Costly Debt Traps-This the Way to Avoid Them

There are many reasons why people go for payday cash advance loans but it draws down to lack of other options to raise money. However, while the cash advance facility meets you at your most desperate moment and makes things much better, it is not one to rush into, especially if the bill or need can wait. The reason is because a pay day loan advance is quite expensive to service and getting quick cash into your hands comes with a price. For those with debts, it is important to explore other available options first to avoid costly debt traps. Those individuals unfortunate enough due to excessive debt have a number of ways to deal with the problem.

Borrowing from family and friends

While this is the default borrowing option for some, a good number see it as a very difficult way of raising money. Friends and money do not go very well and relationships are broken if the loan goes unpaid. No matter who the person is, the hard lesson is that your relationship changes forever. 

Debt consolidation

Through this facility, a single loan is used to help deal with all the glaring bad debts. Debt consolidation allows a person to manage all debts effectively. Having debts from so many creditors make it rather hard to track or manage payments and budgeting is next to impossible. 

Creditors’ negotiation

Some people almost go bankrupt as a result of too much debt and negotiations with creditors is a wonderful idea. The creditors can reduce the owed amount towards a full payment. It is also a better idea if your debt amount is large and you owe multiple companies a hefty sum of money. 

Bankruptcy

Once you have exhausted all the other available options, it is hard not to file up for bankruptcy. In turn, you become radioactive in the financial and business world and cash advances and no one really want anything to do with you. A bankruptcy changes your life completely, thus should be the last resort. 

Credit cards

Sometimes people find it convenient to have multiple credit cards they use to pay college fees for their children, buy new cars, home amenities, clothes and basically anything they desire ending up with a seemingly insurmountable credit card debt. While many end up with ever increasing interest rates and loans, it is possible to completely pay back your credit card debt. The best way of dealing with such a debt is lowering the interest rate and finding other ways of boosting your entire income, cutting expenses and using the additional money to expedite the payoff.

At times, the balances are on more than one card and the best idea is attacking the debt with the highest rates. Starting with the card with the smallest balance and clearing it fully might also give you the much needed psychological boost to also weather on and complete the others. If you have a good credit record, you can receive offers from credit card companies for zero interest when it comes to balance transfers, meaning you will pay the debt faster since the interest rate is eliminated for a period.

About Author

Mark is a business graduate working for a leading financial brokerage firm in Sydney. He occasionally blogs in his free time on how Jet Lending cash loans can help in getting much needed cash in troubled times and how to ensure you repay to avoid hefty penalties.

Keeping Control of your Household Energy Bills Could Help you to Afford a Bigger Mortgage

The global financial crisis represented a watershed moment in consumer borrowing as it changed the way many of us look at borrowing and it changed the way lenders now think when it comes to granting new finance deals, especially mortgages.

Keeping control of your personal finances and avoiding over-stretching yourself has always been the right approach to take but now more than ever, the household bills you have and how much you pay have a big impact on your ability to buy your home with a mortgage.

Tighter lending criteria

The era of cheap and easy loans is over and mortgage lenders in particular are exercising a far greater level of caution when it comes to the amount that they agree to lend so that you can buy a property or move to bigger one.

Borrowers who already have a family to look after are now finding that mortgage lenders are sometimes penalizing couples with children and reducing the amount they are prepared to lend in these circumstances.

One of the questions on an application form has always been to ask how many dependants you have and depending on who the lender is, if you confirm that you have children it could trigger a reduction in what they offer you by as much as between 10% and 20%.

The key to getting the loan you want in today’s financial climate is to have as high a credit score as possible and to reduce the perceived financial impact of raising children by keeping a tight control of your household finances, so you can demonstrate financial prudence and lower outgoings.

Your credit rating

The Money Advice Service has a useful guide as to what affects your credit score and how it also affects the overall cost of borrowing and how much you are offered by a lender.

Credit scoring for a mortgage application works on a number of factors such as the information contained on your application form and also what your past payment performance and credit history looks like.

Paying your credit card, water and gas and electric bills on time is an important thing to do if you want to get the best possible rates and the maximum loan amount available for your income.

