Google Wallet and MasterCard PayPass, two examples of mobile money, work by storing your card data (from credit cards, prepaid cash cards, and loyalty cards) on your phone, then transmitting the info to the checkout stand when you wave or tap your device.

With new applications and improved phones making mobile money more common, this is a good time to master the basics:

Tap-and-pay systems. Google Wallet and MasterCard PayPass transmit your encrypted payment information wirelessly from your phone or a keychain gizmo to a special reader. Some systems require physical contact between your phone and the reader, but a new generation of phones hitting the market in 2012 will turn the tap to a wave.

While this may not sound like a big improvement over swiping a credit card, it might save you time and money as daily deals, coupons, gift cards, and loyalty rewards programs are integrated. Meanwhile, transit systems in London, New York, and Singapore are all evaluating PayPass as a replacement for metrocards.

PayPal mobile payments. Suppose you’re at a San Jose Earthquakes soccer game and suddenly want a hot dog. You can order it from your seat with an app called Yorder, settle up using PayPal’s mobile app, and wait for delivery. Customers of PizzaExpress in London can pay by entering a code from their restaurant check using their PayPal app.

Some mobile banking applications similarly let you transfer funds; expect to see more as mobile payments explode in popularity. In 2010, PayPal customers spent $750 million in mobile money. This year, the company expects that amount to grow by a factor of four.

Roaming credit card readers. Use your phone to accept credit cards at your next garage sale, thanks to apps like Intuit’s GoPayment. With that one, all you need is a free credit card swiper, available at www.gopayment.com, that attaches to your phone. Intuit takes a 2.7 percent cut of every sale. One Girl Scout troop in Ohio boosted cookie sales by 13 percent last year when the scouts starting using GoPayment.

Your customers don’t need to worry that your phone will capture their number; the swiper reads the credit card and encrypts the information before transmitting it to the bank. But such fears could mean it takes years before mobile payment really catches on, predicts Sandy Shen, an expert on mobile financial applications with research firm Gartner. With all these systems, Shen says, “the technology is there to address security issues. The tricky part is persuading the consumer” that his money is safe.

But at least the sale means that the beginning of the end of a disappointing British banking saga has arrived.

Northern Rock stood for all that went bad in the UK’s banking system, as those who should have known better bundled recklessly into a headlong rush to throw money at borrowers, believing that the days of easy credit could never end and house prices could never fall.

The Rock dispensed with the idea of backing mortgages with savers’ deposits and instead borrowed huge amounts on the wholesale money markets to fund rapidly expanding mortgage lending – money was cheap, house prices were going up, you couldn’t lose.

It was different this time.

The infamous 125 per cent mortgage was symptomatic of that mindset: you borrowed the entire value of your property and then stuck a bit extra on top to clear any existing personal debts and have some cash to buy some furniture and fit out the new pad.

In theory, if you were buying a place that was big enough for you to not need to move from for a good long while and you were transferring higher interest rate personal debts to a lower rate on the mortgage this was not a terrible plan.

But that wasn’t how many people saw it. What they saw was a shortcut to buying a property, getting some extra cash to spend and, as house prices could only keep going up, soon the property market would have paid off the extra debt for them and they’d be sitting on a nice profit.

Northern Rock wasn’t the only bank doing this, most were chasing the dream to keep profits rising and executives’ pockets full. And our building societies were also guilty of chasing the property and buy-to-let booms – and again keeping executives’ pay packets healthy.

Except it wasn’t different this time.

House prices could fall, easy money wasn’t around forever, and Northern Rock became Britain’s first banking crisis victim, with queues of savers terrified that they would lose all their money.

But this isn’t just a tale of foolish borrowers and greedy bankers, the Government and financial authorities also totally failed to spot or do anything about the colossal problem brewing – but why would you when everyone was making so much money?

That Northern Rock bank run was massively exacerbated by the Government and financial authorities dithering and failing to step in immediately to guarantee savers’ deposits (a penchant for dithering being a characteristic much observed throughout the banking crisis).

Finally now, more than three years after it was taken into state control, Northern Rock is sold.

We have seen it split into good and bad bank, had hopes of it being used as a state-backed Big Society bank to help small business and homebuyers, turned back into a building society, or bundled in with the Lloyds branches struggling to be sold and handed to the taxpayer in free shares.

Instead Northern Rock’s legacy is to deliver a new name among High Street banks.

Let’s hope Virgin Money does better than the sorry bunch we’ve endured over the past decade.

