Routine Order

Dave Ramsey of the Lampo group is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. He says he was worth a quarter of a million when he was 26, then lost it all in a couple of years due to bad financial decisions and due to paying too much “stupid” tax. He has since got back on his feet and his radio show features nuggets of wisdom for us - those without an MBA in Finance. You can see his free videos at YouTube and read of him from time to time on consumer-oriented blogs. Needless to say, his radio show is very interesting, and he has a cheerful, optimistic voice. The other day, on his show, he was answering a question about long term care insurance agent issues.

Dave Ramsey suggests long term care insurance for people who expect to live beyond the age of 65, and expect to need long term care - which can turn very expensive very fast. Specifically, Dave suggested that if rates where under $1,200 it would be a good investment. Now to find something good, you will need to go shopping for quotes for long term care insurance policies. The site I mentioned above seems to enable just that, and hey, they know of Dave Ramsey I was surprised to find that article I linked to when I searched for Dave’s advice.

Ben Bernanke took out his wallet and lowered the key interest rate by a full half point. When the Fed lowers prime rate, market become uppity. Think of it as everyone getting their loans cheaper from the government. Banks can now borrow money from the Federal Reserve at 4.75% interest. This discount will make its way through all the financial markets. Big firms, and investors in the stock market and other financial indices will borrow money, expecting their investments to appreciate in value, thereby generating profits. The whole idea behind the Fed controlling interest rates has been that the unemployment has to be kept low, as also the inflation. For the first time in many years, the US market was showing a downward trend in employment rates; also, the sub-prime mortgage crisis has meant that borrowers have had to live in a very cautious market.

If less money is available on the market, economic growth will stumble. These are the reasons why Ben Bernanke pushed for lowering the interest rate. Ben is quite accomplished, with his being an expert in the study of the Great Depression. In fact, two rates have been lowered, the Federal Funds Rate and the Discount Rate. The former is the rate at which banks lend each other money. With a lowering of the fed rate, low rate mortgages are possible, and so this would be a good time to try and refinance your mortgage. A direct result of the fed lowering the rates should be a decrease in the Prime Lending Rates of various banks. Of course, they need not be the same across all banks, but overall, there should be a decrease in the rates of loans offered by lenders. If the rate falls too low, however, you will soon have “too much money chasing too few goods”, and everyone will realize they can charge more for their products and services - leading to inflation. So that’s why a half-percent fall in the interest rate is significant. Everyone was expecting the cut to be a quarter-percent. Let’s hope Ben got it just right, and that this cut should get the markets on track, and everyone employed

If you are a small business owner in a crunch situation, then your options with regard to raising short term funds need not be limited to Unsecured (or secured) business loans. A Business Cash Advance can let you get back on track much sooner with much less hassle. If the terms confuse you, it ain’t your fault. What essentially defines a business cash advance is that the loan is against your future credit card invoices(income). So if you accept credit cards at your business and generate over $1000 per month via credit card charges to your customers, you can qualify for a business cash advance.

You can read more about how this compares to unsecured business loans. The big differences are that business cash advances are not available for start-up firms, and that the cash advance option is available with variable pay-back rates - depending on how much credit-card-sales you generate each month - so you can pay these back according to how well your business picks up down the line. Business cash advances are great for businesses with lower credit scores (below 650). Bad Credit Business Loans might not solve your problem in such situations, since if you need money to grow, there might be other factors in the past that adversely affect your borrowing power.

Check out the business cash advance FAQs for more info and a toll-free line you can call to have your questions answered. All these non-traditional ways to raise money are fascinating to me - some like Business Cash Advances and reverse mortgages can be made to work if you play your cards right, but others, like debt-consolidation loans can dig your hole for you.

Domdat is a website that provides powerful tools to search for expiring and expired domains. I just signed up for the service that costs $25 per month to take it on a test ride. It came highly recommended by a friend who finally found a domain name he liked for his flower delivery service. What’s really cool is that the domain he bought had been promoted by the previous owner, and so he will benefit from all those search results that will lead folks to his site, for free.

Expiring domains are much better in many ways. Since the domain hasn’t expired yet, but certainly will, you can bid and buy the domain as it expires and serve your website with that domain name. This will give you the page rank, the search result traffic, and even some traffic from users of the old website.