Household finances

A good way to get your financial house in order and keep your financial commitments as low as possible is to try and get the best possible deal for your energy bills, as these are a major expenditure in household budgets.

An energy comparison site like UK Power can help you to find the best possible deal so that you minimise the impact of rising prices on your finances and also your credit score.

If you can demonstrate stability it can boost your credit score, so make sure you are on the electoral register so that your residency can be confirmed and shop around to get the best deals on not just your energy bills but also other borrowing costs such as credit cards and personal loans.

Keeping good control of your household bills and finances can certainly help boost your chances of getting a bigger mortgage.

Scott Byrom is an experienced writer and often provides tips and advice to help consumers keep their finances in order and reduce their outgoings and bills.

Teaching Kids the Basics of Selling

Understanding the importance of hard work is a crucial lesson to teach our children. Although the point of working for a living and understanding the value of a dollar may both seem obvious to us as adults, it’s only because we’ve probably forgotten what it’s like to be a carefree kid without a career to worry about, or a mortgage bill that needs to get paid.

One of the best ways to teach lessons on money, work, and business is to teach kids the basics of selling. They’ll learn valuable skills they can carry with them, and they’ll also learn about how finances work in the real world. These are great concepts to start absorbing early on, as teaching kids about selling and how businesses operate will provide a healthy respect for money and how it is earned: through hard work.

Consider these ideas for teaching kids the basics of selling:

The best way to learn is to learn by doing. Enable your kids to enter a sales situation. Allow them to price and pitch old toys at your next yard sale. Be old fashioned and supervise as they set up a neighborhood lemonade stand. Encourage them to set big goals for the next school fundraiser, and give them the steps to a successful sales trip around the block (have a pitch targeted at your demographic and show what your product has to offer).

If your kids fail, don’t berate them for it. Failure teaches us many important and vital lessons about our sales techniques and our products. Help them analyze why they failed and work with them to evaluate how they could improve next time.

And don’t forget that you can teach your children about entrepreneurship, too. If they have an independent, creative, and thoughtful side, don’t ignore that. Inspire them to brainstorm new ideas, consider how they can solve problems for other people (and then market that problem), and help them understand how to determine if there is a demand for a particular product or service.

Here are some ideas to encourage your children to learn about selling through an entrepreneurial lens:

· Encourage them to set goals (and then help them define a plan of action to reach those goals).

· Give them a chance to earn their own money via a “business” like mowing the neighbors’ lawns. You might also take this opportunity to “tax” them just like the government eventually will.

All of this begs the question: why? Why teach kids the basics of selling, business, and entrepreneurship? Well, having a grasp of the fundamentals will set them up for more complex learning down the road, and the earlier they understand how the grown-up world works – in other words, the importance of a career, an income, and understanding business and money – the earlier they can adapt to it and start creating good habits that will lead to success as they grow older.

The importance of a good work ethic in children cannot be overstated. When they understand that money is made through hard work and that they can have some control over their future incomes if they dedicate themselves to an idea, they are more likely to strive for excellence instead of relying on their parents to foot the bill throughout their life. When you instill proper work ethic, you avoid raising entitled children.

Additionally, giving kids a certain type ofsales training will come in handy in other aspects outside of a boardroom or a meeting where they need to seal the deal. In the real world, you have to sell everyone. No one will take your word for it that you’re good at something or you possess a certain skill. You have to convince others that you have what it takes. In other words, you have to be able to sell your own personal brand time and time again, in various situations, in order to be successful.

The Pros and Cons of Oversaving for Retirement

Saving is generally a good thing, especially if you’re someone who’s gunning for a comfortable retirement. With the way the economy is going, it seems more and more necessary to put aside a set amount as a huge nest egg is going to be something you’ll be needing come retirement time. So, you’ve been stopping yourself from using your credit card, denying yourself certain luxuries, and generally been living a frugal life with a set focus on the future.

However, there is such a thing as oversaving. It means exactly what it seems to mean; living an excessively thrifty life. Many people believe that the amount of money a person saves is just the right amount, so what exactly warrants the term “overspending”? What specific amount of money exceeds the typical amount of conventional or normal saving?

