Attending college is not just an excellent investment in your financial future.  It also carries with it intangible benefits, helping young adults to build self-confidence and develop key relationships as they adjust to the adult world.

It may be true that the ‘best things in life are free’, but it is also true that some of the very best things cost money.  Arranging funding for further education can involve a variety of financial resources, including savings, a part-time job while attending, scholarships, grants and college loans.  Students who choose to take out loans to pay for college will find that the higher-paying job they obtain later makes it quite feasible to accrue debt in the short term.

How students manage their money during their college years, however, will have a large impact on their future lives.  It is possible to graduate from college with a manageable debt load that can be discharged fairly quickly.  It is also possible for students to mismanage their loans to the extent that it becomes virtually impossible to repay them.  This is a serious issue because unlike a car or house loan, most student debt cannot be cancelled via bankruptcy proceedings.

Financial Advice for Student Borrowers

The most powerful thing a student borrower can do is minimize the total amount of college loans taken out.  This requires discipline and determination.  Students who receive loan funding may feel quite comfortable that they have ‘enough’ to afford a new stereo or some other discretionary purchase.  All too often, these students have woefully underestimated the true cost of attending college.

Costs to keep in mind include not just tuition and dorm fees, but also a litany of smaller-ticket items that, taken together, add up to a great deal of money.  Books alone can cost hundreds of dollars – sometimes for a single class.  Many students also neglect to set aside money for commuting expenses if they do not live on campus.  Keep college loan money strictly set aside for educational expenses.

Saving Money

Every dollar that can be saved and put towards your education is a dollar you will not have to borrow.  With this in mind, savvy students use a variety of strategies to lower the cost of daily living.  For example, keeping a box of snack bars in the dorm can mean going to a reduced meal plan that does not include breakfast.  Those on a budget should also watch their entertainment spending.  A DVD rental from a dispensing machine costs very little compared to purchasing a movie, and students who do not use all of their cell phone minutes for necessary calls should consider moving to a lower-priced package.

Choosing a Student Account

Another way to save money is to select a bank account designed for students.  Many of these have reduced fees on such items as making ATM withdrawals and writing checks.  Some student accounts even offer fee-free savings and checking.

With planning and forethought, students who desire further education can afford to attend their college of choice.  It may mean taking out college loans, but the rewards in the end will far outweigh the need for careful money management while attending an institution of higher learning.

Guest Post by Jessica Bennet

A mortgage calculator is that financial tool that helps you in determining the affordability as it calculates the monthly payments. The mortgage calculator provides you with all of the details on the mortgage like the monthly payments against the mortgage, the interest rate payments, and the time which will be taken to pay off the home loan, the exact date when the loan will be paid off and so on. Because the mortgage calculator helps you to find out the affordability based on which you will be able to take out a mortgage, it naturally gets easier for you to choose the right kind of home for yourself. There are different types of mortgage calculators which are available online.

Importance of using mortgage calculator

There are various factors that influence your mortgage payments. All of these factors are your affordability and income, the interest rate on your mortgage, the loan term, the debt to income ratio, the mortgage APR. So, the mortgage calculator helps you in using all of the items that affects the mortgage and therefore helps you in finding out the details of your payments. Thus, you are able to decide beforehand if you should at all take out a mortgage and if so which would be the best mortgage for you.

Different types of mortgage calculators

There are different types of mortgage calculators and some of these are:

1. Cost calculator – The cost calculator is that type of mortgage calculator that helps you in finding out or in calculating the entire cost of taking out a mortgage and thus the costs of buying your home.

2. Monthly payment calculator – With the help of a monthly payment calculator you will have the opportunity to calculate the mortgage payments which you will be required to make each month as installments against the mortgage. If you use this mortgage calculator you will be able to know in advance the amount which you will be required to pay.

3. Repayment calculator – If you use a repayment calculator, you will be able to determine the repayment amount on a mortgage and the other payment details as per the changes of the repayment term.

4. Interest only mortgage calculator– As there are different kinds of mortgage, there are different types of mortgage calculators too. Sometime you can have the option to take out a mortgage which will require you to make payments on an initial basis only on the interest for a certain period. Now, it becomes important for you to calculate the interest payment and the interest only mortgage calculator is the one that helps you in finding out the payment details of the interest only mortgage.

