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With the oil spill crisis still ongoing in USA, with no signs of ending anytime soon, and with environmental damage which will last more than 50 years, I ponder about how much BP actually profits from piping oil from deep underground. According to this media release, BP p.l.c. made a replacement cost profit of $5,598 million just in the first quarter of 2010. Assuming BP's first quarter is from January to March, that's 90 days. $5,598 million/90 days = BP made $62.2 million in profit (on average) for each day of the first 90 days of 2010. That's making $2.59 million in profit per hour!

What's "replacement cost profit"?

It is a profit figure that is calculated using the cost of supplies at the cost of replacing supplies at current prices Oil companies often disclose replacement cost profit. This is because the oil

Being frugal doesn't simple mean that you're a cheapskate. The frugal living lifestyle means using less of everything (for your own financial benefit, for the environment's benefit, for society's benefit). Less is more. Being frugal means planning your budget ahead of time. Anticipating what you need in future, saving up for that goal and not letting unexpected expenses wreck your budget. Simply loading up your credit card and not being able to pay off your expenses is a waste of money as the interest charges just leak your money away.

A frugal lifestyle means hunting for bargains. It's about planning your financial goals and your spending. It isn't all hard work - once you're changed your habits, it becomes second nature and none of this would seem like a chore - more like an enjoyable hunt to cut expenses to allocate the money to more worthwhile and enjoyable uses. Learning the difference between a need and a want - something you have to have to survive versus something you would like to have.

Want to start living frugally? A part of smart frugal living is utilising free services provided by your government. Most developed countries would have many local, state and national libraries accessible to anyone. Your taxes pay for them, why not use their services? Don't have a library card? Get one! Stop watching TV, go and visit your local library. This article is a part of the Frugal Living series. Where we look at how to set up frugal budget setting.

A part of Frugal living is about making the most of free services. And you local library is a free service which depending on what your local library decide to have on loan can get you free access to:

• movies on DVD(educational and blockbusters)
• books (duh?!)
• music CDs
• magazines (find one on a topic you're interested in from knitting to current affairs or even travel and cars)
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Submitted by Marco on Thu, 13/08/2009 - 1:10pm.

Frank Abagnale believes that fraud is 4000 times easier in the Information Age. If you've watched "Catch me if you Can" with Leonardo DiCaprio, you would be interested in this. Learn how to make counterfeit money and get away with it! Stupid host can't even pronounce Abagnale's name in the video above. Anyway, they make it sound so easy to make fake money and fake checks using your printer at home! But be warned - they say that printers are made today print miroscopic yellow dots to find out which printer made that print.

It's tax time! New Financial Year today for Australians. It's time to lodge your tax return. Or perhaps there's a certain strategy to it? If you are organised and love the challenge of claiming deductions and you know that the Australian Tax Office (ATO) owes you money, well you'll be submitting your etax today. The deadline for submitting a tax return in Australia is October 31st. If you know that YOU owe money to the tax office it is in your best interests to hold that money in your pocket as long as you can. So if you expect a large tax bill, you'd be the one to hold back until the last minute to lodge your tax return. If you are under the first tax threshold (aka student, low income, casual_ then you'd probably not even lodge a tax return.

When does the Australian Financial Year Start and Finish?

The Australian financial year (fiscal year) starts on July 1st and ends on June 30th.

Chairman Mao was a fan of practising diligence and frugality for China. He preached back in 1955 that to make China prosperous and successful it would take several decades of diligence and frugality. And now with perseverance China has made it. 50 years down the track China has become a superpower. China holds many of USA's bonds and currency. China has such a strong financial grasp over USA now that commentators are dubbing the relationship as "Chimerica". The amazing relationship between a big spender (USA) and a big saver (China). Being frugal at a macroeconomic scale has brought rewards to China in the long run. For individuals, would you have the same level of perseverance, diligence and frugality to succeed financially?

