Why You Should Read Your Credit Card Terms and Conditions Carefully

A credit card is a plastic card which helps to buy merchandise on credit and pay for them later on. Credit cards come with enormous benefits like welcome gifts, reward points, cashback etc. 

 You may know all of the advantages the Credit card offers, however you most likely don't know everything about the terms and conditions of credit cards. 

While you may have avoided the information boxes when you applied, you'll get a cardholder agreement after the approval of your credit card application.

In case you are among those who don't read their card's terms and conditions and throw it in the junk without understanding it, you're not the only one. 

This is a major error. A great deal of helpful information is found into the cardholder terms and conditions You must read it carefully before applying for the card. 

Given below points will help you in understanding why you should read your credit card terms and conditions carefully:

Annual Interest Rates

If you always pay all your credit card outstanding bill before the due date and never withdraw cash using a credit card, then interest rates are not that important. But imagine a situation where you are unable to pay your credit card bill on time due to any reason like a medical emergency, you lose your job or any other reason. 




In such a situation interest will be applicable on your credit card outstanding if it is paid after the grace period. So, reading your credit card terms and conditions is important, as it includes details relating to the interest rate applicable.

Grace Period

Grace period refers to the time period between the end date of the billing cycle and your bill due date. During this period, you have to pay all your dues, you will not incur any interest or late payment charges during this period. 

Different cards come with a different grace period. Usually, it is between 18-21 days. So, it's better to read your credit card terms and conditions to avoid any confusion at a later stage.

Minimum Payment

Minimum payment is the amount you pay when don't have sufficient funds to pay the entire credit card bill. Paying minimum amount helps in keeping your credit score unaffected. Read about the minimum amount you are required to pay.

Joining Fees and Annual Fees

There are many credit cards which come with nil joining fees. But after the first year, you are charged an annual fee on it. Reading about different fees and charges applicable is very important. Credit card terms and conditions contain all the required information relating to it.

Welcome Bonus and Reward Points

Credit card issuers offer a host of benefits to all its customers like welcome gifts and bonuses. Then you earn reward points on all your purchases made using a credit card. 

But at a times you can redeem those points only after a fixed minimum level of spending and at select partner stores only. Therefore, reading terms and conditions is important to know the actual benefits attached to the credit card.

Hence, always read your credit card terms and conditions before selecting a card to know the interest rate, annual fees and other charges applicable. Then select a card as per your requirements. You can read terms and conditions, and then apply for a credit card through different online aggregators.

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How to Manage Your Investment Income With FD for Senior Citizens

Most people’s lives are spent in working their days off to save money for the future. However, as the future comes near they are faced with an important question – how to manage all the income coming from their lifelong investments? 

Another important question that arises in their minds is – do we have enough money which would be able to give a decent amount of returns? Also, as they age, there is a certain feeling of independence that becomes stronger as well. 

As we grow, our financial situation changes and may or may not worry us – depending on the way in which your money is invested. 

However, but the savings and returns you have accumulated can grow by investing in investment instruments including FD for senior citizens, special saving schemes, mutual funds etc. Before investing your income, keep some of these tips in mind:

Come up with an expenditure plan for yourself and then plan a pay-out strategy which would offer a safe option to keep your funds flowing.

Diversification of the investment income is extremely important, so that you can withdraw liquid cash if any emergency or unexpected circumstances arise.

Regularly reviewing and revising these diversified investments is an important pre-requisite to keep a check on the amount of returns you are earning.

Here are some ways in which you can manage the income from your investments:

Saving Schemes

There are many investment schemes for senior citizens like Senior Citizen Saving Scheme (SCSS), Post Office Monthly Income Scheme (POMIS), Varishtha Pension Bima Yojana (VPBY), The Pradhan Mantri Vaya Vandana Yojana (PNVVY), Rashtriya Vayoshri Yoajana (RVY) that offer steady monthly income to senior citizens. 

All your money from provident funds, small savings accounts and employee provident fund can be transferred to these schemes. POMIS offers a fully taxable interest rate of 7.8% per year which can either be invested by a single person or in joint ownership. 




The capitals for both types is Rs. 4.5 Lakh and Rs. 9 Lakh respectively. SCSS is another great investment for senior citizens whose maximum duration is 5 years with an annual interest rate of 8.6% per annum – extendable up to 3 years once matured.

Fixed Deposits

Fixed Deposits for senior citizens offered by many banks and companies provide them the liquidity of easily available funds whenever they want to withdraw money. This advantage of having a FD for senior citizen helps them to invest in various different FDs, instead of parking all their funds in just one. 

Companies offer an interest rate of 8.75% - higher than the rate provided by banks. The tenor of these FDs ranges from anywhere between 12 months to 5 years divided in cumulative and non-cumulative interest rates. 

