How Budget Budging Can Create A Life Free of Debt For You Today

By Jenni Snook

I can only start this article by clearing something important up. Your budget is not a constraint. You can construct the life you've always dreamt of with it.

It's possible that you don't like the term personal finance budgeting. Another term, personal finance planning, may also not be your cup of tea. I know I don't. Anything composed of more than 1 word has the capacity to overwhelm us.

However, it would a waste of time talking about whether it's a term that we enjoy or resent. What we must know is that we will benefit much more than if we were to completely disregard it.

Why is this true?

Because it give us tools with which we can build the lifestyle we all desire. Is there someone out there that doesn't crave a life without debt? You wouldn't be reading this sentence in this article right now if it wasn't the case.

So, how does one successfully build a life free of debt?

I will make this as least complicated as possible. Two simple words: Budget Budging. It's important that you never forget these 2 words because they will become a central part of your personal finance planning.

You may now be wondering, what is budget budging?

It simply means that you take control of your budget rather than being controlled by it. At the base of all this is being able to dictate your budget. Dictating your lifestyle is strongly dependent on dictating your budget. It's important that you firstly come up with a budget that fits your needs and follow it.

It's important that you firstly come up with a budget that fits your needs and follow it. Record all the money you spend to the last, in whatever form it may be eg cash, cheque or credit card.

This is a great way to know for sure where all your money is going. It helps to find out what steps may be necessary to create a good and realistic budget for you. Nevertheless, it's important that it's a budget that allows you to live comfortably while eliminating your debt.

After doing that, you should move onto the second thing, which is removing waste. You will quickly realise that much money is wasted on small unnecessary items. You have to be ruthless with this process.

Sacrifices may have to be made during this process. You can achieve this successfully by evaluating what you really need. It's vital you're honest with yourself and are able to sacrifice some luxuries that are really necessary at all.

The reason why people don't cut such waste is because they think short term. They think about the short term pain, not the long term gain.

As you begin this process of personal finance budgeting, you may find it uncomfortable and a bit complicated, but be assured that after coming up with a budget appropriate for your finances, you will have found the whole process worthwhile.

Do you think that there's anything else that would make you happier than debt free life?

About the Author:

Jenni Snook is the premier writer of http://www.HealthyWealthySoul.com, a website dedicated to giving individuals advice and tools on personal finance budgeting to achieve both financial and spiritual bliss in their lives.

Sharing tradelines can cost you more than money

By J. Ochs

Can you buy a higher credit score by purchasing seasoned trade-lines? This question seems to come up more and more these days. The answer to this is a bit complicated, so let me see if I can give a simple easy to understand answer.

The goal of purchasing seasoned tradelines for your own credit reports is to gain points in your credit scores. To purchase a seasoned tradeline, you must pay a monthly fee to get your name added as an authorized user to the account that is seasoned and in good standing. Once your name has been added to the account, it will report on your credit report.

Pro reasons to buying seasoned tradelines: It's often a successful process for consumers with positive credit just needing a little boost in scores to be approved for a loan, for financing, etc. The needed accounts stay on consumer's reports just long enough to benefit scores and once they are no longer needed, payments are stopped and the seasoned accounts will be removed from reports.

Con reasons to buying seasoned tradelines: The credit bureaus and federal officials are now wise to this practice and while not illegal, many issues arise when purchasing seasoned tradelines to cause concern. Consumers must already be in possession of positive credit, and lots of it, for this practice to work. For those consumers with less than perfect credit, purchasing seasoned tradelines will prove to be a waste of money because the newly added tradelines won't do enough to negate the negative credit already appearing on the credit reports. Additionally, the credit bureaus are stating they will cease reporting authorized user accounts in relation to accounts used in the scoring model, thus making the process of purchasing seasoned tradelines completely useless.

Bottom line? Purchasing seasoned tradelines isn't the best way to go. There are other means that are more effective and less costly to improve your credit scores. For tips, take a look at our 'credit repair articles' section. NCA Credit Repair is a premiere credit repair company, dedicated to helping people with bad credit. Give us a call today, receive a free evaluation and find out how we can help YOU!

About the Author:

With over a decade of experience, Jon Ochs is the founder and CEO of NCA Credit Repair, one of the most respected credit repair services organizations. The website contains tons of free credit resources and information.

?Foreclosure Auctions: A Bargain Hunter's Dream

By Michael Geoffrey

If you are looking for bargain on a house, you might want to look into buying one at foreclosure auctions. In most states the prices of houses is below market value, which is established by order of the court. When foreclosure is requested by a lender, the court will order appraisals performed by disinterested third-party appraisers and from their findings, the court will determine the value of the property. Although if the lender believes the estimate is too low, they can cancel the foreclosure action and appeal the appraisal figures.

However, once the value has been determined, the foreclosure auctions will be advertised for several weeks prior to the date of the auction and most states stipulate the house cannot be sold for less that two-third of the appraised value. If you attend foreclosure auctions do not expect to find a huge crowd of people vying for the right to own a cheap house.

Foreclosure auctions tend to be very simple events and the only people in attendance are often the lender who started the foreclosure process and one or two people who are thinking about buying the property. A foreclosure auction where lots of people attend and more than two or three separate bids are made would be a rare occurrence.

Getting Ready to Purchase a Foreclosure Home

Winning bidders at foreclosure auctions are expected to provide payment of 10 percent of the purchase price at the end of the auction. The payment has to be in some for of earnest money such as cash, certified cashier check or money order.

Personal checks as well as credit cards are not usually accepted at these auctions. If the winning bidder is unable to produce the required down payment, foreclosure auctions will usually resell the house right then.