The expired and expiring domain names search tool at domdat is very powerful - As seen in the pic above, you can search by minimum Pagerank, number of links in the search engines, whether or not the website is listed in the DMOZ and Yahoo directories and so forth. This can save you money since unlike DMOZ, you need to pay Yahoo upto $200 to be included in their directory - so if someone has already done the grunt work with a domain, you save a bunch of money. You can set up alerts (upto 5) that will send you an email as soon as any of the domain name searches that you define return positive results.

Domain name prospecting is hot right now. A lot of folks buy expired domains and just sit around waiting for their value to appreciate. Already, it is impossible to find websites that have three characters in the domain name, and domain names that are common words. Domdat is one of the tools these guys use, and if you want a leg-up in your search for a good domain name, it is a vital tool for you.

For those with terrible credit having trouble paying off their debts, there are a variety of credit management programs to choose from. I decided to try out how these programs work, and wanted to put some real numbers to the test. So I was looking for a site that does not require too much personal information to play around with. This debt management program that allows users to evaluate their options seemed perfect, so I took the dive. The Consumer Alliance Processing Corporation Debt Management program seems to be good - it has a BBB affiliation, and seems to be honest.

They have a free debt management quote tool, which is we are most interested in. I filled out the form and the end results looks like the following:


I had plugged in some numbers that I thought to be typical for someone with 30% APR credit cards, choosing a sum below $10,000 for the total debt. I entered a total of 4 cards, with APRs from 20% to 30%, with the outstanding balance on the higher APR cards being about 75% of the total outstanding debt. The free quote tools gives estimates for how much money can be saved. It shows a monthly fee of $35 for the debt management program, but even after this, the total monthly payments are reduced by almost a hundred dollars. The tool also shows that the person can save a total of $18,476 (!!!) by enrolling in the debt management program. I expect this figure is calculated by comparing the total payments made over the lifetime of the debt if one were to pay only the minimum outstanding, to the amounts paid using the debt management program. What’s also interesting is that the monthly APRs are almost halved. If one were to continue making the same payments as before starting on the debt management program, then I suspect the debts will be paid off much sooner.

Debt management programs are not for everyone - of course, if you earn $1000 a month and your financial expenditure is $1200, you won’t find someone to manage your debt. These programs are not for those with less than $3000 in debt, neither are they for those with low APRs on their cards. One of the conditions of the program is that the credit accounts will be cancelled as they are paid off. Once you pay off all the debt, I bet your credit score will improve drastically - enough to get you another card, if you want to play the game all over again!

Lowcostpahealthinsurance.com is a site that offers affordable Pennsylvania health insurance. I was looking up plans for my employer when I came across the site. The offer coverage for Pittsburgh health insurance plans including Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Aetna.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that these don’t work in Philly. There are some very useful tips for Philadelphia health insurance needs too. Though the information on the site is more attuned towards companies looking for group health insurance plans, individuals can get a quote from multiple providers too. Here’s 5 steps to save money on health insurance plans when you are shopping for group plans. There’s always a way to say on even unavoidable costs, if you know where to look. Your savings don’t have to come at too much of an additional cost to the employees, both can save:

Consider a premium conversion plan. With this plan, any contributions towards qualified health benefits made by employees through their employer are tax advantaged. Employees save on federal and state income taxes. Because they are reporting less income, their social security contributions are also reduced. As an employer, you would also save 7.65% on the employee income which no longer has to be reported to the IRS. Because the employee pays less social security tax, you have less to match.

The service also has a toll free number, 1-888-831-7886, for any questions one may have. Check it out if you are shopping for health insurance rates in PA.

Reverse Mortgages are mortgages in reverse. A financial institution will pay you money against your equity on a house or property owned by you. In a mortgage, as time goes by, your equity in a house goes up and the loan amount goes down. In a reverse mortgage, your equity decreases with time, and your loan (or debt) increases. So you buy a house, pay off the mortgage, and then slowly sell your house. Who’d do that? How about people nearing retirement, who want a regular inflow of cash? Yes, the older you are, the more valuable your house is, the more money you get every month out of a reverse mortgage. More details below:

Reverse Mortgage Information is an excellent site for you to bring yourself up to date with the terms involved and all the associated facts. Their reverse mortgage FAQ is pretty extensive and should answer most all questions related to reverse mortgages. You can also find an extensive state-by-state listing of reverse mortgage lenders in case you decide to opt for one. In case you can’t make up your mind whether you should try a reverse mortgage, try the retirement calculator - it has 11 input variables, varying from expected percentage decrease in spending, to expected inflation, to expected social security benefit. Once you think you know the facts about reverse mortgages, take the reverse mortgage quiz to make sure you got it right. All in all, the site is a prime destination for reverse mortgage information and leads.

