November 15th, 2008
Turn on your TV. Open a newspaper. There’s been only one story over the last months. Something called a credit crunch is coming. This is bad. Nobody should panic but the economy is in trouble. You’re short of money, thinking about a payday loan online. Then come all the headlines. Wall Street high fliers suddenly bailed out, taken over or dropping into bankruptcy. The Fed is running around trying to look as if it’s in charge. Even the President comes on TV to push a plan to save everyone. Then the debate starts. Is this just to rescue the executives on Wall Street, or will it do something for everyone else on Main Street? Well, let’s get one thing clear. You’re not reading this because you’re a Wall Street banker. You’re one of the millions of guys who work steady and pull more than $1,000 per month. You’ve got a checking account but not a great credit record, and all you want is a few dollars as a cash advance payday loan. So what’s the credit crunch all about? Think about everyday produce you buy in the market and the more expensive organic foods. Everyone needs food to live but you don’t die if you never eat an organic bean. It’s the same with finance. Everyone needs money in a banking system, but if you never see a collateralized debt swap or a securitized derivative, you don’t die. All these clever bankers who work in these fancy skyscrapers have been playing with stuff that no one but them understands. Except it turns out they didn’t understand it either and they’ve all lost a small fortune. Does that mean banks have got no money to lend? No! Does that mean you can’t get an instant payday loan from a finance company? No! All the millions of guys like you have your weekly or monthly pay coming into your accounts. That banking operation has always been profitable. It’s still profitable. Ordinary Main Street banks are not going out of business. Even if they get into trouble, your money is guaranteed by the government so there’s no need to worry. More to the point, Main Street has got money to lend. You may not realize it but people like you help banks and finance companies to make a good profit. So don’t panic. If you run short between one payday and the next, there is money waiting for you to borrow.
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October 6th, 2008
A hundred or so years ago, there was a sense of shame if you had to take a loan. With low interests rates and easy access to credit, the solid citizens abandoned prudence and began to spend as much as they could borrow. No matter how good their credit score, credit is drying up. People were expected to manage on what they had. Now, the majority of people who live and work in the U.S. are always no more than one pay check away from bankruptcy. But how do you cope if you are unlucky and get caught in an emergency? As it happens, you are better off because your lend is not already high. No anxious banks are pressing you to reduce your overdraft. The only answer is an instant payday loan.
Of course, there were always a number of people like you who looked on from the sidelines because their credit scores were not good enough to get credit cards or bank overdrafts. Finance companies have a solid track record of giving fast cash advances to people in work who fall short between one payday and the next. To get access to this money, all you have to prove is that you are in steady work and you have a checking account. But, if you just find it difficult to make ends meet on your pay, borrowing money through the payday loan system is an expensive choice. The interests rates are high. It’s better if you can either find more hours to work or cut your costs. Prudence may not be so fashionable these days but it is better than ending up in debt on high interest loans.
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October 1st, 2008
For some people, going to college and entering into some sort of business school is an ambition they have. They graduate, go to work for some business or company to get their foot in the door, and soon, they decide to branch out on their own. With this, they often choose to open their own business. What goes into operating and owning your own small business? There are other forms of business owners. Some folks work all of their lives with a dream of owning their own business. While these two types of people have different starting points, they wind up in similar places. Upon retirement, these folks will strike out and open their own small business.
With that, they need several similar things: Small business insurance. Protecting their business is something that, undoubtedly, they think about. After all, having the right type of coverage ensures that the owners, the customers, and the clients all have the protection that they need. If you need coverage and protection that you can relate to as a business owner, you can find it. Security is not promised. No one can guarantee that the market will always be the same. What can be guaranteed to these business owners is that you will have the protection that you need in the case that something goes wrong. Check out the resources online available to you and you’ll find that you can get the coverage and rates you deserve. Protect your business now.
