What You Don’t Know About Debt Will Cost You

Responsible consumers faithfully make their debt payments every month, likely without questioning the real impact of those payments. Here’s a fact you may not know: if you’re only paying the amount your creditor or lender recommends you pay, then you may be paying for a very, very long time.

You don’t have to hire a professional to help you assess your debt and you don’t have to know dozens of complicated math formulas. You can evaluate your debt on your own, for free, using CNN Money’s Debt Reduction Calculator. All you have to do is enter your debt information, select a repayment plan, and click the calculate button. What you get is very valuable – and possibly shocking – information about paying off your debt.

Minimum Payment Payoff Plan

If you’re currently paying the minimum payments on your debts, this calculator will be extremely valuable. To get started, you need to know each of your debts, the outstanding balance, the interest rate, and minimum payments for each of debts. In step two, choose a debt reduction plan which, in this case, is the minimum payment plan. Once you click calculate, you’ll be shown the amount of time it will take to pay off your debt and the amount of interest you’ll pay when you make minimum payments. Very often, paying the minimum will cause people to pay up to 80% of the amount of their debt in interest!

The Impact of Paying More

If you want to get out of debt faster and save thousands of dollars on interest payments, you’ll have to spend more money per month paying off your debt. Whether you can pay a little or a lot, anything you pay above the minimum will help you make tremendous progress with your debt repayment.

Use the calculator’s Fixed Payment plan to see the result of paying $25 or $100 above the minimum payment. This may seem like a small addition but it will save thousands on a $10,000 loan. Or, if you can afford to put more toward your debt, plug that number in the calculator and see what you will get! Many people are surprised, and perhaps relieved, to see the difference that can be made with just a little extra added to their payment each month.

Get Out of Debt on Your Time

The third option with CNN Money’s calculator is the Debt-free Deadline. With this option, you can choose the amount of time in which you want to be out of debt and the calculator tells you the monthly payment that you’ll have to make to get out of debt by that time. So, for example, if you’re turning age 55 in three years and want to be debt-free by that time, the calculator will help you figure out what it will cost per month to make that happen. (Note that your credit card statements will include the monthly payment required to pay off your balance in 36 months.)

Evaluating your debt is an important financial step, especially as you approach retirement. If you wait too long, it may be much more difficult to repay your debt. While it may be painful to face the truth about your debt, getting the courage sooner rather than later is the key to securing your financial future.

This guest post was written by Eliza Collins, a seasoned personal finance writer with professional experience in the debt relief industry. Eliza writes at the debt settlement blog where you can read more about hands-on debt relief strategies, debt relief services or credit repair.

A Better Way To Sell Mobile Phones

Image by sunface13 via FlickrAfter a while the old electronic gadgets begin to fill up the drawers in your home. What do you do throw them out? That wouldn't be right because a better alternative would be to recycle or better yet try to sell them. You could use Ebay, but that's just a hassle. Why not just sell it to one of the online companies that will take your old phone and pay you cash for it.

There are so many sites that buy back your old phones. So which one will give you the largest amount for your old phone? A website called SellMyMobile.com, a popular U.K. website that compares the top phone buyback companies and finds you the ones with the top prices. You get a selection of the best buyback companies and the amount of money they will pay you for your phone, when you want to sell mobile

You can compare all the leading mobile phone buyers in the U.K. on Sellmymobile.com, like, Cashinmyfone, Earth Mobile, Envirofone, Fone Hub, Fone Bank, Greentec, Love 2 Recycle, Mazuma Mobile, Mobile Cash Monster, Mirror Go Green, Mobile Phone Xchange, Money 4 My Mobile, Money For Your Phone, Money4urMobile, Mopay, 02 Recycle, PhoneRecycleBank, RPC Recycle, Reycle my mobi, Royal Mail Simply Drop, Sell Old Mobile, Sell Old Phone, Sell-My-Phone, Simply Recycle and Used Fone.

When you go to SellMyMobile.com you see the homepage is organized and you notice an easy way to enter the info about your phone you want to sell. With just a few simple clicks you get to see the price a company will pay for your phone. All price are kept up to date on a daily basis, you always have the freshest info of your phones value.

After you see the price offered you just click on the form to add your name and address to the page. The company will then send you a postage paid envelope so you can send your phone back to them. 

For a quick and easy way to sell your old phone go to SellMyMobile.com, the No. 1 mobile phone recycling site.

This is a sponsored post and reflects the opinion of this website.

Why The Kindle Fire Is Better Than The iPad

Since the introduction of the iPad no other pad device has come close to being able to make a dent in the pad market. Hands down the Apple iPad is the best pad device around, but its $500 price tag has kept many customers away, including me. Now the Amazon Kindle Fire is making a stir with its $199 price tag. I purchased my own Kindle Fire and this review is my opinion of its usefulness.

Around the Internet the reaction to the Kindle Fire is luke warm to say the least. When you only have the iPad to compare it to it will not really impress anyone. It isn't supposed to be a iPad competitor but it will take potential sales away from it. The Kindle Fire is a well made, well thought out device that will perform all the functions the average customer needs to do.

What can the Kindle Fire Do?