Despite the recent downturn in the lending market due to the low-rate mortgage hassle, business is still on at many mortgage lenders. The key to finding low rate mortgages is to have a good credit score. If your credit score is great, then you probably will get the same low rates from a multitude of players. But what if your credit is not so good? Here’s where you get some help.
Try to save up a little before hand, so you have more of a percentage of the price of the house to put down as initial payment. Then try to get as many mortgage quotes as possible within a week. Getting multiple quotes within a week wouldn’t adversely affect your credit score, as all those lookups by prospective lenders will just show up as one credit application.

To make this process easier, you might want to use a mortgage rate comparison website. These sites are not lenders themselves, but they scour the market for lenders and give you a variety of quotes from firms big and small, national and local. Since it is free, think of it as a free secretary who looks up all the national and local firms that lend money to home buyers, and requests quotes from all of them. Once you have the quotes, you might be in a better position to decide whether to get the loan or not. If you decide not to, remember to wait at least 6 months (more, preferably) before trying for a loan again. In the interlude, try saving some hard cash - set yourself a goal and attain it - if nothing else, it will improve your own financial self-confidence.

Here’s a site promising to deliver Mortgage Rate Calculators. It looks like it is a pretty new site, and very much in the works, but the idea is neat - have a set of calculators for things like mortgage rates, amortization payments and the kind. For those not in the know, amortization is the concept that lends to the fact that more of the initial money payments you make towards your mortgage counts towards the interest on the loan. This means that you’re not so much paying off the loan, as paying off the compounded interest. The amortization schedule defines the proportion between the amounts paid towards interest and the principal loan amount respectively.

After the recent sub-prime mortgage debacle, if one thing is clear, it is that gullible investors make for good prey for the sharks on wall street, and the river runs much deeper than one would have thought. Knowing your calculation and the terms involved in mortgages could just save you from ruin and bankruptcy. I hope MortgageCalculators.org keeps growing and provides what the website’s name promises. It will be really successful, of that I am sure.

There’s no comparison of the rates for gas cards in the UK, but otherwise, UK Financial Options is an excellent resource to compare credit card rates. Surely, they must have Gas cards in the UK. Or are they “petrol” cards? I could find neither at UK Financial options, but I did find a good table comparing credit cards. The credit card comparison page lists the top 5 cards for the various categories, such as the best cards for balance transfer, the best cards for those with bad credit, etc.

The site also has a list of pages, each dealing with a particular kind of credit card. Here’s the page comparing the football credit cards, for example. Football as in the game played almost entirely using one’s feet, as opposed to the game where the foot-long ball is thrown around.

I know, Christmas still seems far away, and that is precisely the reason why you should start shopping now. Starting now will give you the time to hunt for the best deals, and wait for the right price - before the whole world crowds the mall. The most difficult part of Christmas shopping is, of course, deciding what to buy. If you’re short in this department, check out these Christmas gift ideas. The true measure of a list of ideas is ideas for Christmas gifts for boyfriends and males. It is easy enough to pick gifts for girls, but girls must find it difficult to pick gifts for boys. The gifts I get from women are usually “nice” but I’d love something more practical. The more impractical a gift is, the more women seem to appreciate it But I guess it is just different for us.

Shopping for Christmas gifts in September reminds me of the December Effect in stock markets. Thing is, a few people caught on that buying shares in Decembers and selling them in January or February can be profitable since stock prices go up a little at the beginning of a new year. So not long after, some started buying stocks in November, since they expected the December Effect buying to increase prices. That then meant that some started buying stocks in October, and so on, till the December Effect all but vanished! But even if everyone starts thinking like me, there will still be the advantage that I have more time to decide what to buy and to wait for the right prices.

Here’s a great website for financial information: Bankaholic. The site has a section devoted to the best credit card offers. In addition to a very good coverage of the best credit card deals, it also offers tips on how to use the cards, and how to improve your score. There’s an example of how the author started with a $500 limit AmEx student card. After a few years, the credit limit is now $30 K!

