Articles
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Saving and Investment Course
February 24 2010
If you constantly find yourself needing credit to get you to the next payday, you are living beyond your means. Re-evaluate your budget and talk to your banker or someone else who can help you get your finances straight. Unless you pay your credit card bill in full each month, don’t use it for anything you can eat or wear.
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2010 Action Plan #3: Control Your Income
February 13 2010
It wouldn’t be hard to predict that it’s going to be more difficult to make money in 2010. Employees and entrepreneurs alike are experiencing a decline in their earning power due to pay reductions, job layoffs, and consumer spending cuts. Investors who had previously benefited from lucrative profits in the money market now have to cope with decreasing returns.
How can you survive when you are not earning enough? Let’s look at some of the typical challenges that people are facing today and offer some possible solutions to these problems:
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2010 Action Plan #2: Control Your Debt
February 12 2010
Your child’s tuition is three weeks overdue and you’re dreading another phone call from the school office... . Desperately looking for an answer, you notice a newspaper advertisement for a payroll loan. Convinced that this may be the answer to your problem, you call the financial company to get more details on the loan. You realise that you can access enough funds to not only pay the outstanding school fee, but to clear off your credit card and repay your cousin the money you borrowed eight months ago. In fact, you decide that you might as well take the opportunity to finally replace your worn living room sofa. Does this scenario sound painfully familiar? If so, you’re not alone.
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The Dawn of a New Decade
February 08 2010
On January 28, the ECCB Governor, Sir K. Dwight Venner engaged the ECCU public in an interactive discussion on the regional economy in 2009 and prospects for 2010. He noted that in spite of an approximate 7.4% contraction in economic activity in 2009 and the projection of a 2.4% contraction for 2010, the region and people must take charge of the situation and turn things around rather that allowing the projection to become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
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2010 Action Plan #1: Control Your Spending
February 04 2010
In recent times, while speaking to several persons about their money problems, I have detected a growing sense of desperation in their voices. Although many have not yet reached a stage of full-fledged panic, it is obvious that they are very worried about the current financial situation facing Jamaica.
“If I can’t make ends meet now,” a client asked perplexedly, “what’s going to happen to me when the full impact of the tax increases hits?”
I believe that good results can come out of every bad situation. The prevailing economic crisis has forced many of us to recognise that we can no longer be nonchalant or clueless about our financial condition. We have received a monetary wake-up call - it’s now time to take control of our finances!
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Financial Literacy Programme-Trinidad & Tobago
January 29 2010
The National Financial Literacy Programme (NFLP) of Trinidad and Tobago was launched on January 31, 2007.
If the key objectives of the programme were to be summarised in one sentence, it would be:
"to sensitise persons to the importance of making prudent and sensible decisions regarding the use of their money"
We, in Trinidad and Tobago, believe that we have been able to achieve this objective to a considerable degree. In fact, at the launch of our latest publications on October 27, 2009, Governor Ewart Williams indicated that, “There is no doubt that we have come a long way over 36 short months”.
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Opening Speech of Financial Literacy Project
January 22 2010
CARTAC’s Financially Fit website site has a special Caribbean flair which we hope the viewing and using public will find fresh, exciting as well as educational. It appeals especially to a younger population as we hope to influence their financial knowledge at an early stage. Noting also that a younger Caribbean audience spends relatively more time on electronic media, including the internet, than print, we are targeting facebook users as a special community.
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Five Little Changes with extraordinary Outcomes
January 20 2010
Money is usually earned monthly or weekly but it is spent daily. That being the case, it is the changes that we make to our daily financial planning that will have the greatest impact on our financial outcomes
Read more on Five Little Changes with extraordinary Outcomes
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Dare to Save Money Group
January 19 2010
Money is vital to everyday living. We spend years learning how to make it and we spend years making it; therefore, we owe it to ourselves to learn how to manage it.
The Dare to Save Money Group provides another forum for learning how to manage this vital tool that we spend so much of our lives pursuing. -
Take Your Financial Check Up Today!
January 08 2010
In Barbados and the wider Caribbean, we were never taught in any of our formal educational institutions how to prepare for being good stewards of the money we earn. However, we were taught very well what we need to have (a good education!) to earn that money. Well, as the saying goes (with a variation): “Any fool can make (earn) money but it takes a wise man to spend, save and invest it!”
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Budgeting Your Way to a Happy New Year!
January 04 2010
Melissa’s Christmas was fantastic!
She’d hosted a successful family luncheon and made up gift baskets and delivered them to quietly grateful patients at the local hospital. And she’d eaten and imbibed at a record number of festive parties. Yes, it was the best Christmas… ever!
Christmas is over… now what?
