Archive for the 'Finances' Category

 

Best Secured Credit Cards on the Market

Jan 06, 2009 in Finances

If you’re in the market to fix your credit, you’re looking in the right place. When it comes to fixing your credit, many people believe that there’s no way to do it when it comes to credit cards. What most people realize is that if they truly learn their lesson from their credit spending that there are opportunities out there that can help you.

One of these opportunities that I’m talking about are secured credit cards. These are cards that you can use in order to improve your credit score. They simply work by you putting money on the card. Whatever you put on the card will determine your credit limit. If you put $500 on the card, this will be your limit. The reason the banks ask for this collateral is because if you don’t pay off your bill, they can simply dip into your account and pay themselves. If you show that you can pay month after month, you will find that you’ll be eligible for a regular card in the near future. This will take time but after one to two years, you will see a nice increase in your credit score.

How do I find the best cards?

Finding the best cards on the market isn’t that hard. It takes some time and effort to do the right research. You’re going to want to know what bank you’re going to want to go with since many banks offer these type of cards. Don’t just apply for the bank you’re working with but instead look at others because the fees could greatly vary.

You’ll also want to make sure that you make note of the fees. Every secured card you come across, you’re going to find that there will always be an annual fee and there won’t be any way around it. On top of the annual fee, there’s also going to be other fees that may include transaction fees, late fees, etc and once again, these will all vary. If you don’t pay your card off in full, you may want to look at the APR as well since this will be the rate applied to your unpaid balance.

There are many cards on the market and when it comes to research, make sure you check websites that offer an unbiased opinion. There are plenty of them out there. When you go to the bank’s website directly, they are going to do everything to get you to apply for the card. This is why you should go to a site that lists all of them. Here, you’ll be able to get a great review, information on the fees and you’ll get to see what other people think of it. When it comes time to apply, make sure you check out at least three to five cards. Research the fees and see what will be best for your future interests. As long as you’re good with your credit now and don’t overspend, you’ll see a nice increase in your credit score in the near future.

Find your secured credit card and more of Tom’s work all at FINDsecuredcards.com.

Building Your Multiple Income Streams

Jan 06, 2009 in Finances

The goal of the most of the people is to become financially stabile, wealthy or rich. Unless you are born rich, it will take some time and effort to build your wealth. You will need to do various things, in order to build your wealth. One of the proven methods of becoming wealthy is the building of multiple income streams.

Why is the multiple income streams ( MIS ) building important? Many people are working their daily job that gives them salary that is not satisfying all their needs. MIS building can help them. Also, uncertainty of the world economy makes wealth-conscious people to think about their future. Simply, there is no thing called lifetime employment or job security. Everybody can stay jobless very easy. Finding another job is an option, but would it be good to have contingency income, that will support you meanwhile. Furthermore, once you are retired, what do you think about your pension? Is it going to be sufficient when you retire? Look the people around you and you will see that most of the retired people have a financial shortage.

On the other hand, take the rich and wealthy people and their income structure. Most of them have many income streams. This is the foundation of their wealth. MIS is simply the option for everybody, regardless are you just the low paid employee that wants to earn a few dollars more, or wealthy businessmen that wants to multiply his fortune.

So if you are just starting with your MIS building, where should you start? What steps should you take?

- Primary Business / profession should be the first thing in you life. You should give the highest priority in the beginning, even long after you established secondary income streams. Key to successfully managing of multiple streams of income is not to lose focus on your primary revenue generating activity. This is because your job is giving you the regular income on monthly level, while secondary income streams takes some time for set up. This income stream will take most of your time and effort.

- Secondary financial streams are something that you should build after you have your main job / business well established. This can be anything that suits to you: part time job, self-employment, writing, web site building, consulting, etc. It will be still taking some of your time, but it should take you less time and effort than you main profession. Be careful with your personal engagement, in order to avoid burn out and saturation point, that can take you away from MIS concept.

