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IT'S time to come clean about our dirty credit card habits and how we can avoid them eroding our wealth. While we've all been slowly reducing our outstanding credit card balances, with $34 billion still owing, they remain the scourge of most families. It's fair to say credit cards are the most potent weapon of mass financial destruction since the loan shark. Their convenience and flexibility means it's so easy for them to get out of hand and lead to serious financial distress. We need to be vigilant in ensuring our credit cards work for us and don't destroy our finances. To avoid getting into trouble in the first place, or get back in control of an existing debt, here are our five golden rules for using credit cards.

16 Australian Entrepreneurs Share Their Tips For Securing Investment Funding Funding is a crucial element to any startup with dreams to expand and grow, to get bigger and better. Attracting the interest of an investor and asking them put their trust - and money - into your creation is no easy task. With this in mind, Business Insider spoke to some of Australia's most successful entrepreneurs to find out their secrets and advice to securing funding.

I'm grumpy about flying these days. Part of it is just the hassle of the process, but now there's even more. Bud and I had a decades-long strategy of managing our US Airways frequent flier status to maximize free upgrades on domestic and European routes, as well as to secure virtually free first-class seats on flights to Oceania, Southeast Asia and Africa. Trust me, there's nothing like being pampered in first class on Singapore Air to take the sting out of flying! Sadly, airline rewards and loyalty benefits are going the way of free meals - or free anything - in the air.

There are two types of shares, ordinary shares and preference shares. * Ordinary shares are the most familiar type of shares and have flexible dividends (dividends that are adjusted in relation to a company's profit). These shares also allow full voting rights. * Preferred shares carry fixed dividends, which must be paid before any dividends are paid to ordinary shareholders. However, preferred shares do not allow voting rights. Remember that when dealing with shares in the stock market as we know it, it will practically always be involving ordinary shares and this should not be a very big issue!

The basic stock-market information portion of the site contains simple information on the factors influencing the stock market; you should comprehend these factors before deciding to trade shares. The key essential factors in the stock market are enumerated below; simply click on anything you desire to find information on. The number of links below may look formidable; but each link contains only brief, pertinent pockets of information, easy to grasp! If you encounter any unfamiliar words which are not defined in the basic stock-market information portion, check out the stock-market glossary.

According to the Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index, more than one-half of all small-business loan applications are being rejected by banks. Companies in need of capital might find lenders more receptive in a hard-hitting lending environment if they invest in audited financial statements. "We've had clients who needed these statements to even get the loan, and it can make a difference in the interest rate you get," says David G. Barbeito, a principal in the Miami office of Morrison, Brown, Argiz & Farra, a large independent accounting firm.