Having a financial plan is not only important but necessary if you plan to have a relatively stress-free future.

And here’s why:

1. Achieve your goals

A financial plan is a road map to your future; it tells you where you are today, where you are going and what steps you need to take to get there. Our ‘Basic Plan’ will let you know if you are on track to achieve your goals, whether they are buying a car or house, funding your child’s education, your own retirement or even saving for a dream vacation.

If you are heading in the right direction, our ‘Basic Plan’ will tell you so. If not, you may need to readjust your goals, timeframe or other factors

Developing a financial plan is one of the most important steps you can take towards achieving your goals. It will tell you how much you need to save, invest or borrow and how long it will take to save enough to obtain what you want.

2. Prosper in good times

Good investments, solid planning, and diversification: these are the hallmarks of a good personal finance portfolio. When times are good, sock it away. We will let you know the appropriate debt/equity ratio for you and how much you should be saving for your. When you fill in your expenses, take a minute to evaluate if you are spending the right amount for your situation. Can you afford to save more?

3. Protect yourself in bad times

Life is not always a bed of roses. Be sure you are properly insured for medical, life and property when things don’t go as you plan. Our ‘Basic Plan’ can help you identify how much insurance you need to protect your family. Many people buy Insurance either to save tax or as an investment without knowing the quantum of insurance they actually need for protection.

It is important to have an emergency fund, an integral part of any financial plan. And if you planned right when things were good and have a balanced portfolio, it should help you get through the tough times and come out just fine.

4. Earn more from your investments

Make sure you have the right debt/equity balance. If you have too much in savings, fixed income and bonds, you may be losing money if inflation is outpacing these instruments. If you have put everything in equities, you may be setting yourself up for losses in a down market.

5. Free up your time

Stop worrying about your money and get a ‘Basic Plan’. It will tell you your financial strengths and weaknesses, if you are meeting your goals, and more. If there is something you need to do, you will find out. Otherwise, relax and know your finances are fine.

6. Feel confident and secure about where you are financially

It is always good to see it in writing: How much are you worth? What is your cash flow like? Where is your money invested? Is it scattered in 10 insurance policies you may not need or tied up in accounts you had forgotten about? Just filling out our Financial Planning Profile will give you a better idea of where you are and help you get all your documents together. Once you view our ‘Basic Plan’ you will have it all spelled out on paper for you.

7. Be prepared

Knowing where you stand helps you be prepared at the drop of a hat for emergencies and opportunities. Is someone in your family suddenly selling a choice piece of land you would like to acquire? Does a special niece need money for a wedding? Did you just win the lottery and you don’t know where to put all this newfound money? Be ready.

8. Manage Cash flows

A good financial plan helps you to manage your cash flows in the most efficient manner. It also allows one to track net-worth, loan payments; and identify the best way to manage these effectively. Some people spend more than they earn with credit cards and easy availability of loans, and tend to lose focus on future needs. It is always better to be aware of what you need in the future so that you can balance your cash flows accordingly. Many of us have complex financial lives and lack time, expertise, discipline and objectivity to put our financials in order. Financial planning allows you to stay on track.

9. Manage change in your goals

As your needs and financial goals change over time, a financial plan gives you the flexibility to alter your financial strategy to meet new objectives. Therefore a review of your financial plan on a regular basis is very important. To be effective, you and your planner must weigh several factors like your objective, time frames, cash flows, and the potential for taking risk based on the goals.

10. Give your financial life focus, direction and organisation.

Becoming rich is all about starting early, better planning and being disciplined.

So get a financial plan today!

Article Courtsy: www.investmentyogi.com is a one-stop personal finance website which helps in managing finances, investments and taxes through services like financial planning, online tax filing, budgeting and ‘Ask the Expert’.

The World Bank appealed on Monday for more funds as it sees a second straight year of record lending amid the global economic crisis, warning it may have to ration aid to only the poorest countries.

World Bank President Robert B Zoellick

World Bank president Robert Zoellick, while addressing the Annual Meetings 2009, in Istanbul, Turkey,  said that rising aid demand was set to strain the multilateral lender’s resources by mid-2010, forcing it to slash lending.

“As we start to get towards the middle of next year, we are going to start to face some serious constraints, and we would have to ration and obviously focus on the lowest-income countries,” Zoellick said.

Zoellick said the bank had entered the global financial and economic crisis solidly capitalised but that strong demand exceeded the $100 billion it was prepared to provide over three years.