Oversaving is basically when you scrimp so much that your basic lifestyle becomes affected. It depends on how much money you actually make. If the majority of the money you take home (minus the daily expenses and payment of bills and credit card debts, if any) goes into your savings and none go into any leisurely purpose—that may be oversaving. Anything that’s done in excess is bad, even a good thing like saving, and oversaving has certain pros and cons.

Pro: You will have a sizeable retirement fund.

Whether you invest your money in retirement plans or just hide it under your mattress, oversaving makes sure that when you get old, you’ll be well-taken care of, at least financially. You can conceivably live a more comfortable life in your twilight years if you oversave.

Con: You deny yourself today.

By choosing not to spend the majority of the money you make, you basically deny yourself of certain emotional benefits that come with enjoying the fruits of your labor. Oversaving usually means you opt not to take vacations, or buy yourself nice clothes or keep yourself from spending on material things that you want simply because they are things you think you don’t need. However, these things are crucial to your emotional and mental health. Indulging a bit from time to time relieves people of stress, and in today’s world, that’s definitely a need.

Pro: Learning to live with less.

By if you’re used to the idea of not spending, you get to discipline yourself in terms of knowing which things are essential and which aren’t. This means you’re less susceptible to marketing ploys, less dependent on status symbols, and more content with what you have. Your self-definition may rest on more substantial things, which is good.

Con: Scrimping may lead to higher medical costs.

The basic act of denying yourself certain higher-end items could lead to your retirement fund being blown away on medical expenses anyways, preventing you from enjoying the savings you worked so hard to accumulate.

For example, if you choose to low quality mattress to sleep in every night, instead of upgrading to something that has more effective back support, then all those years of sleeping uncomfortably may lead to complications of the back. Or purchasing a cheaper automobile that has less safety features than a newer model might be something you’d end up regretting, for obvious reasons.

Oversaving has, like other things, pros—and it, too, has cons. Both sides of the argument seem equally compelling, but at the end of the day, it’s about you enjoying something you worked hard for. Either it’s going to town on your credit card or resting comfortably knowing your future is financially secure, it’s always better to do what makes you the happiest.

This article is contributed by Money Hero, Hong Kong’s leading financial comparison website. Users can compare financial products, like credit cards side by side. This lets them compare financial products which enables them to make better financial decisions.

Top 5 Overpaid Jobs in America

Whether you're looking to use your unique skills to earn as much money as possible, or you're just angry that some people earn outrageous salaries, you should know about some of the high-paying jobs in America.

#1: CEO

Pay: $14.1 million

CEOs who work for one of the country's top 350 firms can expect to earn about $14.1 million, including money from stock options.

It hasn't always been this way. CEOs have always earned high salaries, but recent trends have made them extraordinarily wealthy. Consider that between 1978 and 2012 CEO compensation increased by about 875 percent.

In 1965, CEOs earned 18.3 times more than the typical employee. Conversely, in 2012, that number jumped to 202.3.

No other job has seen that kind of growth.

#2: Meteorologist

Pay: $360,000 in top markets

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Atmospheric scientists, which includes meteorologists, get paid nearly $90,000 a year. That seems like a fair salary for scientists who've earned PhDs and do the kind of work that could help humanity avoid climate change.

But meteorologists don't do those things. They're more like TV personalities than scientists. Despite this, they get paid much more than those working in hard sciences. Chief meteorologists working in a top ten TV market earned about $360,000 in 2012. Even those in the 31 to 40 markets earned almost $200,000.

That's a pretty good salary for someone who only guesses the weather correctly about 73 percent of the time. Imagine what would happen to a doctor who messed up 27 percent of the time. She wouldn't keep her job for very long. But meteorologists have set the bar low enough that they get praised for telling people about the weather taking place right outside their windows.

#3: Petroleum Engineers

Pay: $138,900

Petroleum engineers can work in practically any area of the petroleum industry. Some of them extract oil; some design pipelines; some oversee safety standards.