The number of self-employed people has jumped to its highest level since records began nearly 20 years ago, official figures revealed yesterday.

Between August and October, 166,000 more people became self-employed, raising the total to 4.1million, the Office for National Statistics said.

Experts raised doubts over whether all of these were happy about the decision, or simply had no other option.

Michael Saunders, of investment bank Citigroup, said: ‘It may well be some, having lost their jobs, categorise themselves as self-employed but really are unemployed or at least under-employed.’

It comes at a time when there are said to be 461,000 vacancies in the UK.

John Philpott, of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: ‘I do not think there has been a sudden surge of entrepreneurial zeal. This is people who cannot get a job picking up bits and pieces of work.

‘It is a sign of economic weakness, rather than strength.’

Vicky Redwood, chief UK economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, said the jump is likely to reflect people ‘resorting to working for themselves.

Yesterday the Employment Minister, Chris Grayling, insisted the latest figures show ‘some signs that the labour market is stabilising’ but said the increase in unemployment was ‘unwelcome.’

It’s yours and you do not know it.  Unclaimed money!

More and more money is going unclaimed. But how can you see if you are owed any money?

David Koch from sunrise gives you the best options.

The highlights at Kids Marketplace included the Kids Entrepreneurship contest, Cashflow 101 for Kids Challenge, workshops by Yuber and a green bazaar.

A total of 39 teams comprising 78  youngsters participated in the Kids Entrepreneurship contest for the chance to win holiday packages, Yuber scholarships and the grand prize of an Asus Notebook.

Participants  who were grouped under the junior (aged 8-12) and senior (aged 13-18) categories competed for the Best Display, Most Creative and the Most Promising Young Entrepreneur Awards.

The Most Promising Young Entrepreneur, in particular, were judged based on creativity and leadership skills, as well as the ability to make the most profit from an undertaking.

The overall grand prize winner was chosen from among the various Most Promising Young Entrepreneur category winners at the end of the contest.

The one who showed the most creativity and were the most innovative in their products was picked the winner.

Siblings James and Janice Chai, aged 14 and 12, respectively, sold a variety of eco-friendly recycled handicrafts  to take home the grand prize of an Asus laptop  for being the co-winners of the Most Enterprising Young Entrepreneur  award for their  conservation efforts.

Their mother Ivy Khoo said:  “We are happy and excited to participate in this  event as it is a fun way for our children to put their living skills to practice.”

Schoolmates Dylan Tan, 10, and Mohamed Yasin Azeez, 11, sold handmade bookmarks and parachute men.

Cousins Elizabeth Mahendra, 8, and Marie Lim, 12, offered a variety of bright, beaded jewellery that they had made themselves.

Best friends Ashley Chow and Nicholas Oon, both 16, sold cards of humour, brightening the day with their cheery greetings.

Patrick Wee, managing director of Group MAD, which Yuber is a part of, said: “Our Yuber team is  thrilled to co-organise this event with HSC, as we believe that our youths need a safe and guided environment to develop their entrepreneurship skills and learn how to take calculated risks in life.

“We hope  this exercise allowed our young ones  to express their creativity and develop important life skills that will help them grow into well-rounded individuals.

“As a youth training provider, we at Yuber  aim to equip youths with soft and leadership skills.

“The curriculum of our youth camps and workshops,  are developed by youth training provider Seeds Training.

It has been designed to produce long-lasting and proven results that equip students with skills  for the increasingly competitive and ever-changing global environment,” said  Wee.

Another highlight was the Cashflow 101 for Kids Challenge that is based on Robert Kiyosaki’s educational board game.

The challenge is designed to teach investment concepts to children in a risk-free environment.

Altogether, 24 children between the ages of  9 and 12 participated in the challenge.

One of the youngest participants Chegne Eu Jinn, 9, was declared the winner.

He won an Asus laptop, a four day, three-night stay in Bali or Phuket, and a half-scholarship from Yuber to attend the upcoming Green Star learning workshop next month.

Creative workshops such as the Free Cap Make Over and Sneaker Facelift workshops were a big hit at the Kids Marketplace. The children were given a plain cap or sneaker that they could then draw and paint on, however they liked.

Illustrator and designer Kenzy Chew helped the children in creating their own masterpieces.

The free workshops kept the youngsters entertained as they drew and painted to their hearts’ content.

Children and their parents also participated in the Yuber Learning Fun Games facilitated by YUBER.

In the games they had the chance to take home some fun, educational prizes.