The cumulative interest rates for a period of 24-35 months at a minimum amount of capital Rs. 25000 is 8.50%, whereas, the non-cumulative interest rates for monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, and yearly range from 8.23%, 8,28%, 8.35%, and 8.50%, respectively.

Investing in Fixed Deposits gives you flexibility of distributing your investments in multiple FDs that you can choose based on tenor or interest rates. 

If you are not sure about the amount of returns or interest you are going to earn with an FD, you can compute it through an FD interest calculator which would show you the exact amount at the maturity and the interest you would be earning. Based on that, you can plan out your investments starting with the short durations and re-investing as they mature.

On a Tight Budget, Are You? Here's How to Rock Your Content Marketing

How do you succeed in content marketing while squeezed for cash? Use the following tips to rock your content strategy without letting your budget slow you down.

Focus on Profitable Content Types

Ideally, you might want to publish content in a variety of formats to appeal to the largest audience possible. However, your tight budget means that you have to be more selective in your activities.

Find out what types of content resonate the most with your website visitors and focus on those to maximize your ROI. To do this, use a combination of analytics and trial and error data. Also, monitor your competitors to see what content formats they use.

As part of the process, calculate the time and money you must spend to create each type of content. When you find a format that consistently gets results that justifies its cost, stick with it. Such a focus will help you avoid wasting your resources while maximizing profitability.

Prioritize Quality Over Quantity

Do you have to publish a certain amount of content during a period of time? Such a practice may keep your website fresh, but it can lead to low-quality, “thin” content that fails to impress your visitors.

As a general rule, quality matters more than quantity. Still, you need to avoid over optimizing your content to control costs. After you reach a minimum quality level, additional efforts will have diminishing returns. 




Your limited budget means that you can’t afford to insist on total perfection. Using the 80/20 standard as a rule of thumb, the majority of your quality will come from a minimal amount of work.

Improve Your Efficiency

You may sometimes feel as though your limited resources will prohibit you from achieving the growth your business deserves. Rather than becoming discouraged, look for ways to do more with what you have.

For instance, you can save a lot of time by grouping similar tasks from multiple projects in batches that you complete in a single sitting. Rather than researching a topic for just one blog post, prepare a couple dozen topics before exiting your research mode.

Other ways to improve efficiency include outsourcing work to freelancers, repurposing outdated content, and optimizing your processes. Also, cloud-based software for time and project management can also help you work smarter rather than harder.

Take a Holistic Approach

Rather than focusing only on online marketing channels, create a wholesome marketing strategy that includes both online and offline tactics. By extending your reach via traditional methods, you can reduce your overall expenditures while increasing your ROI.

Try ordering business cards and passing them out at community events. Also, remember that printed media such as billboards, magazines and newspapers can help you achieve your goals. Other tactics, such as giving free public lectures at libraries and schools cost you nothing while establishing yourself as an industry and community leader.

By incorporating multiple channels in your strategy, you can create a synergy that extends the usefulness of your limited funds. For example, your printed business cards, books and flyers should include your URL and can boost your website traffic.

Utilize Free Content

Content creation takes time and, therefore, it costs money. However, you can find ways to get content for free that can dramatically extend the usefulness of your budget. Start by providing guest-blogging opportunities.

Rather than paying cash for content, you compensate your guest bloggers by giving them access to your audience. On the other hand, they can increase the authority of your brand while exposing it to some of their loyal followers.

To increase your access to free content, publish a page on your website that announces guest-blogging opportunities. Be sure to specify available topics and outline your quality requirements.

Always Deliver Value

You might feel pressured to reduce your quality standards in order to accommodate your small budget. Such an approach may reduce your production costs, but hurt you in other ways. To begin with, poor-quality content may not meet the needs of your shoppers and customers. Additionally, poor content can also damage your page rank in search engine results. 




Instead, if you emphasize quality over quantity, you can create content that meets the real-world needs of your audience. As time passes, people will begin to trust your site and brand to get the information they need.

In the end, your readers will begin to regard your brand as the natural choice when they get ready to buy. So, emphasize quality and see your content marketing budget accomplish more than you ever thought possible.

Build Content Libraries

Rather than discarding your research after using it, archive it on a shared folder on your server. As you build your content library, you will have tons of videos, articles, illustrations, templates and snippets at your fingertips.

After a while, you will have a huge repository of all the factual and creative content that covers all the topics you cover. Rather than designing and creating all your content from scratch, use items from your content library as building blocks.

In other words, you retain the value of your work by extending its usefulness well into the future. Meanwhile, you gain additional cost savings by speeding your content creation processes.

