Archive for Miscellanious
Finding Your Car’s Car Insurance Group
Posted by: | CommentsYour car insurance group is important information, especially when you are filing for car insurance renewal or general applications. It determines the risk and safety factors of your vehicle and applies them to your insurance premiums based on specifications that can be determined merely by taking a look at the type of car you drive. All countries that offer vehicle insurance have these systems, but few are as organized as the United Kingdom’s numerical systems for determining the car insurance group rating.
The ratings mostly apply to new cars, as older cars tend to fall under different ratings standards regarding car care and other specifics. Car care is taken into account when determining the car insurance group because the vehicle’s condition becomes a primary factor when determining the premiums. The most commonly utilized grouping system exists in the UK and is comprised of a numbered system that labels new cars from groups 1 to 20. The United States and Canada tend to use a stricter manufacturer based system to define the vehicle’s grouping and narrow it down based on vehicle type, for example sports or luxury.
The numbered system in the UK essentially runs on the premise that 1 is the lowest number and 20 is the highest. The higher the car insurance group, the more expensive it will be to insure the vehicle. These motor car insurance groups are merely suggested, however, but most providers utilize the ratings as a form of broad scale to determine the ultimate risk factor for the vehicles. There is no legal implications for not following the ratings system as employed by the Association of British Insurers, but most insurers do use the system as a good guide to determining the premium costs.
Motor car insurance in the UK also has its own standards by which to establish notions towards security features in vehicles and how effectively these features augment the insurance costs for that particular vehicle. With security alarms being built into most new factory models of vehicles, the premiums in terms of theft car insurance tend to be significantly lower. Car insurance companies are paying a good deal of attention to these security features when they determine car insurance group ratings because of the improvement in the safety features and its direct impact on the insurance industry.
Car insurances companies are paying attention to the specifications of the manufacturers as they put out new cars, adapting their policy distinctions to match up with the types of vehicles that are rolling off the factory line. This makes for an interesting and specific prospect when it comes to buying insurance because of all of the variables involved in purchasing insurance. With the UK’s numerical system, the business of buying insurance is becoming far more complex.
Insurance providers, when determining the group ratings, take a look at the year, make and model of a particular car. New cars are the most susceptible to this rating scheme because of the factory specifications that make painting all of the cars under one brush a bit easier. With certain import models or modified vehicles, however, using a blanket numerical system could prove to be more difficult. Finding your car insurance group information, therefore, can give you a good idea as to how
15 ways to grow money
Posted by: | CommentsTired of “experiencing cash-flow interruptions”? Want to increase your net worth? The best way to accumulate money is to stop spending it on things you want but don’t really need, and to save and invest so your dollars will begin working for you. “Building your net worth doesn’t require a small fortune, but you do have to change spending habits and practice more self-control,” says Sherrin Ross Ingram, author of Wealth Mentality (Jourdan & Brown Publishing). By taking big and small steps, you can reduce expenses and achieve your financial goals. And if you follow just a few of these 15 tips, you can save $5,000 or more in just 12 months:
1 DON’T PASS UP FREE MONEY. “You can’t afford not to participate in your company-sponsored retirement plan. If your employer matches your 401(k) contributions, it is like free money,” says Gall Perry-Mason, coauthor with Glinda Bridgforth of Girl, Make Your Money Grow! (Broadway Books). And if your job offers a pretax savings plan for medical or child-care expenses, Ingram adds, “don’t pass it up.”
2 PAY ON TIME. Fees and penalties for late credit-card payments add up, and they take their toll on your credit rating, says Ingram. Pay more than the minimum due on credit-card bills so you can cut both the time you spend paying off the debt as well as interest payments.
3 DON’T BLOW A WINDFALL. Avoid scratching your spending itch when you get a bonus, an income-tax refund, a holiday monetary gift and any other extra money. Use it instead to pay down debt, put it into a savings account or invest it.
