Short Term Loans

Today, the short term loan is becoming more and more popular for those who need quick cash. A short term loan is an excellent way for many individuals to get their hands on quick cash and spread the payment out over an extended period – up to a year. Generally, the loans are designed for those who are termemployed but don’t have the funds left over from their paychecks to pay for those other items they might need or require. Short term loans are also popular with those who make good money, but have poor credit rating, something that makes it difficult for them to get the necessary fund from their regular bank or other financial institutions.

The short term loans are offered without the need for credit checks, poor credit isn’t much of an issue either. More importantly, the process is usual quick and painless. Even if one has defaults or bankruptcy in their credit history most short term lenders don’t take these into consideration.

The short term loans are most ideal for those who have temporary shortage when the unexpected happens; a car that needs fixing, appliance emergencies, home repairs, tuition, or some other sticky situation, etc. Smaller loans are generally approved in minutes and once the money is transferred to the individual’s account it can be used for whatever even to cover until the next paycheck.

Posted in Financial | Leave a comment

Go Where the Jobs Are

jobsGot jobs? Loudoun County, VA does and lots of them. With its expansive fiber networks and a swarm of tech workers, it’s a major traffic hub on the East Coast” for jobs. Major employers include Verizon Business and AOL, but the latest boom to hit this pocket of Northern Virginia’s high-tech economy? Data centers, which now occupy 4.3 million square feet in the county has earned Loudoun the nickname “Data Center Alley” for jobs. Easy access to the nation’s capital and Dulles International Airport also creates jobs and opportunities for government and the airline and freight servicing industries. The planned extension of the Washington Metro into Loudoun, which recently got a green light for funding, is expected to lure more young professionals to the region.

Fort Bend County, TX has come a long way from its farming days. Now it’s better known for growing jobs than for growing crops.

A favorable tax structure, strong school system and easy access to Houston make the county a triple threat when it comes to attracting — and keeping businesses. Engineering firm Fluor Enterprises, a major employer, is buying new land for a facility that is expected to add 2,000 jobs when completed.

This is Texas, so energy is naturally a key sector. Oil services firm Schlumberger maintains a sprawling 240-acre campus, and CVR Energy is headquartered here. Team Industrial Services, which provides repair and inspection services to heavy industry, recently announced plans to relocate its headquarters — and 100 jobs — to the area.

Central Texas’ Williamson County hits the bull’s eye when it comes to offering incentives for big business. Corporate tax breaks and low property taxes have attracted the likes of top-flight companies such as Dell, which employs 13,000 at its headquarters in Round Rock.

The rapid development of nearby Austin has spurred the growth of so-called “super suburbs” like Williamson County’s Round Rock and Cedar Park, jobswhere affordable housing, cultural offerings and numerous parks and trails win points with young families. In a tough economy, the county’s incentives are looking particularly enticing to companies offering jobs. Health care equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific said in December it’s planning to move some of its production from Wisconsin, bringing 150 new jobs.

Business in Montgomery County is soaring. Anadarko Petroleum is constructing a massive new 31-story tower at its headquarters in the commercial hub of the East Texas Woodlands. When completed in 2014, the skyscraper will accommodate 1,700.

Companies here aren’t just building up, they’re building out. Exxon Mobil is constructing a 385-acre campus that will house employees currently working in Houston. The oil giant is expected to relocate an additional 2,000 jobs from out of state to the new complex.

Those new workers will find a great place to live in the Woodlands, with its acres of green space and a 1.4-mile-long waterway. The area is also attracting a mix of companies in energy, health care and professional services – bringing jobs.??A location north of downtown Houston and proximity to George Bush Intercontinental Airport help.

Credit:? Grace Wong/Money Magazine
Posted in Financial | Leave a comment

AGE TO COLLECT SOCIAL SECURITY

For those individuals approaching retirement age and can afford it, most are acutely aware that the longer they can hold out to collect social security the more the payout will be.  For that matter, seems the number of those who have decided to start collecting at the age of 62 has dropped significantly over the past several years.  Research shows that the numbers has dropped to their lowest rate during the last 35 years.  AGEDown from “30.8% in 2009, when the jobless rate for people age 62 or older doubled from pre-recession levels, and many of those workers ended up claiming Social Security before their full retirement age as a supplement or substitute for unemployment benefits.”

If you decide to start collecting Social Security later in life rather than sooner it usually a good idea, because if you wait, the monthly benefit you receive will be larger by approximately “8% for each year you delay between ages 62 (the earliest you can claim) and 70 (after which there’s no advantage to delaying).” (“If you’re fortunate enough to be able to work longer and you don’t hate your job, waiting to claim Social Security is one of the best things you can do to improve your retirement security,” says Urban Institute retirement expert Richard Johnson.”  The longer you wait to start collecting Social Security the more money you will receive.

The formula is complicated, but if you hang in there the wait can be worth it. “The government makes you wait until “full retirement age” in order to start collecting the full retirement payout that you’ve earned. So what’s full retirement age? Good question. It used to be 65, but Congress voted in 1983 to raise it to 67 for everyone born in 1960 or later. For those workers born between 1938 and 1960, the full retirement age varies depending on your birth year.”