In summary, by taking an intentional approach, you can rock your content marketing operation. While emphasizing creativity, quality and efficiency, you can publish the content you need to grow your business without going broke.

Jasmine Williams covers the good and the bad of today's business and marketing. When she’s not being all serious and busy, she’s usually hunched over a book or dancing in the kitchen, trying hard to maintain rhythm, and delivering some fine cooking (her family says so). Tweet her @JazzyWilliams88

How Much Do Home Care Services Cost Patients?

Home care services can be useful to individuals who need assistance with basic daily activities. It doesn’t matter if an individual is elderly or if they have any kind of medical concern. 

This form of personalized help can do a lot for convenience and ease. People who are considering home care services can get insight by learning about typical expenses for patients.

Typical Home Care Costs

Costs that are associated with home care assistance services typically run the gamut. They usually cost patients anywhere between $18.00 and $20.00 per hour, however. People often compare home care and assisted living costs. 

Patients who have moderate home care requirements often pay less. Patients who require assistance that exceeds 40 hours weekly, though, often have to pay more.

Expenses and Location

Costs that are linked to home care assistance differ dramatically. One major component that influences these expenses is geography. Home care services are more expensive in certain parts of the United States. They’re markedly less expensive in other parts, too.

Expenses and Degree of Assistance

One other component substantially influences typical home care service costs. That’s the exact degree of care. There are some patients who are rather independent and who do not need as much hands-on attention from caregivers. 




There are others who require assistance that’s significantly more detail-oriented. Patients who have Alzheimer’s disease and dementia may be examples of individuals who require assistance that’s a lot more involved. The more involved home care services are, the costlier they become.

Expenses and Expert Attention

Patients who have more complex requirements often call for assistance from experts with strong backgrounds in their fields. If you’re looking for home care assistance services for a patient who has extremely specific requirements, you should expect costs to be higher. 

This is because you may have to cover expenses for professionals who have in-depth backgrounds in certain sectors of the healthcare umbrella. Paying for a caregiver who has dementia expertise may cost more.

Home care can be an enormous help to all kinds of individuals these days. Home care assistance services are in no way limited to older persons, either. People who are healing after major surgical procedures often turn to home care services. 

People who have disabilities often turn to these services as well. They can be advantageous for many reasons. They can help people remain their familiar and comforting homes. They can make people who are vulnerable and weak a lot less susceptible to all kinds of injuries, too.

Why Do Truly Effective Business Owners Tend to Outsource Their Books?

Have you ever wondered why it is that so many successful business owners all over the world tend to have several defining traits in common? You may well have noticed this while also wondering just how many of these traits there are. 

Finally, you may also have attempted to get to the very bottom of the mystery by trying to figure out just which of these traits are the most important ones. As it turns out, there really are several things that a successful business owner does that are worth looking at. 

One of them involves the way that they handle all of the tasks related to bookkeeping.

Bookkeeping is an Important Skill That Should Never Be Underestimated

One thing to keep in mind is that bookkeeping is a complex and very involved skill that should never be underestimated. This is a time consuming but very necessary practice that will keep your business out of legal trouble and safely in the black. 

If you don't have proper bookkeeping skills at your disposal, you need to find a team of experienced individuals that do. But you may not have the means to do so on your own. 

It may be ultimately more cost effective to outsource these skills so that they can be conducted on your behalf without causing you to lose focus on other issues.

Where Can You Go to Get Top Level Bookkeeping Skills for Your Business?

The question now becomes one of just where you can go to get the top notch bookkeeping skills you need for your business. The answer is revealed when you log on to the world wide web. 

This is the place where all of your competitors go to find the very best bookkeeping services. There is no reason why you shouldn't have access to the very same state of the art service that all of your rivals in the industry are currently enjoying. 



By doing business with a site like Growthforce.com, you will be able to get your books in order while continuing to concentrate on your future plans.

What Benefits Will Come from Outsourcing Your Bookkeeping Services?

If you are wondering what kind of benefits you can expect from outsourcing your bookkeeping services, consider this. By doing so, you finally get a guarantee that your books are being handled in the correct fashion. 

Not every business owner is a wizard in the field of accounting. If you are the sole owner and proprietor of your business, you already have a million other tasks to deal with on a daily basis. It's easier than you think to let a small mistake suddenly grow into a huge one that will impact you in a negative manner at tax time.

It's best to avoid this situation. And you can do so by hiring a bookkeeping expert to handle all of your books. This way, you will be reliably informed of every error you make so that it can be quickly corrected. 

You won't face major penalties from the IRS for coming up short on what you owe to them. The sooner you acquire these handy and reliable services, the better for your business.