There is also a separate section that provides the best rates for money market accounts. This is similar to the credit card offers section and has the low-down on money market accounts, which I briefly mentioned here previously. The list of money market accounts and the rates makes it easy to compare the deals and the deals are also star-rated. Money market accounts can be tricky, since unlike CDs the deposits are not FDIC insured. However, due to the higher returns and the increased liquidity, they are quite popular among investors. They are just like a savings account in that you can withdraw the money at any time. However, it bears repeating that unlike savings accounts, these are not FDIC insured - meaning, if the bank goes belly-up, your money does too. Then again, what are the chances of that happening, really? When you are at Bankaholic, do check out the finance section for good budgeting tips. I am pretty much sporadic when it comes to writing at this blog, but the bankaholic site seems to be more regularly, and more frequently updated.

Certificates of Deposit are a fixed-term investment option offered by banks, credit unions and other financial institutions. So basically, in a CD, you put in some money, and after a fixed period you get your money back with interest. You can’t take out the money you put in until it matures. The lack of liquidity is offset by the fact that the deposit is insured and the returns are guaranteed, unlike, saying, money market accounts or stock market shares. Curiously enough, these days, you don’t really get a paper “certificate” for your deposit

The general rules for CD interest rates are that the higher the amount, or the longer the period of time, the higher the interest rate. Also, generally, smaller institutions, like your local credit unions, often offer higher CD rates. In shopping for the top CD rates available, I did a google search for top CD rates. Among the results was a site promising the highest CD rates. This was the 8th search result, and the URL was http://www.topcdrates.org. Clicking on the link took me to the site, in a weird way. Strange, try it out, and that site does have some interesting information about CDs, among other things.

If you are investing in CDs, remember that it is not enough to find the biggest, or best bank. Since CDs are insured anyways, you might do better by seeking out smaller banks. Also, if you can beat the machine by finding a good rate for a shorter period of time, then that’s all the better.

Continuing the results of my research on credit cards here. So I got turned down for the AmEx Business Card too. I thought I should be saving some money at the gas pump. BP had an ad at the pump promising some discounts for the first few months I use their card, and I made a mental note to check if there are other cards with better deals. I wanted to save the trouble of getting the BP card, using it till I get some benefits, and then canceling it to get a new card, and so on, ad infinitum.

Best Gas Credit Cards is a site dedicated to only gas credit cards. They have a cool table to compare gas credit cards. Of all the cards, the Wawa Visa Card looks really good. The APR is kinda high, but the rebates are the highest at 10% for purchases at Wawa, and rebates for purchases elsewhere too. The Chase BP card looks good too, but like I said before the rebates are top-heavy, so as time goes by, I might forget to cancel the card, and get less rebates. The Discover Gas Rebate card is good, too bad Discover doesn’t get accepted everywhere, like VISA or MasterCards.

Credit Card Flyers is an awesome way to compare credit card offers. The Quick Credit Card Compare tool lists all the cards you’d like to compare, and you can keep removing cards till you find one that suits you.

I was looking for good business credit cards to replace my current card, which insists on giving me free credit scam protection. I have already called them thrice and asked that I be removed, but month after month I keep getting billed some extra or the other for one “essential” useless feature after the other. So I am gonna get that out of my wallet, and get another. I so wish I could get my hands on the AmEx Platinum Business Card. They have a 20+ day grace period for payments, and 0% APR for the first year. I doubt if I will get one - I applied and was told that I would be informed of the application status later, via snail-mail. This usually means that my credit rating didn’t quite make the cut, but we’ll see. Let’s hope for the best

Wayne Gerdes seems to have invented the term “hyper miling”. This article left me wondering how safe it is, though. Wayne defines, and makes up, terms that define the best practices to push your fuel economy ever higher. This includes taking turns at twice the speed limit, tailing trucks at less than a car’s length, driving as slow as you want on roads, even if people behind you honk, and coasting with your ignition turned off. Needless to say, each of those things are potentially harmful, very harmful.

I learned some practical tips that everyone can use from the article, so it is not so bad. It also offers a peek into the lives of hypermilers who can’t seem to get enough out of a gallon of gas. I also found a list of practical tips to improve your fuel mileage at another site. Go, read.