Credit:  Walter Updegrave

Posted in Financial, Society | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook

 By Lauren Barack

“The social media giant is quietly supporting new services for banks that want to engage socially with their customers: The decidedly unsocial business of online banking.”

FORTUNE — “Someday soon, Facebook users may pay their utility bills, balance their checkbooks, and transfer money at the same time they upload vacation photos to the site for friends to see.  Sure, the core mission of the social media network is to make the world more connected by helping people share their lives. But Facebook knows people want to keep some things — banking, for example — private. And it wants to support those services too.”

“There are certain things, whether it?s financial services, or banking where I don?t necessarily want my friends to know exactly what I?m doing, right?” David Robinson, Facebook’s director of global marketing solutions, U.S. financial services, asked a crowded room of bankers at a Securities Industries and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) seminar in New York late last month. “I want to be able to go in and have an experience with my advisor or my bank and have that be a one-on-one experience.”

“Facebook is quietly planning just such an offering with Australia’s Commonwealth Bank. Currently in an internal beta, with the first version built in March, the application is expected to launch sometime this year to customers. It will allow Facebook users who are bank customers to make payments to third parties as well as Facebook friends through the social media channel, according to the bank. Commonwealth will secure transactions with its own authentication system — similar to how payments are secured on its online and mobile banking site, a spokesperson says.”

Posted in Business, Financial | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Bull or Bear Market?

Seems it doesn’t matter anymore whether it’s a bull or a bear market.  All that really seems to be of concern to many is whether to be aggressive or defensive when it comes to making that investment.   In 2011, opinions on whether the economy and market was experiencing a recovery shifted on a daily basis up until mid-October.  Since then, the market has steadily moved upward and some wonder today whether we are experiencing a true bullish market or just a façade of one.

Money Magazine recently turned to some of the market’s best and brightest minds to get their thoughts. Liz Ann Sonders, Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab marketgave her takes on the situation and pointed out that Europe is not yet out of its crisis, but thinks another Lehman market type issue is unlikely, noting that housing and jobs seem to be on the mend.  Her reasoning on this was due in part to Europe’s bailout of Greece. Jeremy Siegel of the University of Pennsylvania argued at the same time that China’s economic slowdown is overestimated.  He believes that the slowdown is part of China’s five year overall strategic growth plan.  He argues that in the end the country will land on its feet, but believes it will be a bumpy landing.  Siegel is optimistic that China market and economy will experience growth this year in the 6% – 7% range and 9% to 10% going forward.  Moreover, that bull market(s) have overcome “walls of worry” in the past and that as the economy improves investors will begin to realize better yields on their investment options.

One market money manager, John Hussman argues that, although Europe appears to have the financial crisis under control at the moment, policymakers and others have covered up their problems rather than fixing them.  Rob Arnott, Chairman of Research Affiliates believes that many countries with big problems like the one facing Greece is running on borrows money which is unsustainable, if current measures in place stifle economic growth.   Eventually, these countries will run head into brick walls that they themselves have built.

In the USA, growth in consumer product consumption and incomes are still low, even though the warm winter in many places have given a boost to the housings and jobs’ outlook.  This maybe giving some a false sense of security in that what seems to be a bull market could be the confusion over real trend with random fluctuation that occasionally takes place.  The bigger picture, recent market gains are taking the focus off two bigger problems – “easy money that’s egging on spending and the government’s addiction to debt.” Bob Rodriguez, CEO of FPA warns that “if it continues to seem like we have no long-term fiscal controls, our foreign suppliers won’t want to keep lending to us at such low rates.”  Trying to solve this issue with massive tax or spending cuts could lead to a recession.

Credit:  Money Magazine
Posted in Financial | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Uncertainty And The Economy

Over the last few years, we have witnessed a market collapse, the economy gone sour falling home prices and foreclosures, and constantly hear the talks on the budget deficits.  We get little or nothing on our savings and the excessive debt and the cost of the wars are a travesty.  What should you do about money if you are a young adult?  economyAlthough the economy and markets are in better shape than they were a year ago, many people remain skeptical and anxious about the economy and their future.  However, we don’t want to let our emotions cloud our reasoning or dictate any financial decisions that may project the current situation into our future.  It makes no sense to assume that the challenges of today’s economy are going to go on than it does to predict that internet banking and marketing will come to a sudden halt.

Since we have no power over the markets or internet banking, perhaps we should focus on those things that we can control.  We can live within our means, diversify our portfolio while striving to keep investments’ cost low.  We can strive to maintain our health and sanity – hold on to our jobs and not spend like drunken sailors.  Of course, this won’t solve all of the problems of the economy, but could improve our own finances and give us hope for a brighter future.

