cool wordpress themes

Finance

Finance Home | Foundation | Top 10

Women at desk with world map in the background.Summary. Welcome to the Financial Management Resource Group. The Financial Management Resource Group has been established to provide timely access to progressive financial services and resources on and off the Internet. Simplifying Your Finances. Using online banking is probably one of the best ways to organize and automate your finances through automatic payment of bills and downloading of transactions for easily searching and sorting your expenditures. Scanning receipts and invoices is another way to organize your finances and reduce paper clutter. General Resources. Below are general resources for financial well-being:

  • 360FinancialLiteracy.org – “360 Degrees of Financial literacy is a national volunteer effort of the nation’s Certified Public Accountants to help Americans understand their personal finances and develop money management skills.  It focuses on financial education as a lifelong endeavor—from children learning about the value of money to adults reaching a secure retirement.”
  • Banking (Notable Financial Institutions and Merchants)
  • Cash Advances – Comparison Selection Review – Read our full report
  • Charitable Giving – Resources and Reviews of Organizations
  • CNN – Money
  • Credit.com
  • Credit Monitoring and Reporting (see Identity Protection below)
  • Debt Management and Consolidation Resources
  • FeedThePig.org – “Here, you’ll find fun tools, a quiz, tons of tips and other resources. They will all help you think through your spending and saving habits, identify ways you can start saving and commit to making changes that will reduce your debt and grow your savings.”
  • Free Planet
    • CreativeCommons.org – “Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry.”
    • Freecycle.org - ”Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.”
    • Free Music – “A list of free music resources”
  • Geezeo – Online community and social networking based on people’s similarities and interests in investing, giving, and planning.
  • Global Marketplace Democracy – Ethical Green Shopping and Buying – “As individual citizens, it’s difficult to complete with large corporations for the loyalty of our political representatives. However, by choosing to spend money on ethical products, services, companies, manufacturers, organization, and vendors, you can powerfully determine what kind of world we live in.”
  • Google – Finance
  • Green Century – Invest and help preserve the planet, so you have a future in which to enjoy your investments. (20030812tu)
  • Identity Protection. Service providers are listed below. Read the Federal Trade Commission Credit Monitoring and Identity Theft Document for more information.
  • Investing and Saving Money – Tools and Resources
  • Loans
    • DirectLendingSolutions.com – “Direct Lending Solutions is located in Southlake Texas and was founded in August of 2004. We try to help educate consumers about various consumer-credit issues, consumer threats, the variety of finance programs available to them. Among some of the topics discussed are mortgage/refinancing programs, credit cards, identity theft protection and recovery, divorce-debt concerns, student loan repayment, bankruptcy rules/regulations, and many other consumer-credit issues. Our staff writers have over 10 years of professional research/writing experience, compiling comprehensive articles about numerous topics, including consumer credit & finance. We continue researching the ever changing consumer-credit industry. We continue to add information frequently, and occasionally distribute our new articles via our RSS feed. Our articles are always fresh, and unduplicated.”
    • DollarsDirect.com.au – “It’s quick and easy to apply for a payday loan. No paperwork, no faxing required to get a cash advance.”
    • NationalPayday.com – Make any day payday with payday loans from NationalPayday.com where first time customers get their first loan free of any interest fees or service charges. “National Payday understands what it is like to be stuck in a financial bind between paydays. We all know that unexpected expenses can arise at anytime and catch even the most financially responsible person off guard. Throughout our years of experience we have become able to provide fast and secure payday loans when you need them most without the hassle of many other lenders.”
  • Microsoft Money Central
  • Money 101 – an excellent online course
  • Money Magazine
  • My Vesta – Best Resource on the Net! “I submitted a request on Monday, and received a personal call the following day to schedule a telephone consultation. Very impressive.”
  • Payday Loans – Comparison Selection Review – Read our full report.
  • PrivacyGuard.com – “Receive up-to-date credit reports, credit scores and credit monitoring — so you’re always informed. Maintain control over your ID with advanced identity theft protection and fraud support services. Enjoy a range of essential tools and reports that help put the power back into your hands.” Note: For this site to work, Safari users must set Preferences > Security > Accept Cookies to Always.
  • Saving Money (See Investing)
  • Savings Codes, Coupons, Rebates, and More
  • Shopping – Smart Shopping Guidelines
  • SmartyPig.com – An online finance social networking community offering tools for budgeting and money savings. From the Why SmartyPig page: “Everyone knows they should eat right and exercise. So why doesn’t everyone do it? Answer: Instant gratification. The cheeseburger looks better than the salad. Extra winks in the morning or watching TV is easier than going for a jog. Same goes for your financial habits: It’s easier to charge the things you want on a high-interest credit card than to save up. (At least until the bills come, with the average family carrying more than $9,000 in debt.) Since May of 1985, when the average U.S. consumer set aside more than 11% of his or her disposable income, saving money has been taking a nosedive, leading up to 2005 and 2006 when we actually spent more than we saved. We’re that out of control! Things simply have to change.” Watch the SmartyPig video news story on KCCI.
  • Socially Responsible Investing
  • The Money Page – investing and banking
  • Religious Financial Advice
  • Smart Money Magazine
  • Spending – Smart Shopping Guidelines
  • The Truth About Credit
  • USA Today – Money
  • Wesabe.com
  • Yahoo – Finance
Featured Articles. Below are some featured articles.
  • The Reason You’re Broke by Liz Pulliam Weston. “If you’re constantly broke and can’t figure out why, the answer may be sitting in your driveway. Americans are spending more on their vehicles than ever before — more than $8,000 a year on average — and it’s driving some to the breaking point. Credit counselor Bill Thompson of Jacksonville, Fla., estimates that one out of every four clients his agency sees has overspent — sometimes dramatically — on a car. ‘They may be spending 15% to 20% of their (take-home) pay on just the car payment,’ said Thompson, who supervises credit counseling for the nonprofit Family Foundations, ‘and that doesn’t include insurance, gas, maintenance and all the other costs of owning a vehicle.’ And sometimes there’s more than one whopping payment. Sandra McGeary, a counselor at Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Western Pennsylvania, says she regularly sees middle-class families struggling with two payments in the $400 to $500 range. The burdens are so big that it doesn’t take a major disaster, like a job loss, to send them over the edge.” Read more…

Video. Below is a cute Saturday Night Live Skit about not buying things we don’t need.

* * *

Choose Your Advertising. The topical advertising links below are provided by Google AdSense. In providing these links, we give our site visitors the option to view advertising or not. We don’t necessarily endorse the advertisers generated by these links, but they are supposed to be context relevant and for that reason you might find them helpful. These links will take you away from our site if you don’t right click and choose to open them in a new window or tab. We’re currently experimenting with this form of advertising. Let us know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. In particular, if you find advertisers listed here that are offensive or misleading, contact us and we’ll have them blocked. Our filtering of ads ensures you get the most useful advertising possible. Click on a topical link below to view a page of ads related to that topic.