At one point, I was checking GasBuddy religiously for the cheapest gas in my area. Turns out, there are more ways than one to get information about cheap gas.

If desktop widgets are your preferred way of getting info, then there is Gas for Mac users, and GasWatch for Windows users. If you’d like SMS messages, you can text the word “gas” followed by your 5-digit zip code to the number 415-676-8397.

Or you can send an SMS to sms@mobgas.com, gas@gasbuddy.com or gas@fuelgo.com. If you have a smartphone like the iPhone or the SideKick, try GasBuddy ToGo or MobGas Mobile. Finally if you can plunk the dough, get a GPS system for your car, which offers this info in your car, like the Garmin services does.

I thought I had lost faith in the zillions of deal websites - you know the kind I am talking about, blogs, or sites that list deal after deal for electronics and stuff. I even frequented a forum that I have mentioned on this blog before, so I was like, “oh yeah, so what’s new?,” when my GF told me about this site that has coupon codes and deals. Just another excuse for her to blow her money sky high. Yeah, she’s the kind that would buy eye drops for $1 ’cause its an awesome deal - the catch being, she’d have to buy a 100 bottles of eye drops, and no, her eyes aren’t dry or anything. But don’t tell her I told you that

Dealwhiz is handy to find those darned discount coupons though - for HP, Dell and the lot that seem to be eternally selling at a loss, but still alive and kicking. Never tell someone who has a Dell how much you bought your Dell for - for she will kill you by telling you how much cheaper she bought it for Anyways, to get back to the topic, check out dealwhiz.com for coupon codes, and I am NOT talking about Dell and HP coupons alone, after all, how many PCs/laptops does one need to buy? I found this cold stone creamery coupon that made my day, and kept my sweet tooth happy.

Let me try this once:) You can get your own free Zune player at myzunefree.com. All you have to do is sign up for one or more of the offers on display after you login, and complete enough offers to get one credit. You could get the one credit for completing just one offer, or, if you choose to try the several free, no-cost offers, you may need to follow through on more than one of the offers to earn your credit.

I’ve long been curious about these schemes, but this Microsoft Zune offer has a great FAQ that addresses the questions I have had in the past. In fact, the first question in the FAQ links to a video from the BBC that explains how these schemes work. Then there’s more:

How can you afford to give away a Microsoft Zune for free?
Our sponsors pay us a commission for users to try out their products and services. That is then used to purchase your Zune MP3 player or other related product.

The basic reason I signed up is because I have been wanting to try Blockbuster’s online video renting scheme for some time now. So I will just cancel my Netflix subscription and give Blockbuster a chance to impress me. What’s really cool about Blockbuster is that you can exchange the movies you get in the mail at any BlockBuster store, and instantly get a new movie! So unlike Netflix, you don’t always have to wait for the next movie to arrive in the mail! So as far as I am concerned, this is a win-win situation. I get the $9.99 for the first month Blockbuster rentals, and if enough of you choose to sign up for the free Zune offer, I might get a free Zune as well. If the blockbuster deal doesn’t cut it for you, try some of the other free, or even $1 offers. You can’t lose, especially with the money-back offers. So sign up for your free Zune now!

File this under “Weird, but True”. According to an article on the UK Personal Loan Store, more than 50% of the people who use a debt consolidation loan actually end up with more debt than they started with. Not that I am thinking of getting a debt consolidation loan - but the recent trends in borrowing in the UK show an alarming rise, and things are about even with the USA, for long the consumer debt champion of the world.

…a number of people use consolidation loans to pay off credit cards, but once the balance on the credit card is cleared it is all too tempting to rack up debt on it again, which is what many people tend to do. The average consolidation loan in the UK is for £16,459 but the survey revealed that even when given the opportunity to do so most people will not pay off the loan early.

The article on loan consolidation quotes a survey by fool.co.uk as the source for the data. If you are in the market for a debt consolidation loan, make sure you read the best practices for debt consolidation, which basically says it would be wise to use a lending broker in your search for a consolidation loan since they would have access to the widest range of loan providers. Also remember that the poorer your credit is, the more likely you might end up with a secured loan, as opposed to an unsecured loan. Defaulting on your payments will then cause the property which was the collateral to be seized by the lender. As a final tip, read the responses to this ask.metafilter.com question - some very nice tips there - between the tips they have all aspects of debt management covered.