Leah’s Cafe

Everyone especially the insurance agent will tell us it’s important to be insured. But, do you know that many of us are sold the whole life policies or investment linked policies, which are only good for the agents who sold them? Sadly, over 70% of the life insurance policies sold today are cash value policies. A cash value policy is an insurance product that packages insurance and savings together.

If a married man is the main bread winner, what he needs is a 20 years term life insurance. Term life insurance is an affordable life insurance, it costs only a fraction of what you pay for a cash value policy. You can invest the difference using other means. Do not invest money in life insurance; the returns are horrible. Your insurance person will show you wonderful projections, but none of these policies perform as projected. That also means when the 20-year term is up, the man shouldn’t need life insurance at all - because with no kids to feed, no house payment, and retirement fund saves up, his spouse will just have to suffer through if he die without insurance.

No matter what the insurance agents tell you, insurance policies are for assurance, they are horrible choices as investment. Do you know of anyone who got rich with insurance and still alive? Yes, many, the ones who sold them!

An old schoolmate has been bugging us about investing in a retirement fund for several months now. We told her that we would take a look at it when we have a chance to do so. Since she has been visiting us quite persistently, we decided to take a look at the sheets that she passed to us last week.

She told us that the retirement fund is better than CD or fixed time deposit because it’s guaranteed 6% return. We did a little calculations [Well, this is a rare occasion that my background in Mathematics comes in handy.:-)] and discovered that she didn’t tell us the whole truth.

She told me that we need to invest a certain amount for 10 years, then we can either take out the money after 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, or leave the money there but take out a fixed sum annually until we die or when we reach 81 years old. What she didn’t tell was: the 6 % return that she quoted is for the last case scenario, that’s when you leave the money there until you die!

If you would take out the money at the end of 10 years, the return of your 10 years investment is just a miserable 2% !! It’s worst than CD!! The lesson learned here is: you should never trust what a sales person tells you without reading up and looking at the fine prints.

With the prices of gas and everything else going up, we need to be very careful with our spending. Our spending habit at present times or did in the past did manifest some aspects of frugality in our lives - nothing too extraordinarily profound, but things that allowed us to pay off our house earlier and have 3-6 months emergency fund saved up.

We bought most of our furnitures and appliances used at the recycled stores, after others have paid for the depreciations. Well, so far they all work fine. For general purpose household items, non-essential odds and ends, we get them from thrift stores. However, we do not buy food stuff at these stores. Also we don’t shop blindly at this thrift stores, as certain items are cheaper at the normal stores.

We drive an old used car and try to maintain it regularly. It does gives us problems occasionally, but we have a reliable and honest mechanics, who does the repairs for us and generally it doesn’t cost a lot. The mechanics likes to joke with us that our junk car only catches a flu every month, which costs a few bucks to fix, but having a newer car on payments will need a major surgery for the bleeding purse every month. We have figured out that it cost less to keep this junk than to buy a better car.

We generally buy clothes only if there is some kind of a discount sale (not talking about those kind of stupid *sales* that goes on everyday). We shop at the warehouse, I don’t buy used clothes though, just have a mental prohibition against wearing used clothes from people I don’t know.:-)

My two sisters just bought a condo together few months back. At first I thought it’s a bad idea to buy an expensive property with less than 30% down. But, after I have visited the place and fell in love with their cozy home. I think the home is worth more than the house, a good buy indeed.:-)

Well, my first sister MC is a careful financial planner and thrifty spender, she has probably done more detailed calculations than the loan calculators could. Though this is the first time they are buying a house and therefore do not have any experience, they are resourceful because they search for information online and ask their friends who are experienced. I am sure they have thought through the whole process and are certain they could afford the repayments before they decided to buy the condominium.

My brother works in the bank selling personal loans. You would think most of his clients are low income people. In fact, it’s the opposite, people who are qualified to take up unsecured personal loans have to be in the category of high income group! You may

wonder why people who earned close to 1 million annually are heavily in debt. Then you look at the houses they live in, the cars they drive, you would not be surprised anymore. Well, my brother told me that many people are living a lavish lifestyle with debt piling up to their eyeballs!

But, they are also many hard-working people get into debt because of mistakes. But those who are willing to keep working hard to get rid of their debts, there’s hope to have a financially peaceful future.