5. Adjustable rate mortgage calculator – There are mortgages on which the interest rates are not fixed, the interest rate adjusts or changes from time to time. So, if you use the adjustable rate mortgage calculator, you will have the opportunity to calculate the amount that you will be required pay towards the adjustable rate mortgage.

Then there is also the amortization calculator which helps you in understanding how your payments results in amortization of the mortgage. With this kind of calculator, you will easily be able to know in which way the monthly payments help in the reduction of the term of your home loan. This calculator also helps you in understanding the details of how the monthly payments are divided as the payments towards the principal and payments towards the interest. If you can have the clear idea on how the payments amortize the loan, you will be able to adjust the payments in that way to pay off the loan fast enough. If you increase your monthly payment you will be able to pay off this home loan much faster.

If you had the power to choose, which one would you grab or would like to have more of? Time or Money? Most people would say Time, and some other people would say Money. Whichever you choose, is a correct answer. There’s nothing right or wrong with your choice.

But if you do look at them closely, which one do you think is the hardest to recover when you’ve lost it? The most intangible one, I would say, is Time. Why is that? Money, when lost, could be recovered. Whether it’s in ones, tens, hundreds, thousands or even millions.

Unfortunately, for time, once it’s lost, it’s gone forever and it’s not coming back. Unless, you have a time machine of your own, lol.

Kidding aside, and going back into our topic, the answer does depend on the person. Some people have lots of time, and need money. These people are common, usually they don’t have jobs. Some people have lots of money, but don’t have time. They are people who are stuck in a job, but don’t have time to spend with their family and friends.

The worst case would be having no time and no money. Hmm, I guess it means that the person is already dead, since everybody has time.

Anyway, the best one to be in is having both, and I know that people would agree that having Time and Money is the best that life could offer. You get to have lots of Time and Money to spend with your family and friends.

How do you even get to have this kind of lifestyle is more and more available and abudant nowadays. It does start with your own mindset. How you think, then follows your actions.

Using Leverage to work for you is a powerful tool. Working 100% of your time compared to 1% of a hundred people is definitely a huge difference. And I mean big.

So the next time you think about it, use time wisely.

Any healthy business will have a customer list. Some companies will use an old fashioned rolodex for this or maybe paper files. Still others will buy off the shelf software all the way up to the mammoth Customer Relationship Management systems.

These systems might be ideal but in many cases they will be overkill if your needs or scale are quite humble. A full system might be more functionality than you need right now, especially if you can count your customers on two hands.

If you are most comfortable in a Microsoft Excel environment you can make a pretty decent little system with your favorite spreadsheet package. A huge advantage of starting out in Excel is you can be pretty sure you can move your data to a new system as and when you are ready to move up to a full industrial strength suite.

Example Customer Database

To demonstrate, let’s put together an example customer database.

In this example we store some pretty simple details. You could add things like what products or services they have bought or when they were last contacted quite simply, but for now we will use it as a simple contact list.

Right now we can use the built-in Excel search feature to find the customer we want, but let’s get fancy.

Creating a Lookup Form

What we want to do is create an enquiry form so we can enter details and have Excel bring up the matching result.

We create a new tab and write out our form to make it look nice and usable.

As you can see in the screen grab above, when we enter a zip code we want all the other fields to populate. This is achievable by using the VLOOKUP function anywhere we want to draw in values from the customer list.

Here is an example:

VLOOKUP($B$3,Customer!$A$2:$F$6,6,FALSE)

This is based on the first value being what we want to find, the range of the source values, and if we want it to be an exact or approximate match (which in Excel means the next largest value that is less than lookup_value is returned, providing the original values are sorted in order).

Extending the Example

Obviously there are limitations to this but it wouldn’t take a lot of effort to enhance the solution. First we could make the search able to switch between which fields we are searching on, for example a logical search field would be surname or company name.

A quick solution to allowing a greater search flexibility would be to add an IF statement to the VLOOKUP. Obviously this would get cumbersome very quickly, but as a quick hack it works.

