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Posts Tagged ‘Benefit’

How Double Glazing Pays for Itself

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

Anyone who has ever shivered through a cold winter in a poorly maintained house knows that the nights can seem very long when you need to try and get to sleep wearing three pairs of socks and a hat.

My own worst experience in this matter came, rather strangely, when I went to live in Spain. Expecting a tropical paradise all year round I took over a big collection of t-shirts and baggy shorts but only one jumper. It was only when November kicked in that I realised that it gets blooming cold in the Mediterranean too, and that you feel the chills even more after a warm summer of bare legs and burned arms.

Since that cruel Spanish winter of going to bed at 6pm and keeping a flask of hot coffee by my bed I have become very careful about only staying in houses which will keep me warm without the need to hop to the bathroom whilst wrapped inside the duvet.

Less Heating and a Warmer House

Of course, the other benefit this brings with it is that my fuel bills are lower too. The Mediterranean fridge in which I lived during one winter had old fashioned windows which didn’t seem to do anything at all to keep the cold out. This meant that I had to keep the gas heater on all evening long just to get a little bit of warmth about the place.

With double glazing, on the other hand, you can make sure that the heat gets trapped inside the house while the cold air stays outside. The next property I stayed in once I got back to the UK had cracking double glazing in it and this meant that I hardly even needed to bother about the central heating once I had got the place heated up after getting in from work. It is hard to believe that I enjoyed a more pleasant winter in England than the previous one in Spain but it is true.

It might look like a bit of an expense to get the windows in your house changed over to double glazed ones but it is definitely going to be worth it in the long run. As well as feeling more comfortable about taking your coat off without running the risk of hypothermia you will also find that your heating bills drop dramatically. This can only be a good thing, and before long you should be able to say that the cost of improving your windows has been more than covered by the savings you have made on your utility bills.

Of course, the main benefit of now having a better type of window in your home is that you don’t need to worry about getting frozen ears during the night. If you can do this and make a saving on your bills in the long term then you might be left wondering why it took you so long to realise that there is no longer any need to suffer during a cold winter.

Tags: Baggy Shorts, Benefit, Central Heating, Chills, Cold Air, Cold Winter, Flask, Fridge, Fuel Bills, Hot Coffee, Jumper, Legs, Little Bit, Pairs, Running The Risk, Sleep, Socks, Spain, Tropical Paradise, Warmth
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Credit Monitoring Services – Great tool for credit repair

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

A credit monitoring service is an annual membership service. This service typically gives you immediate access to your credit report from one or all 3 major credit bureaus. You will also receive access to your credit score. This could be the credit bureaus own score or possibly your FICO score. You may want to opt for a service that provides access to your FICO score. This is the score most lenders will use to determine whether to approve your application for a loan or credit card.

As you begin repairing your credit you will be able to monitor your credit score at periodic intervals. This will let you see if the changes you are making are having a positive effect. This can be a great benefit as you will be able to tell immediately what is working and what isnt. Some of the services even offer tools to let you see what changes will benefit you the most, such as paying off a certain credit card, before you even make such a change. This can be very beneficial in determining your strategy to repairing your credit.

By combining your credit reports from all 3 credit bureaus, you will easily be able to see the differences in your credit reports between all credit bureaus. Since each credit bureau maintains its own consumer credit database, dont be surprised to find differences on each one of your credit reports. This is why its essential to get a copy of all 3 credit reports because you wont know which credit agency in advance that a lender might check your credit with.

Alerting is a feature that allows you to receive email notices if any major changes happen to your credit report. Most services allow you to monitor changes from all 3 credit bureaus. This can be an ideal way to detect Identity Theft. Also, if you are in the process of getting a home loan or auto loan, you will want to know ahead of time if something changes in your credit report that may hinder your approval process.

Many of the credit monitoring services even offer Identity Theft insurance. By being enrolled in their service, you entitled up to $25,000 in damages if you are a victim of Identity Theft.

Credit Monitoring as a service then allows you access to your credit report at all 3 credit bureaus, and the ability to see the bureaus own credit score or you FICO score. Alerts can be setup to notify you of significant changes to your credit that could be Identity Theft.

Check out my 3 bureau credit monitoring review page for a breakdown of the most popular companies offering credit monitoring services.

