You might be wondering if you can use your personal credit cards to order products and stock for your business. The simple answer is yes you can but it makes for messy accounting and other small problems. If you’re only a small business and just starting off its perfectly fine to use a personal credit card to get you off the ground. Just make sure that when your business is open for a while and you build up a credit file for your business you start to switch to a business or corporate credit card. You can also get prepaid credit cards from banks like Bank of Montreal that is more or less a bank account that you can use like a credit card.

If you’ve ever used a credit card, opened a bank account, or financed a car, you no doubt have a consumer credit file with either Equifax or Transunion in Canada. Your consumer credit information is often intended to help you find the money you need to run your household. Some creditors may want to check the consumer credit information of a small business owner if the business does not have a business credit profile.

One thing you want to limit is your personal liability while running your company, so it’s best to establish business credit and use it only to run your business. Using your consumer credit card to get money for your business may cause some problems. You may seem quite overextended in the long run while normally your credit would look fine. But if you’re racking up 20k visa/mastercard bills a month and holding a high balance it may look strange. Because businesses require more cash to operate than consumers do, your personal credit will not be portrayed accurately if you are using it to run your business.

Some business credit cards worth mentioning would be the ScotiaGold Passport for business VISA Card, AMEX Business Gold Rewards Card and the Royal Bank Visa Business Platinum Avion.  If you decide to go with a personal credit card and don’t have any business credit card. Take a look at the Capital One Smartline Mastercard or the MBNA Platinum Plus MasterCard since both have really low interest rates. The MBNA Platinum Plus card offers a special rate as of now for 0% percent interest for 15 months. While the Capital One Smartline Card offers another great rate of 5.99% for 3 years. One thing you could do is sign up for the MBNA card first and then do a balance transfer to Capital One at the end of your 15 months of zero percent Interest.

Special Thanks to Compare Credit Cards Canada for all the great credit card data. If you are looking for a Credit Card give them a try. So that leaves me with the question of what credit card do you use for your business? Leave a Comment Below.

2010 Day Holiday Celebrated in National/Provincial
11 October Monday Thanksgiving Day National Holiday
11 November Thursday Remembrance Day National Holiday
27 December Monday Christmas Day National Holiday
28 December Tuesday Boxing Day National Holiday

2011 Day Holiday Celebrated in National/Provincial

3 January Monday New Year’s Day National Holiday
21 February Monday Regional Holiday Regional Holiday
22 April Friday Good Friday National Holiday
23 May Monday Victoria Day National Holiday
24 June Friday Provincial Day Provincial - Quebec
1 July Friday Canada Day National Holiday
1 August Monday Civic Holiday Provincial – Ontario, Maritimes, Prairies, North West Territories
5 September Monday Labour Day National Holiday
10 October Monday Thanksgiving Day National Holiday
11 November Friday Remembrance Day National Holiday
26 December Monday Christmas Day National Holiday
27 December Tuesday Boxing Day National Holiday

Everyone knows that a budget is an essential part of a happy, healthy home. We are able to live with less stress if we do not have financial worries. We can be happier and breathe a little easier. A budget gives us better control of our finances. It helps us to avoid wasting our money on needless things. All businesses that are successful use budgets. Just as no two people are the same, no two budgets are the same. We all have our own individual goals and financial issues. Every person has different values and different things that are important to them. These values can play a great deal into how we set up our budget and what we hope to achieve in the end. It is a path to our individual, unique goals.
The first step when you are starting a budget is to figure out all of your sources of income. You need to add all of this together and come up with your total monthly income. This is an important step. It should be as close to an exact amount as possible. You do not want to end up with money that is not figured in. This leaves an open door for careless spending and poor management of money. If it is money that is coming into the house in one way or another every month, it should be included in your income.

Once you have the total amount of your monthly income, you will want to take about 10% right off the top of that amount. However, if you are having a lot of trouble with money and your finances, you may not be able to take this much. It is important to keep in mind that you need to be saving at least a little bit of money every month. This money that you are taking right off the top of your income is for savings. Savings is used for emergencies that arise and are not foreseen. This can include things such as an unexpected layoff or job loss, sickness, or accidents that happen. It is also important to save for long-term goals. This can be a vacation, education, or many other things depending on our particular desires.
It is important to keep in mind that there are ways to save without just hiding money away. Sometimes we are in such a financial bind that we are unable to put money away into savings. If this is the case, there are other options for cutting your spending and saving money. You can start by putting your skills to use in your home. Starting a garden is a very effective way to save money by growing some of your own food. You can also cut up old clothes and sew them together to create a new fashion style. You can also turn your old furniture into new. It is easy and relatively inexpensive to make clothes. These tips can all help you to start saving money and spending less.
Once you have created the savings portion, you are ready to delegate the rest of your money into your budget. The first expense should be basic living necessities. These include things such as food, clothing, and housing. The amount that you spend here will vary based on many factors. If you are being smart and creating your own things, your expenses in this area can be greatly reduced. Also, if you shop carefully, you can save a great deal of money. Watch for sales on items. Buy in bulk whenever you can. Do not buy more than what you need. Buy a home that fits your family, but is not too large. Get a car that is reliable, but that is practical also.
By following these suggestions, you will soon see that you have more money available to you. You will be spending less and will find yourself putting more and more money into your savings. Then, if an emergency need should arise, you do not have to worry about where you are going to get money to cover it. You already have the money at hand. You can also try to find a better credit card with a low interest rate. Some cards that capital one offers are guaranteed. So even if you have bad credit you can still have a low interest card. Just make sure to pay off the balance every month.

