How to become self trained financial expert?

Dear Reader,

I am sure most of you read my previous article about are we prepared for higher prices and low income , if not read by clicking here. Today I am going to discuss about how to become self trained financial expert so that you can help your self and slowly start working with couple of clients to help them making good decision in financial decision. I am sure when it comes to the topic of financial expertise lot of us think we know every thing and some of us think it's complicated topic not so easy to understand, we require advance degree to understand. But all these things are not correct. Even my self I'm not expert in all topics I am still learning. I would like to be a life time student. But I'm happy to share what I know with all my friends. Today I'm going to share with you how you can start becoming self taught financial expert in one of the topics in vast industry.

Simply breaking the topic into small topics so that we can start learning.

Personal financial planning: this topic can be broken down to multiple topics again.

• Family budget planning
• Debt reduction
• Savings
• Investment
• Insurance
• Planning for retirement
• Planning for children education
• Tax savings tips.

What type of books we need to read to gain knowledge about this. I am sure now a days through internet we find more reading options than any other time in history. But its always good to pick a book and start reading , that will help us a lot. I recommend you to start reading The Answer Money Book by Dav Ramsey. It's small and easy to understand, you can start your baby steps by reading this book. In upcoming articles I will provide more book references. If you need some good training about these topics please contact me at my email sriram.adviser@gmail.com.

What are you prepared to for better tomorrow?

Are we prepared?

Dear Readers,

Most of us started our new year with good news about financial cliff, Tax breaks extension for middle class, tax increase is there only for above 400K income, which is good but there is some other news for all of us there is payroll tax cut which is expired because of which our pay checking is going to become smaller, don't be in shock when you see your next paycheck for sure its going to at least 2% less compared previous paycheck. Today article I am not going to cover why this increase but I am going to be discussing are we prepared for this?

My first point is don't be surprised when your paycheck is 2% less than previous one, but we need to understand plan accordingly we need to adjust our budgets such a way that our income will be 2% less, in Some cities sales tax is gone up which means our expenses are going to go up, that also going to create negative impact on our budget. So what we need to be doing about this, should we stop eating food if prices of food items continue to rise or pay checking start shrinking? No not really that, its always good to enhance our income so that we don't need to worry about this kind of things. Let me tell you some thing if you have control over your income how much we are going to make if pay check shrinks by 2% then we can crease other source of income by 2% or more which can help us in filling the gap, if you & your spouse both are working then you might be thinking how we can increase our income there are numerous ways how you can improve your income.

Read more about Why your paycheck is getting smaller no matter what - Dec. 30, 2012

Before working on our additional source of income we need to think about few things. What are we doing in our non productive hours? This is very important question if we are wasting our time watching television that means we are not using our non productive hours, just imagine if you can convert this non productive hours to earn some extra cash, if we have will for sure there are lot of opportunities around us. We can use these non productive hours in gaining knowledge about our interesting topics which an help us in enhancing our skill set which intern can help us in making extra incoming when we use that skills.

But if you want to look at the opportunity around us lets see what options we will have.

• Becoming Insurance Agent.
• Becoming affiliated marketing consultant. (very powerful with minimal skill set)
• Becoming tutor (depending on skill set).
• Becoming Nutrition or health or physical fitness consultant
• Becoming Real estate agent
• Becoming environment consultant
• Helping child in home work.
• Becoming finical consultant
• Becoming blog writer.
• Computer or laptop repair.
• Online marketing consultant.
• Working at local store
• Open training center.

Like this there are so many opportunities around us which we can take a look at. Depending on our interest we will have options. Now you decide what you want to be , be an example for others by not complaining about things happening around you or not be an example by complaining about this happening around us?  If you want to know about some good opportunities please contact me at my email sriram.adviser@gmail.com.

 What are you prepared to do for better tomorrow?

Do you require health insurance?

Dear Readers,

Most of the times we all might be paying for health insurance one or the other way. But do we understand terms in health insurance plan? What are our rights? keeping this kind of topics aside first of all I would like to discuss is do we need to really buy health insurance? If so what kind of policy we should prefer.

Some of us might be paying more for health insurance premium some of us might be getting discount or premium sharing option from employer.

Lets see if you require health insurance or not? Before answering this question first we need to ask ourselves following questions.

• Do you regularly go for annual checkup (which must include complete health assessment)?
• Do you exercise at least 20 min a day?
• Do you take supplement's if you have some vitamin or mineral deficiency or to fulfill your nutritional needs?
• Are you getting enough sleep every day?

If your answer is no to any of these questions probably you might need to consider health insurance as well with better coverage. If you are doing all these things that means you might have basic idea about your health and expectancy about what might happened or do you have any tendency to health problem. In this case also you can have health insurance plan with minimum coverage (which is High detectable coverage Plan, but this depends on other factors).

Now lets look into few more questions about your financial health. Not only your health condition but your financial health also makes a big difference while making decision for health insurance.  So lets look at some questions which will help you making decision.

• Do you have emergency funds to support your living for next 6months to 12 months?
• Do you have reserve funds for health care emergency ?
• Do you have accidental insurance?

