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Ahead of its time this is a cartoon animation that’s been up on the web since 2006 and is all about the credit crunch crisis. Credit card spending and loans from banks are in their trillions of dollars and something has to give. We no longer spend what we have earned, we spend what we havn’t earned on the back of house price rises and yet more loans. The banks are prospering and fat cats are awarding themselves massive bonuses, but it cannot continue. Beware the debt time bomb may bring the walls of the western world clattering to the ground. Song arranged and performed by Old Man Pie, with animation by Stuart (formerly of The Pie). Song written by Kyle Christie and (c) Kyle Christie 2006. Credit crunch credit crunch credit crunch!

A living will is an instrument that allows an individual to speak for themselves, through the will, if they cannot in real life. Protect possessions with tips and advice on how to write a living will from an experienced financial adviser in this free video.

Many young professionals in their twenties are dealing with debt from credit cards and unpaid student loans. Managing personal finances can be difficult when you must handle expenses like insurance, business clothes, transportation, car payments, and more while still trying to have savings to meet your long-term goals such as buying a house or planning for retirement.

For more personal finance tips, please visit http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/your-money/2008/04/16/investing-guide-for-20-somethings.html

House shopping is great fun. It is easy to get carried away with fantasies of the perfect home in the perfect location. Perhaps you’ve even found it, driven by, and counted the number of windows and planned your furniture arrangement.

Now, a dash of cold reality. Did you look at the price? Do you know if you can get financing for this perfect home you’ve already fallen in love with?

Save yourself the heartache and get prequalified for your home loan financing before you begin your house hunt. It’s free and simple, and accomplishes several things for you as a buyer.

First, how do you go about it? Prequalification can be handled by your property finance consultant. You’ll need to give him your ID number and consent to a credit check. All information is treated confidentially. With confirmation of a clear credit record, you will receive a prequalification certificate that is valid for three months. This certificate will give you a clear idea of your budget range as you begin your search as it is an indication of the loan amount you should qualify for based on your salary and earnings.

Keep in mind that certified prequalification is not an absolute guarantee of financing. Rather it provides financing options a potential buyer has as long as he or she meets the bank’s requirements. Most prequalified clients are granted a bond once they make their formal application, providing peace of mind for both buyer and seller.

In addition to outlining your house hunting budget, the advantages of prequalification for buyers are numerous. First, it serves as an introduction to the process of applying for a home loan, which is particularly useful for first-time homebuyers. With this less formal process, they get a clear indication of what the bank will look for in the final application, perhaps making them more comfortable as that process begins. Once they buyers have found the house they wish to purchase, the formal application and origination process is quicker for prequalified clients because most of the information is already on file.

To a seller, a prequalification certificate indicates a serious buyer and assures them of the buyer’s ability to secure funding. The seller also knows a prequalified buyer will be likely to receive financing quickly, and the buyer will qualify for the amount being offered.

If a seller accepts an offer to buy from a prequalified buyer, he avoids the problems that can arise when dealing with a buyer who must secure financing once he has been locked into the sale. If the buyer’s loan is not approved, the seller has likely missed out on the serious buyers, and must now start again from square one.

Prequalification is a simple step you can take as a buyer that will give you an edge. Your prequalification certificate will help your offer rise above the clutter of speculative offers and not-so-serious buyers and might just be the thing that clinches the deal that will bring you and your perfect home together.

You’re not alone if you have accumulated more debt than you can repay. If you’re in this situation, you’re probably finding that the debt you have results in more debt from interest charges and penalties. It may seem impossible to pay this debt down, but there are ways to do it.

To break this cycle, many people try debt consolidation. Thousands of people have found their way out of debt using a debt consolidation program, but it isn’t for everyone. There are pros and cons to debt consolidation programs, and you should consider these carefully before deciding if it is right for your circumstances.

Debt consolidation is, quite simply, the gathering of multiple sources of debt into one. Then, you’ll make a single payment each month towards paying off this debt. While it seems simple on the surface, in fact there are many factors to consider when deciding if debt consolidation is right for you.

Remember that whether you pay $150, $50, and $25 per month in three separate bills, or $225 in one check to one debtor, you are still spending the same amount of money paying down your debt each month. With online bill paying, it doesn’t even take any more time to pay three bills than one, so if the monthly payment stays the same, debt consolidation will not get you out of debt quickly.

In order for a debt consolidation program to work, either the monthly payment amount needs to decrease, the net amount of interest has to decrease, or the total amount of debt you owe needs to decrease. While it is possible for a debt consolidation program to accomplish at least one of these, you’ll need to understand all the details of the consolidation plan to make sure it will actually help you get out of debt faster.

Most debt consolidation programs do not accomplish all three of these. Most commonly, they lower your monthly payment. This will make it easier to pay the bill each month, so you won’t add late charges onto your debt. It can also help if you’re struggling to make payments each month, making it easier to make ends meet. However, if the payment is too low, you might over-spend because you consider the difference money to spare. If your goal is to become debt free, you’ll have to reduce your spending even if your payments on existing debt are lowered.