Real debt help is not easy nor quick. You can get help from a credit counseling company, have your debts consolidated and managed, but you still need to solve the root cause of the problem - your spending habit and lack of budgeting to make sure you are saving enough for “unexpected” events.

If you are in financial stress because of something you’ve done, you need to get yourself out of the mess, making sacrifices in order to fix the situations that you created with your own irresponsibility. If you are not willing, or think it is too hard, you will never get out of the debt that you brought upon yourself.

A Structured Settlement is a financial or insurance arrangement, including a lump sum payment or periodic payments, usually it’s a settlement accepted to resolve a personal injury claim or to compromise a statutory periodic payment obligation.

But, do you know that you can also you can sell your lottery payments and receive an immediate lump sum cash payment? But, why won’t someone sells his lottery prize for less? Well, do you know when you win a lottery, you do not get the prizes immediately for most of some lotteries, instead you may receive your winnings over time?

Since inflation is going to make your money reduce in value over years, $1000 today would be more valuable than $1000 in lets say the next 10-20 years. That’s why some lottery winners have decided to take control over their winnings, they sell their lottery payments for a lump sum of cash.

There may be a lot reasons people would choose Structured Settlements to get cash instead of receiving payments in smaller installments. But, I hope people who make this question are fully aware of the chance of them finish up the prize money in a short time and get back in debt. Some people just can’t manage money that they suddenly have immediate access too, though it sounds good to finally can afford the finer things in life, pay back debt and live a debt free life!

Insurance is about transferring risk – risk that you can’t take or don’t want to take. You’re basically paying someone to take the risk for you. If you can afford to take the risk, then you don’t need insurance. Life is unpredictable and we do not really know what will happen tomorrow or even next second. Most of us have health insurances to cover our medical expenses, car insurance to cover us in the case of damages or theft, life insurance especially for the bread winner of the family to take care of our loved ones. In fact, we can have insurance for everything dear to us.

If you are running a business, do you insure your business sufficiently? If you are in a partnership, you may need term life insurance for each of the partner, so that the business can continue in the unfortunate event of one of you suffered a sudden death. If your company owned vehicles or running a fleet service, you would need motor trade insurance and fleet insurance. It is always good to shop for the best rate and compare various offers and plans by different insurance companies. Nowadays, with the convenience of Internet, you no longer have to contact the individual company for quotes, you can just use a insurance comparison site to do the same. If you live in the UK, you may want to check out Quote Me Today.we make it quick and easy to get insurance for your business. It’s easy to get an insurance quote for your business on Quote Me Today. All you have to do is to fill up a short form or give them a call at 0800-988-9255. They have a dedicated team that can provide quotes according to your specific needs, with the best possible cover and rate.

If you think you have an excellent business idea, but do not have the necessary capital to start the business, would you take a Startup Loan to kick it off ?

Not many traditional lenders would provide a loan without any collateral as security. Even if they do lend you the money, the interest would be too high to even consider it. So, if you can find a service that provide unsecured loan with reasonable interest rate, some more provide easy process, fast funding and great service, should you jump on it?

Hubby is finally on board with me in budgeting. Since his credit history is not fantastic because of some past credit card debts, we need to save up a bigger down payment for a house, so that by the time we are qualified for a mortgage with lower interest rate, we can buy a house.

For people who have their credit score trashed due to past spending habit, they may end up have to get bad credit loans to purchase a house. Since the interest rate may be higher, it’s really not a situation that we would like to get into.

Most people who run a small business used their own savings and loans from family members to finance the business, and it’s not easy to get Small Business Financing without collaterals.

Most Small Business Loans would require a co-signor or co-signors if there is no collateral as security. If you are looking for Small Business Loan, you may want to check out the links, they offer an easy process for fast funding with great service.

I have always been careful not to over spend or get into debt, but I was not a great saver, instead of saving part of my income every month, sometimes I wonder where the money has gone at the end of the month. Not until I started living with a written budget since December last year. Since then, I was able to save enough money to pay down the mortgage faster than scheduled and pay off all the loans we took for the business.

“Budget” is a word that may even sound like a dirty word to a lot of people. Hubby for one refused to get on board when I first started. But, I am glad he finally caught on, exactly a year later.

In fact, a written budget basically is just a PLAN. When you budget, you’re spending on paper, on purpose, before the month begins. Though many people view a budget as a straight jacket that keeps them constrained, thinking that freedom and budget don’t go together.