A Content Device.
Through the Amazon music and video store you can purchase content and consume it on the Fire. Amazon has a music store and video store much like iTunes. You can store your media on the device or in the cloud to stream at anytime. As a bonus, you get a free trial to Amazon Prime with your Kindle Fire. That means you get free two-day shipping when you buy stuff from Amazon, plus free streaming access to thousands of movies and TV shows. If you decide to keep Amazon Prime, it'll cost you $79 per year. Not a bad deal considering there are 1000's of TV shows and movies to watch. If you are using Netflix now you don't need both, cancel the Netflix and use Amazon's streaming movies and save money too.

If you have an Android phone you are already familiar with the interface, if not you will still find it very easy to navigate. The video and audio plays smoothly. The built in speakers are small, but adequate enough for individual use. A headphone jack is available for private listening.


Apps are Plentiful.
Again like your Android phone, apps are easy to load and use. The Android App Store is not included on the device but Amazon's App Store is and it has many apps for you to download and use. Some free, some at a low cost. There are apps of all kinds. Though iPad does have many more apps the Kindle has more than enough to satisfy the average user. Receiving your email on the Fire is a snap, too.

There is a Kindle Reader Inside.
Above all the Fire is a Kindle tablet. The Kindle book reader is the ultimate device to read ebooks. If you have been wanting to get back into the habit of reading, the Kindle will help you. It makes reading books very easy. You can adjust the font size, color, and background color. Since I got mine I have been reading like never before. The Kindle book store has thousands of free books and many only $.99. Your local library also lends Kindle books. Reading has never been made so easy to do.

The "Silk" Internet Browser.
Amazon spent the time to get the Internet browser just right. It is smooth and quick to load pages. It has tabbed pages, bookmarks, and everything else a well made browser needs. No skimping here.

Should You Buy it?
In my case the iPad selling for $500 will never be worth it to me. If I was going to spend $500 it would be for a 42" LCD TV. It doesn't make sense for a casual electronic product. At $199 it's worth it, because of all the functions it performs that I don't have to use my desktop for. The portability and functionality makes it a great idea to own one.

Other pads from Blackberry, HTC, and Samsung sell at $400 or more. At that price I would go the extra $100 and get the iPad. Remember, with the iPad and the Amazon Kindle, you have large companies in the market for the long haul to support it. Will these other companies be there in a year or two down the line when sales don't do to well. Remember HP dumped there pads at $200 when they wanted out of the business.

Bottom line the Amazon Kindle Fire gives you the best value and provides you access to the best content. You have the support of one of the biggest companies behind you. That's more than enough to make it worth considering.

Index Funds: The Best Investment Advice Is Not Always The Most Popular

Image via WikipediaOne of the worst problems an investor has is figuring out how to ride the highs and lows of your portfolios performance. The highs can be exhilarating and the lows are always gut wrenching. There has to be a way to invest that allows you to not worry so much. 


What is the key for staying the course?

At the nytimes.com an article describing  the research of Janet M. Brown, president of DAL Investments, revealed the returns of 306 mutual funds over a 20 year period.  She wanted to see if active management was actually the best way. Brown said, “The overall challenge of mutual fund investing is selecting funds in advance that people think will do well in the future,” Ms. Brown continues. “The easiest thing would be to buy and hold or to select a manager with a good long-term track record and buy it and forget it. That was not an effective way of selecting funds.”

Find more information at The Best Investing Advice? Maybe Not the Conventional Method

Performance.
Mutual funds usually compare their returns to the returns of the S.& P. 500 or the Vanguard S.& P. 500 Index Fund. Strategies that use mutual funds in different combinations to build portfolio's can't produce superior results. But Browns research indicated, over the last two decades, no non-index fund investment strategy dominated. At best, some strategies were only successful for a four to five year period on average. Not one fund beat the benchmark every year.

Investment Management.
You will always find the hot manager of the year making tons of money for their clients. Eventually, all managers under perform the benchmark S&P. No particular investment strategy was successful for the entire period of this research.

Expenses.
All investors usually can agree on the idea that high expenses wear away performance. You can always find some funds with high expenses that have outperformed the index. But you will find they have, on average, returned only 1 percent more than the benchmark S&P 500.

Brown's Best Non-Index Fund Strategy. Brown's best non index fund strategy for using mutual funds surpassed the benchmark S&P 500 with a 12.19 percent return. Yet it underperformed the benchmark 9 out of 20 times. 

Takeaway.
Brown admits that the benchmark S&P 500 index has returned 7.65 percent over the last 20 years. I think most investors would be quite happy with that. There are mutual funds that produce a higher return but they don"t do it consistently. The trouble is finding these great performers on a consistent basis. The bottom line is index funds make the most sense for the average investor.

I have found the best implementation of an index fund centered portfolio is Paul Merrimans "Ultimate Buy and Hold Strategy". It has 11 different asset classes giving a broad, diversified group of index funds that will provide a good return over time. The days of tracking down the so called best funds will be over. You will be able to sit back and know you have done all you can to properly invest your money.


Check out Paul Merriman's Ultimate Buy and Hold Strategy here.

Find all Paul Merriman's great strategy and sample portfolios here.

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• Book Review - Financial Fitness Forever: 5 Steps to More Money, Less Risk, and More Peace of Mind by Paul Merriman (50plusfinance.com)
• Walking With Giants: An Interview with Paul Merriman (businessinsider.com)