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Nov 14, 2010
'Will'' You or Won't You?
No one ever wants to experience a life threatening or life altering illness. But the truth is, people face these kinds of situations everyday. It's so important to take action before a catastrophe strikes, so you can make important decisions with a clear head. This will help you insure that you and your family, income, and assets are protected in the way you want them to be.
Here are some important decisions you can make to protect yourself and your family.
Create a Will
It's been estimated that seventy percent of Americans have never drafted a will. This is amazing, because it is one of the most important documents you will ever create, especially if you have children.
In addition to your will, it is advisable to create Power-of-Attorney's to allow someone you trust to be able to make financial decisions or pay bills on your behalf if you are not able to do so yourself.
Also consider creating a living will, outlining the types of treatments that you would want or not want to have performed. Typically a living will is accompanied by a health care proxy, which is a Power-of-Attorney specifically for making medical decisions.
Start an Emergency Fund
There are dozens of reasons that it is important to build up a nest egg of cash, but one of the most important is to help protect against the loss of income that can occur during a medical crisis. Rarely considered for couples who both work, but worth mentioning, is that during a medical emergency, not only would the ill individual be out of work, but oftentimes the other would also have lowered income due to spending time and energy with the sick partner.
"Insure" Your Safe Future
Life insurance is rarely considered a popular discussion topic, but it is a very important way to protect your family. Dealing with the loss of a loved one is very difficult and there is no easy way to ease the pain. And the financial problems, although secondary, can be very serious. Loss of home, income, and savings can all be avoided with the right life insurance plan. Other types of insurance to investigate are disability insurance - which can help provide income if you are unable to work because of an injury or illness - and also long term care, which can help you preserve your assets from being eaten up by caretakers in the future.
Avoid Scams During a Loss
It's also important to be prepared during the loss of a loved one, especially as this is never an easy experience for a family, and people are often understandably distracted and overwhelmed with things to take care of. In fact, scam artists often use the obituaries in the newspaper as a way to target potential victims. Here are some tips to help you or your loved ones prepare yourselves during times of loss:
Protect Your Home: If funeral service dates and locations are listed in the newspaper obituary, scam artists will be able to tell when you will be away from home. And with friends and relatives visiting to pay their respects, neighbors may assume someone entering your house has permission to do so. To be safe, either ask a friend or neighbor to house sit while you're away, or let your neighbors know your plans so they can look out for suspicious visitors.
Know Who's Calling: If you have caller ID on your home phone, make good use of it and don't answer calls from unknown numbers. This will help you avoid calls from companies or individuals who are running cons. Remember: Any companies or people who pressure you during difficult times probably aren't looking out for your best interests.
Be Mindful of What You Pay: As you are going through papers, pay all bills that you know are legitimate like the mortgage, utilities, credit cards, and car payments. Do not pay anything from unknown parties or companies, including invoices, investment opportunities, calls for orders placed, or calls for money owed.
Get a Second Opinion: Sorting through paperwork can be overwhelming during times of loss. Consider asking a friend, family member, or even a trusted professional like an accountant or attorney to review any invoices or claims before you send a payment.
Losing a loved one is never easy. Let these tips help you be prepared when difficult times arise...and help ensure your loved ones are taken care of the way you want them to be.
Oct 26, 2010
Are you using Wordpress
There has been speak about using Wordpress beyond the normal web log configure, into the realms of a fully fledged content management system or CMS. Yet, the majority of people have no notion how this is even possible.
I must stress that the default Wordpress software is intended to be a blogging tool, so if you're trying to make it work like an alternative sort of content management tool you'll have to use the right plugins (enhancements) and have the a plain idea of what you need to accomplish.
While the exact gradual method is out of the scope of this article, lets explore some of the methods you can employ Wordpress, as I have personally done before.
1) Wordpress as An Article Directory
To make Wordpress work as an editorial directory, you need a special plugin, and an origin for the articles. MyArticleMarketer.com is the ideal tool for this, as the articles there are normally human-approved. They also encourage free distribution of their articles to other article sites.
After you have configure the Wordpress plugin, you should sign-up for Article Marketer's distribution list. By filling in their form and specifying the categories (or choose all categories), you automatically qualify to receive all old and new articles that are put forward to MyArticleMarketer.com
Although, with Wordpress as an editorial directory, you'll only be in a position to receive syndicated articles. Authors won't be in a position to sign-up or create a news report directly with you. It is likewise against MyArticleMarketer.com's terms or service to encourage authors to sign-up directly with you.
2) Wordpress as a Membership Site
You can set-up a free or paid membership site using Wordpress. All it takes is a couple of simple plugins to get the job done. As soon as you have installed the plugins, members will need to login to your site in order to view the content. You can also place a login form in your Wordpress style files to make it simple for users to lo inside and outside of your membership site.
Although, the plugins only create an easy membership system, so if you are expecting to create different membership levels and more advanced features, you'd probably want to sign-up with a professional membership system like AmemberPro.net and use their available plugins to ingrate with Wordpress.
Right at that moment of writing, AmemberPro.net has available plugins for a fair price and these will be installed by their support team, so you do not have to worry about the technical setbacks.
3) Wordpress as a Classified Ads System
Wordpress can work like any other classifieds site too. Users can sign-up on your website and place classifieds in the sort of new web log posts. They can also set expiry dates for their ads and specify listings or wanted ads.