However, when you see a budget as spending your money with intention, you’ll actually experience more freedom than before. Hubby couldn’t believe that he could have a balance for giving and saving after all the expenses, and once we created a realistic budget and stuck with it, he is a convert now.

We have been very careful with our finances, always stay away from getting in debt. With millions of American carrying an average of $8000 in credit card debt, we know the multi billion dollars industry exists for a reason. We won’t dare to play with the snake, because we know we may end up getting bitten.

For people who have piled up their consumer debts and ruined their credits in the process, it’s certainly very stressful to deal with creditors or debt collectors. It may even take years to get out of debt and subsequently to rebuild credit. That may also mean they have to repair and re-established their credit score from scratch again!

We considered insurance as essential part of our financial planning. Since we own a home, we have home insurance to cover losses due to damage, theft or injury within our home.

We have no child yet, so “What will happen if I die?” helps us to determine how much life insurance we need. The only debt we have is the mortgage, if one of us died, the other one will need to continue to repay the mortgage. Since we are a couple with double income and no children, we have very little need for life insurance right now.

In future when we start to have kids, we would need to take out a term life insurance policy that is 10 times our annual take-home pay. The point is to have enough money to replace the income of the deceased spouse. It’s going to be even more true if I end up become stay-at-home mom.

We also have health insurance to cover the medical care. You could easily accumulate several hundred thousand dollars in medical debt…and medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy! On top of that, if your illness or injury is serious enough, you’ll be out of work, which means you will have a huge debt to pay and no money coming in. Insurance is an absolutely vital part of any sound financial plan.

Of course as car owner, we need to have Insurance to protect us in the event of an accident or damage to the vehicle. We make sure we have adequate liability with car insurance! As smart consumers, we do compare car insurance to get the best deal.

Definitely, if you are alive and breathing (and assuming you are since you are reading this!), you NEED health insurance. Not a maybe, not wait and see, you definitely need it!

Why?

Well, if you don’t have health insurance and something happens, you could easily accumulate several hundred thousand dollars in medical debt…and medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy! On top of that, if your illness or injury is serious enough, you’ll be out of work, which means you will have a huge debt to pay and no money coming in. Insurance is an absolutely vital part of any sound financial plan. We want you to be prepared.

I am sure you are aware that they are so many different health insurance plans and options floating around out there? PPO, HMO, and HSA, just to name a few. Do you know what they do, how much you need, or better yet, what all the abbreviations stand for? Well, you would need to find out and understand what types of insurance are best for you. For example, if you live in Florida, you can choose a Florida healthcare plan among all the plans available. Some of them can vary significantly depends on your need, that’s why it’ so important to get educated about various options so that you can make the right decision for you and your family.

When hubby told me how much he is paying for his car insurance, I nearly fainted. I am pretty sure he is paying way too much and there are ways he can find a better deal if he shops around. He just didn’t bother to ask for insurance quotes or compare car insurance from a few places to get the best deal. He probably just took the first thing that he stumbled upon and never even read the small prints. That’s my man, who find number crunching too challenging a task.

We have a lot of bills already in our life, and paying for car insurance that cost a bit more is not high on our priorities list. Anyway, to be a smart consumer, we should always compare and shop around to get better deal. The Internet certainly does make it easier for that. We can check out insurance comparison sites that have done all the leg work for us.

We no longer have to make a dozen calls to all the insurance companies or brokers asking them to send quotes one by one. It’s easy to find affordable, cheap car insurance that’s still of the same quality as that policy you’re paying more for. Check out the links and start saving yourself some money on your auto insurance. And I told hubby, for the next renewal, getting car insurance will be my job.

We are debt free except for the mortgage right now. We are driving junk cars and would love to get a better car later. We are pretty sure we want to get a slightly used car instead of new car. We know hubby’s credit score isn’t fantastic due to some past credit card debts, getting a bad credit loans would mean paying higher interest. Since we are set in our mind to not borrow money, we save like crazy right now.

What we would have put into a car payment, we ended up saving toward a slightly used car. We do not like the idea of having a monthly payment and paying interest to the lender. What about you? Did you get auto loans to finance your car purchase? Did you buy new or used?

We are in the midst of moving the checking account from one bank to another because the current one is notorious for charging fees for everything under the sun. One thing I do not understand, in America, when we open a bank account, the bank takes weeks to mail the ATM or debit card and it takes even longer to setup the online access.

