Monday, April 19, 2010

How can you manage your finances effectively and save for future?

If you are unable to utilize your income properly to fulfill your needs, you may fall in debt trouble. You must try not only to satisfy your current requirements but also save for the future. Understanding the different aspects of personal finance can help you mange your funds/resources effectively.

What are the different components of personal finance?

Personal finance is a process of determining ways to fulfill your present financial needs and your future monetary goals. It deals with the following:

  • Prepare a budget: You should determine your credit goals and accordingly design a financial plan to allocate income towards expenses and savings. You can also create a separate fund that will help you in times of emergencies. If you have debt, you should make timely payment towards all of them.

  • Insure yourself and your assets: You must determine your needs and accordingly purchase insurance policies that you require. Life insurance, disability insurance, health insurance, home insurance and auto insurance are the most important types of insurance policies.

  • Plan your tax: Tax planning is an important component of personal finance. You must know when and how much tax you have to pay. By taking advantage of the tax deduction schemes offered by the government, you can save on tax payments.

  • Save for retirement: You must save in your 401(k) retirement plan. This will not only help you meet your future expenses but also provide you with tax benefits. To meet post-retirement living costs, you should effectively distribute all your financial resources and assets.

Personal finance also deals with investments. By investing wisely in stocks, bonds, foreign exchange market and real estate properties, you can make a lot of money. However, you must be careful not to overspend as that may not only prevent you from saving but also lead you to debt.


Thursday, April 8, 2010

Avail Best Insurance Deals Through Insurance Agents


An insurance agent is like a mediator between the insurer and insurance company. Insurance agent can assist their clientele in availing quality insurance solutions for life insurance products, auto insurance and other general insurance entities.

An insurance agent represents an insurance company and their plans. On sign-off of any policy by the client, they get paid a royalty by the insurance company. Many insurance agents pass on the benefit on the first insurance premium as cash back to the client.

Apart from guiding through right insurance solution an insurance agent can help in easing the process of insurance policy sign-off and share vital information. Depending upon the age, sex, professional field and other factors they can help insurers in selecting the right mix of policies and premium.

Insurance agents are generally most sought out for in the Life insurance vertical. They can provide ready to go with information on policies, plans and premium details. Bulk deals, corporate discounts and other factors may attribute to lower premium rates or higher coverage of risk.
It is imperative for an insurance agent to be certified by the governing institution in order to represent an insurance service provider. An individual can become an insurance agent by passing a standard certification course. Various aspects related to insurance domain must be understood in depth by the prospective insurance agents in order to become a certified insurance agent.

Free online sources are giving tough competition to insurance agents. However, the aspects of personalization, communication and negotiation are still untouched by the modern solutions. Insurance agent based solutions must be authenticated on insurance company’s website in detail. Also, it is important to shop around with multiple insurance agent solution agencies for competitive rates. Only a reliable insurance agent solution partner should be selected for addressing your insurance needs at all times on the go.

Monday, January 11, 2010

The Discharge in Bankruptcy


A “Discharge” in bankruptcy specifies that a debtor is released form his personal liability in case of some specified debts. In other words it can be simply said that a debtor is no longer required to pay for the debts for which he is discharged from the court of law or any other law prevalent in the country. The discharge is a permanent order from the court of the law prohibiting the creditor of a debtor from taking any form of action or communication from him (his debtor) in any way to recover any amount of money. A discharge may release a debtor from his personal liability but a secured creditor can obviously enforce his lien on the property to recover from the property secured in lien.

The discharge in bankruptcy depends on various factors such one of which the type of case a debtor files of discharge i.e. Chapter 7, 11, 12, or 13. The timing for discharge too depends on the type of case filled by the debtor.

The debtor will automatically get discharged until and unless there is a litigation involving objection to the discharge. As per the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy the communication of the discharge should be sent to all creditors, the U.S. trustee, the trustee in the case, and the trustee's attorney, debtor, and the debtors attorney. All the parties concerned are informed about the discharge of all the dues from the debtor and cautioned the creditors via notice that continuing collection efforts could subject them to punishment for contempt.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Forensic Accountant: Role played in unfolding various frauds and crimes

A company seeks the help of forensic accountant when it smells something wrong in financial dealings and is not able to find the reason behind it. This may be some mischief, frauds or anything that can cause damage in the financial position of the Organization. Fraud can be of various types such as, forging important documents, cooking up financial information, misappropriation of cash/ stock and money laundering. The stock frauds in India can be categorized into various types: the Flying Companies including IPO web as the investors were attracted by huge returns from the listed shares and in the early 20th century the norms and principles of the regulatory bodies were not strong. Brokerage Misguidance which includes misleading customers by guiding investors in an uncanny manner. High Tech Frauds emerges with the new technology being coming up leading to highly vulnerable frauds. Market Manipulation case can be traced from the example from Ketan Parikh and Harshad Mehta been noted for making abnormal profits by manipulating the market prices of the shares deliberately. There could be various reasons behind a fraud like, ego, fraud intensity, greed etc, and it would start from a very little thing and then after sometime it becomes a part & parcel of the life of the fraudster. A forensic accountant opines that the management should adopt a simple policy that it “Trust, but to Verify” principle since it is found that most of the forgery are done by the CFO’s the most trusted employee by the management. In forensic investigation a group of professional forensic accountant starts its investigation by meeting the senior members of the management and starts shooting questions. The investigator then plans the structure of the interview, place of the interview, number of interviews and the series of questions that would be asked. In order to be successful in investigations, the investigator follows some general principles during investigations that include: conduction of the interview with the potential suspects, manner the questions are posed, shoots pertinent questions depending on the fact whether the interviewee is a lead or a prime suspect, observing the body language and words that could disclose deception. . We can say that corporate world should be very alert and watchful so as to avoid the crimes and frauds that have come up with the so called globalization.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Consumer credit counseling: An overview

Consumer credit counseling is a way to avoid bankruptcy. It is always advisable to go though credit counseling for a debtor, at least six months before filling a bankruptcy. Credit counseling is a professional service in which credits counseling agencies or a body provides education about the financial problems and finds a solution to get a way out from debt burden, depending on the financial condition. A credit counselor will go through your financial profile and access your debt level in order to make an arrangement for making a payment plan to overcome the debt. Counselor can access the financial condition of the individual and the prevailing market condition to bargain for lower interest rates for the debtor with the creditor. The counselor access the financial condition of the individual through various means, it can be number of accounts, balance, minimum payment, balance due, and any past due account. The counselor after this will also considers your monthly income and bills. The counselor uses this summarized information to maker out a reasonable debt management plan (DMP) to pay off the debts. The proposed plan is then sent to the creditor for their approval. The creditor once approves the DMP, sent by the counselor the debtor can start making the payment following the DMP. The payment will be made through the counseling agency. The credit counselor once receives the payment will disburse payment to the creditors in accordance with the DMP. The one way it affects is that the credit accounts are closed for a debtor as long as the DMP continues.