- Passive Income streams are the third group of MISs. They are called passive simply since they do not take your time and effort, or they require relatively little attention. Literally they earn you the money as you sleep. These income streams can be the rent from a property that you own, royalties from a book that you have written, fee’s from intellectual property you have licensed, bank interest rates, investment funds, ads income from your web site, etc. The passive income sources do not come just like that. They are the result of wisely concepted activities of your primary and secondary business activity. At the beginning of your career, your passive income is probably zero. But as you career grows, you should establish as much possible incomes as possible. Eventually, you should be able to gradually pull out from your primary and secondary business activity and grow most of your income from passive income sources.

Having a MISs from primary, secondary and passive income streams will accelerate your wealth building. Simply, these three income groups are the main pillars of your income security. You will be able to secure your income through synergy of various income streams.

During your road to multiple income safety, remember to be patient. There is no easy and fast money, in spite what they promise you in ads. But through the persistent long-term approach, you will be able to build your stabile network of various income streams that will provide you the personal financial stability. Build the balance of active and passive income streams, while avoiding personal burn out. Build your incomes from the stream to the river, from the river to the lake…

Laurus Nobilis has 11 years of experience in FMCG business. He is editing the Biz Development web site dedicated to development of managerial skills. He also runs My Introspective a Personal Exploration and Development Guide. Do not forget to check Stress Relief.

How to Use a Short-Term Forex Trading Technique For Quick Profits

Jan 06, 2009 in Finances

Venturing into whatever kind of business would mean that you’d have to make use of a business strategy of some sort; the same also applies with Forex trading. According to studies, Forex traders make use of an array of different strategies along with time frames to navigate their way into the markets. However, statistics show that one of the most popular tactics used is the short-term Forex trading technique. So, what is it really about and how does it work? Well, here are the essential things you need to know.

What’s The Deal?

Basically, this kind of trading would mean making use of a short time frame to do your thing out there in the market. Since the Forex industry has trends, this kind of strategy could be both lucrative and full of risks.

Not For The Faint Hearted

Although this technique is a popular one, it is still not for the faint hearted. Most experts use this. However, novices in the trade are often advised to use a different strategy than this. This is because most people in the industry say that it is difficult. Why so?—this is generally due to the fact that financial markets, along with currencies in particular, always move in trends.

Nevertheless, although this is true of long-term and medium charts, for instance 30-minute extending to weekly or monthly charts; if you’ll be looking at 1 or 5 minute charts, you are simply just coming across noise.

It would be definite that prices would whipsaw all over and it would be pretty difficult to face the market without any confidence. Although there are times that you would get breakouts that could result to a couple of fair pips profit, you would also encounter a number of false breakouts and would be frequently stopped out of positions whenever your stop loss is triggered.

It’s A Skill

Generally, it is a very complicated method of trading. Traders actually consider it as a skill, which is quite hard to master. Nevertheless, so many people that are novices to Forex trading are obviously seduced into this kind of trading method. They are pretty much excited with the fact that they could acquire for instance 20-50 points within a span of minutes.

Nevertheless, it is still possible that you lose quite a significant amount of points quickly. In fact you could instantly be taken out of your position, most especially if you’re trading via news announcements. In the end, quite a number of short-term traders finally find out how complicated it is to constantly make money via this method and would often give up the whole trade altogether.

Is It Not Worth It?

If you’re thinking if you should give up the short term method completely, then the answer there would be not necessarily. Definitely, there are people that make consistent profits via this strategy. Additionally, there are instances when you might have a bigger longer term position and you encounter an intraday opportunity that you could get into and attain a few points.

For example, you might have a hundred points for profit, all thanks to your long-term position. However, since you’re quite confident for a continued upward move, you deliberate on whether the price have gone too high for the short-term, then you decide to go for short just to catch the short-term retracement. Such kind of change is one good example of where you may find short-term trading to be appropriate.

Nick Stoles has contributed many articles on forex topics like trade forex automatically. Want more forex tips? Visit http://www.financeadvisors.org for more information.

