I negotiate on everything - Recently, I bought a second hand cars and I noticed some scratches in the bodywork, thus I negotiate a better price.

How To Negotiate? Usually, my strategy is  to become more emotional with the seller. I try to be smiling, friendly, when I haggle. In my view, be always upbeat and happy is the first rule if you want to get a discount.

However, is no simple to keep our negotiating behaviour stable. It is important to maintain control. I check, if after the sale the seller is in a happier frame of mind than before, in this case I hit my purpose, and I used the right technique.

Here are some pratical advices you need to know to negotiate. These are two common techniques many people use.

• Ask for a discount. I always ask if there’s a good discount for customers.
• Usually, when I purchase a lot of things, I ask for a discount price because I’m buying a bunch.

However, there are a couple of others things that work very well.

Image Credit: blakeley’s in Morocco

1. Finding defects - I think it very wise to look for a blemish on a big screen and get 20 percent off.

2. Be A Good buyer - This is a strategy I use when I reach a true bottom of the price. When you haggle, you can say “Well, my mother hates it, but I love it, so if you can make another 10% off, I can buy it anyway.” It’s works fine.

3. Getting The boot - This is another strategy I use when I see that the seller will not go a penny lower. It works like this: I ask them to give me some small extra things. For instance, when I have made my pile of merchandise, I say: “If you will add this glasses or statue or lamp or whatever to boot I will pay your price.”

4. Be positives - You say you like the subject, but also say that it is too expensive for your pocket. I’ve bought a notebook with this tecnique.

Conclusion

However, there are places you can not negotiate for yourself, for instance, when you buy a car. For the rest, almost everything is negotiable. Most sellers will give a discount if you just have to ask. The worst the seller can say is “no”.

A few years ago, the US equity markets were in their heyday and were generating double-digit annual returns. Now, the US has endured a deep and prolonged recession and the stock market has declined by about 40 percent since 1999.

Fear hit investors of all ages, and has created a broad pessimism between investors. Thus, after all the bad news thrown at us by all media, I want to give three simple advices on how to building wealth.

First at all, we need to define what is Diversification?

Diversification in finance is a risk management technique, related to hedging, that mixes a wide variety of investments within a portfolio. It is the spreading out investments to reduce risks.

These three principles are used to improving diversification and  allows you to stay away from Wall Street and learn more about two important things: They help you to control your savings and spending.

1. Never put all your eggs in one basket - It was said time and time again that you should look into different mutual fund sectors as possible such as growth funds, small cap, large cap funds, index funds, and balanced funds. It allows you to determine the best way where allocate your investments, thus you can valuate your level of risk in relation to your goals.

2. Save money for a bad day - Developing your own personal financial plan give you an awareness of your current spending levels and brings clarity to your risk. Also, you can asses which are the financial goals you can get. Sure, you might not  reach your savings goal, but at least you have got an awareness. The personal financial plan you have created for yourself make you know your saving and spending issues.

3. Low-cost is better - Building a globally diversified portfolio through  low-cost index funds. Low-cost index funds are the surest way to generate superior returns in any asset class over the long haul.

I am sure that investments in the stock market will continue to grow over the next decades, but while the market is wildly inefficient, these  three simple principles will help you to have more control of your financial future.

Let’s face it, when the economy is in a period of negative growth, it’s mom who usually decides what the family can do without. It’s a fact, moms are still who check the checkbook balance and manage the household budget at the same time to make adjustments to household expenses for food, clothes, school, toys, and so on.

Sure, the economic crisis is bad for our pockets, but, for those have kids, the positive side is that this is an great way to teach them about the value of money. Thus, I’ve put a great reminder of the things you can do to help your kids to know more about finances.

1. One of the best moments to introduce the concept of the value of money is when your kids have 5 years olds. At this age, childrens almost all have already learned to read. Then, is the better time to teach them how to saving money.

2. At a certain age, kids understand the value of money, for instance, when you’re at supermarket ask them, what they really want, in order you only pay things they needs.