Diligence and frugality should be practised in running factories and shops and all state-owned, co-operative and other enterprises. The principle of diligence and frugality should be observed in everything. This principle of economy is one of the basic principles of socialist economics. China is a big country, but she is still very poor. It will take several decades to make China prosperous. Even then we will still have to observe the principle of diligence and frugality. But it is in the coming few decades, during the present series of five-year plans, that we must particularly advocate diligence and frugality, that we must pay special attention to economy. From - Introductory note to "Running a Co-operative Diligently and Frugally" (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China's Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. I.

Smart financial planning is important when living frugally. In this post we shall look at how to save pennies by setting up a frugal budget plan. A lot of "common sense" ideas here, but with many families and individuals in financial trouble - "common sense" is not so common after all.

Frugal Budget Plan

For couples: A smart frugal method to financial planning is to learn how to live on a single income. You may both work for a living, but when you both do the sums, its a smart move to make an effort to be able to live on a single income. This is to safeguard your family against any adverse effects such as losing a job. The second job would then pay for savings, investments and other luxuries and extras.

For Everyone: In your frugal budget plan you must implement an emergency fund for yourself or your family. This should be over and above your insurance (as we all know we can't rely on insurance - just look at what happened in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina). Set aside some money for a rainy day, in case of job losses.

What does "frugal" mean? It means being economical and avoiding waste. "Practicing or marked by economy, as in the expenditure of money or the use of material resources; or "economical in the use of money or resources; thrifty". Frugality and the art of frugal living is the:

1. acquiring goods and services in a restrained manner, and
2. resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services, to
3. achieve a longer term goal.

As Wikipedia puts it: "Common strategies of frugality include the reduction of waste, curbing costly habits, suppressing instant gratification by means of fiscal self-restraint, seeking efficiency, avoiding traps, defying expensive social norms, embracing free (as in gratis) options, using barter, and staying well-informed about local circumstances and both market and product/service realities."

Personally, frugal living means being smarter with money management (budgeting in advance how mu

We are fooled into investment scams by only one temptation: greed. Let greed not blind your logical reasoning when choosing investment schemes. Be it real estate, stock market trading, penny stocks, forex investing, mutual funds, start-up business or any other innovative form of investing structure be wary of scammers willing to take from your hard earned cash. Don’t be a sucker, don’t be a fooled into an investment scam.

Scammers come in all shapes and sizes, targetting anything from investments to anything in daily life. Simple small scams, Nigerian email scams which tempt you with the possibility or obtaining large amounts of cash for nothing - where more and more people are falling for it. On the internet there are quite a number of forex invesment scams. While travelling in the Philippines be wary of people selling you gift cheques.

Black Friday: The tradition to wake up the day after Thanksgiving and go shopping at 4 in the morning has always been a ridiculous one. All the major stores slash prices, so parents can save money on high School Musical memorabilia their kids will outgrow by next year. Lines are long, and employees have to interrupt their Thanksgiving festivities so they can sleep for a few hours before working this chaotic day (and for no extra pay, usually).

With the economy as bad as it is, people still rushed out in droves this year for the annual Black Friday Sales. Many stores reduced prices so low that even a guy who was laid off from his job could buy presents for his whole family without breaking the bank (which probably is broken anyway). Madness rose to new heights, except tragically. At a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York, an employee was trampled to death when a crowd of over 2,500 people rushed in to indulge in the latest sales. Also in Southern California, two men apparently engaged in a duel that left both men riddled with bullets. Who the hell brings guns to a toy store?!?

The internet has fuelled many new industries, one of which is the online forex trading industry (forex = forex exchange i.e. currencies). Once the domain of institutional traders, the internet has opened up forex trading to many public retail traders. Because of the structure and potential rewards of trading successfully, it has attracted quite a few scammers and spammers. Forex trading has been labelled as gambling - and it is (it is only detrimental to your finances if you don't act like a professional gambler by controlling the risks taken), and it has also been classified by some as a get rich quick scheme (which depends on your perspective - if you are trying to get rich from forex trading quickly then it is).