Forex - Understanding Commissions, Spreads, And Trading Costs

Jan 06, 2009 in Finances

The foreign currency market, also known as the Forex market, is turning into one of the most successful and popular investment methods. Many new traders are flocking to the Forex market because of its tremendous potential for money-making. Experienced traders are seeing its worth also and turning to it.

Forex offers many advantages over its competitor investments. A few of those benefits are:

1) Great leverage. In the Forex market the leverage can be 100:1 or even 200:1!

2) The trading costs are low.

3) Amazing liquidity. Nearly 2 trillion dollars are traded on a day to day basis. This is larger than any other financial market in the world.

4) There are no commissions! But we will talk about this more later…

However, currency trading, like any form of investment, does require some costs. That is what I want to concentrate on today.

Paying The Price

Though the costs are much, much lower in the Forex market than in most others, it is crucial to know what they are and how to manage them. In order to understand the profit of “no commissions”, let’s compare the stock market to Forex.

In the stock market, you need to have a broker who will have control over your investment funds and trade for you. But of course the broker will require a percentage of what you earn. Normally, the broker will earn commissions for each trade executed. These commissions can be charged for both selling and buying stock, therefore costing you much money.

With Forex trading, the brokers don’t require commissions. And, except for a few brokers, this really is true.

No Broker - No Problem

Also, the great thing about Forex is not just that brokers don’t require commissions, but that you don’t require a broker! Your capital can be in your own control and you can made decisions on your own. Though the responsibility sounds scary at first, it really is quite liberating. With your own future in your hands, you can trade confidently and successfully and your own freedom can be a great motivation.

But if you do need to use a broker, there are some things that you should understand. First of all, instead of charging commissions, the brokers will charge a “spread”. Though it is not strictly a commission, it is similar in some ways.

However, unlike commissions, spreads are only charged for one side of the transaction. This way you don’t have to pay to buy and sell Forex. Usually the spread is only required for buying Forex units.

Spreading The Wealth

Spreads will differ from broker to broker. They can change on account of what currencies you are trading and what kind of account you have. The more popular the currency, usually the less the spread will be. The currencies that are less commonly traded (and therefore have higher risk) will require higher spreads.

Be sure to decide first of all on what currencies you will be trading and to make sure what the spread will be for those certain Forex units.

All in all, it is very important to know what the spread will be before you trade and invest your money. Though brokers will still cost you money in the Forex market, it is dramatically less than in any other financial market. This is one of the great advantages of Forex trading.

Ferris Malone writes about investing and early retirement. Discover a powerful way to generate wealth and improve your Forex trading with rock-solid Forex trading strategies at http://www.thetradinginstitute.com by attending one of the FREE “Forex Trading Strategies” Webinars. Get a FREE Forex Strategies 21-page report.

Buying North Carolina Lake Property With 401(k) or IRA Funds

Jan 05, 2009 in Finances

How to use a self-directed IRA with Entrust Carolinas, LLC to Purchase Real Estate

With a self-directed IRA, you can own the property in a variety of ways. Here’s an example on how to use a self-directed IRA to purchase land:

While doing some research, you find a 1-acre lakeview lot for sale for $100,000 in a booming part of North Carolina. In five years, you are certain that the lot will be worth much more than $100,000, and so you decide to purchase the lot.

You look over your finances to see what’s available. You currently have $150,000 in your retirement account.

Here’s a few ways to structure this transaction for your benefit:

1) Purchase the Lot in Cash with your IRA - With $150,000 in your retirement account, the lot could be purchased in full on the day of the closing. Purchasing the lot in this way would mean that there would be no mortgage payments and no debt associated with the lot, and all profits made from the eventual sale of the lot from the real estate would go directly into your IRA account tax-free or tax-deferred, depending on your plan. It’s just that simple. And remember that any expenses pertaining to the property, such as construction work or tax bills, will be paid out of your IRA; leave some cash in your IRA account so the expenses are covered.