If the answer is no to any question? Then without any questions you should go for health insurance with less deductible I know premium might be high for that but in case of emergency there is no option for you to support financially other than insurance. But decision about health insurance depends on your health and weather you can afford to pay for it when its urgent.

There are two types of health insurance plans, low deductible & high deductible plans, insurance companies break them into some more types of plans but mainly we should be aware of these two types of plans. If you opt for high deductible plan you will need to have Health Savings Account ( HSA ) which will help you to save pre taxed money for your deductible.

Simple math which will help you to make decision.  (these calculations are for example the premium may be different depending on health insurance company).

  For Normal plan if you are paying premium of 1500 per month

  For High deductible plan you might be paying around 500 to 750 per month.

That means you will be paying around 750 per month less for your health insurance which you can put it in H S A account that you can use for deductible amount in case of emergency which is pre taxed money. If you don't use that amount you will accumulative more money in your H S A account which you can use for your health care emergency.

But when you need low deductible insurance plan or when you need to visit your health care provider or if  you have some critical health problem which require you to visit doctor office on regular basis,then you must be looking at low deductible   plan, if you don't have emergency fund aside then also its good to go with low deductible plan.

If you are not able to decide as to which plan s good for you then talk to your financial planner who can analyze your financial status and recommend you the  correct insurance plan.

What are you prepared to do for better tomorrow?

Are you effected?

Dear Reader, 

Wish a very happy new year, I would like you share with all of you some important topics which helps you in making decision about your financial future, if you are leaving in united states probably you might be aware of discussions about financial cliff, probably by the time I publish this article there might some decision about all these things. But I would like to share some information about financial cliff it's not about debt limit or some thing else there are many tax exemptions are expiring on DEC 2012 which means there will be extra direct tax on individuals like you and me. According to he stats around $500 billion tax beaks are expiring on Dec 2012, government spending cut around $100 billion & some other tax benefits  

Read more information about financial cliff at Investopedia. 

But kind of effect you see if the deal not taken place or what kind of effect we see if the deal is taken place? Lets discuss about this.  

If deal not happened the your direct income tax rates are going to go up. Which means less take home money for you. Once less money in our pockets less spending which means less revenue to companies which means high chances of cutting down the cost by company, which might impact job growth or less jobs. This will create repulsive effect. Economy might go into recession or depreciation. 

What kind of effect we see if the deal happens, which means government/Federal bank pump more money into economy more liquidity means higher inflation which means we need to spend more money for same goods what ever we are buying today. imagine $600 billion cash per yearn into economy means more inflation.  i remember in 2007 we used to spend around $100 per month for food items & grocery but today same stuff cost us 4 time higher around 300 to 400 USD. this inflation is because of more stimulus pack (money pumped) by fed.  

Inflation is long term effect on our economy this will kill our purchase power as our income will not go up this fast. but at some point of time we need to accept that our life's are effected by what ever the decision governments are making,  but do you think every one life is like this not really lot of people build there wealth as inflationary proof.  

now you decide do want to leave your future in some other person hand or some organization decisions or do you want to take control over it? 

how to build good credit history

Dear Readers, 

I am sure if you are in USA credit score always matters, to rent a place or to buy a car or to buy a nice phone for less... I am sure if you don't have good credit score every thing is going costly for you. When you come to USA as an immigrant, you will have lot of questions about how to establish credit history? 

Lets look into this topic now. I am going to discuss about how you can build good credit score very faster?

You might be a student or you might be on your working visa, you can do these to start building your credit score. Most of the times we will think that we need to have income to start building credit score,but that is not true. You can build credit history even if  you are  on H4 or F2 or L2 ,any kind of dependent visa . 

To start with, first try to open a savings account. You can start with any bank. I prefer you can open with credit union (Some examples are Start One Credit Union, Tech CU, Valley Credit Union and many more link this) or you can open with reputed banks such as Wells forgo, Bank of America, Chase. Keep this point in mind USA federal insurance program cover maximum up 200K USD of deposit. (to know more FDIC click here) To know basic information about FDIC click here. One more good thing is that if you have account in credit union you are going to make good money as returns for your deposits.

Secured credit card is the right way to start for building credit score fast. Most of the banks and credit union offer secured credit cards. 

Check Credit score for free on regular basis at www.creditkarma.com without effecting the credit score. Following images show you some of the components which impact credit score. 

When I was new to the country couple of my friends told me that, we need to use max amount of our limit to build credit history fast. But what I learned from my experience is that, we should not use more than 15 to 20% of our credit limit to grow our credit history very fast. 

Few more points to remember: 

When we apply store credit cards they are going to impact credit credit score little high compared to applying for credit card from a bank or credit union.

Building credit score will be must faster when we are using store credit card compared to card from bank or credit union. 

Having too many credit cards also going to impact credit score negatively. You might ask how it can affect. Its very simple it might become tough for us to track and pay the bills on time. 

Do simple math before planning for number of credit cards. Calculate what is your average monthly spending & try to get a credit limit with 10 times more than that. If one card is not offering that much credit limit try to get multiple cards.

Read more about how to improve your credit score.