Unfortunately, most debt consolidation plans are able to give you are lower monthly payment by extending the term of the loan. Over the long term, you’ll end up paying more interest and when worst comes to worst you might as well decrease instead of increase your credit score. However, you may be able to negotiate a lower loan amount, because some companies are willing to settle for less to get you to repay the debts. Then, consistently make your payments on time every month to lower your debt.

There aren’t many people that don’t need an occasional boost in income for a short period, but we would prefer no to take out a loan for a small amount of money. To get over this short term financial situation, a ‘payday loan’ can be arranged which until recently normally require a bank checking account to arrange. If you haven’t heard of this before then this is how it works and why so many people find it convenient.

You may have received some unexpected bill for repairs to your car and need to pay them as soon as possible. In these cases, you don’t need a large loan and you can repay the amount as soon as your paycheck comes in and this is where the payday loan comes in. Quite simply, you arrange with a lender to forward a small amount of money which is normally restricted to less than a 1,000 dollars, into your bank account where it becomes available for use immediately; but is paid back in full on the day you are paid plus any interest that has been agreed upon.

Most people with internet access now arrange their payday loans online as it is much more convenient. This is an easy way to arrange to funds and once approved, the money is in your account almost straight away. Until recently, the only way you would be granted a payday loan was if you had a bank checking account which would ensure the money would be repaid without any hiccups as soon as you were paid.

The same hassles do not exist today with lenders much more flexible in their approach, even lending to people with adverse credit histories but normally proof of a savings account is enough. In fact the rules of lending have been relaxed so much that often it is just enough to prove you are employed in a permanent position. If the situation arises again where you require some cash short term in the form of a payday loan you will know what to do.

As the process is simpler, you will only need to prove that you have a job or some money in a savings account. Words of warning though; do not use this facility regularly as that is not what they are designed for and the interest can become costly if used all the time. It is easy to forget that it doesn’t take much to start relying on these types of loans for the wrong reasons; you need to improve your financial position rather than continue to use this facility as a crutch which will eventually cause more problems than it solves.

Getting the right type of life insurance for you and your family can be one of the most important decisions you will ever make. The major problem with this decision however is, if you get it wrong you will probably not know until you have died and it is too late. So this article has been written with the hope that it’s a clear breakdown of the cover available to you will help you to make the right choice now and see you right in the future.

Essentially there are really two types of life insurance available on the market there are more but owing to their particular niche uses they are probably not relevant to be discussed here. The main types that you will come across, and probably need in one way or another, are Term Insurance and Whole of Life Assurance.

Whole of life insurance is probably the most simplest in so much as it insures you for the whole of your life, you could say it does what is says on the tin. You take out whole life insurance for a set sum assured and you just keep paying it till that fateful day comes. You can add features such as indexation to the benefit, this means that the sum assured (and the premium) will rise with inflation. This is a valuable feature as what is a large amount of money today will not be a lot of money in the distant future, so one well worth considering. Let’s face it you don’t want to take out life insurance now for a lot of money only to find out it would barely take you out for dinner 40 years later.

The main reason that you would decide to choose whole of life insurance is for the protection of your family. You want to make sure that in the event of your death there is a sufficient amount of money saved for your family to be able to reinvest and provide an ongoing source of income for the future when you are no longer there to provide for them. The downside of this form of insurance is that because it runs for the whole of your life, it is not the cheapest option available. It is, however, the only one that guarantees a cash payout at the end of your life.

The other type of life insurance comes in many guises but is simply known as Term insurance for the basic reason that it runs for a specified term, anything from one year to 50 or 60 years. You set the sum insured you require and you decide what term you like and that is it, it will run for that period at that level. If you die during that period it will pay out the benefit, if you don’t it will just cease and that is it. Term insurance can also include indexation, as explained earlier, it doers the same thing just increases the premium and sum insured at the rate of inflation.

As I have said, term insurance comes in several forms. We have level term insurance, decreasing term or mortgage protection as it is sometimes known, family income benefit also called family income plans, convertible term and last but not least renewable term insurance. I will try to shed some light on these in the following paragraphs.

First is decreasing term or mortgage protection. This plan is the same as all term plans in so much as it runs for a specified period of time. However the difference is that the sum insured reduces year in year out. The reason for this is linked to the use it is put to. You would normally use this type of plan to cover a repayment mortgage and with repayment mortgages the amount of debt falls year in year out so the plan just mimics that reduction. The benefit of this is the premiums for 100,000 cover for mortgage protection which decreases each year are a lot cheaper than for 100,000 on level term. So if it is a repayment mortgage you need to cover then this plan is possibly the one for you.

Next on the list of options is Family Income Benefit. This is a relatively new sort of life insurance policy, aimed at providing bereaved families with a payout in the form of an annual income rather than a one off lump sum. The problem with one off payouts for families is that it is then up to them to reinvest the money in other areas in order to create an income for them. This can be traumatic and difficult for grieving loved ones. Family income plans take away this hassle. By insuring for a set income for a set amount of time, if you die before the end of the term, the policy automatically pays out that income to your family until the end of the term.

