Protect Your Home from Flooding

Although most of us worry about fires and earthquakes when it comes to homeowner’s insurance, the truth is that most home repair expenses are incurred from flooding. 

Whether you’re in the deserts of the southwest, or at risk of hurricane season on the eastern seaboard, you need to take some precautions to guard your home from flooding.

This year, especially, people throughout the country are finding themselves worried about rainstorm flooding, especially in areas like California where record-breaking rainfall has caused problems in residences and community infrastructure alike. 

Drains and gutters

This is one of the things you can do for your home that will have the biggest impact on protecting your home from water damage. Ensure that your gutters are clear and free of debris, to prevent buildup. 

If you have a buildup of garbage and dead leaves in your gutters, water is more likely to pool up because it doesn’t have anywhere to drain to. You should also consider installing one way valves into your drainage pipes, to prevent backup in your sewage and water coming into the house. 

Keep water from getting in where it doesn’t belong

Flooding happens when you can’t prevent the water from entering your home in the first place. If you don’t have anything in place to block water from coming in when there’s an exceptional amount of rainfall, then you’ll have to play offense to get the water out. 

A common place for water to leak into your home is through your garage. This article has some great tips for preventing leaks into your garage. Of course, the garage door is not the only place that tends to collect leaks and flooding. 




Apply weatherstripping and door jambs throughout your house in order to prevent leaking. Build awnings and check the roof. Check the rain gutters and install trenches in order to lead excess water away. 

Don’t introduce unnecessary water

When most people think of their home flooding, they assume it will be from natural causes outside of their control. But most homes that experience minor or small floods actually happen because of water from inside the home. 

This can be from not operating your washing machine or dishwasher correctly, causing excess water to leak out. Or it could be from not having your sprinkler system installed correctly. We’ve all seen someone’s sprinklers set up incorrectly and essentially watering their driveway instead of their lawn. 

This is exactly what you don’t want. When you set up your sprinkler system for the first time, you’ll want to make sure that you watch it run once to ensure that not only that it’s watering the correct areas of your yard, but that it also doesn’t run longer than necessary. 

Weatherproof the exterior

Even if water doesn’t make its way into the inside of your home, water could still damage the outside of your home. 

To help keep the exterior of your home looking great no matter the weather, one great tip is to make sure you have a good quality exterior coat of paint on your home. 

When you let your paint wear off and get faded, you’re giving water a chance to permeate that paint and cause further damage.

Your paint isn’t the only thing that needs to be protected from water damage, though. Make sure that your fence and all outside decorations are properly weathered to prevent water damage.

Probably the most important part of the exterior of your home to weatherproof? Your roof. Getting a leaky roof is not only annoying, but it can cause damage to the entire interior of your home. 

Depending on the roofing material used when your house was built, it will need to be replaced every 20 to 50 years. When you approach within five years of that, you’ll want to have someone come and inspect your roof and make any necessary repairs to maintain the durability of your roof. 

Be Aware of Groundwater Risks

No matter you are, there is risk of groundwater flooding whenever there are excessive amounts of rainfall. 

Groundwater flooding can be confusing because it seems to come out of nowhere. Sometimes it’s influenced by storms that are happening farther away. 

You can look up information about groundwater flooding risk on your local city planner’s website or office. This article contains more about groundwater flooding, how to prevent it and watch for it. 

An Easy Guide to Understanding Your Credit Report

Credit is a major driving force in today’s economy, giving people the purchasing power that they need to buy a home, start a family, and build a career. 

Landlords, employers, utility companies and more use credit reports when deciding whether an individual is responsible and reliable. A good credit score can open the door to better deals and lower interest rates, but unfortunately, many of us have a less than perfect credit score.

This July, around 12 million people can expect to see a slight bump in credit scores as credit reporting agencies nationwide wipe tax liens and civil judgments from their records. 

However, much of those affected should only expect to experience an improvement of 20 points or less. If you’re looking to improve your credit even further, it’s important first to understand the basics of how credit reporting works.

Finding and Checking Your Credit Report

Keeping an eye on your credit report can help you to stay on top of your finances and improve your overall fiscal health. An unusual credit report can also give you an early indication of fraud or theft, allowing you to nip the problem in the bud. 

Ideally, you should check your credit report on a monthly basis to ensure that all of the information is up-to-date and accurate. A mistake in your report could adversely affect your overall score. You may have to pay a small fee to check your report, or you may be able to access your credit scores for free through your bank.

What the Numbers Mean

FICO scores created by the Fair Isaac Corporation, are one of the most popular measures used by banks and lenders to assess the risk of doing business with a particular person. 