2) Partner with Your IRA - A great way to use leverage with your IRA is to partner with yourself; specifically, you can use mortgage loans and IRA money to make a purchase. In the example, the $100,000 lot can be purchased using both your IRA and a mortgage loan. You could use your IRA to put down $30,000 (30%) at closing, and then you, as an individual, acquire a mortgage loan from a bank for the remaining $70,000 (70%). In this type of transaction, partnering with your IRA allows you to put a cash sum down without involving any personal money. When partnering with your IRA, the split of ownership must directly reflect how much each contributes to the purchase price. With the above example (the 70-30% split), the IRA cash is for 30%, and you as an individual contribute 70% via the loan. Of course, this example is just one way in which the split can occur. Any percentage split is permissible so long as it reflects the contribution amounts from each party and equals 100%. Keep in mind that the IRA is not responsible for any loan costs or loan payments. Once the lot is sold, the profits from the sale must also reflect the same percentage split.

The paperwork associated with this transaction is also easy & painless. Essentially, you would complete an Entrust Carolinas LLC application, a fee disclosure & a copy of your driver’s license, and that would create your self-directed IRA. From there, a simple transfer form would move your retirement account from the previous custodian to Entrust Carolinas, LLC (which is a non-taxable event) and along with the Buy Direction Letter and standard closing documents of any real estate transaction, the lakeview lot would be yours.

How would the property be titled? As an example, if the buyer’s names are Bill and Melinda Gates, the contract and deed are made out to Entrust Carolinas, LLC FBO Bill and Melinda Gates. The FBO stands for “For Benefit Of”. The folks at Entrust would actually sign the contract, paperwork, HUD, everything (think of Entrust as a “Power of Attorney” for Bill and Melinda Gates).

How much does this cost to setup? Entrust fees are: One time cost to setup is $50, and cost is $250 per property per year. Very minimal cost. If you own multiple properties, cost per year can be less.

These examples above are for illustration purposes only, and are not to be considered legal or tax advice.

Source of some information: Entrust Carolinas, LLC.

FYI - We just sold a lakefront lot for an investor that he bought in 2005 for $250,000, and sold it for $420,000. In 3 years, the property went up $170,000. Most lakefront properties here average 12-15% return per year. I have a detailed chart showing these results (if you want a copy, we’ll send it to you).

Contact NClakefront Realty at 800-659-6017 for more information

Matt Lahtela - Director of Sales and Marketing at NClakefront Realty. NClakefront Realty is one of the largest sales and marketing companies focusing on North Carolina Lake Properties, and continues to grow everyday. http://www.nclakefront.com/pages/Active-Rain.cfm

How to Get Your Credit Repaired by Doing it Yourself

Jan 05, 2009 in Finances

It’s important that you learn how to do credit repair on your own. It could cost you hundreds of dollars to have someone else do it for you. There are so many people that are going to these different agencies to have their information corrected for them. All it takes is some time and work.

Here are some ways that you can take advantage of the situation on your own:

• The first thing you need to do is get a copy of your credit report. In order to do your own credit repair, you must know what’s on the report. If you have been denied credit recently, the report is free. However, it would be helpful to you if you ordered your credit score as well. The credit score determines where you rank as far as your creditability is concerned. There is a fee for you to access your credit score.

• When you receive your credit report, look through it very carefully. Sometimes credit agencies will place postings that should not be there for whatever reason. Effective credit repair requires you to find the errors on your report and correct them as soon as you can. The quicker you do this, the quicker you will have a better outcome with your credit report. You would also receive more points toward your credit score.

• If you are behind with some of your payments, contact your creditors to work out a payment plan. Some creditors will bend over backwards to do this because they don’t want to lose your account. That would mean less money for them. Making arrangement for delinquent payments is an important part of credit repair that you cannot neglect.

• If some of your delinquent balances are too high for you to pay off, then ask the creditor if you can negotiate a settlement. What you’re doing is asking to pay off a percentage of the past due balance. A negotiation of past due bills is another way of implementing credit repair for your debts. Not only will you have saved some money by doing this, you will also have a zero balance after payment is made.

