Do you remember when your parents gave you your first piggy-bank and told you to save for a “rainy day”? I must have been 6 or 7 years old at the time. And I still can remember what a good feeling it was when I had more money at the end of the week than at the beginning.

I was always proud of myself when saved a bit of my pocket-money rather than spend it. But unfortunately, as we grow older, the drive to saving money gets less and less. This is due to several reasons:

For one, our needs do get bigger, especially when we start our own family and have kids. Unless you are extremely disciplined by nature, there won't be much money left at the end of the month to be put into your “Rainy Day Fund”...

Secondly, the society we live in these days teaches us “instant gratification” rather than “save for a while and then get what you want” - and with all those nice “BUY NOW, PAY LATER”-offers that we all get in everyday, it is very easy to fall into the trap.

But, there is an old saying which still holds truth: hope for the best, but plan for the worst. No matter how careful we are, there's always the chance that things will go wrong in an expensive way: your car breaks down, your roof starts leaking, or your company "restructures" you out of a job.

Therefore, even in our instant-gratification society, a “rainy-day-fund” IS NOT wasted money. It is in fact money well spent. And if you don't need it because things keep going well for you: EVEN BETTER STILL...

There are three things you need to know about rainy day funds: how much to save, how to save, and where to save.

When calculating the amount of money you need to put aside for your rainy-day-fund, there are a few expenses to consider:

• housing expenses (e.g. rent, mortgage payments, maintenance, heating-bills, necessary insurances etc.)
  
  
• food expenses
  
  
• transportation (car / public transport etc.)
  
  
• old debt
  
  

Those are your basic expenses – anything else does not need to be taken into the account for your emergency fund. As a general rule, you should aim to put enough money to one side to be able to cover your expenses for three months. And be under no illusion, once you have done all your calculations, it will still be a lot of money you are looking at. But don't panic – you don't need to stop eating just to tank up your emergency fund. Even a few hundred dollars can help you get through most emergencies, such as an unplanned car-repair or a medical bill. Over time you can gradually increase your savings to cover even a long-term lay-off.

Build your savings over time

Okay, so you have a few hundred dollars in the bank. How do you grow that to a few thousand? There's really no trick: you just spend a little less than you make every month, and put the money aside so you don't spend it. Small changes can make a big difference over time.

Here are some suggestions on how to lower your expenses so you can save more:

• Review your mobile phone plan to make sure you're not overpaying for data, text messages or long distance
  
  
• Pay your credit card bill in full every month so you don't have interest charges
  
  
• Switch to a cash-back rewards credit card, and save the money you get back
  
  
• Try working out a monthly budget and stick to it
  
  
• If possible, try to put a fixed amount aside every month (even a small amount like 10 to 20 dollars a month). Remember: The important thing here is to GET STARTED. Once you have taken this step, you are on the right track...Should you have more money left over at the end of the month, leave half of the extra-money in your bank-account (for unforeseen expenses) and put half into your rainy-day-fund.
  

At the end of every month, add up what you've saved. Success will motivate you to save even more. And the longer you stick to your new financial policy, the more money you will have in your emergency-fund. Should you be lucky without any emergencies or “rainy days”, just leave the money in your account – AND ENJOY YOUR RETIREMENT.

1. 1) Most telephone sales calls are made by legitimate businesses offering legitimate products or services.
2. But wherever honest firms search for new customers, swindlers will be looking as well. Phone fraud is a multi-billion dollar business that involves selling everything from bad or non-existent investments to the peddling of misrepresented products and services. Everyone who has a phone is a prospect; whether you become a victim in the end is largely up to you.

2) There is no way to positively determine whether a sales call is on the up and up simply by talking with someone on the phone.
No matter what questions you ask or how many you ask, skilled swindlers usually have answers BEFORE the question is asked. That is why sales calls from people or organizations that are unknown to you should always be checked out before you actually buy or invest. Legitimate callers have nothing to hide.

3) Phone swindlers are likely to know more about you than you know about them.
Depending on where they got your name from in the first place, they may know your age and income, health and hobbies, occupation and marital status, education, the home you live in, what magazines you read, and whether you've bought by phone in the past. Even if your name came from the phone book, telephone con-men (and women) assume that, like most people, you would be interested in having more income, that you're receptive to a bargain, that you are basically sympathetic to people in need, and that you are reluctant to be discourteous to someone on the phone. As admirable as such characteristics may be, they help make the swindler's job easier. Swindlers also exploit less admirable characteristics, such as pure greed.

4) Fraudulent sales callers have one thing in common: They are skilled liars and experts at verbal camouflage.
Their success depends on it. Many are coached to "say whatever it takes" by operators of the "boiler-rooms" where they work at rows of phone desks making hundreds of repetitious calls, hour after hour. The first words uttered by most victims of phone fraud are, "the caller sounded so believable..."

5) Perpetrators of phone fraud are extremely good at sounding as though they represent legitimate businesses.
They offer investments, sell subscriptions, provide products for homes and offices, promote travel and vacation plans, describe employment opportunities, solicit donations, and the list goes on. Never assume you'll "know a phone scare when you hear one." Even if you've read lists of the kinds of schemes most commonly practiced, innovative swindlers constantly devise new ones. The problem there is that new schemes are thought out on a daily basis worldwide. If a figure could be put on the actual number of fraud-schemes around, it would be a horrendously high one. Plus the “training” those people get is being “perfected” at a similar rate to the invention of new schemes – so guess YOUR chances against them...

6) The motto of phone swindlers is, "just give us a few good 'mooches,'" one of the terms they use to describe their victims.
Notwithstanding that most victims are otherwise intelligent and prudent people, even boiler-room operators express astonishment at how many people "seem to keep their checkbooks by the telephone!" Sadly, some families part with savings they worked years to accumulate on the basis of little more than a 15-minute phone conversation - less time than they would spend considering the purchase of a household appliance are the actual choosing of one.

7) The person who "initiates" the phone call may be you.
It's not uncommon for phone crooks to use direct mailings and advertise in reputable publications to encourage prospects to make the initial contact. It is another way swindlers imitate  the perfectly acceptable marketing practices of legitimate businesses. Thus, just because you may have written or phoned for "additional information" about an investment, product, or service does not mean you should be any less cautious about buying by phone from someone you don't know.
Always remember the old rule: If something sounds too good to be true, it USUALLY IS.

8) Victims of phone fraud seldom get their money back – or, at best, no more than a few cents on the dollar.

Despite efforts of law enforcement and regulatory agencies to provide what help they can to victims, swindlers generally do the same thing other people do when they get money: they spend it! The other problem is that, in most occasions, those people are virtually impossible to trace: A postbox here, a hired part-time secretary there (who probably does not even know who she works for) and so on. Those kinds of people have kept hundreds of lawyers busy for god knows how long. Apart from using fraudulent business-practises, they are also banking on the fact that, at some stage, you might run out of money to pay your lawyer – or the actual sum involved just is not worth spending a fortune on prosecutions.

MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND... Just think about it ladies, what would our life be like without a good session of "retail therapy" every so often? The only downside to this is that we have to make the money first before we spend it - at least we all (should have) learned that during and after the worldwide financial crisis. Never before was it so obvious that the world was spending more than it could possibly afford. Or, as other people might ask, how much of the money that was "lost" then has really existed (or really represented any real value)?
Therefore, we all have to ask ourselves how we can best use our money to make ends meet or where we can make a bit extra so that we can afford the things we like more easily without having to cut back elsewhere.
Within this section of our website, we will look at the different angles of finances, from the making of it over good financial planning to clever spending.