UK Broadband Switches On First Commercial 4G TD LTE System In The UK
February 29th, 2012 | Posted by Global InvestorsView full post on Live News from PR-USA.net
February 29th, 2012 | Posted by Global InvestorsI run across a lot of articles that may not merit an entire blog post but are worthy of sharing. Let me know if you like this format with short summaries or if you’d rather me just tweet links.
Playing It Safe as a Long-Term Strategy
For a while, Professor Zvi Bodie has written books and articles about low-risk investing and encouraging the purchase of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) and I-bonds. If you bought them when he was first saying that, you’d have TIPS paying 3%+ real yield and doing quite well. But now you’re looking at 0% or negative real yield unless you go decades out to eek out 1%.
He still says that stocks are too risky regardless of time held and should not be bought unless you already have enough assets to cover the bare necessities. You won’t like the alternative options: spend less, save more; plan on retiring later; work a second job. He and Taqqu have a new book called Risk Less and Prosper.
Berkshire Hathaway Letter to Shareholders
Warren Buffett sent out his annual letter to shareholders over the weekend. As usual, the letter contains some of his insights and opinions on issues like the housing market recovery, investing in gold, and the current dangers of bonds. He also lays out his argument for why owning equities (at least BRK) is actually low-risk over a long time horizon.
There has never been a better time to be an individual investor
From the Abnormal Returns blog. I agree that there are better tools out there now at a lower cost, but with the death of pensions there will also be a lot more responsibility and pressure placed on individual investors. If they mess it up, it’s not going to be pretty. That makes it a stressful time to be an individual investor!
Wave Accounting: Free online accounting software for small businesses
The price is right at free, as they intend for it to be ad-supported. Includes free import of transactions from your bank account. I signed up but haven’t taken it for a test run yet. I currently use Intuit Quickbooks and haven’t had to upgrade for 5 years.
Your Mistaken Belief in Financial Willpower
I have come around to support the idea that willpower is more of a finite resource, or at least it has to be built up like a muscle. Don’t use it up when you don’t have to. Carl Richards of the NY Times points out ways that we can conserve our willpower for other things using automation for paying bills and savings.
Should Your Retirement-Portfolio Withdrawals Fluctuate With the Market?
What is the best way to withdraw from your portfolio in retirement in order to make sure it lasts? This Morningstar article looks at the research on ways to implement flexible withdrawal rates. I agree that numbers like 4% withdrawal rates should be a guideline and not a rigid rule.
Related posts:
Reading List: Low-Risk Investing, Free Accounting Software, Limited Willpower, Flexible Withdrawal Rates from My Money Blog.
© MyMoneyBlog.com, 2012.
View full post on My Money Blog
Doh! I knew this would happen!
Say what! After this whole big speech about “I’m going to concentrate on paying down my debts”, I’ve been fooling around again?
I’ll reassure you right away, this is not the case. My finances are under control, but…
Because there is always a “but”….
We had our 3rd child at the beginning of the month! This is great news for my wife and I but not for our budget 
. In fact, a kid means:
- 2 days of dining out expense for breakfast, lunch and supper (‘cause the hospital food is completely disgusting)
- A drop in my income since I’m on paternity leave for the whole month (more time but less money!)
- Tons of last minute expenses for the baby (diapers, clothes, etc)
- A bunch of medical receipts that I need to file claims for to get reimbursement from my insurance
In addition to that, I got my first bill for municipal taxes ($429) along with a $500 cash deposit for my pool this summer. But don’t worry; the pool is being paid in cash. But I’ll get the cash with my tax return… which I will only receive in May or June. Therefore, the $500 deposit has to be taken from my own money in the meantime.
So overall, my liabilities have temporarily increased by almost 2K but I’m not too worried. Starting on March 12th, I’ll be going back to work with a salary increase and I’ll be able to catch up pretty fast considering the fact that I won’t have to spend $800 in transportation anymore. Yup! I’ll be working 5 minutes away from my house!
On the other hand, when I look at my assets, I’ve noticed that I’m fairly conservative. For example, the neighbor in front of my house sold his for 340K last fall. My house has about 20K more in features (heated floors everywhere + central AC) & materials and is 400square feet bigger. Last year, I added a small increase that equals the cost of my central AC. This year, I’ll do the same thing with the pool. I’m aware that I can’t use the full price of these 2 things and add it to my price as it’s not “worth what I paid for” when it comes to selling my house. However, I don’t consider inflation in the price either. This is why it’s about the same thing.
Then we have our cars. I even out the value of my Tribute with its loan and I drop my RX-8 by $400/month since I bought it. By the end of the year, the car will be virtually worth nothing (less than 2K). However, I’ve done a quick search and the cheapest car I found for this year was selling at 7K.
