FinanceBasics
Planning Personal and Business Finances Properly
For the self-employed, the business account and the household budget quickly blur. A clear separation and a simple plan bring overview and calm.
Section
Finance
Financial planning, liquidity, interest, inflation, retirement
Good finances start with an overview. Finance explains liquidity, purchasing power, reserves and planning for the business and the household, with worked examples and tools you can try straight away.
FinanceBasics
How Inflation Changes Purchasing Power
Why the same euro buys a little less every year, how the inflation rate is measured and what that means for savings, wages and prices.
FinanceBasics
Cash Reserves: The Questions Business Owners Should Answer
How much of a buffer a business needs is not settled by a rule of thumb alone, but by a few honest answers. These questions help you decide.
Do the maths
Liquidity Reserve Calculator
How much of a buffer your business needs, from fixed costs, volatility and payment terms.
Business glossary
Terms from Finance
- Advance VAT return
- Electronic return to the German tax office (Umsatzsteuer-Voranmeldung) in which businesses calculate their own VAT minus input VAT. It must be filed and paid by the tenth day after the end of the month or quarter.
- Basic pension
- Tax-advantaged retirement provision in Germany (Basisrente) with a lifelong monthly pension, whose entitlements cannot be inherited, transferred or used as collateral.
- Cash reserve
- Freely available money held by a company (Liquiditätsreserve) that bridges short-term gaps between income and expenditure without new loans.
- Consumer price index
- Index calculated by the Federal Statistical Office (Verbraucherpreisindex) that measures the average change in the prices of goods and services bought by private households in Germany.
- Core inflation
- Rate of price increase excluding the volatile categories of energy and food. It is intended to reveal the underlying price trend.
- Deposit guarantee
- Statutory protection of bank deposits (Einlagensicherung) that, in a compensation event, reimburses up to 100,000 euros per depositor and bank.
- Drawings
- Money or assets that a sole trader takes out of the business for private purposes (Privatentnahme) and that do not reduce taxable profit.
- Fixed-term deposit ladder
- Splitting a sum across several fixed-term deposits with staggered maturities (Festgeldleiter). This makes part of the money available at regular intervals.
More sections