=IF(ISNA(IF(A3="Enter phone to search",VLOOKUP($B$3,Customer!$A$2:$F$6,6,FALSE),VLOOKUP($B$3,Customer!$B$2:$F$6,5,FALSE))),"",IF(A3="Enter phone to search",VLOOKUP($B$3,Customer!$A$2:$F$6,6,FALSE),VLOOKUP($B$3,Customer!$B$2:$F$6,5,FALSE)))

Basically, this IF function does 2 things, it checks whether to search using the Phone number or the Zip codes and adjusts the VLOOKUP range accordingly (the VLOOKUP function always searches for the value in the first column of the range). It also checks whether the entire VLOOKUP function returns a value at all using the ISNA() function so that a blank would be displayed instead of an error.

The second upgrade we could add is we could store more data. We could create a contact log, any relevant details such as if they have had any feedback or problems, and make notes on sales activity and actual purchases. This would allow us to track the impact of our sales and marketing, plus see who our best customers are. I will leave that an exercise for you!

Summary

I hope, while being only a start, this has given you some ideas for how you can create your own customer relationship database. Do you keep track of customers or any other similar data in Excel? Please let us know…

About the author

Yoav Ezer co-authors the technology and productivity blog Codswallop. He is also the CEO of a company that produces PDF to Excel conversion software.

For more Excel tips from Yoav, join him on Facebook or Twitter

If you find yourself facing an unexpected bill or need to meet urgent expenses but are short of money until your next pay check, then payday loans could provide the answer you need.  These loans offer small sums of between $100 – $1500 for a period of 14 to 31 days depending on when you are next paid and can be applied for online quickly and easily with the money appearing in your bank account within 24 hours.

The payday loans industry has seen rapid growth in recent times mainly because they fill the need for short term borrowing of small loan amounts.  Banks are unwilling to lend small loans like this because they can be expensive for them to administer.  Overdrafts and credit cards have traditionally been the answer for a shortfall in finances for many consumers, but this can be an expensive way to borrow.

A payday loan on the other hand is cheap by comparison even though the annual interest rates are on average 2500%.  Because the lending period is short, the amount interest applied is relatively small providing the loan is paid back when agreed.  Payday loans have been criticised by the financial services industry as lending to those who cannot afford to repay especially because many lenders do not carry out any credit checks and effectively lend to all who apply.  This has led to borrowers in poorer sectors of society to land themselves in serious debt.

However, if payday loans are used responsibly they do represent a good solution to those who need money fast.  They can be used for any purpose and borrowers do not need to declare their intentions before hand unlike some other forms of borrowing.  Loans are not secured on property or assets either making them ideal for those living in rented accommodation.  The only requirements to be eligible for a payday loan is that you are a U.S citizen over 18 years of age, have a regular income and a valid bank account.

Do make sure you can repay the loan in full on the agreed date, some lenders require a post dated check or be granted permission to debit your account directly, but you should be sure that you will have enough money to live on once the loan has been repaid.  Taking out loans on a regular basis can be detrimental to your credit record and over time be more expensive than taking out a larger loan over a longer period with a bank.  Payday loans are best used to meet large bills or unexpected expenses such as garage bills, but it is recommended you do not use them to meet your day to day living expenses, unless absolutely necessary.

Guest Post by Riza @ Payday Loans

A spreadsheet is an ideal way to keep a track of your household and/or personal budget. Watching income and expenses allows you to consciously control your spending and stop you from getting into trouble. In today’s challenging economic times, we need to be more penny wise than ever!

With that in mind I went looking for a spreadsheet to help track my personal expenses. After searching the internet for a few hours, I came up with only these that following.

Monthly budget sheet

This sheet allows you to arrange your personal monthly income and expenses in various categories, so everything is right there in front of you.

Categories include: Home expenses, Transportation, Health, Charity/gifts, Subscriptions, Daily living, Entertainment, Savings, and Obligations.

Everything is then summed up in a handy monthly budget summary.

Monthly sheet for 12 months

This sheet has pretty much the same categories as the previous one, but it has a table with 12 columns for the different months, so you can enter the budget of a year into one sheet.

For some reason these two sheets appear many times around the net with various small variations to their title …

Home budget

This home budget sheet has similar structure to the previous one, but separates tax-deductible expenses from non-tax-deductible expenses.

Create your own

There are really few options for ready-made solutions out there. If none of these work for you, you may wish to create your own budget and expenses sheet. Here’s an eHow article which gives instructions on exactly how to do that.

