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When the mortgage monthly payments start affecting your finances, you need to start enhancing your budgeting skills and learn how to manage your finances in order to avoid late payments or worst: defaulting on your home loan.
Your first home or a larger one for a growing family usually involves complete focus on accumulation of down payment and meeting criteria for financing the chosen property. With final closure of loan and settling into the house there is great relief.
However, soon enough you will be faced with the financial demands of home ownership.

As your home is a major investment, a lot is at stake in case of defaulting on mortgage payments or failure in maintenance. Plan for unforeseen situations in addition to the routine costs of home ownership and you are likely to avoid foreclosure or bankruptcy in case of emergencies.

Thinking Ahead

Create a budget planning for maintenance and repairs. An emergency fund for repairs and replacements is also advised. Find out your financing options for major replacements like roof or heating system. With costs running into thousands a home equity loan, second mortgage or installment loan may be necessary. Examine your loan options thoroughly with a plan for a major expense.

A loan workout plan with your lender defines remedies for delinquency and avoids loss of home. Either written or oral, specific deadlines are crucial to avoid foreclosure. So be very realistic in estimating your ability to achieve the plan schedule.

The workout plan is subject to the gravity of default, duration of financial difficulties or impairment of your payment ability for the near future, chances of acquiring funds to correct the default and current value of the property.

Waivers

Temporary indulgence is likely if the default is due to a temporary condition with the likelihood of being rectified in a short span. This possibility arises in situations where the house has been sold with the sale yet to be settled or with pending insurance settlements. It is often possible to set a date for curing the default. Documented evidence like sale contracts may be necessary for the lender.

In case of a temporary loss of income followed by return to previous levels, your repayment plan could be restructured for making the loan current. This arrangement requires timely mortgage payments on schedule, with an extra amount to rectify the delinquency in about 12 to 24 months. Sometimes the extra amount could be a lump sum due by a specific date. Repayment plans are most popular for this workout agreement.

At times no payments may be possible for certain duration. A good record with the lender can merit a forbearance plan to suspend or reduce payments for a specific period. Forbearance plan is written with a definite term and specifies them method for ending the delinquency. Usually the duration is under 18 months and it specifies commencement of foreclosure in case of defaulting on the agreement.

Mary Wise, a professional consultant with twenty years in the financial field, helps people in the process of securing personal loans, mortgage, refinance or consolidation loans and preventing consumers from falling into the hands of fraudulent lenders.
In her website Badcreditloanservices.com you will find more useful tips and interesting financial articles on this and many other related topics.

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You can prepay for a college education, and save a little money too.

The cost of education might seem high, but it is a necessary cost in today’s world. Those without college educations often face a hard time finding a job today. Jobs you would never think would require a college education, do. For example, there are many cowboy jobs — you know, riding a horse and doctoring cattle — that require you have an animal science or ag degree. Firefighters have four year degrees. At the least, many management positions, even in retail, require that you have an associate’s degree.

College tuitions are just going up and up every year. Increases are necessary to keep the level of education and boarding up to standard. Education is not cheap and it costs a lot to produce it. You can choose to pay tomorrow’s college at today’s tuition, tax-free.

Sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t. With an Independent 529 plan, you aren’t simply working with a state-sponsored savings plan. Independent 529’s are offered by private colleges and universities.

You simply deposit up to $165,000 into the plan. In return, you receive tuition vouchers good for use at any of the plan’s 255 participating schools and universities. You can use the vouchers between three and 30 years after purchase.

The benefit is that the actual cost of tuition will probably be at least double what it is today when you redeem the vouchers. Think of it as locking-in today’s college tuition prices. Basically, you are pre-paying for an education.

The drawback is that the vouchers must be used at participating schools. If your child or grandchild enrolls at a school not on the list, you can get a refund at the rate your money was invested. You can also roll the assets into a state-run 529 plan.

State-sponsored 529 plans put your money into mutual funds or other investments that grow tax-free. You then can use the account to pay for any college tuition in the country.

Tuitions vary by school, so you will have to rely on the plan to let you know how many classes you are owed by the plan. You are also limiting the growth of your money to the rate of tuition increases. While tuitions have reportedly risen by 6% a year, there is no guarantee that they will continue that rate. However, most people agree that college tuition rates will probably never go down. You are basically risk free from losing money here.

Once you have saved for retirement, saving for your children’s college educations is important. Do this for them, and you give them a step onto the right path. Research both traditional and independent 529 plans. Decide which is right for your family and use it to your advantage. Start saving as early as you can. It is the perfect answer to “What does she need for her birthday?” After all, they are ready for college before you know it.

Martin Lukac represents http://www.RateEmpire.com and http://www.1AmericanFinancial.com, a finance web-company specializing in real estate and mortgage rates. We specialize in daily updates, mortgage news, rate predictions, mortgage rates and more. Find low home loan mortgage interest rates from hundreds of mortgage companies!