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September 25th, 2008
Often, people naively assume that life insurance is for the sick, those who know that they are soon going to leave us. But the reality is different-life insurance is just as much for the healthy as it is for the sick. Life insurance is for anyone who truly wants to protect their family in the case of some accident. Some people believe that you have to be worth millions of dollars to even have cheap life insurance, something they believe only belongs in stories from harlequin romance novels. But life insurance truly is something for everyone. The sad thing is, most people think that life insurance is something that only rich people can afford. You just meet with an agent who can give you all of the details about it first. Find out exactly what it is and how you can use it to protect and secure your family. Just find out ways to save on it like quitting smoking or joining a gym. You’ll soon see that you can save and that you deserve it. Then, when you are ready, you can go online and find more resources there before you begin to compare the quotes and rates of possible life insurance plans. Remember, you don’t have to be rich to get the best life insurance that you possibly can.
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September 25th, 2008
Let’s remember old Aesop’s fable called The Ant and the Grasshopper. The grasshopper spends all summer singing whilst the ant toils to fill his home with food for the winter. When it gets cold, the grasshopper dies of hunger. This is a dramatic way of telling you it’s better to make save and preparations for the worst before the worst happens. If nothing happens, you’re actually better off all round. Hey, I know you don’t want doom and gloom but one of us has to ask the hard questions. So, with the housing market in free fall and price inflation taking off, jobs are less secure. Now is the time to spend a few minutes thinking about what you would do if the unthinkable happened to you. The headline. If you’ve been wise with your money, you’ll probably survive. All this time, you’ve been sheltered from the hard world of personal health insurance coverage. What are you entitled to receive? Leaving to one side the questions of your severance pay, unemployment compensation and whether your employer will pay for outplacement services to help you find your next job, look at health insurance coverage through COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985). So long as your employer had twenty or more employees, and terminates you without a justification of gross misconduct, the rights will probably apply. Your employer should have sent you and your spouse a notice about your rights. If there is a slight shortfall in the amount, i.e. $50 or 10% of the premium, your employer cannot terminate. This means it is always better to send some money rather than no money. If you are short, you get an additional thirty days to make up the payment. If your spouse and children are covered under the plan, they have separate rights to claim COBRA coverage. You all have sixty days from the date coverage under the plan ends to elect for coverage under COBRA. You must make your first premium payment within forty-five days and thereafter at regular monthly intervals. You will lose coverage if you miss a payment. Use this breathing space to find new employment, secure in the knowledge that your health insurance needs are covered. That is, assuming you have laid the money by like Aesop’s ant.
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September 10th, 2008
This is a good year for drivers in California. Way back when in 1988, Proposition 103 received more than enough support from voters to pass. Basically, voters wanted car insurers to set rates based on the driver’s record and the number of miles driven. Three years ago, the Commissioner for Insurance introduced new rules prohibiting the use of ZIP codes as the primary factor for determining car insurance rates . These rules came into force July 14. This is one battle won for consumers’ rights. The war goes on. Zip codes remain a dominant factor in other states. Similarly, insurers also check out your credit score. Almost every company seems to think that people with low credit score make bad drivers. So what’s going on? Well, it’s all about how to define risk. All the factors go into the melting pot. How old you are, where you work, where you live, whether you own or rent your home, whether you own the car outright or have a car loan, what make and model of car, and so on. This personal information is included in your credit history. It gives the companies a snapshot of who you are. Is it fair to look at this information? Unfortunately, yes. Just as a loan company wants to know more about you before making the offer of a loan, car insurance companies want a better idea of whether you take care of your financial affairs before agreeing to pay out if you get in a traffic accident. The first step in setting the auto insurance rate is whether you qualify for any discounts. For example, most companies offer discounts if you can pay an annual premium rather than by monthly or half-yearly installments. Then comes the math work. There are statistical methods to determine the risk of you getting in an accident. If you’re a late payer who gets into trouble with liens and mortgages on your property, if you rent rather than own, you may not take as much care of your property as others. Add in lack of consistency in employment and multiple lines of credit getting close their the maximums, and you’re considered a higher risk driver. It may not feel fair. It probably isn’t completely fair. But that’s the way insurance credit scoring works. So, before you go online for your next car insurance quotes , check out your credit score and, if necessary, repair the score. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you the right to get free copies of your credit reports. Use that right and get your credit score into shape before getting quotes.
