In December, we would put aside an amount of money for gifts and holiday shopping. Paying cash does help to keep you from getting carried away. If you plan to do most of your holiday shopping online and do not want to pay with credit cards, you may want to check out ebillme. Ebillme is a secure payment option that does not require a credit card, you pay for your purchase through your bank’s online bill pay portal!

Ebillme.com currently runs a contest in which you can tell your Shop and Confess story and win prizes of $500, $300 and $200.

Please mention the URL of this blog if you decide to enter the contest, so I could win and shop till I drop this Christmas!

He has agreed to help me with the medical bills and pay for the air ticket, now he is broke and won’t be able to purchase the air ticket! Luckily I have transfered a few thousands out of his bank account before he splurged it on toys. A boy should not be trusted with handling money. He “needs” to spend it when he sees money in his bank account!!

Looks like we got to diverse our income source. Since I am already working in front of the computer all day long, may be I should learn to trade stock options. It shouldn’t be too much a rocket science, as some of our friends started trading right after they attended a seminar and bought the software program that enables them to do different spread and strategies.

We would be happy to to able to sell the old junk for 2-3k! Looking at the second hand car market, we doubt we can get that! Consider we paid 11k for this old junk three years ago, the price has dropped like a bag of rocks, hasn’t it?

Realizing how stupid that was, we paid off the credit card debts. We have also decided a year ago that we don’t need to carry so many credit cards in our pocket books. We got rid of all of them except for one that we considered as one of the Best Credit Cards. We keep this one for emergency use only and pay it off every month. We use mostly cash for grocery shopping and everyday expenses.

This card has subscription free and cash back. It also comes with travel insurance when you purchase your air tickets using the card. We are happy with how things are right now and would never carry a balance on our credit card!

It’s very important to be equipped with the right knowledge and know your right when it comes to choosing a right insurance product. That’s the wonderful thing about this information age, you don’t live in the dark ages anymore. The best thing is: you can ditch the insurance agent who only watches over his own pocket and ask for term life insurance quotes online now!

With rising medical costs abroad, travel insurance that cover short term health care has never been more important. Any illness or accident while overseas can leave you with a serious financial burden unless you come prepared.

Do you know that suffering a hip fracture in the USA could cost you $30K? Or that a heart attack in Spain will set you back $60K? While you may consider yourself to be in good health there are always unexpected accidents waiting to happen. It’s much better to be safe than sorry. Travel insurance ensure you’re fully prepared before you hit the sea, sand and, of course, the slopes!

To add salts to the wound, many of these people are also carrying a balance on their credit cards. If you are one of those who has been loaded with credit card debts and being in debt up to their noses, the obvious thing to do is to research and look for some low interest rate credit cards to do a balance transfer.

Once all the consumer debts are being consolidated into a lower interest credit card, you should start a small emergency fund that takes care of the “unexpected” and start mow down the debts. It’s very important that you stop using the cards for purchasing more stuffs thus incurring more debts. Remember, whatever you can’t pay with cash means you can’t afford!

Just done my fair share of yelling on the phone, to the slow in action forty-something who wants to stay as a seven years old spoilt brat. What kind of dumb cow takes two weeks to come up with a personal budget that doesn’t balance ?! I gave up, never try to pull a cow up the tree!

The best you could do in such situation is to consolidate and transfer all the debts to a low interest credit card and try to pay them down as quick as you can. It is not going to be easy, but you would need to have a goal and work towards that.

You may check out creditnet.com, the premier credit card resource site for information on such credit cards from selected providers. You get to read about the company reviews and chat with people who are sharing the same financial issue in their lives.

If you do not have emergency fund to cover living expenses during the transition period when you try to get a new job, it’s highly possible that you may face foreclosure or bankruptcy. When that happens, you want to equip yourself with the bankruptcy law and real estate process.The judiciary process for bankruptcy may differ from state to state i.e if you live in New York, you may need to know about the New York bankruptcy process and even seek the assistance of lawyers who practice in this state.

Since we are going to move and need to sell off our car, we are pretty glad that we didn’t take her advice to get a new car. We might, after the move, but it’s unlikely to be a brand new car!

The big boy is trying to find out whether his employer-provided health insurance will cover me once we reunite in IL. If it does not, we would have to look for an affordable short term health insurance till I find a job that provides health insurance.

Insurance is an absolutely vital part of any sound financial plan. If your illness or injury is serious enough, you’ll be out of work, which means you will have a huge debt to pay and no money coming in!

If you think you are a victim, you need to file a report with the local police department, report the suspicious charges to the credit issuers and contact the three main reporting companies to put a fraud alert on your credit report. The three main credit reporting bureaus are Experian, Equifax and Trans Union. You can report fraud or get a copy of your credit report by reaching one of these companies. Once you report to one bureau, the other two agencies will be sent the report. A fraud alert will be put on your account by each company and you will be sent a copy of your credit report.

The laws requires the credit bureaus and creditors to take extra steps to verify your identify once a fraud alert has been placed. However, since the crime may take days or even weeks before you noticed what happened, it’s easy for the criminal to commit several crimes before you’ve realized what occurred.

