure financial future, not excess money to squander and waste. These plans have provisions for you to decide on what are the expenses that can be provided for with your plan.

Typically, the biggest challenge for growing kids is their college and university expenses. The education costs are sky rocketing and this can deter or defer your grandkid’s desire to pursue a degree of his choice. This is precisely when you would like to come in and help your child make that decision. They would not only love you for your invaluable support in times of need but also be really grateful to you. In this competitive world you want to give the best education to your child so that he/she is always on top of the competition. Money should not a deterrent to that. With the 529 Savings Plans you can do just that.

Though the lifestyle keeps improving, financially times are bad and they can get worse. So if you have led a successful life and have a secured financial future, why not start on a second journey – the one for your child or grandchild.