Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. --Cicely Tyson One of the cardinal rules about Mastering Money is that our income MUST be greater than our outgo. In simple words, spend less than you earn. The way to initiate is to keep track of every cent that comes into or goes out of our life. There are many ways to do this, and so there is a method that will suit almost everyone: Personally, I keep receipts of every purchase I make in my wallet. At the end of the day, when I come home, I transfer the receipts into a folder I have created for expenses for that month. For those items that I don t get a receipt for, I write down the expense on a small slip of paper and put that in my wallet. At the end of the month, I add up all expenses in the folder for that month, under the appropriate categories. Now I know exactly where my money is going. If...

If you get up day after day to work long, long hours at a job and still find you can barely pay your bills at the end of the month, don t feel like you re the only one. New statistics from the US Census show literally millions and millions of Americans are struggling through the same experience. While many of us are working longer more hectic days than at any time in decades, we re still earning about the same pay. Meanwhile, the cost of everything from gas to insurance is going through the roof. No wonder you don t see that many people smiling any more - there s not that much to smile about. That is, unless you own your own home business. A huge number of Americans are now pulling down a fine part-time or full-time income from one or more businesses they run from home. Often the home business entrepreneurs make money from a skill they learned on the job or in the military, or...

Estimated charitable giving reached a record high in the United States with contributions totaling over 248 billion, according to a Giving USA report. Individual giving represents the single largest source of donations, accounting for three-quarters of the total charitable contributions made. Though cash and checks re-main the most common method of donation, the use of credit and debit cards for charitable donations is growing. This growth is spurred by the increased use of the Internet and e-mail for solicitations and donations, a new generation of donors who have a preference for electronic payments, as well as recently passed charitable tax reforms that will soon require Americans to keep better record of their donations in order to claim them as a tax deduction. Giving Made Easier Leveraging credit and debit cards can help simplify the process of giving and receiving...