There are very serious consequences to having a poor credit rating. You will likely find that you have difficulty getting approved for a loan to buy a house or a car. If you do get approved you almost have to pay higher interest rates if you have poor credit. Fortunately there are things that you can do to improve your credit so that you can get approved for a loan.

The first step to fixing your credit is to find out exactly what is in your credit report. That means that you are going to have to get a copy of your credit report from all three of the credit reporting bureaus. These are Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. You will need to get a report from all three since they will all be different, not every creditor reports to each bureau. You are entitled to get one free copy of your credit report each year from each credit bureau, you can find out how to get one on their websites.

Unfortunately a lot of credit reports have errors on them so it is essential that you check for these. The items on your credit report are based solely on what your creditors report to the credit bureau, it goes on your report if it is true or not. Even a small error can have a major impact on your credit rating so it is important that you get them fixed.

You can get errors on your credit report fixed by completing the argument form that is available from the credit bureau. You can also do it by simply writing a letter. That won’t just take your word for it that something is an error, they will however investigate the claim. They will likely want to see some documentation from you to substantiate the claim if you have any. Your challenge is far more likely to be successful if you can provide documentation. If after their investigation they find something is an error it will be removed from your credit report. Some people will tell you to challenge everything in your credit report, don’t do this. You can only have actual errors removed from the report, if something is true it will stay on your credit report.

You will face serious difficulties in life if your credit report is not good. Your credit rating impacts almost every aspect of your life. It would be unfortunate if your credit were being hurt by an error on your credit report. This in fact happens all the time. Many credit reports contain errors that hurt peoples credit. This is why it is important to check your credit report regularly for errors.

Financial emergencies are something that almost everybody will experience at some point in their lives. There are of course different levels of financial emergency. It can range from sending in a few payments late to losing your home. Obviously the way that you deal with your financial emergency is going to be determined largely by how serious it is.

If you have a financial crises it is vitally important that you deal with it. Most peoples natural reaction is to try to avoid it, but this doesn’t work. Nobody likes to deal with harassing phone calls from bill collectors which is why we try to avoid them but at some point you are going to have to face your problem. The sooner that you do this the easier it will be to deal with it, things like this only get worse as time goes by. So you need to talk to your creditors and find out exactly how much you owe. You then need to decide which bills need to be paid first. It is probably more important to make sure your rent gets paid before you worry about your phone bill.

Depending on your situation there may be ways to make it easier to pay your bills. A consolidation loan is one of the most common ways of dealing with debt problems. You can combine all of your bills into one monthly payment that is lower that the rate you were paying before. This is because you will have a lower interest rate and the payments will be spread out over a longer time. If this isn’t enough to allow you to pay your bills then you may want to consider a negotiated settlement. It may be possible to work out an arrangement with your creditors to reduce the amount you owe. There will be a huge negative impact on your credit but it is better than not paying your bills.

If a negotiated settlement is not enough to allow you to pay off your debts then you may need to look into bankruptcy. This should always be a last resort and it may not be possible. The laws on bankruptcy have changed to make it harder to declare bankruptcy. However if you  are in a dire situation it may be necessary. It would be far wiser to deal with your financial problems before you reach the point that bankruptcy is your only option.

The lawsuit was filed under the Class Proceedings Act, but the B.C. Supreme Court judge has determined  that the case does not fit the criteria for a class-action lawsuit. The class action lawsuit accuses UPS of misleading and deceptive practices by failing to get the consumer’s consent by not telling the consumer about the fee. UPS should fully notify the consumer to arrange their own customs clearance allowing them to use another broker that would be cheaper.

 Something tells me if the judge got a new set of golf clubs from the United States shipped with UPS he might of changed his mind. Don’t forget that UPS even tryed to SUE canada post in 2001. It tryed suing the Canadian government for $230 million, claiming Canada Post unfairly subsidizes its courier service. I guess they were not making enough money from charging such high brokerage fees.

Leave a comment and let us know what you think of the outcome!

Some might be wondering with this economic downturn is it time to lock in mortgage rates or get a mortgage. If you have a fixed-rate mortgage at 5.5% interest or higher then you should really consider refinancing your loan and if you don’t have a house yet then now might be the time. If you look at current rates now its about the lowest they will ever be for a while. Continue Reading