President Bush signed a new bill just this past Thursday, which negates a rule which required borrowers who have all their federal student loans with one lender to consolidate only with that lender.
Under the new law, borrowers will now be able to consolidate their student loans with any lender, it does not have to be the original lender they got the student loan through in the first place.
This couldn’t come at a better time, and was actually precisely timed as a sort of “emergency measure” for students who had taken out loans, since as of July 1st, the interest rates on federal student Stafford loans will raise to 7.1%, up from 5.3%.
Those borrowers who consolidate the student loans that they have already begun to repay, they can lock in a rate of 5.375% for the lifetime of their loans. This is huge, since this can add up to thousands of dollars in saved interest for many student loan borrowers, especially those that took out larger sums of money.
I ran across this cool site called Arm Chair Millionaire, which I thought of course must be filled with “easy get rich quick” schemes, until I started to browse a little further into it, and found that it was actually showing how you can build your own retirement portfolio up so high that you do not have to worry about having enough for retirement, or choosing the wrong stocks and losing money.
I also like the site’s credo from who must be the site’s founder, Rich which goes :
A “Get-Rich-Slowly-But-Surely” Plan
Using Armchair Millionaire’s Five Steps to Financial Freedom, you can build a million dollar portfolio — and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or budget your social life away to do it!
To help you get there, we’ve designed this interactive, fully customized Five Steps tool. Simply enter some information about your savings and income, and we’ll tell you exactly what to do to reach your million dollar goal. Along the way, we’ll explain the sound financial principles that make the Five Steps such a powerful plan.
Let’s get started!
So check it out if you’d like, it looks like it’s got some good, solid investment and money advice. Armchair Millionaire
Lowe’s home warehouse, one of Home Depot’s biggest cometitors, is currently offering a special on their line of credit, where if you sign up for a Lowe’s credit card, you can get 10% off of any order up to $10,000! I thought this was a pretty great deal, because you’re looking at a possible $500 off of a $10,000.00 order, if you choose to spend that much at this home retail giant.
And believe me, once you start shopping around this place, it’s very easy to spend $10,000.00 or more, especially considering that their product offerings expand into tiling, large appliance (and pretty good deals on washers and dryers, oh and referigerators too).
The deal is all outlined on their website, and you can see what the terms and conditions are and how easy it is to get approved for this special credit offer, especially tailored for new homeowners who are bound to be spending a lot of cash on their new home, especially if it’s a fixer-upper!
Inflation is officially dictionary-defined as “A persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money, caused by an increase in available currency and credit beyond the proportion of available goods and services.”
What does this mean to you and me? Well, it can have significant impact on everything from the cost of the homes we buy, to the foods we buy at the grocery store, to the costs of our utilities, so inflation does affect us a great deal in almost every aspect of our financial lives.
Inflation influences the value of the American dollar, which in turn greatly influences our economy as a whole. It makes more jobs or less jobs available to the American public, it makes the American public spend more or less and support mom and pop businesses, and large corporations, or not spend that money because things are tight, which just has a domino effect on the whole economy, jobs, cost of living and the general state of affairs for the American people from a fiscal standpoint.
So before you say “inflation doesn’t really influence me”, think again, because it influences us all a lot more than we’d like to admit!
Financial freedom can mean a lot of things to different people. I might think that financial freedom means that I have everything paid off, even down to my car and all credit cards, and even a house, and that means that the money that I have sitting in my 401k investment account is all mine, free and clear because I really don’t owe anything to any lending institution, and what’s in that account is really 100% interest free, with no plans to be paying anyone off with it.
Financial freedom might mean something entirely different to others though. It might mean just paying off credit cards to one person, while it might simply mean not having to sweat being able to pay the bills every month and making ends meet, while having a little leftover for fun to some.
Whatever it means, it is definitely something that all Americans are looking for. To be comfortable, and not to have to constantly worry about our debt seems to be the common thread in everyone’s definition of “financial freedom”. What does it mean to you?
Supposedly the tax return anticipation loans that H & R Block, the tax preparer services company offers, has been litigated by several former clients charging that the company took advantage of lower income families desperate for money by charging very high interest rates on these “courtesy loans”. What is the pre-tax return anticipation loan?
Well, I’ve actually had my taxes prepared by H & R Block before - only once because my experience was less than stellar - and they tried to get me to sign up for one of these loans. Luckily I wasn’t in dire need of the money I would be receiving in my tax return, so I turned down the loan offer and just waited for my money from the government.