Dr. Denis Waitley, shares the answer from his broad knowledge in self-development, high performance and personal success that he has gained from helping Super bowl, Olympic Champions, NASA astronauts, the US Army, foreign governments as well as educators and youth groups around the world.

Waitley, the bestselling author of The Psychology of Winning and The Seeds of Greatness, says the secret behind the successes of famous names such as Steven Spielberg, Walt Disney, and even William Shakespeare is passion.

He saves some other examples:

Ross Perot, Forbes’ 57th-richest person in America was his big brother at the Naval Academy who went on to become a billionaire with Electronic Data Systems, a global business and technology services company. He was always a man of passion.

Ray Kroc was also passionate in what he believed in and founded MacDonald’s when he was 54.

Steven Spielberg did little home movies, where his theme was always about a great powerful figure that is going to save the world.

Andrew Lloyd Weber, wrote Cats, Evita and produced the Phantom of the Opera. When Weber was nine years old, he already displayed his passion for plays by creating a little home theater with puppets.

Denis’ was good friends with the late French underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau. Before his passing, Cousteau had told Denis that he broke both arms while watching a water spider taking a bubble of air down to her babies in a lake. In his passion for observing marine life, Cousteau invented the aqua lung which helps people to breath underwater for a short period of time after after observing the bubble of air in that spider.

Denis also gives the examples of passion in the lives of people like Bill Gates of Microsoft, Fred Smith of Federal Express and every great inventor or innovator.

He explains that these people weren’t trying to make money; they had an inner fire of passion to drive them, rather than a desire for wealth. He believes that most successful people achieve their greatness because they have something to express inside.

He stresses it is not the goal of such people to make a lot of money, but many of them earn a tremendous amount of money and respect because of their pursuit of their passion. He quotes famous figures such as Shakespeare, Thomas Edison, Estee Lauder and Walt Disney who made a lot of money but were far more interested their passion than money. The key to their success was their passion. It was their inner drive to create or provide something excellent in a product or service.

Denis calls this the “Stradivarius Effect”, named after Antonio Stradivari, the famous violin maker. It simply means, “the love to live by, uncovering and discovering one’s passion.” And that, according to Denis, is the secret to people who make millions.

In less than a week, the value of his Wal-Mart Stores stock had dropped almost $3 billion, reducing his wealth to a mere $4.8 billion. “It’s paper anyway,” he told the Associated Press. “It was paper when we started and it’s paper afterward.”

Given the wrenching swings of the past two weeks, many of us may wish we could be so sanguine about our own losses. But even without a few extra billion dollars in the bank, there are useful lessons to be gleaned from the way the Waltons and other ultrarich families cope with investments and market volatility.

Just like us, the rich want to maintain their lifestyle, preserve wealth and have money for their heirs or philanthropy. And when it comes to investing, there are several ways the rest of us should take a cue from them:

• The very wealthy have a plan. Sam Walton’s plan started in the early 1950s, when, on the advice of his father-in-law, he set up a family partnership, made up of him, his wife, Helen, and their four children, to own his two variety stores. By doing that, he began planning his estate and building family wealth years before he opened the first Wal-Mart in 1962.

Nowadays, most very wealthy people have a team of advisers and an investing strategy in place that should work even when the worst imaginary case becomes real. Small investors, too, should have a comfortable investment process that works in good times and bad.

A financial adviser can be invaluable in helping you with this, but so can a trusted family member or friend who will help you stick to your plan when you start to doubt it.

• The very wealthy live below their means. Walton, who died in 1992, was famously frugal, driving an old pickup truck and flying coach. Many very wealthy people spend much more extravagantly, but even so, “most of our ultrawealthy clients have a lifestyle that is well below their means,” says Craig Rawlins, president of Harris myCFO Investment Advisory Services, which serves wealthy families.

When you don’t spend everything, he says, “you have a better opportunity to weather this volatility because you know there’s a cushion there.”

• The very wealthy value cash flow. One of the most painful lessons of 2008 was the recognition that we need to keep enough in cash or liquid investments to weather a stretch when the value of everything else is in flux. Martin Halbfinger, managing director, wealth management, at UBS, says every investor should have a “SWAN” account—for “sleep well at night.”

“That’s a different number for every investor,” he says, but you should have enough in bank accounts, bonds or other liquid investments that you can leave your stocks alone when market volatility defies logic.

Sturdy, dividend-paying stocks also can help. Annual dividends on the Walton family’s 1.68 billion shares of Wal-Mart stock add up to $2.45 billion a year, enough to buy plenty of groceries and just about anything else.