Thus, a company called lifelock has started a identity theft protection services, they will automatically generate a fraud alert request on behalf on you. When fraud alerts are established with major credit bureaus, creditors are required to take extra steps to verify your identity.

But the company is currently in a legal dispute with one of the major credit reporting agencies Experian. Experian is suing Lifelock for generates huge numbers of alerts which cost them millions of dollars every year in processing large numbers of extra initial fraud alerts, mailing mandatory notices to consumers, and providing free credit reports to consumers who are not eligible for such reports.

It’s true that no matter how prepared we are, life sometime present us unforeseen circumstances that we need cash desperately. However, the decision to sell structured settlement payments should not be taken lightly. Since turning the structure settlement payments into immediate cash may affect one’s financial security in the long run, it’s an option that need to be clearly thought through and plan well. The flexibility of turning structure settlement payments into lump sum cash should be used for emergency and not be abused for instant gratifications.

Whether you are ready to receive cash for structured settlement payments or simply have questions about the lump sum option, call the company that does a lot of this kind of conversion and transactions- StoneStreet Capital at 1-800-LUMP-SUM. The staff who are experienced professionals may work with you to help you decide if getting cash for structured settlement payments makes sense for your unique circumstances.

One thing we need to look into is how to get me insured. The big boy needs to find out whether his health insurance plan at work would cover me. If not, we would have to pay for a health insurance plan for me.

Are you cover under any health insurance plans? If you are not covered through your work, you might want to look into getting a health insurance plan. If you are retired and not working, you may want to find out more about medicare insurance? It’s really important to do that as health care is very costly in the US, medical bills are the number one reason for many people who filed for bankruptcy!

This arrangement is alright for me, the important thing is that we are united and live in one place instead being separated in two locations. We need to be very careful financially and save money like crazy. It’s going to be a while, but we hope one day we will be able take one of the Costa Rica vacation packages to go on a vacation or honeymoon. We hope our discipline will pay off one day and we are looking forward to delayed gratifications instead of instant gratifications. :-)

I must say it was a stressful time for us. I don’t know about you, being in debt robbed the peace out of me. I couldn’t sleep well and felt terrible. I can just imagine the perils one had to go through for being in debts up to the nose or facing the possibility of bankruptcy. It must be stressful and one may be even experienced sleepless nights. But, at least it’s not all loss, one can prevent or avoid bankruptcy with the help of Debt Management service and have a turn around of the situation.

It certainly takes much focus and determination to manage and pay down your debts, but the peace and freedom that come from being debt free make it worth all the hard work. It’s not the end of the world, really.

However, if you still have many years to go with your mortgage repayments, you should take advantage of the lower interest rate currently by doing a Mortgage Refinancing. The interest rate has gone down quite a bit and came close to nailing the very bottom of the valley in mortgage interest rates since beginning of this year.

Check out CountrywideHomeLoans.com to learn about the popular mortgage products and the latest offers that can help you to lower your monthly payments with lower interest rate, thus shorter repayment period.

Ready to bid goodbye to your boss and take charge of your destiny in 2008?

Would prefer the older funds that have 10-15 years track record of consistent performance, as it’s really hard to tell whether a two years old equity fund is performing. But, what to do, the gomen feels obliged to make decision for us, here it goes, the only decent choice, an Islamic equity fund for the pick!

It is definitely not easy to build your own business from scratch. It had been an uphill task for us running a small business of our own. We started off with our savings and went into some financial bind in the second year when business didn’t pick up as expected. Sleepless nights struggling with cash flow problem was not exactly what we would call fun.

It’s not that easy to get business funding from traditional lenders. Using revolving cash with credit cards will just be committing suicide, so our advice to our friends was make sure they have strong financial backup before going into business.. or even think about it.

It’s actually quite difficult or should I say near impossible to obtain a Business Loan without collaterals or co-signor(s). Most conventional lenders do provide unsecured loans, but they have ridiculously high interest. Unless the business that you are going to start has very high profit margins and good returns, it can be quite a burden to keep up with the repayments. That’s something that we need to take into consideration before taking a loan to start a business.

The obvious advantage of a structured settlement is tax avoidance. With appropriate set-up, a structured settlement may significantly reduce the tax obligations as a result of the settlement, and may in some cases be tax-free.

But some people who enter into Structured Settlements feel trapped by the periodic payments. For example, they may wish to purchase a new home, or other expensive item, yet they are unable to use up the resources because they can’t take up a mortgage or borrow against future payments.

Do you know that there are companies who would buy your structure settlements for a lump sum payment? You take the full value of your personal injury settlement payments up-front or just enough to cover your current needs by selling only a part of your personal injury settlement payments. It’s your choice. If you think you will do better by accepting a lump sum settlement, to use it to purchase a house or investing it yourself, it’s an option that you can consider!

Even if the conventional lenders agrees to give you a small business loan after jumping through all the loops, you would still require to find a co-signor or co-signors, sometime this is required even though there is collateral as security.

If you are currently in need of working capital or suffer from cash flow problem, you may want to check out the link below. Merit Capital Advance offers a financing program that provides you with Quick Business Cash based on your anticipated future Visa® and MasterCard© sales. They also make it easier and convenient for you to get funding with the quickest and speediest processing.