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September 9th, 2008
The auto insurance game is a tough one to play. Just when you think you have scored an amazing deal on your auto insurance, you hear that another agency is offering a cheaper rate, one with better quotes and amazing deals. Think about it: you spend your free day off of work driving around town, stopping by agency after agency looking for the best rate for you; one that will accept your driving record, for good or for worse, and offer you a decent quote. Asking for free quotes in an agency is like asking them to go out of their way for you, something that you aren’t doing. Not to mention dealing with less than friendly agents who frown upon seeing your less than perfect driving record. Don’t put yourself through that if you don’t have to! Right now, in this day and age, you can get your auto insurance quotes online easily. All you have to do is find a website that offers you all of the benefits of searching from home. You can find the quotes online by simply comparing at least five agencies who offer the right rates for you. Don’t hesitate with something as serious as auto insurance. Get the facts now.
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September 5th, 2008
I have absolutely no doubts, that you want to get the best quotes for your car loan. So stand up for your rights! The Federal Government doesn’t often cover itself in glory. It usually caves into the interests of Big Business. But, with the FCRA, Capitol Hill actually did something useful for the consumer. There are three national credit data collection agencies - Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
You can ask, what’s in a credit report? Well, it’s basic information on where you live, how well you look after your debts, and whether you’ve been arrested or sued, or filed for bankruptcy. Use annualcreditreport.com. It may be more useful to get one report from each of the three companies every four months. That way, you get free updates as the year goes by. If you find anything wrong, the FCRA gives you the right to have it corrected. Don’t forget. If you see less than 550, that means that you’re not getting the best car loan. Anything you can do to improve your score will save you dollars on your car loan.
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September 2nd, 2008
When you’ve checked and, where necessary, fixed your credit score, now’s the time to start asking around for that car loan. So let’s put up a list. Your local bank will offer car loans as part of its package of services. Obviously, the bank knows you since most transactions will go through your account(s). So you can go down, join the queue to see one of the loan officers and get a quote. More convenient is to sit down and use a site like this to get online quotes. No waiting in queues. Then there are the finance companies. You can always pick up a telephone and ask for a quote. Car dealers can offer their own loans or act as agents for the finance companies or the manufacturers. When you’re out shopping for that car, you can also ask about what loans are available. All that? Sure thing! Never accept the first deal offered to you. Car loans can vary from the affordable to the eye-popping insult. You need to get as many quotes as possible, look carefully at how the instalments fit into your current commitments, and decide whether you can afford this new car. It’s humiliating to have the reproman come and take your car away when you default. It looks bad on your credit records as well. Be realistic in what you borrow and the rates at which you borrow. If all else fails, make do with the current car.
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August 26th, 2008
One way of looking at the choice between term and permanent life insurance is as a lease and a purchase. When you take out a term policy, you lease the right to death benefits during the term. When the contract ends, you have no further interest. But when you buy a permanent policy, it stays in force during your lifetime and accumulates a cash value from a tax-deferred savings component. So a permanent policy is term insurance plus an investment account and many buy this kind of policy because you can borrow from the cash component or surrender a part of the policy during your lifetime. Because of the savings or investment component, permanent policies cost more than term policies. The first main issue for you to consider is the scale of the investment element. Over the last ten years, the stock market has outperformed other forms of investment. It’s only recently that the DJIA and other indicators have begun to fall. Thus, if all you want is high growth, don’t buy policies of this type. Buy term life insurance and make your own investment decisions. Insurance companies are not wealth managers with a mission to maximize your capital. They are conservative investment managers whose only mission is to provide steady growth (if possible) over time. Remember, to maintain the tax efficiencies, the policy should be in force at least fifteen years. Always think long term and, so long as the policy has the required number of years in play, the benefits pass to your beneficiaries tax free. The different types of permanent insurance policies give you a choice on how your savings are to be invested. It’s up to you to investigate the options and to be comfortable with the decisions you make about risk. A further essential element to consider are the options to stop paying the premiums later in the policy’s life. Depending on the terms of the life insurance policy, you may be able to use the accumulated investment income to pay the premiums, or you may buy an annuity with that element. This will relieve any financial strain in maintaining instalment payments during your retirement. Finally, look carefully at the conditions you have to meet to withdraw cash from the investment account, or borrow from the account or use it as collateral for a loan. Since there will be both a cash and surrender value, it is important to know how to use this value to pay for your children’s education or should an emergency arise. Always have a clear understanding of a life insurance policy before you buy. Never buy simply because the premium is a low or affordable cost. Get the best value for your dollars.
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