4 SHARE YOUR SPACE. Consider taking in a roommate, family member, friend or tenant to help cut rent or mortgage payments and utilities in half, says Bridgforth. If you shell out, say, $800 a month in living expenses, with a roomie, you can halve your costs and save $4,800 a year. The savings can be invested in your retirement account or socked away in an emergency fund.
5 GET A LOW-COST RIDE. “Because cars decrease in value the moment they’re driven off the dealer’s lot, it makes sense not to invest too much money in them if your net worth needs accelerating,” counsels Bridgforth. Expensive cars cost more to insure and repair, and their resale value can plummet significantly after three years, she adds. Compare prices and market values at edmunds.com, then shop around, and always negotiate the sticker price.
6 BECOME A LANDLORD. The equity in a home is a large source of wealth, says Robert G. Allen, coauthor of The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth (Harmony). “But owning rental property is a powerful wealth builder. You buy property and someone else pays you rent, which often covers your expenses from owning it,” he explains. Meanwhile you increase your current monthly income, build long-term wealth, and receive tax deductions. The depreciation annual write-off on a $100,000 property amounts to more than $2,000, he points out.
7 TAKE A COFFEE BREAK. With a luxury latte going for about $3.50, you could easily shell out more than $1,200 a year for that daily caffeine fix. Purchase regular coffee or buy a jar of instant and make your own at the office, and you’ll save about $1,000 a year.
8 DON’T GET CLEANED OUT. Dry-cleaning bills can put a big dent in a budget. Perry-Mason suggests that you save on cleaning bills by using Dryel–or some other do-it-yourself dry-cleaning product for lightly soiled clothes–or washing items in Woolite. If you spend, say, $20 a month on professional dry cleaning, do it yourself and save up to $200 a year.
9 CLIP COUPONS. By snipping coupons from Sunday’s paper, you often can reap a windfall because many stores will double the amount of the coupon. This can save you as much as $20 to $30 each time you shop, about $1,040 a year.
10 SAVE ON TALK. You can save from $20 to $45 a month ($240 to $540 a year) by cutting off the extra features your telephone service provides or by switching to a company that charges two or four cents less per minute per call. “Many people are just too lazy to switch,” Allen says. “But that laziness costs them.”
11 BOX-LUNCH IT. Take your own lunch to work; if you normally spend $10 a day, that’s an extra $50 in your pocket on Friday, a saving of $2,500 annually. Leftovers from eating out or from last night’s home-cooked meal can make great lunches.
12 REFINANCE YOUR MORTGAGE. If you want to reduce your monthly mortgage payment to free up some cash, refinance at a lower interest rate if the estimated closing costs are low enough to make refinancing worthwhile. And if you call afford a higher monthly payment, go with a 15- or 20-year loan because you build equity faster and pay much less in interest, Bridgforth advises. For example, she points out, “with a $100,000 mortgage at 6 percent for 15 years, you pay $843 monthly in principal and interest, and $51,894 in interest over the life of the loan. With a 30 year mortgage, you pay $599 monthly but $103,961 in interest over the 30 years.”
13 DON’T EAT ALL YOUR EQUITY. “Excessively consolidating your credit-card debt into your refinanced mortgage or equity line of credit will devour your home equity and significantly lower your net worth,” Bridgforth cautions. If you run your credit cards up again and again and remedy the problem by using equity from your home, you may walk away empty-handed when you sell.
14 The sticker price of any item is rarely the lowest price a merchant will accept, says Ingram. After you decide what an item is worth to you and how much you’re willing to pay, then ask the merchant to give you “a better price.” That way you’ll know how much bargaining room you have.
15 PLAN AHEAD. “The more long-range planning you do, the cheaper your life becomes,” says Allen. For instance, if you buy an airline ticket less than a week before you’re ready to travel, you will generally pay full fare. If you get it three months in advance, you can save up to 50 percent, he reveals. Buy it two weeks before and you can knock 10 to 20 percent off the purchase price.
For a wealth of ideas on saving and growing your money, go to allthingsfrugal.com, bargaindiva.com, or the frugalshopper.com.