In the economic climate that we live in today, most of us can barely survive with the amount we earn at the end of every month from our jobs or let alone if we run our own business, there is never quite enough for us to expand our business or service our debts.

During the last couple of years as I entered into the business world, I was told that it is best to make money by using someone else’s money but I never quite understood this. It took me some time to get my head around this but over the years it started to make sense to me. It is best if you have access to finance to start up a business or project, by borrowing and using someone else’s money rather than plough in your own cash that you have saved up. Not many people would agree with this line of thinking but is had boded well for many successful businesses today.

But not all of us are able or lucky enough to be able to borrow or use someone else’s money. It has been rather difficult to access loans or lines of credit in today’s business environment. But luckily there are financial institutions out there that are still able to offer us with cheap loans. One just has to look hard enough and you will be able to find them.

And the beauty of such companies that do offer cheap loans is that you do not need to go see them physically and have an hour long meeting with the manager to approve your loan, but they have made the process of acquiring a loan to be very simple! We live in the world of technology today and so we can do almost everything online. Now you are able to get instant online loans by simply visiting a website and filling in a form with your details for your application and your application will be approved there and there. How great is that as opposed to what we were used to years ago?

So going forward we should not be scared or put off from applying from loans if there are now quicker and simpler ways of obtaining loans online.

Building credit and establishing a good credit history is essential to enabling you to get adequate financing for a car, and a house. There are times though that people may have difficulty in either establishing a credit history or creating a good one. However there is a solution to this dilemma and that solution are prepaid credit cards. Prepaid cards allow users to lend themselves money and pay their bills on time thus putting together a sound credit rating. Companies such as AccountNow, Rushcard and Netspend provide this opportunity to card users.

Prepaid cards provide many advantages. First prepaid cards are like checking accounts. They are insured and allow you to safely and securely store your money. Second, they allow you to keep your spending limited unlike credit cards so you are at less risk to overextending yourself financially. Next prepaid cards save you money by allowing you to avoid late fees, finance charges and overdraft fees. Lastly everyone qualifies and it helps you build credit.

AccountNow prepaid credit cards offer users to build their credit history by allowing them to pay bills online and on time to establish creditworthiness. AccountNow reports your payment history to the credit bureaus.

Rushcard provides benefits such as allowing users to avoid overdrafts on their accounts and avoid fees. It also allows users to prevent themselves from getting into high interest debt from credit cards.

The third prepaid card company is Netspend. Netspend enables people to receive online bill payment and earn 5% APY on their savings.

All of these companies allow users and individuals to pay bills online and on time, avoid high interest rates, avoid debt accumulation and build a good and solid credit history without any difficulty.

We all dream about winning the lotto or by some miracle seeing six extra zeros added to our bank account one day. Now in all reality the chances of someone just getting a million rand are very slim unless you work hard for it or you come up with a brand new idea that will make you a million rand just like that. The question I would like to pose today is, “If you do just get a million rand extra from somewhere, what can you actually do with it?” Read the rest of this entry »

I was walking through a mall in Cape Town yesterday and 90% of the shops had a “SALE” sign on their windows or doors. It really was no surprise seeing most of the shops having sale signs as January is usually the slowest month for retailers as consumers are very reluctant to buy due to lack of disposable income. So I decided to enter one of the clothing retail shops which displayed a sale sign. I was expecting a small section of the store to be on sale but to my amazement, every single product in the shop was on sale! Then I thought to myself that maybe they have just reduced the prices by a small fraction but after browsing through their clothes, I could see that some of the products were cut down by as much as 50%. Now this was a real sale. Read the rest of this entry »

Many of us have credit cards today, ranging from your entry level cards, to Gold cards and to Platinum cards but today I came across the Amex Black credit card which is supposed to be the top of the range credit card in the world today. They say your world changes when you are in possession of this card so I decided to take a closer look at it and let you know of my findings. Read the rest of this entry »

As we know of, we have been accustomed to several currency notes in South Africa, the R10, R20, R50, R100 and R200 notes. But there now seems to be a new dominant ‘note’ in the South Africa economy today and it is the credit card. The beauty of this ‘note’ is you can use it to make your purchases and the seller will not keep it, unlike when you give them a R100 note, instead they will gladly swipe it through a machine, make you sign a slip and give it back to you. Read the rest of this entry »

Whilst shopping online recently, I thought too myself, “when I am entering my credit card details they ask to enter my name as it appears on the card, my credit card number, the 3 digit CVV number on the back of the card, the cards expiry date and if my card is VISA or Mastercard.” Once all that is entered I have basically just shopped online.

Then I thought to myself, do I physically need to have a credit card to be able to shop online? And the answer was no. When I’m shopping online, no one is asking to see my credit card or I do not have to swipe it through some machine, all that is required is the information on the front and back of the credit. This then got me thinking that, I could easily have someone else’s credit card information and be able to shop online. The security is lacking when it comes to this aspect of shopping online. Read the rest of this entry »