Teach Your Family Solid Personal Finance

With the world economy in a state of unrest and tight living becoming a far more common experience for society, teaching your family solid personal finance values is a must.  It may sound silly to tell your five year old that they should put those pennies they found on the sidewalk in a jar, but in truth you are helping to install excellent values in your child.

Why is it Important to Teach Your Children Early?

Core values should always begin early for the next generation.  The values you instill in your children at an early age are the ones that hold true the longest.  By teaching your children to save from an early age, you are cementing a concept within them that savings is smart.  Praising them for every penny placed in a savings jar is a great way to get this idea started.

How Can You Make Saving Fun?

Where children, especially younger ones, are concerned, you cannot take the standard approach to teaching proper personal finance.  The usual approach, complete with a lecture on how not saving can cause trouble later on, is far more suited to putting them to sleep than it is to exciting their minds.

This fact can bring about a lot of difficulty when choosing methods for instructing your family about savings and responsible spending.  Here we will list and discuss a few ideas you can implement into your daily routine that will help to encourage them to learn this very important life lesson.

·         Planned Family Events

By planning out fun family events you open up the opportunity to involve the entire family in a savings plan.  Explain the cost of the event in the simplest terms possible.  After doing this, ask if anyone can think of ways to save money for the event.  Takes notes on all suggestions and as a family, pick the ideas that are best suited to you.

·         Savings Contests

Encourage each of your family members to save all of their change for a week.  At the end of the week, each person can count how much they have saved.  The person with the most savings is given the right to choose an activity for the family to participate in that weekend, be it going to a movie, having dinner at a buffet, or even just having a cook out in the back yard.

·         Pick One Item to Purchase

In this activity, each family is allowed to choose one item to purchase.  They must be given a price limit, such as twenty dollars, which would easily cover the cost of the average flashy toy in the store.  They are given a set period of time to save money for this item, with an agreement made that they must save at least half of the cost for the item within that time.  This activity promotes not only saving, but also negotiation, deadline planning, and personal responsibility.

By employing just a few simple, yet fun activities to your routine, you will open up the stage for your family to learn excellent lessons about personal finance, teamwork, negotiation, and family togetherness.  This will also set the framework for further lessons over time, eventually leading to a generation well-prepared to handle the personal finance challenges that life can bring.

Author’s Bio: Valerie Anne B. Reyes is a freelance writer. She writes guest posts on personal finance websites, particularly those dealing with credit card consolidation, mortgage, debt settlement and debt reduction.

Equity Release: The Way to a Carefree Retired Life

Equity release plans were introduced in 1965. In the beginning they were unregulated and so gained a lot of bad-press. As a result, many approached the idea with caution. But over the years, the situation has changed and Equity release has become the answer to the question of after-retirement expenses for innumerable property owners. Those who have been working and taking care of their own expenses most of their lives do not like the idea of being dependent on another person for financial assistance after retirement. So they prefer to release the equity on their home. These schemes allow them to get a certain amount of money in exchange of their home. The equity release providers take over the home after the beneficiary(s)’ death and auction it to regain their money. That way they can manage all their expenses without compromising on their standard of living. Also, the amount that they receive is tax-free. These schemes also allow you to clear any remaining loan repayments.

What are the Types?

Equity release schemes are primarily of two types—- life time mortgages and home reversion plan. In lifetime mortgages or reserve mortgages, the home-owner receives a certain amount of money either in one down-payment or in monthly installments and the house will be taken over by the financial institution after their demise. But the value of the inheritance will reduce significantly. In equity release mortgage the property is mortgaged to the lender of the money.
In the home reversion plan, you can sell off your property or a part of it to the financial institution. In return you get to live there rent-free for the rest of your life.

Get a fair deal

It is not always easy for us to know the exact value of our house. So there is a chance that we might get cheated. So you should always calculate the equity release mortgage amount through an equity release calculator. These calculators are provided by the equity release providers and also on the Internet. All you have to do is provide them with a few basic information and they will give you a rough estimate. But you should also have an idea about the amount which is not too high or too low. Also use more than one calculator to get a more accurate amount. But make sure that all the information that you feed it is authentic. Wrong information can only return wrong results in site.