Career Master

Posts Tagged ‘Business’

Unless you have a degree in finance, you probably don’t know all that you need to know in order to be an informed, responsible credit card user. Now you don’t need to be a finance expert to comprehend the basics covered in this article, but after reading it, you might feel like one the next time the subject comes up with your co-workers, friends, or family.

What is Interest?

If you borrow $5,000 from your grandma and promise to pay her back in six months, you might return $5,000 to her a year later. Grandma would probably be happy with that because she loves you. But if you wanted to borrow $5,000 from a bank, you know you would not get off the hook nearly as easily. The bank would almost definitely expect regular monthly payments, and would absolutely expect to be compensated in the form of interest. But compensated for what? So long as you pay back the money, why should the bank deserve any extra compensation?

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A balance sheet is a quick picture of the financial condition of a business at a specific period in time.

The activities of a business fall into two separate groups that are reported by an accountant. They are profit-making activities, which includes sales and expenses. This can also be referred to as operating activities.

There are also financing and investing activities that include securing money from debt and equity sources of capital, returning capital to these sources, making distributions from profit to the owners, making investments in assets and eventually disposing of the assets.

Profit making activities are reported in the income statement; financing and investing activities are found in the statement of cash flows. In other words, two different financial statements are prepared for the two different types of transactions.

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