Although, you will need to create all the necessary categories and even create a sign-up information page to teach your users how to place ads. The upside of using Wordpress as a classifieds site is that you can also employ tagging tactics to get traffic from web 2.0 sites and sites like Technorati.com
4) Wordpress as an Audio / Video Training Site
Utilizing the membership plugins mentioned above or AmemberPro.net's Wordpress compatibility plugins, you can make a membership site with Wordpress. Then, all of that is required to do is to include the Podpress plugin which looks after all audio and video elements on your site.
You will be in a position to display and stream MP3 audio or FLV video employing their intrinsic players. The Podpress plugin is actually robust and likewise permits you to specify setting on iTunes, so you can make this commercially and accessible to the entire iPod / iTunes community.
As you should be able to see by now, there's a whole lot of possibilities when it comes to using Wordpress to the extreme.
Oct 1, 2010
A New Way to Cut a Mortgage
Some homeowners who already have refinanced into low-interest-rate mortgages are using a little-known strategy to make their monthly payments even smaller.
Called "recasting" or "re-amortizing," the strategy allows a borrower to lower the monthly payment on an existing fixed-rate home loan for a small fee without having to apply for a new loan and without having to pay reappraisal and other fees.
Recasting also may enable homeowners to save on interest paid over the life of the loan, merely by putting a large sum of cash against the principal, whether or not they have refinanced already.
The bad news? Banks don't advertise the strategy, perhaps because it is less lucrative than refinancing a mortgage. And not all loans are eligible. To find out more, you will have to ask your lender directly.
At J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s Chase Home Finance unit, less than 200 mortgages a month are recast out of 10 million home loans outstanding, a spokesman says. At Bank of America Corp., about 200 to 300 a month recasting requests are received out of about 14 million home loans serviced by the company, a spokesman says. Neither bank has seen increased demand.
Here is how it works: A homeowner asks his loan servicer if he can put a large sum of money against the outstanding principal on the mortgage. Ordinarily, doing so would enable him to pay off the loan early, but he would still have to pay the same monthly note. But if the lender agrees to recast the mortgage, he may be able to reduce the monthly payment over the remaining term of the loan.
For example, a person with a 30-year $300,000 fixed-rate mortgage and an interest rate of 4.75% who recasted one year into the loan by putting in $60,000 toward the principal would trim his balance to $235,371. Assuming there were 29 years left on the loan, that would result in a monthly payment of $1,247 instead of the original $1,565.
Recasting can be a good choice for borrowers who have cash and want to reduce monthly payments but who can't refinance, such as those with no-documentation loans, most of whom can't get the same types of mortgages today due to tighter regulations, even if they have high income and good credit. (Self-employed professionals often find themselves in this boat.) And at a time of low interest rates on certificates of deposit and U.S. Treasury bills, paying off a mortgage early is a relatively safe investment that brings a return at least equivalent to the interest rate on the mortgage itself.
There are downsides to the strategy. Many financial experts advise against putting additional cash into one's residence, arguing that higher returns historically have been available in the financial markets and interest rates on bonds are likely to rise eventually.
They also warn of the possible tax consequences of retiring a mortgage early, because mortgage interest on a primary residence can be tax-deductible.
Mortgage recasting resembles a "cash in" refinancing-a newly popular strategy in which a borrower pays down principal on an existing loan in order to qualify for a new loan with a lower interest rate. In a recasting, though, the interest rate and the number of payments remain the same, and there are no transfer and title costs.
Getting permission to recast a loan can be tricky. The loan must be in good standing, and you need to secure permission from the loan servicer, who may or may not be the original lender. If the loan has been sold to an investor, the servicer also must secure its approval.
Since nearly two-thirds of all outstanding mortgages have been sold to investors via mortgage-backed securities, some homeowners could find this step difficult, especially those with subprime and "jumbo" mortgages. (Jumbos are loans that are too big to receive government backing through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the Federal Housing Administration.) If approved, the borrower will need to sign a modification agreement, a legal document recording the change of contractual terms.
Each lender sets its own fees and requirements. Chase requires a minimum $5,000 principal payment to recast a loan and charges a $150 fee, for example. Bank of America generally charges $250. It suggests at least $1,000 be paid toward the principal, but has no minimum.
John Henry Low, a fee-only financial planner in Pine Plains, N.Y., says homeowners should have one to three years in savings as an emergency fund before tying up additional cash in their homes, even if the account is "paying nothing."
A financial adviser in Pennsylvania says he refinanced a $270,000, 15-year mortgage in November 2009 on a second home at a 4.25% interest rate. This year, he inherited some money and instead of having money "sitting around in a money-market fund earning a fraction of 1% interest," he decided to put $75,000 to pay down principal on his mortgage.
So he requested a recast in a letter to Chase, which had acquired the loan. To get it, he paid a $150 fee.
With 14 years remaining on the mortgage, his balance was reduced to $170,020, factoring in additional payments he had been making toward the principal. This reduced his monthly payment of principal and interest from $2,032 to $1,322, excluding escrow payments-a savings of $710 a month.
If he puts the $710 monthly savings back into the principal, he will pay off the mortgage in a little less than eight years, saving $24,300 in interest. He also has the flexibility of a reduced monthly payment "in case I lose my job or something in the future," he says.
You don't need to recast your loan in order to save thousands of dollars in interest over its life. You can simply make additional payments toward principal on an existing mortgage without paying a dime in additional fees, or make a 13th mortgage payment each year-assuming, of course, the loan has no prepayment penalty.
One thing in homeowners' favor: The recent overhaul of banking regulations has severely restricted prepayment penalties on new mortgages.
Write toM.P. McQueen at mp.mcqueen@wsj.com