Lenders may also check your VantageScore, which is a measure developed by three major credit bureaus, including Equifax, Experian, or Transunion. Scores are influenced by a number of factors, including:

• Late payments
• Credit utilization rate, or the amount of credit you use versus how much credit you have available
• Number and age of credit accounts
• The types of credit you use

If you keep your account active and pay back your debts on time and in full, you can build up your credit score and enjoy access to lower rates on insurance plans, business loans, mortgages, and more. Credit scores can range anywhere between 0 and 850, with higher scores indicating fiscal responsibility.

Excellent Credit: 720 to 850

Consistently responsible borrowers with a score in this range can get some of the best interest rates when making a purchase. Most lenders require a FICO credit score of over 740 for a low interest rate on a mortgage.

Good Credit: 690 to 720

When most, but not all payments are made on time, a borrower is considered to be fairly reliable. People with credit scores in this range tend to get decent interest rates from banks and lenders.

Problematic Credit: 650 to 690

Credit that dips below 700 begins to raise a red flag for any agency checking a credit report. Borrowers may be denied future credit if they have a history of making late or short payments.

Poor Credit: 350 to 650

A poor score can be the result of anything from bad spending habits to bankruptcy. Lenders will often deny credit to anyone with a score in this range.

No Credit: 0 to 349

People who have no credit history will have a score of zero. Opening a credit account allows individuals to start building their credit up so that in the future, they can make large purchases such as a house or car.

Improving Your Score

If your score is in the low range, over time, you can work to build your credit up again. It’s a good idea to start the process as soon as possible since you never know when you might have to borrow money, move apartments, or switch insurance plans.

How to Improve Your Credit Utilization Rate

Your credit rate indicates how much you’re spending compared to how much credit you have available. Lenders look for a low ratio, meaning that borrowers use less than the amount available to them. By paying off your debts and reducing your spending patterns, you can improve your credit utilization rate, and thus your score.

How to Get a Late Payment Removed from Your Credit Report

If you have a good history with your creditor, then you may be wondering how to get a late payment removed from your credit report. In some cases, it might be as simple as calling them up and requesting that a late payment gets removed as an act of goodwill. 

You may also be able to get it removed by agreeing to set up an automatic payment schedule in the future. If a creditor refuses to remove a late payment, you may be able to dispute the issue or hire the help of a professional credit repair agency.

Many people focus too heavily on the past when it comes to matters related to credit. While it’s true that you can’t change any historic mistakes (such as late payments) that you’ve had problems with, there’s a lot you can do to improve your credit score in the future. 

Knowledge is key, so begin by finding out your current score and then work on the ways described here to start improving your rating bit by bit.

How SEO Can Help Your Business Grow

In a world of modern marketing, it’s almost impossible to skip SEO. Almost everywhere you look there is a success SEO story behind a big company. But what is SEO? How to approach Search Engine Optimization and what does that mean for your business.

Generating leads and retention, gaining higher visibility and reach and even helping with strategic promotion, SEO can be quite useful when used properly. It can pay off significantly to learn about it so here are some basics and benefits of SEO.

What’s SEO?

The main goal of Search Engine Optimization is to make your website more visible in the “organic” search results on search engines like Google or Yahoo. It’s generally well known that websites that appear higher on the search list get higher traffic rates.

Implementing good SEO solutions can help you get a higher position, but it also depends on the type of business you’re running. 

If you’re in the mobile market or having travel services, you will need quite a budget to finance the top placement, but working with defined geographic areas can help you reach that first page if you are patient and ready to learn.

Benefits of SEO

There are various ways of implementing a successful SEO to your business. You can learn all you can about it, and approach it from your personal stand point, or you can hire a professional help such as a highly professional SEO company from Australia. 

With professionals involved, you can have some guarantees, and it can mean quite a lot for your page. From leads and traffic generation to the full return of the investment – SEO has quite a lot of benefits, so let’s go through some of them.

• Increased Traffic – One of the fastest ways of generating niche market traffic to your site is through SEO article marketing. With articles that are attention-grabbing, informative yet light to read, you aim at your specific target market. This way you generate streams of traffic with good content, and with well-written articles, you gain great credibility.
• Get Brand Recognition – Brand recognition is the degree to which your customers are able to recognize your products or services. Local SEO helps in improving the visibility of your brand before the potential customers in your local area. Frequent exposure of your brand to your customers leads to enhanced brand recognition, which may eventually lead the customer to a purchase.
• Generating Leads – According to Search Engine Watch, around 60% of the clicks in Google search results are taken by the results in the top three rankings. By investing in a Local SEO campaign, a business will be promoted higher in the local search results. This causes larger number of people to click on the website. With an increase in traffic coming to the website, the number or prospective customers also increases, which may lead to increased sales.
• Research Cycle – These days everyone checks the internet for the needed information, before anything else. Well-developed SEO strategy can help you become an integral part of any product or service research. Recent studies have shown that more than 60% of consumers have more confidence in companies that have useful content on their pages, and using this information can help you boost your online business quite fast.
• Increases Earning Potential – Local SEO offers a business tremendous potential to increase earnings. The revenue you generate by using Local SEO will be many times higher than the investment with which you start. The improved visibility that a Local SEO provides will help a business in maximizing sales, leading to revenue generation.