• The very wealthy focus on risk, not return. Larry Palmer, managing director, private wealth management, at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, said he has never had a client say, “My objective is to have my family wealth beat the S&P 500.” Rather, he says, clients focus on what kinds of risks they are taking with their portfolio.

The Walton family wealth long has been tied to its Wal-Mart stock, now valued at $83.6 billion. But Sam also bought the tiny Bank of Bentonville in 1961, and it is now part of the family-owned Arvest Bank, an $11.5 billion banking company. Walton Enterprises also owns a chain of small newspapers that, along with other interests, offer diversification and push the family’s estimated combined wealth close to $100 billion.

Small investors need to similarly manage their portfolios, making sure that their holdings of stock and other volatile investments aren’t so great that they are putting more at risk than they intended to.

• The very wealthy hang on. The super-rich don’t sell because they are fearful—though some may be selling right now for investment reasons, such as cutting the tax bite on holdings with big gains. The Walton family ownership of Wal-Mart stock hasn’t changed since late 2002, when some shares were transferred to charitable funds.

In that sense, Sam was spot on. Though the Walton family’s Wal-Mart shares have dropped by more than $10 billion since mid-May, until the stock is actually sold, the losses really are nothing more than paper.

Karen Blumenthal is the author of “Mr. Sam: How Sam Walton Built Wal-Mart and Became America’s Richest Man” (Viking).

“Choose to be happy” isn’t just a cliche; its a scientific conclusion.

People with the freedom to change careers, start a business or live their dreams are happier than people who feel stuck, researchers discovered.

Money relates to happiness only as far as it influences a person’s freedom to make choices, the researchers found.

In other words, money is indirectly tied to happiness through the lens of your ‘freedom to choose.’

“While wealth can provide you with more choices, it’s really having the ability to realize your dreams that leads to greater happiness,” study coauthor Ronald Fischer told AARP Magazine.

Fischer belonged to a team of researchers at the University of Wellington in New Zealand that surveyed 420,000 people across 63 countries about money, freedom, and choices.

Here’s the kicker: the people with freedom to choose report higher levels of happiness, even if they never act on that freedom.

The actual act of changing careers, starting a large family, moving to a new city, launching a business or traveling the world is irrelevant. What matters is having the freedom to do so. (I call this the freedom to ‘afford anything’ you choose.)

Money can provide you with more choices, but only if you keep your bills low.

It’s not the balance in a person’s bank account that makes them happy; it’s the ‘spread’ between their bank balance and their bills. If there’s a wide spread, people have more flexibility, more options. If there’s a narrow spread, people perceive themselves as stuck, and their happiness levels plummet.

If you get a raise but you embrace a bigger mortgage or a new car payment, your ‘spread’ never changes and you aren’t any happier.

If you get a raise but your spending habits stay the same, your ‘spread’ increases and – with it – so does your freedom and happiness.

The bottom line? Happiness relates to your ability to self-govern your own life, even if your day-to-day actions stay the same.

Maybe you’ve been putting off these tasks, or maybe they haven’t occurred to you. But with 30 days left in the year, you can take out this whole list doing just one thing every couple of days. And most of these jobs won’t take an hour.

Review your credit history. Time required: less than one hour. At AnnualCreditReport.comyou can get a free copy of your credit history – everything the three major reporting agencies have in your file. Your credit history doesn’t include your credit score, but this is the information used to tabulate your score, so you really need to check it for accuracy. Take 10 minutes to download it, then a half-hour looking it over to make sure all’s well.

Check out your tax situation. Time required: one to two hours. The window for some tax advantages closes at the end of the year, so now’s the time to look into possible credits and deductions – especially if you’re close to another tax bracket. Start by pulling out last year’s return, scoping out last year’s deductions, and seeing if there are actions you can take now to swell this year’s. Can you add more to your retirement plan at work? Can you take a deductible loss on an investment? Make a charitable donation?

Clear clutter. Time required: one hour to one month. There’s no better time than the holidays to turn your clutter into cash, or at least a tax deduction. The best way to approach your closets, attic, basement, or storage rooms is slowly – otherwise it’s too overwhelming. Pick one room, closet, or drawer per day, and spend a few minutes getting rid of stuff you haven’t touched in a year or more. If it’s easily sold, sell it online. If you’d rather help someone less fortunate, donate it. Either way, you’ll end up with more money, more deductions, less mess — and if you’re lucky, maybe even a re-gift.