• After you have paid your debts, you have to do future monitoring and follow-up. People will start out with good intentions, but fall short when it comes to keeping up with your credit report and credit score. You have to continue to check both of these in order for your credit repair to be successful. This has to be done every few months. Having errors on your credit report is not a one-time thing. It can happen more than one time.

Even though this is not a quick-fix, this method of credit repair can be effective as long as you apply these steps each time you want to improve your credit. It is very important that you spend time getting your credit report corrected and improving your credit score. Not only will you have mastered how to clean up your credit, you will also save lot of money in the process.

Joseph FeRoss is one of the leading experts on credit repair and provides great credit repair services. Visit MSI Credit at http://www.msicredit.com

How to Fix Your Credit With a Credit Dispute Letter

Jan 05, 2009 in Finances

Per the Fair Reporting Act or FCRA, any consumer is allowed to dispute negative or questionable items found on their credit report. If you are faced with a situation such as this, part of your credit repair would be to write a credit dispute letter to the credit bureaus. The purpose of this letter is for the bureau to verify the item or delete it from the credit report. Writing a credit dispute letter is a good way to fix your credit.

The first thing you need to do is to get a copy of your credit report. You may want to get it from all three credit bureaus. When you find the errors or questionable items, look at the information carefully. If it’s something that should be disputed, note that next to the entry. Part of dealing with credit repair has to do with checking for errors and accuracy.

Put all of the entries in question on a separate sheet of paper. It’s important that you copy every piece of information from the credit report. Then write to all three credit bureaus, even if all of them don’t list the erroneous entries. This will help them not to include it in future credit reports.

Some people probably don’t think that letter writing is a significant part of credit repair, but it is. When you address your dispute letters, you will have to do them separately, as in one item for each letter. If you don’t the credit bureaus may not take much interest in your letter.

If the credit bureau refuses to acknowledge your dispute, you can remind them that by law, they are obligated to assist you with your request. They have to look into your queries to see whether or not adjustments should be made on your behalf. As you work on your credit repair strategy to fix your credit, provide the credit bureaus with a short synopsis of what you need. Make sure your correspondence is in good English format. Also, if you have documentation supporting your dispute, you can send that along with your letter.

When doing credit repair with written correspondence, your letter should also be formatted correctly. The margins on each side of the page should be the same length. When you’re ready to send your correspondence, send it return receipt requested or registered mail. It would be easier to just use a first class stamp, but the likelihood of it getting lost without much of a trace is greater than if you used one of the first two methods. They only cost a few dollars and they’re worth the effort. In addition to that, do not forget to make copies of your correspondence so that you can refer back to them.

Skip the long-drawn out explanations. When they get the letter, the important thing for them to know is the brief particulars. They will have to look into your concerns of disputed items from your credit report in order to verify your claim or advise you that the item posting is correct.

With credit repair, it’s important that you are precise about the information regarding the disputed item.

Joseph FeRoss is one of the leading experts on credit repair and provides great credit repair services. Visit MSI Credit at http://www.msicredit.com

How to Get Your Credit Repaired by Checking Your Credit Report

Jan 05, 2009 in Finances

It’s very important for consumers to look at their credit report on a regular basis. A credit report is not something that you can look at in five minutes. It takes a while to go through the entire report. Going over and checking the report is part of the credit repair process to get your credit up to par.

The way to get started is to get a copy of your credit report from one or all of the three major credit bureaus. All three of them have credit information on you, along with your credit score. You may also want to get a credit score so that you will know where you need to start the credit repair process. If you do get all three, some of the information may differ slightly on each report. You are entitled to a free one every year—this applies to most states in the U.S. Or if you have been denied credit within the past 60 days, then you are eligible for a free credit report. However, you will have to pay a fee to get your credit score.

During the credit repair process, if you find errors on your report, note them and start investigating. You may have to dispute those errors with the credit bureau. They may ask you for documentation to support your claim. If you don’t have it, contact the creditor and have them vouch for you in writing. Errors on your credit report are not a one-time thing. You will have to constantly check your credit report every year to make sure your information is updated and correct.

