Off late there has been a debate about whether to move your money to a small bank or not. People have started to boycott big banks due to their poor services and move money to a small bank.

The reason behind moving your money is that the big banks don’t care about people, small businesses, and community. Smaller, community banks are supposed to be more responsible and personal because you know the bankers personally. The organizers believe that a mass movement to smaller banks will force the big banks to be more responsible.

If you are also thinking about moving your money to a nearby small bank, then it is advised do some research before stepping further as there are some factors in favor and not in favor of this.

Favorable Factors:

Control: The biggest advantage of moving your money is the feeling of control over the situation that you’ll receive from sticking to a small bank.

Support to Small Business: A small bank nearby, supports local organizations and lends to small businesses. Being in a small community, they become a part of the community.

Personalized Services: A bank with just a few branches and clients provide better personalized service when you have some problem related to your accounts. Moreover they charge less fees for their services.

Unfavorable Factors:

Inconvenience: Local banks have a limited number of ATMs that may also be far from the place where you work or live.

Over-leveraging: Big banks are bailed out for excessive leverage but smaller banks fail in much higher numbers because they over-leverage and make risky loans.

Higher Risk: Most of the community banks are failure prone. Before placing your money in a small bank, you should verify its ratings.

The decision about moving your money depends totally on you. You have to decide whether switching to a smaller bank is right for you and your financial habits.

The widespread reach of affordable Internet enables mobile phones have increasingly enabled the consumers to have a direct access to the Internet. The dramatic fall in the price of mobile devices and falling prices of data services available on a prepaid basis are the main reasons behind it. These two are also responsible for the effectively Internet access via mobile in all developed and developing countries. The Internet enabled mobile phones are to be the basic handsets of tomorrow.

Mobile financial services are very likely to become the next big thing that will attract millions of consumers all over the world. There are three kinds of mobile financial services:

Mobile Banking: It enables customers with existing bank accounts to get connected to their bank or financial institution over the mobile network. They can use standard banking services such as bank account management (check balance, view transactions, etc.), credit / debit card management with it.

Mobile Payment: Enables customers to make credit card payments and bill payments any time anywhere, from either a bank account or a mobile wallet.

Mobile Money Transfer: Transferring Money via international or national remittance hubs from and/or to a real bank account or a mobile wallet. It is is a peer to peer form of mobile payment mechanism which is most successful among other kinds of mobile transactions.

As the use of Internet is expanding day by day, consumers are becoming more comfortable with using their handsets for increasingly sophisticated purposes, which also leads towards adoption of electronic channels for financial services. Today’s successful payment services have been built using certain mobile-specific channels that even basic handsets could support. Moreover access to the Internet will enable providers to offer solutions that do not depend on the security solutions offered using the SIM card in the phone. The growth of the mobile Internet may cause a boom in a new generation of branch less banking providers, raising substantial questions about risks to consumers, as well as the future shape of the competitive landscape.

It is estimated that there will be more and more people within the reach of wireless communications in next few years. Devices like mobile phones, which require less energy than PCs and ATMs and which can be recharged by windup or solar power, would play an increasingly important part in mobile finance.

Being different to each other, we all have different opinions, goals and priorities, and different attitudes to issues like finance. Due to this, our opinions, circumstances, goals and priorities continue to change throughout our lives. Financial planning, is also something that we can not do once. Financial planning needs a regular review of our financial position and goals.

Financial planning Stage1: This stage is about tracking where you are now. What is your income, your assets, debts and expenditure? How stable is your income? Does it remain constant, or is it dependent on factors beyond your control? And what about prospects, are you in an occupation where you can reasonably expect your income to increase year on year?

Financial Planning Stage 2: The next stage is about identifying your goals which depend upon your age, circumstances and individual tastes. For example, the young will probably be concerned with purchasing their first home, the early middle-aged with paying their kids college fees, and the late middle-aged with providing sufficient retirement income.

Goals: Goals exist within different time frames. These can be short term that might be to save enough for next year’s vacation, a medium term which may be to pay off your mortgage and the longest term one may be building a decent pension fund.

Step1) Identify and write down your financial goals.

Step 2): Break each financial goal down into several short-term (less than 1 year), medium-term (1 to 3 years) and long-term (5 years or more) goals.

Step 3): Learn through a money magazine, or a book, or surf the Internet, for how to take wise decisions that will increase your net worth many times over. Then identify small, measurable steps you can take to achieve these goals, and put this action plan to work.

Step 4): Evaluate your progress by reviewing your monthly, quarterly, or at any other interval progress to determine if your program is working. If you’re not making satisfactory progress on a particular goal, re-evaluate your approach and make changes as necessary.

Finances can be improved by by saving money and investing carefully without any specific targets but it is a good idea to have some general goals.

Fuel being the non renewable source of energy needs to be saved for future. Imagine how much would it cost after some years if we keep on wasting it like this. Apart from saving it or our future use, we also need to save it reduce our petrol bills and manage expenses. The best way is to walk more or talk public transport . Yet even, sometimes we need to drive by our personal vehicles. Then, what to do?

For this you need to to follow or try at least these things:

Improve your vehicle’s efficiency:

Keep your tyres correctly inflated and get correct amount of pressure in tyres as low pressure needs more fuel.

Clear out junk from the boot to make it lighter in weight and reduce less effort to speed up.

Turn on air conditioner only when required otherwise turn it off to save a large amount of fuel

Fill only the adequate amount of fuel.

Drive smoothly and efficiently:

Accelerate slowly to stay under 3,000 revs. Remember ‘the harder you press accelerator, the more fuel you spend.’

Always apply the correct gear.

Let your car slow down naturally to use its stored momentum rather than using the brakes always

Take care while filling up the fuel:

Do not overfill the fuel tank so much that petrol nozzle ‘clunks’.

Always refill at least fifty miles before the tank is empty.

Fill up at night when it’s cold and you get some extra bit of fuel.

Pay Wisely:

Always try to pay with a cashback/fuel credit card to get some of your outlay back.

Check out for the new petrol schemes and promotions regularly to get worth out of a single penny.