But not so many people are that lucky, and have complained that the rates charged on these courtesy loans were too high and took advantage of them out of financial desperation. I guess the company has recently settled millions of dollars in damages over this..
I was reading an interesting, if not frightening article the other day about a forecasts for how many Americans will not be fully prepared for retirement when the time comes. The number was way too close to 50%, let’s just say, which in my opinion in staggering. I think I’m actually one of the paranoid ones, afraid that I will retire and then find that my money runs out, so I’ve been saving since I was about 27, which is actually fairly early to begin according to some standards!
The studies/educated guesses further postulate that these same people will not have enough to live the same lifestyle as they did before they retired. Heck, most people look forward to having free time and being able to travel in their retirement and with this grim outlook, will that even be possible?
Now, before I scare you too much, that high percentage includes households which fall 10% or more below the projected amount of “nest egg” they need to live comparable lifestyles in retirement, which isn’t that bad, but it was unclear how many fall into that low category.
Save as early as you can! Especially if your employer contributes, it’s like throwing money away if you don’t contribute something!
The latest news on the homebuying and selling market isn’t so good. Apparently, the recent news of rising interest rates and higher home prices have definitely cooled off consumer spending on housing as an investment. What does this mean?
It means buyers are waiting around for prices to fall, bidding too low so that they cannot get the houses they want, and there are a heck of a lot of cancellations on homes that were supposed to be sold to would be buyers. All of this adds up to bad news for the homebuyers and sellers market.
The news that used to be good just a month or two ago, where record low interest rates and investment home buyers and speculation which upped prices is now a thing of the past.
The good news, if there is any, is that economists and financial analysts do not expect a complete standstill or crash in the homebuying scene, but they do expect somewhat of a stagnant homebuyer’s market, until interest rates drop again at least.
Recently it was reported that several economic forecasters (supposedly people who know what they’re talking about when it comes to finances and the US economy) are saying that there are some not so bright days ahead for the US economy. But I thought things were looking up?
Apparently the economy is somewhat sensitive to highs and lows, and you can look at the economy as sort of a “blood sugar” of economics and finances. It’s good to maintain it at a steady rate, not get too high or too low, just like with your blood sugar (I’m terrible at analogies, so forgive the less than adequate explanation, if you get it - great!).
The economy was looking good from a growth standpoint at the beginning of 2006, but experts say that growth has slowed tremendously, which usually means tougher days are ahead. Can’t we catch a break?
Here are the factors economists are saying will influence our economic outlook:
1.) Businesses only created 75,000 new jobs in May (opposite of what I earlier reported, this was reported after I posted the job outlook, the government was surprised too). This may not sound so bad if you didn’t know that the government forecasted an estimated 175,000 new jobs being created. Population? Maybe…
2.) The housing boom of 5 long years is coming to an end.
3.) The inflation that has been somewhat absent as of late may also start to be an issue. Believe it or not, inflation can sometimes be a good thing, although not on it’s face, inflation is needed to create a healthy and strong economy.
Everyone kept talking about the “new bankruptcy law” that was shadowing anyone who was in financial trouble. I remember this talk starting a couple years ago, and then not hearing about it for a while, probably the law got held up in congress. And for good reason. The new bankruptcy law was known for one thing primarily : It would make it much harder for people to just “write off” their debts to their creditors by filing for bankruptcy. And how so?
Well, the new law is in effect officially, as far as I know, and it is called the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005″, which is pretty much a self described law, but I’ll get into a little bit of explanation of why it was put into effect and even proposed for consideration in the first place. The law’s purpose is to make it more difficult for some people to just completely erase debts by simply filing for bankruptcy.
In the past, before this law was passed, many financial companies, lenders, banks and other financial services companies felt that too many people with gambling problems, and unruly spending habits were able to just get off scott free by filing bankruptcy and not being responsible for repaying any of these debts to their lenders, who were left holding the bag.
Some people do oppose the law though, claiming that it may hit the people who need it the most the hardest, such as lower income families and single moms. As with anything else, this law seems to be fair from one perspective but also tends to deprive others who really deserve it of their rights to financial freedom.
Entitlement? For some yes, for others it really might be a necessity. It’s a shame this isn’t a law that sees more grey than black and white. But that’s the problem with law, isn’t it?