Hey, in my so called third world home country, the banks can issue the ATM card and setup the online access at the same time you open the account! It’s a bit frustrating when direct deposit or transfer between your own accounts takes more than a day and transfer from Paypal takes more than a week to clear! That’s ridiculous when even check deposit clears on the same day in my home country now. How come banking in this so called first world country is so backward ah?

After running a small business for three years, I would say it’s not an easy job to work under constraints with limited human and financial resources. We were lucky because my sister gave us a interest free personal loan. That really helped with cash flow and lifted the many limitations that put us through a lot of pressure.

For those of you who are running a business or planning to start a business, if you are looking for Commercial Loans to finance your business or premises. You can check out http://www.earth.co.uk/commercial-mortgages.html, the link to a loan comparison site, you can compare all the packages offer by all the commercial lenders to ensure you get the best deal. You can generally get a decision in principle within 48 hours and can be approved for up to 70% of loan in value.

Where do most people go for debt help? Most people try credit repair companies, debt consolidation, debt management, or bankruptcy. These companies offered quick, pain-free fixes are really scams that cause more harm than good.

If you have screwed up your credit rating with foolish financial decisions and choices and you live in the state of California, can a California credit debt helps you to repair and rectify your credit rating? I noticed it only can brings about the desired change and become helpful if you are also working on your real problem - you and your spending habit!!

When we started the tutoring business 3 years ago, we funded it with our savings. When we encounter finance problems a year later, we try to get a Business Loan from the bank. It wasn’t easy to get a loan from the bank with reasonable interest rate that won’t push us further into debt, that’s for sure.

After much considerations and prayers, we decided not to take the loan. We were fortunate in that sense that my sister had offered us a loan, interest free. We have paid her back the loan since then and we are happy that we are debt free now.

If you are alive and breathing (assuming you are if you are reading this!), you do NEED health insurance. Not a maybe, not a “Oh, I’ll wait and see.” You definitely need it!

Why?

Well, if you don’t have health insurance and something happens, you could easily accumulate several hundred thousand dollars in medical debt. Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy! On top of that, if your illness or injury is serious enough, you’ll be out of work, which means you will have a huge debt to pay and no income. Insurance is an absolutely vital part of any sound financial plan. You have to be prepared.

Before hubby got the new job that covers him under a good medical and dental plans. He used to have a health insurance plan. He can’t afford to get sick without a good insurance plan. If you are resident in GA, and are looking for affordable GA insurance, do check out http://www.usa-healthinsurance.com.

Though paper qualification is important in order to compete in the society, but getting in debt to get the paper is never a good idea. How can one avoid getting in debt while getting the paper needed for a brighter future? In another word, how can one avoid student loan?

You can start with checking out college financial aid for grants and scholarships, which means it would be a great idea if your GPA was much higher than average. Good grades are an investment. Students in the top 10% of their classes have many more options.

Work part-time if you need the money. This idea isn’t widely accepted, but if you need the income, WORK! You could also try attending an affordable local college to get your first few years of required classes done. Then transfer to the school of your dreams if you can pay cash.

How many of us can afford to buy a new car without taking a loan? Most people have to take auto loans when buying new cars. But, bad credit, repossessions, or prior bankruptcy can be an obstacle to get approved for auto loans at banks or other financial institutions.

Nowadays, there are auto loan services available online which focuses on providing auto loans to individuals with poor credit. This service seeks out a solution to your bad credit problems and is cater to nationwide.

My parents in law attend a very old United Methodist church. I mean old as in the church’s history and their members.:-) They have a new pastor few years ago and it seems god is doing some revival in the church. The membership has grown quite a bit and they are out growing their premises. I heard from hubby that they are starting a church building fund soon.

You will be surprised many churches got torn apart during the fund raising process. Getting into debt to build a new premises and fill it with church pews can be a very stressful task to the pastor and leaders of the church. In my humble opinion, church leaders can learn to manage church finances through careful cash flow planning by creating healthy budgets and strive to fund the building project debt free.

The bible says, the borrower is the slave to the lender. (Proverbs 22:7). Debt burdens people and it prevents the churches from realizing their full potential and maximizing their impact for God’s Kingdom. The church can teach the members about managing their personal finances instead of keep preaching about giving and tithing. Members who can manage their personal finances will be able to beat debt, build wealth, and give with generous heart and make a deeper commitment to live their faith.