Review/rebalance investments. Time required: less than one hour. Investments like your retirement plan shouldn’t require a lot of maintenance, but they do require some. Take a look at how your investments are performing and decide whether it’s time to buy, sell, or leave well enough alone.

Support a charity. Time required: less than one hour. It’s the season for giving, not just because of good  cheer, but also because of tax-deductible donations. It only takes a few minutes to check out charities.

Prepay bills. Time required: less than one hour. You might boost some tax credits and deductions for this tax year by prepaying things like your mortgage or next semester’s college tuition. If these bills are due soon anyway, get a deduction by paying in advance. What’s deductible? Look at last year’s tax return.

Tinker with your budget. Time required: one to two hours. Now’s a good time to look at whether your spending has matched your projections over the past year – maybe some adjustments are in order, especially if your income or expenses has changed.

Make a will. Time required: less than one hour. If you don’t have a plan for your demise, there’s no time like the present to start one. Lawyers can cost hundreds but do-it-yourself software is less than $50 and you can do it in less than an hour. If you have the time and money, have your computer-generated will checked by a lawyer later.

How to find the time to do this stuff

The key is slow, easy, and gradual. Earmark just 15 minutes to an hour per day and go down the list. Keep in mind much of this stuff doesn’t require excessive concentration – you can do a lot of it while you’re watching TV.

And if you don’t get it all done? Well, there’s always next year.

But would you have gone out to eat at that fancy restaurant if you didn’t have a gift certificate? Would you have suffered greatly if you didn’t receive the discounted massage? Not likely. In fact, if you never knew these deals existed, you probably wouldn’t have spent the money in the first place.

A New Breed of Frugality

The recession has inspired a newfound frugal mentality among Americans that’s only increasing. Everyone from the usual suspects (stay-at-home moms and starving students) to less likely digital coupon-clippers (single men and retirees) is jumping all over daily deal sites like Groupon, Living Social, and Restaurant.com.

So how much are the users of these websites actually saving? The real question is: How much more are they spending?

According to analysis by BIA/Kelsey, annual U.S. consumer spending on daily deal offers is expected to increase from an estimated $873 million in 2010 to $3.9 billion by 2015. That’s a compound annual growth rate of 35.1 percent.

At the same time, however, 64 percent of Americans don’t even have $1,000 in emergency savings, a relatively small amount of money for a financial safety net.

It’s becoming apparent that consumers think they’re saving money, yet are failing to do so.

How Daily Deals Encourage Impulse Buying

The primary characteristic of daily deal and coupon sites that sets them apart from other money-saving resources is a deadline: These deals are only available for that particular day, or a few days at most.

That means it’s nearly impossible to use these sites for planned-out purchases that fit within a predetermined budget. Rather, you’re enticed by a steep discount on a non-essential purchase – then urged to buy, buy, buy before the deal is gone forever.

Here’s one result of that impulsiveness: 21.7 percent of daily deal participants never even redeem their coupons, according research by Utpal Dholakia, a management professor at Rice University.

Whether they never have the time or they simply forget, obtaining the deal and “saving money” is more important to the buyer than actually using the product or service.

Lindsay Benitez, a 22-year-old professional in Los Angeles, admits her addiction to daily deal sites is a constant drain on her budget. “I don’t really save any money because they’re things I wouldn’t normally spend on at all. Sure I’ll save 50 percent on this service, but really, would I have even gotten it in the first place?”

Even though this fact is obvious, the thrill of snagging exclusive discounts keeps her coming back. “They e-mail so early in the morning, so it’s the first thing I see,” Benitez says. “I check them about every day to see what new deals they have.” She jokes, “I need to deactivate the messages, but what if I miss out on a good deal?!”

What If You Saved the Money Instead?

These online coupons and daily deals are positioned as tools for budget-conscious shoppers, but the money spent would almost always be better used for something else – like building up an emergency savings account or paying down high-interest debt.

Peter Warnock, father of two young children and avid daily deal shopper, agrees: “Cash flow gets tight at the end of the month from my impulse buys. If I can’t pay my bills in full, the interest I get charged negates any discounts I would’ve gotten from the offers.”

Spending $20 here and $50 dollars there may only feel like an occasional splurge, the financial impact of which is easy to discount by the savings associated with the purchase. Unfortunately, these small purchases add up to big spending each month or year – money that is often spent at the expense of a high credit card balance or severely underfunded 401(k).

In a time when high unemployment and rocky financial markets make it more important than ever to scrutinize every dollar spent, consumers will likely find their finances benefit most from avoiding these deals sites altogether.