Convertible term insurance and renewable term insurance are very similar in so much as they allow the plan to be changed in some way in the future as long as that change takes place before the end of the term. Renewable term insurance allows the policy holder to renew the plan for a further term without any underwriting (that means no health checks) this means you could have a 10 year renewable term plan and essentially renew it for a further 10 years regardless of your health as long as you do it before the first ten year term has finished.

The convertible plan takes it to another level. This sort of plan lets you convert the original policy from term insurance plan to whole of life, as long as it is done within the time of the original term. The reason you may want this option is if you couldn’t afford a whole of life policy at the start but find yourself in a position to take one out later. Convertible policies allow you to change to whole of life when you can without having to undergo any health checks.

You should know, however, that convertible and renewable policies are more expensive than regular term policies. Also, when you do come to renew or convert your policy you will be asked to pay the premiums in accordance with a person of your age at that time, which will inevitably be higher than you have been previously paying, so don’t be under the impression that you are getting a free lunch. The main thing is to ensure that you have the right cover needed regardless of your health.

Hopefully this article has gone some way to clear up any misunderstandings you may have had about the life cover options open to you. That said if you are still unsure you are strongly advised to seek independent financial advice because as I said earlier a wrong decision now may not be discovered till it is too late.

To avoid a poor credit rating which can last for some time, don’t default on your student loan. It is important that a student loan debt is taken very seriously; it can affect your wages and whether you are eligible for income tax refunds.

A few simple steps are all you need to avoid defaulting on your student loan. Staying in touch with the lender is the most important step to take as this can help to avoid having a defaulted student loan.

Admitting to your lending institution that you are facing financial difficulties usually stops the need to default. I too had financial problems keeping up with the payments on loans I had acquired whilst a student.

My education was not a tangible product but service so how would they try and take that back? If you take this approach you will definitely have a problem and default on your student loan.

I really didn’t want an adverse credit rating by defaulting so the first thing I did was to contact my lender before it was too late. In retrospect, telling the finance company and obtaining a deferment was the easiest part of it all. The Lending Company showed me the steps that would have to be taken in order to suspend payment until a time when I could start repaying them.

I couldn’t believe how quickly it was all arranged, the debt was frozen and I would only start payments again when things had improved for me. Although defaulting on my student loan wasn’t what I wanted, I knew that other financial institutions would not be quite as accommodating. Unfortunately, it was not defaulting on my student loan that saved me because not all my creditors were as happy to assist.

Don’t forget though that interest is still adding to your loan whilst the suspension is on and it will cost you more in the long run. Despite the additional cost it is preferable to a defaulted student loan. Often, lenders will accept occasional small lump sum payments.

Banks can agree, on occasion, to arrange an interest only payment on a loan to help alleviate financial worries. It is worth checking with you bank to see if they will agree to accept interest only payments on a loan for a temporary period. Although you can avoid the defaulted student loan, you can’t avoid the principle sum which still remains to be paid at the end of the process.

One thing to remember about these debts is that many students applying for college depend on this kind of financial support. There is only a certain amount of money available for student loans so if the number of defaulters rises above a certain limit then there won’t be any available for others. Your debts do not have to become a burden if you just keep in contact with your lenders.

Taking a little time to make payment arrangements or to defer the debt will help you avoid defaulted student loans. Another reason for this is it should help other students get the loans they need for their college education.

Refinancing your home can be a huge decision, especially if you have been investing in that home for a long time. There are situations where it makes sense and is the best move forward but that does not mean that you shouldn’t try for the best deal available.

Of course despite world financial problems, there is more choice today than ever before plus the one thing homeowners didn’t have fifteen years ago as a resource tool was the Internet. The other benefit of the Internet is that any research and quotes can be gathered anonymously which is a luxury that people in the market for home refinancing loans in the past did not have.

Ordinarily, if you were talking to a representative you would supply your contact details and then you would be pestered regularly but the Internet has stopped this to a large degree. The Internet also has another plus side and that is just how many lenders you can compare in a very short space of time without having to get into the car, once.

As there is no pressure time is no longer a problem and nor is there a need to rush or feel pressurized so finding the best deal is much simpler. Many experts in the field of lending now agree that this form of ‘lending online’ has put the homeowner back in control of the finance process, which has not been the case in the past.

The other aspect to arranging a loan like this is almost the whole process can be carried out online including the refinancing application. Being able to conduct your own research online will allow the homeowner to be in total control of the process of researching and if they have a question they can find the answer instead of trusting that a mortgage broker will do it for them.

The other aspect to arranging a loan like this is almost the whole process can be carried out online including the refinancing application. As our lives get busier, we seem to have less time to see people personally and carry out this type of task face to face which was commonplace not that many years ago.

Often the homeowner will just download the forms and print them off to be completed at their leisure only then seeing the mortgage lender when the agreement requires finalizing. In some cases everything can be done over the internet so that the homeowner doesn’t have to visit a lender at all, which is in fact, becoming more of the norm for those who turn to the internet for refinancing.

This seems to be the future of finance and not just arranging home refinancing loans as it is a very cost effective way to run a business for everyone concerned.