Credit:  Jeff M. Denver on the Economy

Posted in Money & Banking, Society | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Buying a Home or Investing

Today, the 30 year home mortgage is down to a little under 4%, which is tempting, if you’re in the market to buy a home.  If prudent, you could put down a small payment on the home and borrow the maximum amount.  This would leave you with any extra funds that you have to invest for an opportunity to get in on what has been a bull markets over the last quarter.  There is the chance that you would earn more interest in the long run than what you’re paying on that new home mortgage.  However, move homecautiously as a 3.5% down payment on an FHA loan rather than a 20% down payment could cost you thousands of dollars more in interest and insurance payments each month.  And some of us would be tempted to invest that extra money in some risky asset, but probably lose quite a sum.  So it may be better to put the 20% down on your home mortgage which could save hundreds of dollars each month in fees.   Then if you have extra cash left over you could use it to pay for everyday items or even invest it since you would have that option.  Good news, today a low cost index IRA fund can be started for as little as a thousand dollars or you could opt for some stocks and bonds to go along with that new home.

Posted in Financial | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Latest Jobs Report

The jobs reports release today was mainly a huge disappointment but one key aspect showed improvement.  The underemployment rate which counts the number of unemployed individuals searching for work or part-timer who want full time work and those discouraged who are looking for jobs fell to a three-year low down to 14.5% from 14.9% in February.

Experts believe that when this happened in the jobs market, “it’s a sign not only of less economic pain, but also that the economy is operating closer to full capacity, said Heidi Shierholz, jobslabor economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. “When that rate is lower, it is better, better both for workers and the economy,” she said.  The underemployment rate had reached a record high of 17.2% in November 2009.  Two years of slow uneven improvement followed as the economy slowly began to slow improve.  In October of 2011 the economy made a sudden jump upward and now that March is here the jobs outlook looks even better.  We have received the best unemployment news since that heard just prior to President Obama taking office.

“Much of the improvement came because the number of workers who want full-time jobs but who are stuck working part time fell by 447,000 to 7.6 million. It’s the sixth-biggest monthly drop on record. In addition, the number of unemployed, as well as the number of discouraged workers, also both declined.”

Ordinarily, when there’s a big drop “in the size of the labor force, it’s because of an increase in discouraged job seekers. But that’s not what happened in March, and it raised questions” regarding the jobs market for which economists didn’t have any simple answers” on April 6, 2012.

Credit:   CN Money Chris Isidore
Posted in Financial | 2 Comments

Oracle's Earnings

“There are some in the tech media who think covering enterprise technology is a major snoozefest. But it can actually be incredibly entertaining — especially when Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison goes off on a tirade against his competitors.” “Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle announced its third-quarter earnings Tuesday afternoon, beating analysts’ expectations and sending its stock up in after-hours trading. After falling short last quarter, the company impressed the Street with strong quarterly sales of new software, up 7% from a year earlier.”

“But between talk about increased software sales, the company’s new cloud service, oracleand its Fusion applications, Ellison and his posse (including co-presidents Mark Hurd and Safra Catz) took plenty of time to bash their rivals.” Ellison has previously referred to Marc Benioff’s Salesforce.com (CRM) as the “roach motel” of cloud services, but he went relatively easy on the smaller company this time around. He did claim Salesforce.com’s products weren’t as “secure” as Oracle‘s new suite of cloud-based software. He also took a few jabs at Workday, another cloud-based software maker that has been nipping at Oracle’s heels, saying the company’s biggest mistake was not relying on an Oracle database (Workday would not comment on Ellison’s statements).”

“I think it’s a fundamental mistake and it’s going to create all sorts of problems for them down the road,” Ellison said during the company’s earnings call on Tuesday. “They’re going to have to build out that tool set themselves rather than relying on us like Salesforce does, rather than relying on us like NetSuite does, rather than relying on us like SuccessFactors does, as SAP does. They all rely on us. But Workday, they’re going to rely on themselves.”

“By far, Ellison devoted the most time to bashing SAP (SAP), the number one player in the business applications market. Ellison knocked the German software maker’s attempts in the cloud and its recently-launched analytics appliance HANA, which is expected to eventually compete with Oracle’s database technology.”

Credit: Michal Lev-Ram

Posted in Financial | 2 Comments

Alternative Investments

Various European blue chips are trading at big discounts to competitors in the US today due to the fear in the heavy debt laden countries of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain known as (PIIGS). Investments in Spain’s market seem to be the main risk but some believe that Investments in anything in Europe today is highly risky.  However, to  those who do their research there are some bargains to be had.  If you’re on the hunt for investments you don’t want to go near the PIIGS. Healthier and much more profitable bargains can be found in the Northern European economies.  If you invest, you want to go for those larger companies that don’t have a lot of exposure to their home markets. According to Stan Pearson who isinvestments head of European equities at Standard Life Investments, a lot of those firms will survive regardless of what happen to the Euro.  He believes they will take their market share, grow and any investments made will turn a profit.    Shares of consumer products giant, Dutch British is just one example.  It is trading at a 5% discount to US based Procter and Gambles and they are basing it on an estimate of the current year’s profit.  At the same time, Colgate-Palmolive is being traded at a 12%.  All three of these companies projected growth earning rates are in the upper single digits which make them excellent buys.  LaMonica of CNN advises not to let this crisis go to waste, that there are deals to be made and that we should sift our way through Europe’s discounts for investments that could show real profit in time.

Credit Source: Paul R. LaMonica
Posted in Financial, Money & Banking | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment