Tag Archives: cash

Use your cash wisely

Posted on by
No Gravatar

In a time of recession such as we are all undergoing, it is important to use whatever limited cash resources you have in the wisest way possible.  It may be that things will go even worse.  It also may last longer than the experts are predicting.  The wise course is to be ready for whatever comes.

An important factor is to make sure that you are getting the maximum bang for your buck.  It is worth looking carefully at even small improvements.  An old British saying is relevant here:

Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves.

The same sentiment is expressed in a Scottish version:

Many a mickle maks a muckle.

A CNN article this week is worth reviewing since it offers 20 money-savers that add up.  They are all worth considering but here are four that particularly caught my eye:

  • The leak: Paying bills by snail mail.
  • The fix: Save time and money by signing up with the billers’ customer-service departments to have your bills paid by credit card or automatic debit; payments will be documented on your monthly bank statement.
  • The leak: Paying the minimum on credit cards.
  • The fix: Savings accounts earn little to no interest, so dip into them to pay off your balance. If you don’t have savings, pay double the minimum and slowly increase your payments each month.  Pay off higher-interest credit cards first, and never skip a payment, which can result in a late fee of $35 or more and an increased rate on all your credit cards.
  • The leak: A cell-phone plan that doesn’t match your needs.
  • The fix: On average, according to the consumer research firm J.D. Power & Associates, cell-phone subscribers use only 64 percent of the minutes they pay for.  If you’re still under contract, call your cell-phone company and ask it to analyze your usage.
  • The leak: Letting the water run.
  • The fix: Turn off the tap while you’re brushing your teeth or shaving — every minute the water flows wastes up to 2 1/2 gallons, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.  Run full loads in washing machines and dishwashers.

Perhaps you should do a similar review of what you do each day to make sure that you are not inadvertently allowing dollars to leak away without you getting appropriate value for them.  It is not a question of being a Scrooge.  It is just avoiding needless ways your money may be working less effectively than it could.

By the way, if you are a student then we would recommend Use Your Cash Wisely: 10 Major Money Tips.  It’s another good check list of what is important in handling your cash resources well.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Phony Money

Posted on by
No Gravatar

Apparently more and more people are using phony money.

That is not the kind of phony money that appears in that Denny commercial.  No, we are talking about ‘real’ counterfeit money.  It is not surprising that in economic hard times, more people are resorting to using fake money.

Counterfeiting arrests in the USA jumped 28% in 2008 over 2007 — the highest number since 2004, according to the US Secret Service, a division of the Homeland Security Department that safeguards the nation’s currency. Counterfeiters passed $64.4 million in fake cash into the economy, a 5% increase over 2007 and also a five-year high, according to Special Agent Darrin Blackford, spokesman for the agency.

It’s not just the criminal element, but we’re also seeing more students that maybe use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy pizza or someone trying to do it to purchase gas to get to work,” says Brian Marr, Secret Service special agent. Reports of fake bills spiked this year when gas prices hit record highs.

CosmoLoan has some interesting information about counterfeit money.

  1. More people are faking it
  2. Coin Clipping used to be prevalent
  3. Death to all counterfeiters was the rule less than 400 years ago
  4. The US Secret Service was originally founded to suppress the major counterfeit currency racket going on in 1865
  5. Attacking countries with their own fake money has been used as a means of warfare
  6. Catch Me if You Can is the story of the world’s greatest check counterfeiter, Frank Abagnale.
  7. Superdollar or Note Family – C14342 has been able to fool many experts who were unable to tell it apart from legitimate currency.  It is believed that 1 out of every 10 000 bills in circulation in the US is a Superdollar.
  8. You must accept counterfeit money and then turn it in without reimbursement
  9. In Canada today many businesses still refuse 50 dollar and 100 dollar bills following a huge counterfeiting operation in 2001.
  10. Poor quality Ink-jet printed money represented 60% of the counterfeit currency collected.

The Bank of Canada takes counterfeiting very seriously and responds by a number of measures to help in Counterfeiting prevention.

  • researching and developing new security features that are difficult to copy and easy to use;
  • working with law enforcement to monitor and respond to counterfeiting activity; and
  • showing Canadians, especially those who handle cash regularly, how to verify bank notes to make sure they’re genuine

They even now have an exhibit in their Currency Museum that showcases the history of phony cash.  The exhibit opened Jan. 6 and is called The Good, The Bad, and The Fake.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Search the Internet for related articles:
Loading