3. Persuade your child to start her own business. Having kids earn their way early is a great lesson in life. There are jobs for kids under the age of 14, like newspaper delivery. Also, families can always looking for baby-sitters, or senior citizens can look for someone that help them with yard work, housework, or car washing chores. Kids likes earn money and saving it for their own needs.

4. Around 15 years old it’s time to open a checking account and saving account. Remind them to put money half in saving and half in checking and that they paying a monthly maintenance fee if their account runs day. I open a savings account in my name from the time I was about 15. It had something like $50 in it. I’ve completely forgot that it existed, and I never ever went to the bank to check on it.

5. At 18, now that they are adults and they were done with school, let them find their own way.

Today I’m going to highlight one of the current financial situations. Often, browsing on internet I read people asking for some advice on how shopping for books, in particular they want to know how to save money on books.

I love books too, and I like read book about make money, personal financial, marketing, entrepreneur, etc. Usually, I prefer borrow and read from my local library, but some books are so good that I prefer buy it. Especially, when I buy a book I’ve already read, I just don’t want to pay full price for, and with this economic crisis, I’ve learned to choose my favorite book without breaking the bank.

Image Credit: Lochaven

Here, I put some tips that help you for saving money on books:

1. If you buy used books online can happen that you pay more for shipping than the book itself. Thus, for those live in a city, whether you want find used books for cheap, then Library book sales is a great way to do this. Library book sales has always an area with shelves were books are always for sale. The only things you need to do is to find their annual book sale. At my library’s sale, I usually find marketing and financial books for a buck or two each.

2. Reviews help you to choose what is good from what is bad. Image you purchase a book and spend $30 only to discover it don’t how you want. Usually, I use Amazon as a reference because I’m able to check prices, reviews and related works.

3. If you’ve a general idea of what you want, another way to find books cheap is to search for bargains. At garage sales you can haggle for a better price, but the selection is entirely in the hands of fate. Marketing and Personal finance books aren’t big sellers, thus you can find good deals. I bought most of my financial books on garage sale, and I built a fantastic library for cheap.

4. If you’re patient, one of common places to find used books is by looking for local thrift stores. Is an excellent places to find cheap copies of popular bestsellers. For example, recently, I saw a copy of The 4-Hour Workweek.

5. Of course, book stores, you can find used book stores not far from you. This book stores sell  marketing and personal finance books, thus you can check their stock once or twice a year to see if there are books at reasonable prices.

6. Finally tip: Usually, I tend to buy book and then I find that I can’t really get into reading them. A good idea is to only buy new books after you’ve read those last purchased. Sure, this may seem obvious, but I’ve learned only after a long time.

Usually, after meeting basic needs the first thing you should do, is to start an emergency fund. In this volatile economy, an emergency fund is vital for your financial security.

What Is An Emergency Fund?

An emergency fund is an account that is used only in case of emergency to improve financial security. It is not to be used to buy a new car, or something of useless, but in case of an illness, loss of a job, or a major expense.

An Emergencies Found Is Necessary? 

Imagine the worst-case scenario: you’ve an incident with your car, while your house burns and you can not do anything. You survive and slowly recover in about 1 year.

A real emergency is something that threatens your survival. If you do not want to accumulate debt you need to have an emergency savings. Here are three real-life example of emergencies that happened to my friends.

1. Shop clothes just laid off over 200 workers.
2. A cupboard collapsed.
3. My friend john had a heart attack while playing football.

These examples show how an “emergency found” is essential and you can’t afford not to have one. In each case, you need to build a larger cash cushion that are going to better than without one.

How Does To Start?

First to starting an emergency fund be sure that you’re meeting your basic living expenses. And as you create your emergency fund, be sure you’re also reducing your spending and avoiding debt.

Now, a question people could ask again and again is: How much you should save?

It’s depends by your needs. In my experience, the happy medium for one person is $4000, which help you to pay a few expenses for a couple of month and the mortgage for two month. If you don’t have $4000, then You can start with your mortgage as first goal, then all expenses.

Once decided how much you should save, put your money in the right bank in order to earning interest on your emergency found. I keep my emergency fund in a savings account on ING and have money from my paycheck direct deposited to it.