Conclusion

With internet expanding extremely fast and new companies emerging daily, it can be quite challenging to stay on top of your competition, or even stand a chance in the market. That’s why there are SEO marketing experts that can help you learn how to approach your target audience.

In order to stand out and generate the proper traffic, you need to start thinking about quality content and all the best ways there are to optimize it. 

In the end of the day, take yourself as an example – if you wouldn’t look at the 5th page of Google results for something you’re looking for, how can you expect someone to look for your website so deep. SEO can help you quite a lot if you follow these basic principles.

How to Find the Right Mechanic for Your Car?

If you have been a car owner for some time, you would invariably have had to depend on a car mechanic one time or the other. Though there are many car mechanics in your locality, how would you know which one in the long list of car mechanics is the best to choose from.

Before you check for mechanics, you must be a well-informed car owner, who has some basic understanding of the working of the car, or else you run the risk of being taken for a ride and made to cough up money for unwanted repairs.

Car Repair and Maintenance

When it comes to car repair and maintenance, there are different specialties involved and the one which is most commonly needed is the service technicians who undertake routine services of your car like changing oils and filters, checking breaks, changing air filters, belts, inspecting electrical and other parts for any damage or malfunction. 

Given the cutting-edge technology that is being increasingly used in the automotive industry, malfunction of mechanical parts, electrical and electronic components are being diagnosed using scanners by diagnostic technicians, to detect any errors. 



This field has now grown to be become a specialty as only trained hands can operate and infer the readings that points to breakdowns or malfunctions. Brake, transmission, and steering technicians specialize in the hydraulic mechanisms of these parts. 

They also would have expertise in all other aspects of these parts. Body repair technicians are those who are adept in removing the dents that the vehicle may sustain while driving due to a variety of reasons.

Once you have an idea as to which type of car mechanic service is required, it becomes easier to find the right one. Let us see how we can find them:

Car dealerships

If you have a latest car, then car dealership should be your first bet. Attempting to repair your car in places other than authorized dealer can make certain warranties and guarantees invalid. 

If your warranty of your car has expired, then you can take the service of other workshops. Car dealerships will have their own service and repair division. They will have all specialists your car would ever need, but of course, they charges more than general workshops do.

General workshops

These are not as expensive as car dealerships as they would fix your problem with second hand parts or refurbished parts with ease. Old hands in general repair shops would have loads of experience which you can take advantage of. 

The drawback with general workshops is that they may not be able to repair certain complex damages or malfunctions owing to lack of availability of custom tools or electronic instruments required for certain models of latest cars. 

More over, you must be an informed car owner before you solicit them to avoid being tricked. Better if you or your close acquaintance has a personal or long-term relationship with the mechanic.

Auto repair chains

They come midway between general repair shops and car dealerships in that these chains have many centers across the city and states. They are able to bring down cost of spare parts by buying them in bulk. 

They service a variety of cars thus helping to keep their business high. They mostly have all these specialists, tools, and other equipments available with them.

Which ever be the case, make sure you are briefed about the damage or the malfunction and the repair that would be required. They must give you an estimate of the cost that may be incurred. 

This is important to avoid yourselves from being taken for a ride by undertaking unwanted repairs and slapping a hefty bill on you. You must also ensure that only the repairs you demanded are done. 

It should not happen to you that many other repairs, which were not sought for, are done and the final bill goes beyond your planned budget for the car repair.

Author Bio:

Evan Javier is an expert writer, blogger with strong passion in writing for various topics such as Business, Health/Fitness, Lifestyle, Home décor, Travel, Automotive and lot more. Follow him at Facebook and Twitter.

Money Matters: 5 Investment Options You Probably Haven't Thought About

There are countless articles about the power of saving at 20 versus saving at 30, and how with just $100 a month, incredible gains can be made. This foundation of investment wisdom is great, and if you started saving consistently from a young age you can be very comfortable later. 

However, stocking money into a tax-advantaged account is not the only way to invest. And money isn't the only medium of exchange. When thinking of investing beyond the basics, consider these investment options.

Microloans

While the average reader of this site cannot do much with a loan of $25 or $100, there are people all over the world looking to get ahead who can, such as in India. 

Microloans are a way for average people to become lenders, which will permit them to make a fair interest rate - as opposed to less than 1% at the local bank - while also helping people get ahead. Rates of return have been found to be at or around 8%.

A Good Mattress

A government study found that sleeping poorly costs you a lot of money. This is why you need to consider not just saving for later, but putting it into something right now. 

