Be our next success story.
Last year alone, more than 8,000 CESI clients became debt-free. You could be our next success story.
Planning & Saving
Over the past 40 years, savings rates in the United States have declined significantly. The old rule of thumb was to save at least 10% of your salary into a “rainy day” fund. Now at the outset of the 21st century even this number is decreasing. Americans are saving, on average, less than 2% of their incomes and personal debt levels have increased dramatically. Has our world changed or have we?
In this section
The Basics
Whether it’s an auto loan, a student loan, a mortgage, or even unmanageable balances on credit cards, store cards or personal loans, a large percentage of people owe some amount of debt. When these debt amounts add up and you are not able to make your payments, that’s when problems occur. As an educational non-profit company, CESI provides free money management tips on how to handle your credit and debt responsibilities.
Like most life skills, money management techniques are something that need to be taught. Learning money management tips will not only help you get out of debt, but will also help you make wise financial decisions for yourself and your family in the future.
Budgeting & Saving
Money Management
One of the first money management techniques we teach is to live within your means. To do this, it helps to calculate your debt to income ratio.
Your debt to income ratio is equal to your monthly debt payments divided by your monthly income. First, determine how much you spend each month on debt. This includes all of your expenses.
Investing
9 Quick Investing Tips
You do not need a lot of money for investment; even a small amount invested on regular basis can return handsome rewards over the long term. However, in order to ensure good returns, you need to plan and develop a strategy. Strategizing will help you to get the maximum benefits of investing with limited resources.
Housing & Real Estate
Keeping Your Home: Forebearance not foreclosure
There is a growing fear among consumers that the so called housing bubble is about to burst with all sorts of dire consequences for homeowners.
No less an authority on family finances than the returning Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, recently spoke out saying “in some markets home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels.” He also brought our attention to a worrisome relationship between home prices and consumer spending. His analysis highlighted the growth of borrowing against home equity and spending.
In 1994 borrowing against home equity accounted for only one percent of consumer disposable income. Ten years later that figure had grown to seven percent.
Retirement
Planning for Retirement
Retirement planning is essential to pursue your interests and enjoy life after bidding goodbye to your office. You may want to spend your time by traveling around the globe or to simply unwind from years of stress. Just as you made plans for your career after college, make plans for your retired life as well.
With proper planning you can make retirement a golden phase of your life, but it all depends on the way you plan to put together your nest egg or retirement fund. Right from the time you start earning, it is important to ask yourself, ‘At what age can I retire? and ‘Am I on the right track to retire at the age I want to? The answers to these questions will help you to manage your money and work out a strategy to build sufficient funds for a comfortable income in your retired life.
Car & Automobile
Do You Really Need A New Car?
Major auto makers are turning up the volume on pitches to promote the idea that now is a golden time to acquire a new car. The most recent one I have heard and read is that they are pricing cars at an “employee benefit” level. Supposedly they are selling them to consumers at a price previously available only to their employees.
Some dealers are claiming to sell them to you exactly what they paid for them! While few consumers are naïve enough to believe claims of that sort, the facts remain that many are tempted and new car sales are very strong. Here are some points to keep in mind if you are thinking about buying now.
Wear Out Your Old Car Until the Loan is Paid Off
Latest information shows that many new car buyers are trading before the loan on their present car is paid off. Sales in 2005 show that 36 percent of trade-ins still had payments due on them. When you trade-in a car that still has time to run on the loan or lease you are in what the auto industry calls “negative equity.” The longer you own your car, the more you are getting out of it. The average amount of outstanding loan balance on the 36 percent of trade-ins so far this year is $3,600. Contributing to this situation are the 8 year loans some dealers are giving on a car, mot people don’t keep a car for eight years, five or six years is the average. This argues for you to keep your current car until all loan payments are made so you do not have to carry a negative equity to your new car loan.
College & Education
4 Ways To Finance College
Ah, May. The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, and a whole new crop of high school seniors will throw their graduation caps in the air to the tune of “Pomp and Circumstance”. So, what’s the CESI? For many of these young adults, they’ll head off to college in a few months. And their parents are probably pulling their hair out worrying about how to pay for it. Here we discuss a few of the many options for college financial assistance, and the differences between them.
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