For this work, they earn about $138,900. Now, that's a lot of money, but it's nothing compared to what a CEO can earn. Consider, though, that many petroleum engineers start their careers with only four years of experience. That means an engineer can start earning major money right out of undergraduate school. At least the CEO probably spent a couple of years in business school. 

#4: Patent Attorneys

Pay: $170,000

Patent attorneys are some of the best-compensated lawyers in the US. Making $170,000 might sound fairly reasonable considering that these lawyers protect the intellectual property rights of individuals and businesses. They could do a lot of good work that protects creative people from losing a lot of money to unscrupulous competitors.

A lot of patent attorneys, however, aren't doing this kind of productive work. Many of them are overpaid because they're actually making it harder for companies to develop and profit from new ideas. A company named Personal Audio has even hired patent attorneys to sue some of the world's most popular podcasters, claiming that podcast technology steals from an earlier patented idea.

That idea: cassette tape recordings of magazine articles. If you have a hard time seeing the connection between cassette tapes and podcasts, then you've just realized why so many people think that patent attorneys are overpaid.

#5: Data Scientists

Pay: $133,000

Data scientists usually have advanced degrees in mathematics and computer science. Given how much education they need, $133,000 might not seem like too much money.

Consider what most data scientists actually do and how it affects your life before you decide that they get justly compensated.

Data scientists often work with huge amounts of information that they take from websites, apps, and other types of technology. Some scientists use their skills to predict earthquakes and improve technology. Those professionals deserve high salaries.

Unfortunately, a lot of people in this field just mine data so they can target you for advertisements or sell your "private" information to companies that want to know more about your habits.

The ability to invade privacy, organize information, and sell it to companies that make life (and the Internet) worse shouldn't mean that these people earn more than $100,000 a year. If the world got to vote, data scientists would probably earn some of the world's lowest salaries.

What other overpaid jobs can you think of? Do you plan to pursue a career in one of these areas?

5 Ways to Earn More Interest on Your Savings

Interest Rates (Photo credit: 401(K) 2013)

If you are someone who is committed to having a solid savings account, then there's a pretty good chance that you've taken the financial advice of top experts like Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey and Warren Buffett and put some money aside each month for your savings account. And if that's the case, we think that is simply awesome. But have you ever wondered what you can do in order to earn more interest on the hundreds (or thousands) of dollars that you have inside of it?

If you've been looking for ways to earn more interest on your savings, we have provided you with five of them below:

Look for the best interest rate. There are a lot of people who never consider changing banks simply because they have been with the same financial institution for many years. But if you really want to get more interest on your savings, we recommend you shopping around until you find one that has the highest rating. Although some of the larger banks do not have the best rates, many community banks and credit unions do. Just make sure that whatever institution you choose is insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. or the National Credit Union Administration.

See what incentives that you have to offer. Once you find a financial institution that you are interested in, the next thing that you should do is look for the kinds of incentives that they have to offer. For instance, there are banks that offer a modest monetary amount for opening up a new account and there are plenty of credit unions and internet banks that give bonuses for opening a new checking account with them as well.

Inquire about low-penalty certificates of deposit. Although low-penalty certificates of deposit are basically like "liquid money", one of the reasons why they appeal to many individuals is because they pay higher rates. With them, not only are you able to take money out at any time without a penalty, but you can earn a higher interest rate than a savings account. Plus, it comes with FDIC insurance.

Don't overlook your savings bonds. Something that you might want to speak with a company like DepositAccounts.com about is purchasing a few savings bonds. Although most of us can recall getting them from our grandparents while growing up as children, aside of it being a nostalgic gift, you might be surprise by the interest rating that comes along with them. In fact, a Series I savings bond can currently earn you as much as 1.76 percent. That's a pretty impressive amount.

Open up a money market account. If you're really serious about growing your savings account, something that you can do is open up a money market account. It's basically the same thing as having a savings account. The only difference is that in most cases, you have to have a minimum balance (sometimes as much as $2,500) and you're only allowed to make a withdrawal 3-6 times per month. But the benefit is that you are usually offered a much higher interest rate. For more information on money market accounts, visit your local bank institution.