A Prosperous and Happy New Year Ahead of Us

It’s the first day of the year 2009 and there are lots of speculations about the year ahead, especially about the economy. It’s really easy to get confused to what people predict for this year but for your personal finances, it’s really only you who can make things happen for you, all for the better. Here are some things that I plan or continue to do this year 2009 and this may also help you formulate your own.

Sell old stuff that I don’t need. Doing this will free your apartment of clutter and could generate some amount of cash that could go directly to your savings, or can be used to buy new useful stuff.

Try to cut on cellphone expenditures. For prepaid users, set a limit to your prepaid load usage for the month and buy 300 or 500 call cards because they contain free texts. For me, getting a postpaid plan will only incur unnecessary expenses, and I’d rather take advantage of unlimited texting promos and call promos.

Put up a home based business. Home-based businesses, which simply refer to work that could be done in the comfort of home, are continuously increasing in popularity. Home business, of course, doesn't have to be confined to homemakers. It could be a sideline while doing a day job and it don’t necessarily need a large capital to start, but only creativity, hard work and a lot of “diskarte”.

Learn something new. What you may learn can also be a good business idea as well. You can try to read and surf online or attend free seminars.

Save and save. And that’s the bottom line. Other than your payroll ATM account, open a separate passbook savings account. I think an ATM account will not be a good savings account, because of access to withdraw cash anytime from an ATM machine. Deduct a fixed amount from your pay every time as if you are paying for something, and deposit it directly to your savings account.

Woohoo! May we all have a prosperous and happy new year ahead of us!