Tags: Auto Loan, Benefit, Consumer Credit, Credit Bureau, Credit Card, Credit Database, Credit Monitoring Service, Credit Monitoring Services, Credit Repair, Credit Report, Credit Reports, Credit Score, Fico Score, Home Loan, Identity Theft, Lenders, Major Credit Bureaus, Membership Service, Periodic Intervals, Repairing Your Credit
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Credit Cards Let You Spend More than You Make

Monday, February 28th, 2011

Two minus four equals trouble when you are talking your budget. If you spend more money than you make, you will have money problems.

The problem is that you usually don’t realize what you’ve done until it is too late. It’s hard enough to keep track of checking account spending, but add credit cards, and spending can get out of hand. How many times have you used your credit cards to buy clothes, impulse items or even groceries, and said you’ll pay it back? But at the end of the month, you have nothing to pay it back with.

It’s easy to say you will pay it back next month, or when you get that bonus at work, or when you get your tax returns. Before you know it, it’s added up to a mountain of debt.

While credit cards aren’t the only way to spend more than you make, they are a number one enabler. Other ways to spend more than you make is by taking out cash advance loans or having an interest only mortgage. In the long run, they rarely work for your benefit.

It’s not easy to stop spending more than you make. But it is possible. Start by creating a budget. List all of your bills and all of your expenses and see what you have left over. Do this every paycheck. You have to know exactly how much money you have if you want to avoid spending too much. If you need to, sit and look at your bank account register for three minutes every morning. Write down what you’ve spent the day before.

Personally, my husband and I have found that the longer we go between looking at the checking account ledger, the more we spend. When we know every day how much we have left, we are able to spend more frugally. But if we both just assume that we still have x amount left, we get into trouble.

If you are a shopaholic, then there are ways to cut your need to spend. The number one way is to never step foot in the store. If you know that you will buy too much other stuff at Walmart, don’t go there for groceries. If you want to go in Hobby Lobby just to look, but know that every time you look, you spend $200 — don’t go in.

Another way to reduce that need is to go through what you already have. When you see how many things you already have, the need for more is lessened.

You know, everyone has lapses. If you have lived on a $5,000 a month spending habit on a $3,000 income for a while, you may be used to juggling things. And even when it starts falling in, you want to spend that $5,000. You may go out and spend too much every once in a while — you just have to deal with yourself when you do. Then get back on track.

There are people out there that live comfortably on $500 a month. There are others that make $5,000 a month that can’t make ends meet. It doesn’t matter how much money you make, it’s how you use that money. By keeping close daily track of your income and purchases each month, you can make it on almost anything.

Tags: Account Ledger, Benefit, Bonus, Buy Clothes, Cash Advance Loans, Checking Account, Creating A Budget, Credit Cards, Groceries, Hobby Lobby, How Much Money, Impulse, Interest Only Mortgage, Money Problems, Paycheck, Shopaholic, Sit, Tax Returns, Three Minutes, Walmart
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What is the best type of investment?

Saturday, January 29th, 2011

When people look at investing, there are three main areas to choose from; shares, property or cash deposited in interest bearing accounts.

Why has property proved to be the most effective choice?

In Australia and many other places around the world, over the past 50 years property has averaged 10% p.a. compound growth. (Carefully selected properties have averaged even greater returns). Not forgetting that investment properties also generate an income from rent.

Median priced property in Australia have averaged growing at 2 4% p.a. higher than inflation, making it a very solid investment.

One of the most effective way to build riches is to accumulate a portfolio of investment properties (over the space of 7 to10 years) and then let the power of Compound Interest work to your benefit.

The main reason that property can be utilised more effectively than shares as an investment, is due to the added benefit of being able to highly leverage an investment property.

Leveraging is where you use a small portion of your own money along with a large portion of someone elses money (a bank loan) to secure an investment of a far greater value than you could have, using only you own money.

If you invested $10,000 directly into shares that were growing at 10%, then in 7.2 years they would be worth around $20,000. On the other hand if you had used that $10,000.00 as 5% deposit on a $200,000.00 property and borrowed the remaining 95% plus establishment costs. If this also grew at 10% then in 7.2 years your investment would be worth $400,000.00. Meaning that by leveraging your investment you have gained an additional $190,000.00.
Compounding has an even greater power, the longer it is allowed to work. With the above example, if you were looking at a 21.6 year period, then the results are quite staggering.

The un leveraged shares would be worth $80,000 and the property $1,600,000, a differential of $1,520,000.

