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Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card

Earn 10,000 Starpoints with your first purchase - that's good for up to 3 free nights!
Earn 1 Starpoint for virtually every dollar you spend on the Card and double Starpoints at participating Starwood hotels and resorts
Redeem at over 825 participating Starwood hotels and resorts worldwide with no blackout dates. Starwood hotels include Sheraton®, Westin®, W Hotels®, St. Regis®, Luxury Collection®, Le Meridien®, and Four Points by Sheraton®.
Transfer to over 30 frequent flyer programs, most on a one-to-one basis.
Save on business purchases at companies like FedEx® and Hertz®
Winner of 2006 Freddie Awards: Voted Best Travel Rewards Credit Card by frequent travelers.

ADDITIONAL STARWOOD PREFERRED GUEST BUSINESS CREDIT CARD BENEFITS
Turn Starpoints into miles with over 30 frequent flyer programs3
Complimentary enrollment in the Starwood Preferred Guest program
Fee-free Additional Cards for employees — earn Starpoints on the business purchases they make4

OPEN FROM AMERICAN EXPRESS
OPENSM the small business team at American Express is all about small business. It provides you the resources to help you run your business, including:
Financing
Get unlimited fee-free Additional Cards, 2.9% APR for purchases in the first six months, and pay no annual fee.

Savings
Save at AT&T, FedEx, Hertz®, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM® and more by using your Business Card and see the savings on your statement. No coupons or codes are needed and the savings are in addition to other discounts your business may already receive.5

Online management
Manage your account with Summary of Accounts and track charges with Expense Management Reports.

Community
Chat, pose questions, get insights from other small business owners, and attract new business.

Advice
Ask an expert a question, use an online tool, and read articles by other business owners.
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DID YOU KNOW?

	Keeping control of your personal finances is, in theory, a fairly simple process. It is only human nature that makes home budgeting and financial control so difficult for many people. However, for the sake of this article, we will consider the simple side of the household budget equation, which is making a budget in the first place. A good starting point in your quest to make a home budget, is to take stock of your current and recent situation, and list out all your monthly outgoings. If you only do this from memory, there is a chance you will miss one or more important items. You probably have several sources of information on what those regular outgoings are, and whether they are easy to find depends on how well organised you are with your paperwork. It is worth checking back over at least three months bank and credit card statements, and jot down what your regular payments are out of those. At the same time, you can also make a note of items of expenditure that may recur later on. Another source of information will be the bills and receipts that you have received over the past quarter. If you have not kept such documents and records before, then now is a good time to start. The good organisation of your important financial documents, and orderly filing of bills and receipts, will stand you in good stead for controlling the family budget when it is set. Going over what you have spent over the last quarter will cover most if not all of your regular payments. However, it is important to think about whether you have any quarterly, annual, or new commitments that may not have shown up in your previous search. This part of the process in making your budget should give you a list that includes utilities (eg water, electricity, gas and telephone), insurance payments, mortgage and loan repayments, and credit card payments. The regular payments you have so far found will form the core of your household budget. You can now turn those into a formal list, either on paper or on a spreadsheet, and put the amounts into the next column, with a heading notifying the month. Before moving on to the next phase, add a further 11 columns on the paper or spreadsheet, with the headings changed to appropriate months until you have a column for each calendar month for a year. I have prepared an example budget spreadsheet to help you. For each of the items listed, decide whether they are monthly, quarterly, or yearly, payments, then repeat the monthly amounts in all the columns that apply. For example, monthly payments will go in all 12 columns but quarterly in only in the four columns when payment is due. The next stage is for you to consider what other necessary expenditure will come out of your income every month. These other expenditure items probably do not show up as regular payments in the first stage, though individual payments may. These items may include food, household goods such as detergents, car maintenance, petrol (gasoline), and fares, which are essential to you, and you need to budget for each month. Again, list these items in the budget list, and then enter amounts in each monthly column. What you will have then will be the "essential expenditure" part of the budget. This, if you like, is the unavoidable part of your budget. At least, it is unavoidable in the short term. On top of that essential expenditure, though, we all have discretionary, unnecessary or indulgent expenditure, on things we like to spend on but do not actually have to. However, before considering your non essential outgoings, there are two things it is advisable to do: 1. Total your monthly essential expenditure for each of the next 12 months, and 2. Write (or type) in your monthly net income at the top of your budget form. Hopefully, "2" is much higher than "1", and you still have some income left to spend on non-essential things that make life more pleasant, plus some regular savings too. Now that you know that you have money spare to spend on non-essentials, such as holidays and eating out, then you can also list those. You will then have a complete picture of your spending and income patterns, and have a basic budget from which you can plan ahead and keep your finances under control. If all goes well, you can also budget to save a reasonable amount each month, putting you well on the way to financial stability.

If you've become accustomed to having your finances in disarray, it's likely time to take control of your financial life and get things in order. This may seem like a tall order of business, especially if you've had your financial records scattered for quite some time… but it can actually be a much simpler process than you might think.

The first step that you need to take in order to make some headway toward organization is to realize that there is definitely a better way to take care of your finances and banking than what you're currently doing.

From that point, it's simply a matter of creating and enforcing your own personalized banking strategy in order to get the most out of your money.

What Is a Personalized Banking Strategy?

If you're not exactly sure what a personalized banking strategy is, you're not alone. At its most basic, a personalized banking strategy is simply a method of looking at the way that you deal with your finances and building your financial planning around it.

Savings accounts, chequeing accounts, investments… they all fit into your banking strategy. It's time to take the time to look at them individually so as to determine how to best get them to work together for your benefit.

Savings

The purpose of savings is obviously to assist you in saving money, but many people use savings in much the same way that they do chequeing. Not only does this cause you to miss out on some of the benefits of the interest rates that savings accounts carry, but you can actually lose money in fees if you make too many withdrawals in a month.

If you don't have a savings account, you might want to consider getting one… but if you find that you're using the ATM a bit too much, it's time to hide your ATM card. The money in your savings account needs to stay there until it's really needed.

Chequeing

The key to successfully managing your chequeing account is to balance your chequebook monthly and build up a bit of a buffer to prevent overdrawn cheques. Round up to the next whole number the amount of each purchase when you record it in your chequebook.

While this may only be a little bit of change, with each purchase it will grow; at the end of each month you'll find that you've got more money in your account than your ledger was showing.

You can either leave it there to build the buffer more, or transfer the difference to your savings which you should do every few months, at the very least.

Long-Term Deposits

Long-term deposits can also figure prominently into your banking plans, especially if you have problems with maintaining a savings balance. Instead of placing all of your savings into your savings account, place some if it into certificates of deposit or other long-term deposits… the interest rate will be better than most accounts, and it will help keep you from spending the money that you're trying to save.

Investment

You shouldn't ignore the usefulness of investments when determining how best to divide up your money. As a general rule, it can be best to choose a relatively stable investment that will be used as a long-term investment… this way there's less danger of the value suddenly dropping and you won't be as tempted to simply sell the stock when you need quick cash. Investing a little each month (perhaps on an investment plan) can help you to keep your investments growing, as well.

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