Finally, I have my company shares. This could be quite arguable as they don’t have a “real liquid value”. However, following our valuation model (we consider 36 times our monthly income minus debts), our company is already worth more than the $196,000 (98K each) that we established. The next update will happen in May after our annual meeting. I can’t wait to have a new evaluation ;-D
I guess the most important point when you do your net worth statement is to be highly conservative with your assets and track down every single expense. You don’t want to boost your net worth artificially. This is called “living on a cloud of dreams” and prevents you from seeing dramatic situations. This is when I realized I was spending too much in 2011 and made corrections for this year.
I’m expecting a good month for March. This is really where we will see if I made a real statement when I said that I was taking care of my finances in 2012.
Here are the details:
Assets:
ASSETS
PREVIOUS
MONTH ($)CURRENT
MONTH ($)CHANGE (%)
CHECKING ACCOUNT
$1,000
$1,000
0.0%
EMPLOYER STOCK
ACCOUNT $3,083
$3,139
1.8%
RRSP ACCOUNT
$29,804
$29,545
-0.9%
PENSION PLAN
$20,218
$20,218
0.0%
HOME
$345,640
$345,640
0.0%
COMPANY SHARES
$98,000
$98,000
0.0%
MAZDA TRIBUTE
$17,794
$17,360
-2.4%
MAZDA RX-8
$5,600
$5,200
-7.1%
TOTAL
$521,139
$520,102
-0.2%
Liabilities:
DEBTS
PREVIOUS
MONTH ($)CURRENT
MONTH ($)CHANGE (%)
CREDIT CARD
$6,358
$8,287
30.3%
LINE OF CREDIT
$19,804
$19,213
-3.0%
HELOC
$263,400
$263,400
0.0%
CAR LOAN
$17,794
$17,360
-2.4%
Personal Loan
$10,624
$10,416
-2.0%
TOTAL
$317,980
$318,676
0.2%
Net Worth: $201,426
View full post on The Financial Blogger
Knowledge of Ovarian Cysts On the rise Among Most women
February 28th, 2012 | Posted by Global InvestorsWhat number of most people managing ailments that will destruction your excellent plus the quantity of their own working life is also very superior. Right here is the ending of a typical account requested to the parts of sexual and also program well being among the both women and men. The experts exactly who looked into followed by posted all of the account are situated in the tip many people staying in both wilful or simply inadvertent prejudice about trouble they often already have, and are also hence failing to end up getting answer to the stipulations; illnesses that may… View full post on Live News from PR-USA.net
How To Maximize Your Appraisal During A Mortgage Refinance
February 28th, 2012 | Posted by Global Investors
During the housing boom, nobody worried about appraisals. If you put in a bid to purchase a house for $300,000, the appraisal was basically guaranteed to come out at $300,000 or above. Appraisers are hired by lenders, and back then lenders wanted to make the loan happened no matter what. Therefore, if you were an appraiser and you didn’t reliably provide the number that the lender wanted, then your phone might stop ringing. I was told directly that the intended purchase price itself was a “strong indicator of value”. Rather self-fulfilling, no?
Nowadays, banks are much more cautious, and thus so are appraisers. In addition, recent legislation created new Appraiser Independence Requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. At the same time, mortgage rates are at lows and refinance requests are at highs. Your ability to refinance is often dependent on what the appraiser says your house is worth, as you will need to satisfy a certain loan-to-value ratio. So what can you do to maximize your appraisal?
Feel out the lender first. Appraisers still work for lenders, and a good mortgage broker should be able to give you an idea of your chances for an adequate appraisal given the current environment and your basic home details. Check recent sale prices in your neighborhood on sites such as Zillow.com and Trulia.com to get a realistic sense of what to expect.
Collect supporting documents. If you’ve made any improvements to the house, gather up any blueprints or housing permits to provide to the appraisal. You could also make a list of the best “comps”, or recent sales of comparable homes in the area. If you’ve gotten one recently, dig up your last appraisal, and see if there were any omissions or changes. A busy appraiser might simply copy stuff from the previous appraisal. You may even find that they just bring a copy of the old appraisal and mark off things as they go.
Prepare your house. The appraiser will call you to schedule a time to see the interior of your house. Some people have suggested that you should hire a landscaper and basically stage your house as if you were selling it. I don’t know about spending that much energy on things, but I would definitely keep things neat and tidy. Have the kids and pets playing elsewhere. You want the house to come off as well-maintained and cared for.