It is possible to borrow 100% of the purchase price of a property plus expenses by securing the deposit against your own home, so that you dont need a cash deposit.

Isn’t going into debt a bad thing?

There are two types of Debt. Good Debt is where you borrow funds to secure a capitally appreciating, income-producing asset. Bad Debt is where you borrow to buy a capitally depreciating, non-income producing item such as a car, boat or holiday.

There are many different strategies for property investing, which suit different people depending on their current income or financial position.
A combination of using Good Debt to buy property and then allowing Compounding to do its work seems to be one of the most effective way of creating wealth. But this is definitely not a Get rich quick scheme, on the contrary it is a Get rich slowly scheme which works most effectively over a 10 to 20 year period. It takes patience and perseverance, but after having spoken to dozens of other property investors, many of whom have become multi millionaires within the space of 10 to 15 years, I am certain that it is worthwhile.

Tags: Bank Loan, Benefit, Compound Growth, Differential, Establishment Costs, Inflation, Interest Work, Investment Properties, Investment Property, Large Portion, Money, People, Portfolio, Power Of Compound Interest, Property In Australia, Reason, Shares, Small Portion, Solid Investment
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Online Banking Made Easy

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Here’s a really simple way… to have your banking handled with no muss, no fuss… on the internet.

Traditionally you have been used to doing your banking by going in to a physical brick and mortar building and taking care of whatever banking business you had to take care of.

Whether it was opening an account, checking balances, depositing a paycheck, taking money out for living expenses, applying for a loan, paying a bill, moving money around from account to another or whatever.

Of course you had to make a special point of putting it into your schedule and arranging other tasks around it to accommodate your planned trip to the bank. Well, those days are over.

With the popularity of the internet during the last 5 years banking has never been easier or more convenient than it is today.

With the internet and online banking you can access your bank 24/7. Or as close to 24/7 as can be since there is always the time when the bank’s website is not accessible due to website maintenance.

And you don’t even have to get dressed to do your banking. I find this benefit very useful in the cold winter months when I can just sit in the warmth of my home and do my banking activities through my computer.

Nowadays, most large national banks, regional banks and even smaller local banks and credit unions have some form of online banking for both the convenience of their customers and for their convenience as well.

By allowing you to access their bank and your banking account they don’t have to pay for someone to attend to your needs and they save money. They can pass that savings on to you through higher interest rates on your money.

In fact there are virtual banks that exist today that do not have a brick and mortar existence and exist solely online. Because of the great savings that they enjoy with that arrangement they offer some of the highest banking interest rates I have seen.

Another great benefit of online banking that I have been taking advantage of is online bill paying.

In the old days when I had to pay a bill I took the bill, wrote out a check, put it in the envelope, put a stamp on the envelopeand put it in the mail, hoping that it arrived on time so I wouldn’t be assessed a late fee.

Now I can just get on the internet and get on the website of the place where I am paying the bill, hit a few keys on the keyboard of my computer and the bill is paid, saving a stamp and a lot of time and worry about the reliability of snail mail.

Another great advantage of internet banking is the concept of direct deposit.

Using direct deposit your employer can now take your paycheck and automatically deposit the money in whatever banking account you designate. That way you don’t have to worry about getting the money into the bank in time to pay your big bill coming up. Now having the money in the bank and the paying of the bill can be done electronically.

And now dealing with the IRS has been made somewhat easier with the arrival of internet banking.

Now you can file your return and if it turns out you owe Uncle Sam some money you can pay it electronically by submitting your banking information with your return. If the IRS owes you a refund they can send it to you using that same banking information. And, it is all done more speedily than it was in the old days using snail mail. If you are due a refund you will be very happy to get your money sooner.

As you proceed into the 21st century you can take advantage of the progress that the banking industry has experienced in the
last few years. You will find many ways to make what used to be
considered a drudge or a necessary evil into some thing that is
more pleasant and less time-consuming to deal with.

So if you haven’t experienced online banking, give it a try. You’ll probably like it!

Tags: Bank 24, Banking Account, Benefit, Brick And Mortar, Cold Winter, Convenience, Credit Unions, Existence, Fuss, Interest Rates, Internet Access, Living Expenses, National Banks, Paycheck, Physical Brick, Popularity Of The Internet, Regional Banks, That Exist Today, Virtual Banks, Warmth
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