The bank forecast another record year of lending to middle-income and creditworthy poor countries this year, of at least $40 billion, after $33 billion in 2008.

“These are difficult times for governments, and all their budgets are stretched,” he said, adding

“We have broken the fall of the financial crisis, but it is certainly too early to declare success. 2009 will continue to be a difficult year, and 2010, when much of the stimulus action will run out, remains a highly uncertain economic year.”

Countries around the world, particularly low-income countries, are still suffering as the global economic crisis undermines exports, cuts remittances, curbs tourism, and lowers their investment. It is therefore important that the G20 agreed to scale up support for developing countries, said Zoellick.

Stating that one of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations, Zoellick said, “The latest economic forecasts show how China and India are helping to pull the global economy out of recession, but we should also remember that countries in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the wider Middle East and Africa as well can also serve as engines of growth. A multi-polar economy, less reliant on the US consumer, will be a more stable world economy.”

There are many risks out there, he added. These include growing unemployment lines, rising protectionism, and still-large output gaps. The global economy could still suffer a setback, not least in 2010 when governments plan to withdraw much of their economic stimulus and debt rollovers could be combined with a rise in interest rates.

“We have no guarantee that the private sector, the main producer of jobs, will kick in. It is still not clear who will replace the US consumer as a source of demand. The global engine of growth may have stuttered back to life, but it could easily stall.”

In this new multi-polar economy, the Bretton Woods arrangements forged after World War II and patched up in the decades since look increasingly outdated, so policymakers need to catch up and move ahead.

Catching up means voting reform at the World Bank and IMF, he clarified.

“I have called for increasing the developing countries’ share in the World Bank over time to 50 percent. Last weekend, the G20 took an important step in this direction by proposing the increase in share of developing countries by at least three percentage points by early next year. This would create a share of 47 percent for the developing and transition countries, and this will be another item that I hope we will discuss with the Development Committee.”

The danger today, he said, is no longer, fortunately, one of a collapsing world economy. The danger today is one of complacency. If the crisis wanes, there will be a natural tendency to return to business as usual.

“It will become harder to convince countries to cooperate in order to address many of the problems that led to this crisis, that put millions of livelihoods of people at risk, and the problems that we will face coming out of the crisis. Therefore, we have to seize this moment to press reform.”

Zoellick spoke after a committee representing all 186 members of the World Bank and sibling institution the International Monetary Fund tentatively approved the first general capital increase for the World Bank in 20 years.

A Cisco IOS Access-List (ACL) is used to specify network traffic. Once you specify traffic with an ACL, you can then do a variety of things with it. For example, you could allow it, deny it, limit it, or use it to restrict routing updates. In this article, we will learn the basics of Cisco IOS Access-Lists.

What do ACL’s do?

A Cisco IOS Access-list is commonly abbreviated ACL. ACL is usually pronounced like A.C.L.; however, some people do pronounce it like “ankle”, but without the “n”. In other words, it can be pronounced “akkl”. My preference is to pronounce it A.C.L., as you would pronounce FBI or CIA, not as you would pronounce NASA or FEDEX. As I stated before, an ACL is used to specify or define traffic. By just creating an ACL, you have made NO effect on anything. It is simply an unused definition of network traffic. Once it is defined, you can then use it for a wide-ranging list of purposes.

What are the types of ACL’s?

Access-lists can be one of two types: standard or extended. Numbered IP access-lists fall within the following numerical range: – 1 to 99 Standard IP – 100 to 199 Extended IP – 1300 to 1999 Standard IP – 2000 to 2699 Extended IP A standard access-list can only define the SOURCE IP of the traffic. An extended IP access-list can define the source and destination IP address of traffic, along with source and destination port numbers. Also, while a standard access-list only defines IP traffic, an extended access-list can define TCP, UDP, ICMP, IP, AHP, EIGRP, IGRP, ESP, IGMP, OSPF, and PIM traffic. Here is an example of the most basic standard IP access-list that can be defined:

This access-list was numbered “1” and it is permitting traffic from the source IP address of 1.1.1.1. Since we brought up the numbering of access-lists, let me point out that these numbers are not like line numbers in a program. The access-list statements are not processed in the order of the numbers. The numbers on the access-lists are there to group those access-list statements together. In other words, all lines of an access-list that have the number 1 are in the same access-list and are used together.