Meet the appraiser. You’re dealing with a human, so be nice. Walk the appraiser around your house, answer any questions he or she may have, and point out any changes that you have made to the house. When I met my appraiser he was happy to see our official building permits that showed our legal additions. We also pointed out any remodeled areas and newly-installed hardwood flooring.
I don’t know if all appraisers would be open to debating about exactly what houses make good comps to yours or not, it might rub them the wrong way. But you could probably point out ways that your house is different than other potential comps (bigger yard, pool, view, etc.).
Read the appraisal report and follow-up if needed. Request a copy of the report and review it for any inaccuracies. The workload is high right now, and it could be that they mixed up details with another house or just copied stuff over from other sources. Point out any errors along with supporting evidence and you may be able to get the appraisal re-evaluated. On the extreme end, you might ask for another new appraisal at your cost.
Don’t worry about property taxes. While the local government might consider your house’s sales price history when figuring out your home’s tax assessment, they will not be notified of the value from an independent appraisal. In fact, they probably have a rather rigid formula to figure out your home’s assessed value (they do have to do this on a lot of houses) based on things like number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square footage, lot size, etc. If anything, you might volunteer data from the new appraisal to appeal your assessed value – assuming it’s lower of course!
In the end, by taking these steps we felt that we had done our best… and our refinance was a success, so good luck!
Related posts:
How To Maximize Your Appraisal During A Mortgage Refinance from My Money Blog.
© MyMoneyBlog.com, 2012.
View full post on My Money Blog
You Waste What Is The Most Precious
February 28th, 2012 | Posted by Global Investors
Some people waste talent like Kurt Cobain (nebulous death at 27), Jimmy Hendrix (nebulous death at 27) and Ben Affleck (we all wish he would have died in nebulous circumstances at 27).
Some people waste money like Sean Parker (bought a $23M house), Jeff Bezos (built a $42M clock!) and Meg Whitman (former president of eBay who spent $144M to run for Governor ofCalifornia…and lost!).
Some people waste their health like Barry Bonds (who took steroids and made my kid’s dream baseball hero turn become a shame), Lindsay Lohan (we all wish that she would join Ben Affleck) and Ronald McDonald (who eats solely at McDonalds).
Is it because we have so much that we don’t even care?
Is it because we don’t realize that we are wasting it?
Is it because we think we can always get it back whenever we want since it’s easy for us to have?
No matter what, we all waste what we is the most precious in our lives.
I don’t know if you have seen the movie “In Time” with Justin Timberlake. The movie is okay but there was one interesting thing about it: people who could afford buying time and become eternal were wasting it big time! Lately, I’ve been wasting a lot of what I have too. And what I have (for one of the first times in my life!) is TIME!
I’ve been on paternity leave since Feb 2nd (yup, my 3rd one, Caleb, was born at the beginning of the month!) and I’ve been pretty quiet wandering around in my house lately. One thing I did most is to go from one blog to another to read and comment. I’m not saying it was a total waste of time (‘cause there was some great reads out there and it’s good to interact with bloggers once in a while), but I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time on some articles. 2 of them were big time eaters last week:
How to Retire and Never Have to Work Again @ Financial Samurai
I went on a merely epic debate with Sam, the author, about his non-sense retirement projections. Sam likes to call out my gross revenue vs my spendings from my blog income report. He’s right since it’s important to be accurate with numbers (if not, you can have them support whatever you say). This is probably why I went on and on with his article to claim that his early retirement plan didn’t make sense. Whether I was right or wrong, I’ve spent a lot of time commenting, analyzing and researching (now I know how a 401(k) works vs our RRSP J ). Was it worth it? Definitely not! On top of that, I probably annoyed the hell out of him but I still think that his charts are bogus and I couldn’t let people think that they could retire at 40 after working only 18 years! It turns out that if you work only 18 years and retire at 40, chances are that you will be almost living like a homeless person (less than $1,000 net per month) for the rest of your life.
Is blogging a bubble @ Financial Uproar
This is another example but from another context. I didn’t spent much time arguing with Nelson’s point of view on my business model, the fact that the blogging industry was about to burst its bubble or his befouled hatred for the Yakezie group. In fact, I couldn’t care less about the reason why he dislikes the group so much. But I had a crazy time reading all the comments going back and forth from members and non-members. It was better than a reality show! I applaud Nelson’s guts (or naivety) to publicly make a stand but it wasn’t done in the most fashionable way. But then again, regardless if you agree with him or not, there was not much value added to my life vs a lot of time wasted stupidly smiling at my screen.
And Then I Woke Up Because of the Picture I Have on My Board
After 2 days of being in hard core competition with people on welfare for the time wasting Olympics, I finally woke up. What woke me up? A 4”x2” picture on my board right beside my home office (where all the magical posts get written by Santa’s laid-off elves).