Summary

If you have any ideas or have created your own useful budget spreadsheet, please let us know. I would like to compile a list of such sheets that would benefit all the readers, so please suggest any other templates that you know about.

About the author

Yoav Ezer co-authors the technology and productivity blog Codswallop. He is also the CEO of a company that produces PDF to XLS conversion software.

For more Excel tips from Yoav, join him on Facebook or Twitter

photo by Torley*

Entering the world of Forex or what we call Foreign Exchange is not new to most of us. Especially, if you have already made a visit to a bank or currency exchange booth and simply conducted a transaction of changing your currency into another one. This is a common practice when traveling to another country for vacations or business.

So what’s the buzz with these Forex Robots about? As the name implies, they are robots that are mainly concerned in trading currencies in the Foreign Exchange Market. Even though they are called robots, they are actually software that you install into your computer as a program running scripts that helps a person trade.

You might be thinking now, why would people want to install robot software to trade for them? It’s quite simple, since the Forex is open 24 hours a day, 5 days a week, trades are made during the day and night around the world. And for most traders, missing a significant trade means a lot to them, most especially if the trade should have been conducted in a certain time, however, they were asleep.

Thus, they found a way in solving these problems, by creating a script that they could run with their trading software, and then the robots were born. These robots are very useful as you don’t need to be in front of your computer all day to monitor the market. They could be programmed to make a trade for you night and day. And this makes traders happy as they could spend more time with their family and friends, knowing that their trade is not affected.

Now, you might be thinking, that is so great but I need to leave my computer turned on 24 hours a day. Yes, that’s right, you need to turn it on for the whole day and night 5 days a week. But also, traders are really smart and they have also found another solution to that problem – VPS. What does VPS stand for? Well, VPS simply means Virtual Private Server, it is a server provided by a hosting company. You pay for their services, and in return, you get to have your robot on a server working for you.

And that’s what I call a Perfect Automation System (PAS), you don’t need to worry about the power supply, your trades are done for you and all that you do now is just check it once in a while and see how your accounts are doing. But wait, all of these will be running smoothly if you have a really functional forex robot running your trades. And because the market is always changing and unpredictable, systems like these don’t work 100%.

But the good news is, most of them do provide a high percentage of wins over losses. So if you are thinking about setting up this system. I’ll be talking more about this on my coming posts, so stay tuned. In the mean time, if you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced trader, what do you think about Forex Robots? Have you heard of them before? Have you tried them before? And if you’re going to choose, would you rather trade the forex the traditional way (manually), or with a Forex Robot, or having both?

photo by Troy Holden*

If you are an Old Navy Flip Flop lover, then here’s your chance of saving money on their 2010 sale. It’s great stuff and you know that quality is really great for this brand. So start looking for participating outlets near you. As this could definitely help you in your budget to save some cash. Available stocks for adults and kids. So hurry and join in the fun.

*photo by Troy Holden

photo by nixArt*

Thinking about buying a new car? Great, so do I, and perhaps a lot of other people. But are you sure that you can afford it? Well yeah, if you’re rich and able. But what if you’re just a simple employee starting out and living on a daily basis from paycheck to paycheck. Do you think that you could afford to buy a brand new car? Or would you settle for a second hand instead?

With all these questions in mind and having a lot more of reasons coming in, it is quite confusing to come to a definite solution or answer to our main question, “am I able to buy a new car?” Well, don’t be worried or confused anymore, in just a few weeks, or days, a new tool called “Car Saver” will be available here in our site to premium members who would like to register.

Readers are welcome to see screen shots of the tool and how it works, but if you plan to use it, you must register for a premium member. Giving you all the benefits to try it out and even help you find out if you are able to buy a new car. The tool provides a details on how much interest you would be paying each month, initial down payments, your monthly budget needed, and even a daily savings budget to let you see your progress when you start saving until you reach your goal.

I’m even thinking about providing an affiliate membership for people who would even like to earn some cash from this tool. But more details will be provided soon when this project is ready to be launched.

So for now, if you dream of having a new car, it’s good to know if you could afford it, without getting into too much debt and headaches. And as you use the tool, you could really see if you would want to spend that much on interests that would really eat up on your financial savings and earnings. It sort of makes you conscious and even helps you stay out of debt. And even better, if you do get into debt, you could take control of it and manage it wisely.

*photo by nixArt