Top down Processing

The lines of an access-list are processed from the top down, in the order that they are entered. When the network packet being processed through that access-list matches a statement in the access-list, all processing for that packet is stopped. Let’s look at an example. Say that I have this access-list:

Say that this access-list is being used to filter traffic in-bound to a router. A packet comes in with the source IP address of 1.1.1.1. Look at the access-list. Will that traffic be permitted or denied? Because the access-list is processed from the top down, that traffic will be denied, even though it would have been permitted later down the list. This is because, when the traffic is denied, processing of the access-list is stopped. The important thing for you to know is that the order of the statements is crucial. If you are using access-lists to filter traffic, you want to stop the traffic closest to the source of that traffic to conserve WAN bandwidth.

The three P’s of access-lists and filtering traffic

When it comes to filtering traffic, the rule of access-lists is the “three Per’s”. The rule goes like this: “You can have one access-list per PROTOCOL, per DIRECTION, and per INTERFACE”. So, you can have an access-list for each protocol (IP, IPX, Appletalk, bridging, etc). You can have an access-list for each direction- either IN, or OUT. You can have an access-list on each interface- FastEthernet0/0, Serial0/0, Serial1/0, etc. In other words, you can’t have two IN-BOUND IP access-lists on the same interface. Those access-lists would need to be combined to use both of them.

Wildcard Mask

A very important thing to remember is that, when specifying a range of hosts on a network, or an entire network, ACL’s use something called a wildcard mask. The wildcard mask is an inverted subnet mask. In other words, take the subnet mask for the network (or range of hosts), turn it into binary, reverse the 0’s and 1’s, and turn it back into decimal. I won’t go into how to do that with a sub-netted range of hosts but, if your octets are all 255’s or all 0’s, you can just reverse these. Here are some examples: Subnet mask 255.255.255.0 = wildcard mask 0.0.0.255 Subnet mask 255.0.0.0 = wildcard mask 0.255.255.255 Subnet mask 255.255.0.0 = wildcard mask 0.0.255.255

Implied Deny

Another very important rule about access-lists is that there is always an “implied DENY” at the end of each ACL. What this means is that every access-list has the following statement at the end of it: access-list X deny ANY (if this is a standard access-list) or access-list X ip deny ANY ANY (if this is an extended access-list) So, if your traffic isn’t explicitly permitted by a statement in the ACL, then your traffic is DENIED. If you manually type the “deny any” statement in, it will appear but if you don’t type it in, it is still there. Here is an example: What traffic is allowed through this ACL?

The answer is that NO traffic is allowed through this access-list. That is because the only statement is a deny statement and, after that, there is the implied deny which denies everything.

Example of Filtering with an Access-list

Now, let me provide an example of how to filter inbound traffic with access-list. Here is our sample network:

Let’s say that we are on the Chicago router. We want to only allow inbound www traffic from the IP addresses on the San Diego LAN. Those IP addresses are the network 10.10.1.0, which has a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. We want to log any traffic that is denied to our logging buffer. Let’s do this in two steps. First, create your access-list:

Note that the second line of the access-list denied all traffic, and used the log-input keyword at the end to log all denied traffic. Also, note how the wildcard mask was used instead of the subnet mask. It is important to know the direction of the traffic (the ACL uses source, then destination), and how the traffic works (WWW or HTTP) traffic contacts the web server with a destination port on the server of port 80, or WWW. Second, apply your access-list:

Note the direction of “IN” when we applied the access-list. This says that the ACL applies to IN-BOUND traffic, coming into the Serial interface from the T1 WAN circuit (in this case, from San Diego, CA). Finally, let’s see what the access-list looks like with our show command, and also where the ACL is applied to the Interface.

Here is output from the show ip access-lists and show ip interface serial0 command. In the first command, you can see the access-list that we created. In the second command, you can see where the access-list was applied and in what direction. Of course, you can see both of these things with the show running-config command.

Example of Restricting Telnet access with an Access-list

Quickly, let me provide another example of using an ACL. Say that you are still on the Chicago router. You want to only allow your PC’s IP address (on the Chicago LAN) access to TELNET, to the router. Yes, you could do this with an ACL on the Interface but, instead, let’s do it by using the access-class statement on the vty lines. To do this, you only need a standard access-list. Say that your PC’s IP address is 10.10.2.100. First, create an access-list to specify traffic with that source, like this:

Next, apply this ACL to all 5 VTY lines using the vty range configuration, using the access-class statement, like this:

By creating this ACL and applying it to all 5 VTY lines, we are saying that only IP address 10.10.2.100 can TELNET to this Cisco router. This is just another example of the many uses of an ACL.