3 Habits That People With Excellent Credit Scores Have
There are a number of things that you might be doing to damage your credit score without even knowing that it is causing your score harm.
So, how does one improve their score and end their bad credit habits? It’s simple. You follow people who have excellent and do the same.
Having said that, here are 3 habits that people with excellent credit scores have:
#1: Payment history matters greatly
Making payments later than 30 days can result in a drop of your credit score. This actually only takes one missed payment. It’s been found that people with the best credit scores tend to pay their credit card bills and loans in time. That said, even if you can only afford to pay the minimum amount, make sure you still pay it in time.
#2: Credit Debt and Utilization Are Important
According to the company that invented the FICO score, Fair Isaac, people with more than average credit scores tend to only use 7% of their available credit. This is in stark contrast with people who have lesser credit scores and usually max out their available credit. In fact, the faster you pay off your debt, the better your credit score gets.
#3: Avoid opening or closing credit accounts suddenly
People with high credit scores tend to have an average account history for 11 years or more as opposed to those with poor credit whose average account history is about 7 years. One way of shortening this is by opening a number of new accounts at a time. Alternatively, closing old and inactive account can also reduce your credit score as a result. Moreover, you won’t have any access to that available credit either.
3 Ways to Boost Your Monthly Income
If you are preparing for a special event
or are planning to raise fund for an upcoming big expense, it might be a good solution to start seeking alternatives to boost your income. Some simple or out-of-the-box ways might be available to raise some additional money. These are listed below.
Start Freelance Work
Various sites online propose effective solutions for people to sell their skills by doing additional projects and raise funds. This is done either by bidding on projects or creating pages where buyers would be able to contact sellers for particular products and services. One would only need to be aware of which skills might be in demand and to tap on that.
Cover your car with advertisements
This is a new method of advertisements that allows individuals to earn up to 1000 dollars a month by just placing ads on their car. The persons selected for this would then just have to travel their normal route regularly. The selection depends on the area that the person lives in.
Become a Mystery Shopper or join a focus group
Being involved in market researches is quite lucrative. Several people can earn up to 300 dollar per focus group participation. In order to enrol, you might want to gather information from a local market research agency and they would ask you for information to assess whether you would be eligible. Mystery shopping is quite selective but people who get involved in it would need to provide their opinion on products and get paid for it.
3 factors to consider when choosing a retirement portfolio
Going on retirement is liberating. It is the moment when you would finally get to relax and forget about your work and intent with which you were focusing on your career. The following questions will help you decide how to allocate assets for your retirement distribution.
Determining your budget and expenses
Making a list of all your necessary expenditures will help you evaluate how much you would be needing from your retirement plan. Your expenses are the main influencing factor of your retirement and having a strong understanding of how they are broken down is key. If are able to determine how much you would be withdrawing for your retirement, you would be able to find out what you would be expecting from your investments.
Determining your expected rate of return
By determining the rate of return on your investment that you would be needing, you can decide what would be the amount of money to allocate in your pension plan. Factors such as risk and time would also have to be taken into consideration.
When would you be needing the money?
Determining when you would actually require the release of your funds would determine which mode of retirement investment to choose and adhere to. Adopting a long-term approach can be beneficial, especially if you are investing in relatively risk-free plans. Factors such as taxes, inflation and the market trends would also have to be considered when devising your long-term retirement investment plan.
Calculations for a Comfortable Retirement
Generally, owners of small businesses decide to finance their through the sale of their company. While this may be a good plan, business owners often do not consider the amount of money that they will receive during the sale.
Develop a retirement budget in today’s dollars
While developing your retirement budget, you could start by considering your current expenses and forecasting whether these would still exist when you would be retiring. For instance, if you have children, they would probably have grown into adulthood and become self-sufficient. Other financial aspects such as a mortgage would have been paid off. Your retirement income would also need to cater for activities that you might want to indulge in once you would be free from professional obligations.
Estimate any income you will have in retirement
In some cases, you would be eligible for a person scheme. Even though social security might be around, you might want to disregard this income in your calculations. Moreover, some people do not plan to go on full retirement. They would therefore still be receiving an income and this would reduce the amount needed from the retirement scheme.
Consider the effect of inflation
Supposing that you would be about to retire in 15 years. You might need to take into consideration the forecasted level of inflation for the forthcoming decades. Assuming that the inflation rate would be at 2.5% for the next 15 years, to gather a capital of $3.3, the retirement fund would need to be at $4.8.
How To Budget for an Event
Balancing the budget for an event is one of the challenges faced by planners. The cause of most money issues is generally related to initial discussion stages. The design and planning of an event should start with the financial resources at the disposal of the planner. The tips below might help you estimate the cost.
Outline Each Event Expenses
Expenses related to an event would come from various sources. Once you have all these sources listed down, you would be able to assign budgets to each one. For any event the most obvious expenses would be venue and catering. Overlooking one expense might cause a disbalance in the initial budget.
Discussion with the planner
The role of an event planner is to provide expert guidance on the coordination but also on how to balance your budget. The planner should be able to advise when your ideas are going too much over the top so that you are aware of budget restrictions. You might sometimes also have to adjust your expectations with this regards.
Build a Basic Event Budget
Once you have formed an idea of how the event will be and have an idea on the overall budget, you would have to break it down for each component. Another factor to consider is that your initial budget is only a working draft. Other expenses might come in. It is therefore important to keep a buffer, just in case. A 10% buffer is generally adequate. You will also have to include your event planner’s fees when considering your budget.
Tips To Avoid Student Loan Debt
Federal student loans has experienced considerable progress in the past years. Borrowers who were struggling with their debt have been offered several options in terms of loan repayment and even loan forgiveness programs have been put into place to help them out. However, borrowers having opted for private student loans often do not have so many facilities. The tips below might help you avoid private student loan debts.