You want to dispute any questionable items as soon as possible. Provide documentation to the credit bureau if asked. This may be one of the toughest parts of the credit repair process. However, it has to be done; otherwise, you will have a less than stellar credit report to show for it. That’s why it’s so important that all documentation relating to errors and similar entries should be on paper. So if a dispute does come about, you will have to paperwork to back up your side of the story. Not having a good credit report can cost you.

After your disputes have been resolved, the negative information must be removed from your credit file. It cannot be put back on there unless the creditor says otherwise. They must also provide proof in writing that the negative information is valid. Your quest to the credit repair process may be rough at first, but once you follow through, it will start to improve.

Also during the credit repair process, you must also deal with any debts that are in collections. If you have any unpaid collections accounts, you should make arrangements to pay them off. Contact the creditors to set up a payment plan to pay off your debts. Or try to negotiate a settlement deal for your debts. This can provide you with some financial relief, as you wouldn’t have to pay the entire amount owed.

You can also keep some of your credit cards while closing others. You should only close at the most, two, if you have more than that. Don’t close them at the same time. It’s good to leave some of them open because closing them all can affect your credit score. Keep the credit balances on your cards low. As long as you maintain these steps with your credit repair, you will see a change in your credit report.

Joseph FeRoss is one of the leading experts on credit repair and provides great credit repair services. Visit MSI Credit at http://www.msicredit.com

How to Repair Your Credit When It’s Been Damaged

Jan 05, 2009 in Finances

Nowadays, more people are on the verge of damaging their credit, if they haven’t done so already. When this happens, they will not be able to fix it quickly. Having damaged credit is akin to getting a divorce from your spouse. It leaves a terrible stain. Not only that, you feel ruined. However, there is a way that you can implement credit repair strategies to get this fixed.

When your credit is damaged, one of the first things you will need to do is to analyze why it happened in the first place. Look at what problems caused this to happen. In other words, you need to go back to the root of the problem. Did you have financial problems prior to this happening? Did you have a job? Did you have any money saved? How were you paying your bills? Were you paying them on time or were you consistently late? Did you try to contact your creditors and set up payment plans? Did you make any type of attempt to initiate an effective plan of credit repair?

These are questions that should come into your mind as you do your financial soul searching. Doing this can help you to see what issues you had and why you didn’t do things different. Credit repair is important when you need to resurrect your credit to a decent standard. With damaged credit, you must find ways to change your unsuccessful financial habits. Look at where you can make improvements and implement plans in place for you to follow. Having a plan is a great start, but if there is no follow through, then it’s just a waste.

Handling credit repair after your credit has been damaged can be a delicate situation for some. Depending on the damage done, your credit can suffer for several years. If you fell into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, this will stay on your credit report for 10 years. If you faced a foreclosure on your home, it will stay on your credit report for 7 years. Neither of these situations is proud to have, but since the damage has been done, the only thing you can concentrate on now is starting over to repair your credit.

Handling credit repair will require you to create a spending plan. Since undisciplined spending and lack of financial management was probably the cause of your damaged credit, you need to start there. Find out where you can cut spending and how you can better manage your money. List your expenses and income. Subtract your expenses from your income and see how much you have. If it’s not enough to carry you over, then you’ll have to make some changes. In addition to eliminating some spending habits, you may have to get a part-time job, or you can start your own business on the side.

Another thing you can do to help your credit repair is to start paying your bills on time. Whatever extra money you may have after you cut your spending can be used to apply to other bills and debt that you have. The more money you apply to your debt, the faster you can get rid of those bills and improve your credit. However, the damage to your credit will still be there until the required time has expired.

There’s something else that can help you with your credit repair—don’t use credit cards. Credit cards are any easy way to get trapped back into the debt cycle. If possible, do not use them unless you are at a point where you can pay the bill on time every month without having to strain and struggle. These guidelines are important to have because they can help you rebuild and revitalize your credit.

Joseph FeRoss is one of the leading experts on credit repair and provides great