If you find yourself buried deep in an ongoing cycle of debt, rest assured – all hope is not lost. Here are 5 ways of dealing with your debt problem.

1. Do not be an ostrich

While it is tempting to stick your head in the sand and hope that it’ll be ok, this is the absolute worst thing you can do when faced with a lots of debt. Debt is cumulative, which means that the more you ignore the problem, the bigger the problem will become. While it can be scary to face your debt problem head on, the sooner you do this, the sooner you will start to some sense of relief.

2. Draw up a budget, and start sticking to it

While drawing up a budget may seem to be “too little too late”, this will prevent you from falling further into debt. Ensure that your budget is realistic (i.e.

Full Article…

Just as the stargate in the picture was a gate between two different dimensions (from the 1994 movie), today is also the stargate between planning and accounting. Accounting starts today and goes backwards in time in ever-increasing detail. Planning, on the other hand, starts today and goes forward in time in ever increasing summary and aggregation.

The catch that causes many misunderstandings is that the tables look very similar.  Your accounting system produces an Income statement (alias Profit or Loss), a Balance Sheet, and a Cash Flow statement.  A good business plan has at least the same three statements as “pro-forma” (meaning projected) statements. The form, presentation, and order of appearance of these financial statements are almost identical, but their information content is quite different.

Why do you care? Because the two concepts don’t mix well. And people who approach planning from an accounting point of view suffer. Accounting is reporting off of a database of transactions.

Full Article…