The Time for You to Outsource Your Bookkeeping Services is Now

If you really want to get the best deal on bookkeeping services, you are well advised to pay a visit to a great new site called growthforce.com. This is the place where you can get the latest news on outsourcing all of your crucial bookkeeping services for a price that you can easily afford. 

It's also the place where you can go to finally free up many crucial hours of your time. Once you have done so, you can now use the extra time to concentrate on your plans for the present and future. Outsourcing your books means boosting your imagination.

7 Key Challenges of Launching a Startup

It may seem daunting to know that 8 out of 10 startups will fail in the first 18 months, but it doesn't have to be. To begin with, many successful startups took a few tries to actually get right. 

Just because an initial startup may fail doesn't mean it doesn't provide valuable experience to get the second or third try up and running. Ultimately, all startups fail because they run out of money. 

What causes them to run out of money is the question. Here are 7 key challenges to launching a startup.

1. Expanding Too Quickly

When people think of growth, they often think of expansion. In truth, those are two very different things. In reality you often have to grow before you expand. Getting an order for 1,000 units of your new product may seem like a windfall, but not if you don't have the production facilities in place to handle an order that size. 

Suddenly having more clients than you can handle sounds ideal, but in reality it can be the death of your business. When you plant a seed, it can be months before you actually see growth. 

That doesn't mean the seed hasn't been busy beneath the surface planting roots that will support the expansion when it happens. Make sure you understand the difference between growth and expansion.

2. Having the Wrong Partners

No one individual can singlehandedly build a successful startup. They need partners that bring something to the table in the form of wisdom, experience, contacts, money or some combination of all. 

What you don't need, however, are partners that bring little to nothing to the table. Your best friend since high school might be your most loyal friend, but that doesn't make them a good business partner. 

Similarly, be careful who you allow to invest in your startup. Most investments come with strings - make sure you have a very clear understanding of what they are before taking any money.

3. Failure to Adequately Judge the Market

No matter what product or service you have to offer, you need someone to buy that product or service. You may find an area you think would be perfect for an upscale coffee shop, but that doesn't mean the residents of that area are going to buy your upscale coffee. 




Before you offer a product or service, you need to ensure there is a market for your product or service. If there isn't one, that doesn't mean all is lost, it simply means you will have to build one.

4. Failure to Build a Market

While you may actually hit on a product idea or service people are genuinely hungry for, it is rare. More often than not, you actually have to convince people they need the product or service you are offering. 

When Starbucks first started selling coffee in the 1970's it was unheard of to spend more than about 50 cents on a cup of coffee. Starbucks actually had to convince the entire world that a cup of coffee was something worth spending upwards of $4 on. They didn't walk into a ready-made market, they built one.

5. Lack of Security

The minute you actually invest something into turning an idea into a reality, you have something to protect. Whether that is your proprietary blend of spices, your manuscript or customer information, you have something that can be stolen. 

Anything that can be stolen needs to be protected or it can signal the end of your business. These days it is important for all businesses - from the smallest startup to the largest corporation - to invest heavily in cybersecurity. 

Small businesses are often in the greatest danger of being hacked because they think they are too small and insignificant to be worth hacking. They are generally wrong.

6. Lack of Proper Insurance

There are any number of catastrophes and cataclysms that can prematurely derail a startup. From fires, floods and other disasters to the death of a partner or investor to costly lawsuits, startups can suddenly find themselves stopped. 

Making sure you have the proper insurance is critical to any startup. In addition, you should always work with a reputable agent from a reputable carrier. It is also important to do periodic reviews of your insurance with your agent to make sure that your coverage is keeping pace with the changing needs of your startup.

7. Burnout

Building a startup into a full-fledged business is a marathon, not a sprint. The tasks involved in building a startup are never-ending and they can easily become overwhelming. 

Generally, the people that actually successfully shepherd a startup into a fully operational business pace themselves and don't lose sight of what is truly important. They take care to maintain their relationships, their physical health and even their outside activities. 

While it may take longer to build a successful company by going at a slower pace, you also give yourself a far better chance of actually seeing the finish line.

Wrapping Up

People who successfully guide a startup to a full-fledged business often seem to anticipate what is going to happen long before it ever does. That's because in one sense they do. 

While this list doesn't cover every potential pitfall of building a startup, the full list of things that can derail them is not actually that long. Savvy entrepreneurs make it their business to know every single thing that can go wrong and generally have a plan in place for dealing with it.

Jasmine Williams covers the good and the bad of today's business and marketing. When she’s not being all serious and busy, she’s usually hunched over a book or dancing in the kitchen, trying hard to maintain rhythm, and delivering some fine cooking (her family says so). Tweet her @JazzyWilliams88