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If you use business cards, you’ve probably thought about printing your own. After all, you own an inkjet printer, a computer, and some graphics software. How hard could it be to save a few bucks?

To check out how well this works in practice, my employees and I conducted a small experiment. We created 3 batches of business cards, using 3 different techniques.

The first technique was fairly straightforward: We took the business card down to our neighborhood print shop, and asked them to print up some more. We brought a blown up copy of our logo, which served as “camera ready artwork.” The copy shop took care of the typesetting, proofreading, printing, etc. It was fairly painless, although it did involve physically getting to the print shop. Next time we’ll email them a TIF file. We had planned on getting 500 cards, but the price for 1,000 was only a little higher, so we went with the larger quantity. The cards took 5 business days, apparently because they were not printed on-site, but rather outsourced to a wholesale printer.

The second technique may sound unorthodox, but it worked. We used a custom made rubber stamp to create the cards. This was fun, though it took a while. We also wrecked a few cards by stamping carelessly.

Finally, we created some cards on our inkjet printer, an Epson Stylus C84. There’s special software available for placing the images 10-up on the page, but we opted to use Adobe PageMaker, since that’s what we’re familiar with. We printed the cards on Avery #8871 Clean Edge Business Card paper.

All three methods have their proponents, and none of the methods was clearly the best choice for everyone. The rubber stamped cards were definitely funky looking. If you work at a bank, don’t even think about it. On the other hand, if you just need a few dozen cards for your part time cookie baking business, rubber stamped cards might be just what you need to convey the “home made” impression. Art stamp enthusiasts often have fun with multiple ink colors. The more ink pads you have, the more variety your cards can have. The cost of rubber stamped cards was 12.4 cents each. Unfortunately, our 8 year-old assistant got bored, so we aborted the experiment after an hour and a half, and about 150 cards.

The inkjet printed cards were a little harder to evaluate. The image was clear and sharp, and we chose to use the printer’s abilities to mix several colors and a blend on the page. However, the designing is not quite as trivial as it sounds. You can easily end up designing a card that’s too busy. Also, our first few designs had type that went too close to the edge. If you’re not a professional designer, count on printing out some experiments to look at before you hit the “Print” button for 200 cards.

No matter how careful you are, however, you still end up with cards that look like they were printed on an inkjet printer. The “clean” edges were still perceptibly perforated, and the ink ran a little when it got damp. An informal poll of small business owners in New England showed that inkjet printed cards still convey a “less serious” impression. Of course, this could be fine for many businesses, but it deserves some consideration. All together, we spent about 3 hours designing and printing 200 cards. We saved the design, so next time it could be quicker.

We expected the inkjet printed cards to be much cheaper than the professionally printed ones. That was before we tallied the cost of ink cartridges and paper. The paper was $16.88 online, plus $7.95 shipping, for 200 cards. That works out to 12.4 cents per card. If you include a 10% waste factor, the final paper cost is 13.66 cents per card. Then we calculated the ink cost. Overall, we averaged 42 cents per page, or 4.2 cents per card. (Each page had room for 10 cards.) Again, a waste factor of 10% meant a final ink cost of 4.62 cents per card. Total cost for ink and paper was 18.28 cents per card. An excellent price if you only need a few dozen, but for larger quantities, we could do better.

The professionally printed cards were simple 2 color (black and dark blue inks) raised printing on an off-white card stock. The raised printing and lack of perforations won the thumbs up from the New England small business owners. One middle aged woman observed that “they look like a real business printed them.” The price of professionally printed business cards varied quite a bit when we called around, so it may pay you to do a little shopping. Remember that you’ll likely use the same printer again in the future, if only for the convenience. Most print shops keep your data on file for quick reordering.

The print shop we chose charged us $43.00 for 1,000 cards, which works out to 4.3 cents per card, or about a 76% discount from the inkjet printed cards. Had we chosen to order only 500 cards, the price would have been $38.00, or 7.6 cents per card. That’s still a savings of 58.4%. More importantly, we felt we had a good looking card. While not exciting, it was professional enough to hand out anywhere.

A few other points to consider: The price we paid at the print shop was for a fairly simple job. We didn’t choose, for example, to have solid ink coverage extending all the way to the edge (a “bleed”.) Nor did we have a custom color mixed up for us. These charges can add up, so if your design isn’t set in stone just yet, you might want to check with the print shop about their policies. Also, we chose to do our inkjet printing on specially made inkjet paper. You can save money by choosing a cheaper paper, but we haven’t had good results with any we’ve found so far.

Our verdict: Go with the method that’s right for you! For the homemade cookie business, get a rubber stamp. If you only need a few business cards, and aren’t overly concerned with appearances, go with the inkjet method. However, for most people in business, the professionally printed business card wins on convenience, cost, and professional image.

Simon Peter Alciere is a business owner and writer in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.
Please visit his website at:
Simon’s Stamps | Custom Rubber Stamps,
to see how easy it is to buy personalized rubber stamps online.
You may also call him at his office: 1-413-773-5400 or 1-800-437-4666.

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