The forex trading spammers merely do the underhanded marketing technique of spamming multiple email boxes for the forex scammers. Watch out for programs and teaching packages which promise extraordinary returns. Remember: "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches." If they can make 1000% each week, why are they sharing the trading strategy? if I can make that much money, do you think I'll I'd be sitting in front of a computer sharing the information through the kindness of my heart? I'd be in the Bahamas relaxing on a beach. Another consequence of sharing information like effective trading strategies may have a detrimental effect to the overall strategy.

Many Australian uni students like to associate themselves with the stereotype of a struggling student living on a small amount of cash. But Ross Gittins, the Sydney Morning Herald economics columnist doesn't buy into it. There isn't such a thing as a poor uni student. He says that these "self-pitying university students" are "middle-class kids pretending to be poor and deserving, whereas they're actually setting themselves up for a life of well-above-average earnings. The few years of their life they spend having to scrimp and save won't do them any harm. It might teach them to have some concern for the genuinely needy." He also notes that "on average, the lifetime earnings of graduates are about 70 per cent greater than for those who went only to year 12." But all in all, he concludes that most under 25's live at home anyway, plus some would get Youth Allowance from the government and more than 60 percent have some form of work to subsidise whatever expenses they have...

Gittins goes on to talk about HECS repayments by uni students - which affects all graduates after they leave uni and start earning a REAL income (HECS is the Australian system of deferring university/college fees, where accumulated fees have no interest but is indexed to inflation).

Australian dollar at parity? Bah! Remember all the foreign exchange analysts pegging the Aussie to be at parity at the beginning of the year? It certainly looked that way, but there is never any certainty in the forex markets. Anything can happen, at any time. All forex traders know (or should know) that trading is not a game about prophesy and prediction. There are only probabilities. At that point in time, there was a high possibility of the Aussie dollar hitting parity (AUD$1 = USD$1) because of the upward momentum and strength of the aussie against the greenback. But there was a small possibility bouncing back off the resistance. And an even more minute possibility of a crash. And guess what? the market took for the worst and chose the most improbable route. Although improbable, forex traders should have stops in place (if they had been long) to protect them from the downside.

As the credit crisis broke and large international institutions unwound their overseas investments into cash (especially USD), currencies such as the Australian dollar was battered. Other factors to the fall of the Aussie from 98+ cents to about 60 cents (about a 40 percent drop in 3 months) include: the 100 point (1 percent) official interest rate drop, the credit crisis and falling metals prices.

When you go to the shopping centre (or shopping mall as they're called in the USA) - what kind of monster do you become? How do you handle you money when you go shopping? What kind of purchaser are you? Logical purchases are when you consider and research your purchases well ahead while an emotional purchase is based purely on emotions and are more likely to be impulse buys. Rate yourself on a scale... Are you extremely logical when you buy or are you an extremely emotional buyer?

Imagine that you've just purchased a product worth over $2000. Before you bought the item did you take some time to research all your options with regards to alternative similar products and compare features and prices? Are you the person who would research all the similar products and compare prices? Would you think about it for a few days? Would you buy the product instantly because what is the use of researching if THIS is what I WANT.

Imagine you went shopping and you came across an ipod you wanted. You can't afford it until your next paycheck. Would you wait until you've actually got the money in your pocket to afford the ipod? Would you layby the ipod? Would you pay for the ipod using your credit card, knowing that you've got a good habit of paying back your debt on time? Or simply throw it onto your credit card and worrying about the debt when you get the bill?

The forex business is an interesting business to be in. Forex is a business solely involved in money. Nothing is being exchanged but money from different countries. I guess Forex can be considered as a "service" business as the brokers and the money exchangers act as a service to help people change money from one currency to another for people who travel and businesses who are involved with international business through imports or exports.

How about the Forex business for traders? Traders can take advantage of the fluctuations of the currency exchange prices and profit from the volatility. Does this help anyone? Not directly. It helps you (that is if you are profitable in trading forex) and it helps the broker turnover money and hence make money off commissions (or trading spreads).