A good mattress is the answer. Whether you sleep 4 hours a night or 14, the quality of sleep matters. By choosing to save hundreds on a mattress there could be thousands lost as a result.

Invest Time to Researching Grants

Grants are tax-free money from non-profits and the government. Just as kids should be researching and applying for scholarships when going to college, adults should look into opportunities for grants. 

Some towns will update old windows and doors for residents who qualify. Why? They received a "green" grant, and the funds are to be used in ways that are good for the environment, such as with structural updates. Some grants are cash. Others are services. Both are worth your time.

Collect Something

Most people don’t think of hobbies as investment opportunities, but there are a few different things you can begin collecting that can end up providing a significant value down the road. 

A good example of this is stamp collecting. This habit is dying out, but there are stamps out in the world that are worth quite a bit of money. Another good option that is still fairly popular among much of the world today is collecting coins and other currency. Some rare coins can be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. 

The best part is that they only appreciate in value as time goes on, so beginning to build a collection early can really pay off. Some companies like Rocky Mountain Coin and similar firms are experts at hunting down rare and valuable coins. Buying from someone like that can be a good way to get started.

The Wait & Lunge Strategy

Lastly, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about how to make a lot of money. This is where we interviewed a financial expert, Christopher Pascale. Mr. Pascale has an MBA in Accounting, has been published in numerous tax and law journals, and was the CFO of Portfolios with Purpose from 2013-2015.

He said this: "I mostly invest through retirement accounts - a Roth IRA as well as a TSP. Plus property. But on the side I have a special account where I wait for special events to occur," he said. "One just happened, in fact. 

The Kroger (KR) Company had a huge fall in its stock price really for no good reason, going from $30 to $21 in two days. That's what I wait for, and when it happens I lunge if I have the cash. It might take 18 months for the stock to recover, but for a 50% gain or greater, I can wait."

Not everyone has a pool of cash just to make money with, but everyone can take advantage of these other opportunities, such as microloans, a good mattress, and putting time into online research and helping others.

By employing even one of them, you will be better off.

4 Questions to Ask Your Mechanic Before Agreeing to Engine Work

You’re driving down the highway, eyes on the road, when something appears in your peripheral vision. It’s the glowing orange “check engine” light that every driver fears and despises. You sigh. Suddenly your commute home from work or your weekend road trip isn’t so simple—you know it’s too risky to leave it unaddressed.

It’s time to find a reputable car repair shop—either through an internet search, or by asking around to find a solid recommendation from friends or family. You bring your car in, and after an appraisal, the mechanic approaches you. What do you say?

Here are four questions to ask your mechanic before agreeing to engine work. Remember: You’re no car expert, but you don’t have to just nod along and give the green light to anything the mechanic tells you.

Does this Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) require a repair?

The check engine light alerts you to a problem, but does not tell you what it is. Each time this light on your dashboard turns on, a Diagnostic Trouble Code is recorded. Your mechanic will base their recommendations and estimates on the DTC.

As one professional technician writes for HuffPost, it’s a well-kept industry secret that some DTCs don’t actually require repairs. Some issues won’t necessarily damage other systems or diminish your gas mileage. But you’ll never know unless you ask your mechanic what the code means and how it could affect your vehicle’s operation.

Can you explain and point out the problem?

Good mechanics know they establish trust when they walk you through the problem and explain their proposed solution. As Automatic Transmissions writes, “You wouldn’t let a doctor operate on you without looking at the x-rays first. So you shouldn’t let a mechanic work on your car without showing you what the problem is first.”

The more you know, the better chance you have of making an informed decision when it comes to repairs. 

Will you provide a written estimate?

Unless you and your mechanic have a close professional relationship spanning many years, it’s not enough to agree to a verbal quote. Get it in writing. Imagine how shocked and upset you’ll be if the final bill is twice the initial verbal estimate with no clear-cut explanation. 

You’ll kick yourself for not having it documented, but you won’t have a foot to stand on. It’ll be your word against the mechanic’s, and if you want to drive your car out of the repair garage, you’ll have to pony up the cash.

Your vehicle is a significant investment and part of your daily life. Think about it: When you buy a car, you ask for its specifications and the total price in writing before you sign on the dotted line. 

When you insure your vehicle, you compare car insurance rates online first so you can examine quotes in writing before picking the best policy. Similarly, before you get your car repaired, always ask for a written estimate up front. Doing so also gives you a basis for comparison if the quote seems unreasonably high. 

When will I be able to pick up my vehicle?

You might assume your repairs will be done within 24 to 48 hours, but always double check up front so you can plan for alternate transportation. After all, you don’t want to be calling the garage a week later begging for your car back so you can resume your daily travels.

Asking your mechanic these four questions before agreeing to engine work or other repairs will give you the confidence and power to make informed decisions at the auto shop, and will help you stay in the loop regarding your vehicle’s progress. When in doubt, don’t be afraid to ask!