Get To Know Your Loan Terms First
It is really important to keep track of the terms of your private student loan. Essential information such as the person dealing with your record, contact details, the repayment status and balance of your loan would need to be constantly checked. This might be hard to keep up with especially if you have contracted different private student loans through each school year. You might want to use your credit report to get all required information to contact your lenders and update them with your address to receive regular statements.
Negotiate With Your Bank and Focus On Earning Extra Income
If you find that you are in difficulty to repay your loans, you might consider contacting your bank to explain your situation and find a solution. Generally banks will propose a win-win solution. The solution might be in terms of lower repayment for a longer period. Another solution would be find alternative ways to generate extra income. It might be by working more shifts or engaging in a side activity that would make your earn some extra money.
Walter Bigelow Wriston: An Influential Wall Street Giant
Walter Bigelow Wriston was president of Citibank from 1967-1970, and served as the bank’s chairman until 1984. He would become one of the nation’s most prominent names in banking, helping to expand Citibank’s operations in commercial and residential sectors. Although he retired in 1984, he did not stop his activities in the financial sector, and is credit with a few innovations we still use today. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, Wriston grew up as the son of a historian who would eventually become president of Brown University. Walter B. Wriston graduated from Wesleyan College in 1941, after which he served four years in the U.S. Army. When he received his honorable discharge in 1946, he joined the rank and file of First National City Bank, the bank that would become Citibank.
Wriston worked his way through the bank, and developed a reputation for being knowledgeable and influential. Under Wriston, Citibank developed home mortgage credit-card services. He invented and deployed the world’s first ATMs, machines most of us still use today. When President Reagan took office, he tapped Wriston as the chair for his Economic Policy Advisory Board from 1982-89. During and just after his time as chair, Wriston published two important books on economic finance and philosophy. The first came in 1986, Risk and Other Four Letter Words, detailing how industry and banking have shaped the modern world. He also penned The Twilight of Sovereignty in 1992, which explores how the instant access to information is changing the modern world.
Wriston received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, and he died one year later at the age of 85.
Phineas Upham is an investor from NYC and SF. You may contact Phin on his Phineas Upham website or Facebook page.
Benefits of having a long-term home mortgage
Long-term mortgages are those that last for 40 years or more and tend to be more expensive due to the greater risk involved in lending for a considerably longer time compared to other loans. If you are reluctant at considering a mortgage, the following reasons could help you in your decision.
- Mortgages enable you to build equity
The value of your home will rise over the years and having a mortgage does not affect that value. Instead of spending all your money on buying the property, getting a long-term mortgage will have the effect of increasing your equity while at the same time the value of your home will increase. An increase in equity can help you fund major life events such as weddings, education or retirement.
- Mortgages carry low interest rate
Mortgages have low interest rates since you would be putting your house up as a guarantee of your payment. The bank’s risk with this loan is considerably lower as you are offering something huge as collateral, therefore they are willing to reduce their interest rate.
- Mortgage interest is tax-deductible and tax-favorable
The interest that you pays on your home loans up to a certain amount is tax-deductible in the U.S. This provides savings on federal and state income taxes.
- Mortgage payment gets easier with years
Mortgage payment, especially fixed-rate mortgages become comparatively cheaper over time as your income will undoubtedly increase. Mortgage payments might seem high during the first few years but as income increase, things would start to look easier.
How to protect yourself against credit card hacks
As per a Consumer Reports Survey carried out in 2012, 22.5% out of five thousand consumers who have received notice of a security breach have found out that they were victims of identity fraud. There are certain actions that you might take to protect yourself in case you find out that your account has been subject to a data breach.
Get a Replacement Card
If you have been informed that you are involved in a data breach, immediately demand that the company get you a new card or you would close down the account. The company should be able to meet your demand.
Daily Check Your Account Online
Finding suspicious activities and disputing them promptly is the best way to be able to solve any issue. Check your account everyday when your new card arrives for a least one month.
Freeze your credit
If you find out that you are the victim of a data breach, you can call the three main credit bureaus and request to freeze your credit report. This would ensure that nobody would have access to your report without your prior consent. In extreme cases of real breaches, you could also freeze your accounts.
Order your credit reports
As per the law, you are eligible to one free credit report each year. If you are a victim of fraud, you would probably to eligible for more regular free reports. Even if you have not been a victim yet, you might be cautious by getting reports every quarter year.
Investment tips for beginners
Investing can be an intimidating process for beginners. The following tips could be helpful to ease up the process.
- Choosing the right investment partner
The most crucial choice when it comes to investment revolves around which brokerage company to solicit. This is an important decision as it will impact on the amount paid in fees, the type of investments that you would be proposed and the expected returns on investment that you would get. A good long-term solution is to choose a discount broker. Choosing one that would not charge high fees and charge low commissions would be ideal. Brokers that offer mutual funds or ETFs (exchange-traded funds) without charging for a commission are perfect for beginners.
- Start with basic funds
Mutual funds and ETFs are great for beginners. The advantage of these funds is that they would split your investment across several stocks. This creates a buffer for risks associated with the downfall of any given individual stock. Mutual funds and ETFs are ideal if you want to learn about investment. Some target-date mutual funds offer the advantage of automatic computation of the risk level associated with your investment as you approach the goal you had set (such as your retirement, for instance).
- Opt for safer stocks
Safer stocks can come in the form of consumer staple products such as food, clothing and medical supplies. These stocks tend to be less volatile as even when the economy is tough, people would still be looking for buy those products. These stocks have a good long-term prospects but require patience to yield their return.