I don’t like the unexpected and get stressed up with financial problems. And I can’t imagine living without a budget and an emergency fund.

I guess if people live without having a written budget, they would always wonder where their money goes. I know many people are living from paycheck to paycheck, they have to rely on Faxless Payday Loans when the “unexpected” happened. Only if they know the unexpected can be planned into their budget.

There are more and more young people in America got sucked into the holes of consumer debts and credit cards debt have their credit ruined. Having bad credit will certainly affect their chance of getting a mortgage from the lenders with reasonable interest rates. Should they bother to “rebuild” their credit scores? Well, they do not really need to borrow more to get deeper into debt that’s for sure.

They should work on paying down the existing debts, thus create good payment records. Then, in future they would be able to get home loan from lenders who do manual underwriting, which will not just look at the FICO scores, but also look at the payment records.

I hit my financial bottom three years ago due to the business that I started. It didn’t do well in the first year and incurred some unsecured loans in the form of credit card debts. I would tell you, it’s no fun to be in debt. I am so glad I managed to pay them off and be debt free and sleep well at night now.

The banks have certainly come out with more variety of loans that get people deeper in debt. I would never take equity loan against my house and any other loans that would ruin the financial peace that I have right now. Mortgage debt is the only kind of debt I would recommend anyone, because not many people are able to do the “100% Down Plan” when it comes to buying a home!

The kitchen cabinet that came with the purchase of the house from the developer is falling apart. It needs to be fixed up or remodel. We are hesitating, don’t know whether we should spend money getting the kitchen remodel or not.

We may not stay here for long and if we decide to leave in next few years, we are going to waste money renovating. With the current house price here, it’s not possible for us to recover the renovation cost if we sell the house. The second hand housing market has been really slow and sluggish lately, there are so many new houses being built, why buy second hand when one can get it new. Oh, should we or shouldn’t we do(remodel the kitchen) that?

If you have paid off all your debts except for the house and have saved up an emergency fund, you are ready to invest 15-20 percent of your income for retirement and start building wealth. But, you really do not want to gamble away your hard earned money in the stocks market based on rumors and speculations. Trading stocks and futures carries a high risk. The only way to do is to equip yourself with the right knowledge and learn how to minimize the risk. In fact, majority of traders who lose money are those have no proper trading plan and believe in tips and rumors.

Making money in the stocks market may not be rocket science. We must be willing to follow a system and be vigilant to study the opportunities before we take the plunge. It will require hard work and the right kind of knowledge. If you are interested to brush up your skill in investing, do consider attending the Wealth Expo (http://www.wealthexpo.net) which will be held in Jacob Javits Convention Center, New York City.

I found the Schedule for the events on their website:
Friday, 10/19: 1 p.m.-6:30 p.m. EDT w/ a cocktail hour to follow
Saturday, 10/20: 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. EDT w/ a cocktail hour to follow
Sunday, 10/21: 9 a.m.-4 p.m. EDT (no cocktail hour)

These two seminars catch my attention, the first one is “We Systematically Tripled the S&P 500 Since 2000. You Can Too!”, the second one is “Making Money in the Markets Is Not That Difficult- We Will Show You How”. Wouldn’t it be nice to better equip ourselves and learn from others about how to leverage our income in the market and letting our money works for us instead of us working for money!

What do you think/feel about co-signing or be a guarantor?

My uncle recently had to learn the hard lesson, he co-signed for a car with his son, and he defaulted. If seems when you co-sign a loan, you are playing Russian roulette with your financial life. If the person you sign with defaults, the bank will come after you. If the bank wants a co-signer, usually it’s because they know that signer won’t pay. So don’t be shocked when this comes back to bite you.

When I was teaching at the private university, I was asked by a few students to be the guarantor for their student loans. I did sign for a couple of them thinking that it’s no big deal. But, now I think about it, it was quite foolish to do so, wasn’t it? Good thing they have not brought me any financial havoc.

I could understand why my friend Dianne won’t co-sign on a loan for her son, though her son was furious with her. He’s furious with her because he’s a spoiled brat who doesn’t like being told no. I think my friend made a very good choice to not co-sign on a loan for this guy. He’s 26 years old, and it’s about time he heard the word “no” about something. Right now, he’s using borrowed money to go to Japan … GIMME A BREAK!