Winning bidders are responsible for obtaining mortgage loans for the balance of the foreclosure auctions' price within an established time limit, normally 30 days, and if unable to find appropriate funding, will lose not only their right to buy the house, but also the 10 percent deposit they put down on the house. Most people to buy a house through foreclosure auctions will have their financing in place before placing a bid.

If a home is auctioned a second time due to the winner's inability to secure funding, if it sells for less than the first auction, the first auction winner may be responsible for the difference, as well as losing their 10 percent deposit. It is important to remember that sales through foreclosure auctions are final and the winning bid is considered a contract, promising to make the purchase.

About the Author:

Do you know how credit card reduction services can impact your credit score? There are some things you need to know before using these debt reduction services. Find out what you need to know on the Debt Smackdown website

Student Loan Consolidation Services: Why You Should Use Them

By William Blake

The odds are against most college students when it comes to student loan debt. That is because the grand majority of them will have incurred quite a bit of debt due to borrowing money to pay for education related expenses. Even though some of the student loans that individuals use to borrow money are part of government or bank programs that offer great interest rates, other student loans are probably quite different.

Other people owe money on a series of student loans, each of which has an individual payment and payment schedule. This can become overwhelmingly confusing because the different payment amounts and payment dates are not easy to keep track of at all. Student loan consolidation services can be of great assistance to you if you find yourself in either of the two above mentioned situations or any other similar predicament.

Although there are many, the biggest reason why people who have lots of student loan debts use student loan consolidation services is because they need to make their payments smaller and life easier.

On the one hand you can look at student loan consolidation services to give you a uniform interest rate and save yourself some money on repaying your loans. In some cases you may had to take out student loans that offered very high interest rates and now that you have graduated and began your first job in the real world you can use student loan consolidation services to help get your college debt under control and get your new life started off on the right foot.

When you are just setting out to establish yourself in your new career, having to deal with a student loan whose interest rate is 20% can be a gigantic stress and concern. Help yourself by means of student loan consolidation services.

That's A Lot Of Loans

The majority of college graduates have had to borrow several student loans in order to successfully complete their studies. Just thinking of trying to keep track of so many loans and organize payment of each one can be a sobering thought.

Institutions that offer student loan consolidation services will let you take all of your current student loans and consolidate them to just one monthly payment with one flat interest rate. If that interest rate is lower than what you currently pay, you will save money each month on payments, too.

About the Author:

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Will cutting rates be beneficial for the public?

By Chris Clare

As the credit crisis deepens and more people are feeling the real impact as credit becomes more difficult to obtain, the focus on interest rates has never been greater. 12 months ago, only those connected to the financial services industry were aware of LIBOR and its importance in the marketplace. Today LIBOR is discussed in living rooms and pubs throughout the country with many of these discussions fueled by news reports on television.

The nation is now aware that LIBOR, the London Inter Bank Offered Rate reflects the actual rate at which banks borrow money from each other and is accepted as an accurate barometer of how global markets are reacting to market conditions.

The British Banking Association (BBA) works out the BBA LIBOR rate on any given day by taking the inter bank borrowing rates from 16 contributor panel banks and analyses the middle eight rates (dismissing the first 4 and the last 4) to arrive at an average rate.

Over the last twelve months the difference between the LIBOR rate and the Bank of England base rate has been substantial and it has also been acknowledged that the period of this variation is also longer than ever before. There has recently been a drop in the rate with a 1.065 percentage reduction on Friday 7th November giving a rate of 4.496% (its lowest point since April 2004), reflecting a slashing of the interest rate by 1.5% to 3% by the Bank of England. The pressure has been put on the financial institutions to pass this on to the general public, not only by the government, but also by the media. With this in mind, many of the leading banks are following the Bank of England's lead.

In clamoring for reductions to be passed on there are a number of factors that appear to have not been taken in to consideration;

Current customers will of course welcome a reduction in interest rates. For the bank, however, this can have a damaging effect on arrears performance. As borrowers are set to pay less monthly, this automatically puts up arrears percentages. For example, if a borrower normally pays 350 a month, but is 300 behind, they are effectively not an issue as yet. However, if those monthly payments are brought down to 290, that 300 in arrears is considered to be over a month's worth of payment, which then puts them on the problem list. This will have a knock-on throughout, as people who are 1month behind move to 2, 2 to 3 and so on. Therefore, the amount of people being litigated against will also increase.

Those bank's wishing to lend to other bank's at the LIBOR rate will take in to account the performance of the borrowing bank's mortgage book. This will have deteriorated considerably as a result of the rate cut and will deteriorate further with future cuts. This will obviously have a detrimental effect on a bank's willingness to lend, and could have a negative impact on LIBOR rates as the perception of risk increases, this will be priced accordingly.

This isn't the only way banks get funds though. Loans and mortgages are also funded by retail deposits and the moneys accumulated in the existing loan book. Those banks that have carried on functioning recently have done so based on retail funding. At the moment, the drive we saw in the past for mortgage business is now being focused aggressively on investment business.

The reduction in rates will result in banks receiving less income from existing borrowers, yet there is still the drive to compete for investment business. This will reduce profit margins and slow down the rate at which banks will recover. As banks compete for investment business, rates available are much lower than the LIBOR rate. This means that the banks strategies for obtaining liquid funds will remain firmly focused on retail business. LIBOR therefore has to fall to a level that is attractive to banks compared to the cost of attracting retail funds.

To summarise, there is little doubt that the government's actions have boosted confidence levels and created a positive impact on the money market. However there is still a long way to go, and many more challenges to overcome, and the cash injection and reduction in interest rates, although remedial, will still have a few nasty side effects. The irony is, as this article is written, LIBOR has gone back up to 5.65%, so who knows what to expect!

About the Author:

Mortgage Route gives assistance help and advice on mortgages from fully trained mortgage brokers along with no obligation mortgage calculators and sourcing tools.