This isn’t a picture of my wife (sorry honey!).
This isn’t a picture of my 2 big kids (sorry William and Amy!)
This isn’t a picture of my latest toddler (sorry Caleb!)
This is a picture of a little girl I’ve never met. I’ll call her V to protect her identity (Veronique is my sister-in-law’s name, no connections J ). V is a little girl that goes to my daughter’s daycare. Back in December, the daycare hosted their Xmas party where all the kids and parents were invited to eat together, sing and play some games.
All kids and parents were there but V and her parents. They weren’t there because V has some sort of cancer and is being treated at the moment. When I heard about the story, it ripped my heart apart. The following Monday, I went to see the daycare’s director and asked her if I could make a direct donation to V’s family in order to help them supporting this unsupportable burden. Each year, my partner and I give a part of our online profits to charity. We had established an amount of $100 each back in 2009 with the goal of doubling this amount each year. So I told the director that I needed a receipt to take the money out of my company. Since an individual (V’s parents) can’t write me a receipt, the director suggested that I give to an organism that was currently helping the family. Without meeting V or her parents, I followed the director’s suggestion and made my donation accordingly. Not so long ago, V’s parents sent me that 4”x2” picture of their daughter with a thank you note. As I am writing this paragraph, my eyes are flooded once again.
Sorry to be so dramatic this morning but I wanted to make a kick ass point out of this post:
YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE TIME ON STUPID THINGS!!!!
Let go of unnecessary frustrations, let go of annoyance in your life. Concentrate on what is good and live the moment. Because someone, somewhere, just can’t afford to lose the time you are wasting. Since you can’t transfer a few years to a sick child, you might want to use your time to make something out of your life.
I rarely waste my time and I’ll make sure to use it to do something from now on. Have you wasted your time lately? What’s your excuse?
View full post on The Financial Blogger
Coming Soon MatchRate PLUS Ultra Assessment From An Stay At HomeMomma
February 27th, 2012 | Posted by Global InvestorsView full post on Live News from PR-USA.net
Credit Sesame’s New Interactive Mortgage Map
February 27th, 2012 | Posted by Global InvestorsCredit Sesame might be best known for offering people a free credit score every month, but they make their money by providing mortgage quotes. That makes sense given how sensitive mortgage interest rates are to credit scores. They just rolled out a new tool called the Mortgage Map that lets you visually compare various mortgage loan options. Here’s an example screenshot:
The vertical axis appears to be savings (refinance) or cost (new loan), and the horizontal axis appears to be interest rates. Different colors denote fixed-rate, variable-rate, and interest only loans. A little house icon appears for refinance quotes to indicate your existing loan. Mortgage rates are still reaching new historic lows, so it’s good to be aware of the options out there.
Of course, I played around with it using my own numbers, even though I already refinanced last year into a new 15-year fixed mortgage. Almost all of the loan options given were worse than my existing loan, which I suppose made me happy. However, a 7/1 ARM or 10/1 ARM would save still save me money if I paid it off during the fixed initial term (makes sense, although these are lesser-known flavors). I noticed that the default setting for refinancing a 30-year mortgage is that you will only keep it for 7 years, my guess is that’s how often the average person changes houses. But you’ll want to remember to change that to better reflect your own situation.
All of the quotes that I wanted to “learn more” about seemed to be offered by First Choice Bank, which I am guessing is a mortgage broker? As a result, I don’t really know how many different lenders are behind this map, and how it would compare to something like LendingTree.
Related posts:
Credit Sesame’s New Interactive Mortgage Map from My Money Blog.
© MyMoneyBlog.com, 2012.
View full post on My Money Blog
If You Can’t Buy’em, Build’em!
February 27th, 2012 | Posted by Global Investors
Last week, I started to share my view of how you can build an empire online. In my opinion, there are 3 ways you can succeed. From my own experience, the 3 ways are good and have equal chances of succeeding. Unfortunately, nothing is perfect and this is why each strategy has its strengths and weaknesses. Then, I talked about how you can build your empire by pressing the fast forward button: through acquisitions. In the first part, I told you why I think that cheap buys don’t make the cut in my model. Today, I’ll tell you exactly why.
I totally understand that not everybody is willing, or has the possibility to shell out 50K on a blog. So if you have a limited budget, let’s say 4K, I want to let you know that there is another alternative to buying a small site. But before I talk about building your own site with 5K, let’s take a quick look at what you buy when you buy a small site:
- Less than 500 articles (most likely 100 to 200)
- Less than 10,000 visitors per month
- Less than $500 per month (most likely around $200 to $300)
- A PR2 or PR3 site
If I look at all these metrics and think that I would have to pay $4,000 for such a site, there is another question I need to ask myself before completing the transaction: can I make build a better site with similar metrics with the same $4,000?
The answer is most likely: YES!
The thing is that small sites are for sale for a reason. Chances are that the blogger wasn’t able to find a way to bring the blog to the next level, wasn’t too good at SEO or is just simply too bored to care. All these reasons lead to the same consequence: underperformance!
There are things you can tweak quickly and make a few bucks out of these sites, but some articles are simply worth nothing (e.g. they won’t be read or found through search engines). So you can either spend a lot of time tweaking the site, or building a new one. Sometimes, you are better off starting from scratch.
I believe I can now build a website with less than $4,000. And I’ll show you how with this example. The first step you must start with is to do a quick keyword research and narrow down your topic. We won’t go through how to use Market Samurai and find your niche (you can read these 2 articles, right?). Let’s fast forward to the moment when you have your domain, topic and keywords you need to rank for. What you need to do next is to write down all the categories and post titles that will be on your site.
It’s important to complete the structure before you start writing your very first article. If you don’t do it this way, you will start writing and will get more and more ideas. Then, after 2 months, you will have transformed a static site into another blog… and you don’t have the time for that . Plus, I’m not expecting you to write these articlesJ. Each category should be created around a specific keyword that is a derivative of your domain name and main topic. Then, you make sure you have enough topics to have at least 25 articles. You can have more, it’s up to you (and your budget!).
The point of buying a site is to benefit from what has been created already, right? Well it’s the same thing for a “built site”. Once you have your structure and know exactly how many articles need to be written, your quest to find a writer has just started! The easiest way to do it is to find a good blogger in the niche you want to hit and make him an offer. Most bloggers don’t make much with their own blog and would probably be happy to write for $20-$25 per article.
Depending on the topic, you can also pick up a writer from ELance or ODesk. So far, I’ve had much better results by picking existing bloggers than using these sites. I guess it really depends on the topic! For great results, you can take a look at a few freelancers/bloggers:
Crystal @ Budgeting in the Fun Stuff
The point of paying someone else to write is that you don’t have to do it… yeah I know, it sounds simple and stupid to say it but that beauty of a “built site” is you don’t have to work hard. But two things are required: money and a great brain! If you pay $25 an article and spend $3,000, you will get 120 articles… that’s enough to get any site rolling!
This is where the “brain” comes into play. So far, you should have not spent more than 3-4 hours on the site. That was used to a) build your structure and b) find your writer and give him directions. Now that you have your articles, you have to use your brain a little.
These articles should already be “SEO’d” since they have been started with specific keywords and written by real bloggers (not some Philippine dude working in a hut). However, you can use a bit of your magic touch to:
- Add internal links
- Add pictures with alt text
- Make links from your homepage
- Find affiliates that fit
- Include Adsense code within your articles
This is how you will boost both your SEO and the chance to make money from your site. This operation should require up to 10 hours of work.
So far, I’ve “spent” only $3,000 out of my $4,000 budget, right? The last 1K can be used to promote your site via:
- Carnival submission services
- Article marketing services
- Paid tweets
- Commenting on forums or other blogs
- Etc.
You can also put out $70 and get a decent logo (go see Peter from Logos for websites!). Another great thing you can do is to build a newsletter (read how I made $463 with my last mailing).
I’ve already shared my experience building Canadian Dividend Stock last week (read it here). The site is on its way to earning a solid $100/month from Adsense and just added another advertiser that will be paying about $150/month to display its add on my site. Therefore, with a $4,000 budget, I have a site producing $3,000 in the upcoming year. It took me 4 months to get there and am convinced that my site will be making a lot more than $250/month by the end of this year.
The difference with a “cheap buy” and a “built site” is that the latter has a sustainable business model. This means that I can count on this site to generate the same $250/mth and will probably increase over the years to come. I highly doubt that you can buy a cheap site, do almost nothing with it and come up with the same result. Your thoughts?
View full post on The Financial Blogger
Cool Creation offers the Latest Trends in Website Design Services – Get a Fresh Look For Your Websit
February 26th, 2012 | Posted by Global InvestorsWebsite Design (http://www.coolcreation.co.uk/) – Mark Russell started many years ago as a freelance website designer
and soon discovered a niche for bespoke quality websites at cheap prices, over
the years CoolCreation has grown to become one of the most successful cheap
website design companies online, offering a wide range of design services to
clients from all over the world.
View full post on Live News from PR-USA.net
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