Expenses

This category looks at stuff that we spend money on!

How my life insurance came in handy: AmericaDirect.com

Posted by

When I first met my wife in Taipei, she was a life insurance saleswoman for Aetna Life Insurance. She naturally tried to sell me some life insurance and got me what she thought was a low term life insurance rate for my policy, as she was just learning the trade. The other possible reason for trying to sell me on this is that she just wanted my telephone number!

Of course, I was the somewhat reluctant customer… there’s nothing wrong with me… I’m going to live for ever 29-year-old! To persuade me to buy it, she signed me up and paid the first contribution for me! That was not a little money, but it gave her peace of mind!

Funny thing is: about two years later, after a very hectic and stressful period of my life, my body was physically run down! I got pneumonia, ended up in hospital for 10 days, with a raging fever; and needed fairly powerful medications. This was all in the days before Taiwan’s National Health Insurance. When we went to check out, we paid the bill for that hospitalization, and it wasn’t cheap, something like half a month’s salary, plus I didn’t make any money for about two weeks or thereabouts.

After contacting our then insurance agent (wife was now an English teacher!), we were covered in full almost for the illness. When the check came, it was a might relief! That was handy. Handy, indeed. Next time, I took better care of myself, too!

Nowadays, though, I don’t have to meet someone on a bus just to get good life insurance coverage, I can just find online term life insurance rates and get instant insurance life quotes at the click of a button. However you decide to get life insurance, having appropriate life insurance can really make a big difference when things go bad.

Sponsored Post by AmericaDirect.com.

Money Management: Do you have Abusive Borrowing Behavior?

Posted by

“Never a borrower or a lender be!” is an old saw that continues to perpetuate itself amongs those who fear or are victims of abusive borrowing behavior: that’s right I have coined a new term, and now I can have an acronym to go with it: ABB.

What is ABB?

ABB is simply the overborrowing of money to the point that the repayments no longer constitute a minor expense in your salary. Some would say that any single installment in excess of 10% of your net salary would be excessive. I’d go even further than that. In excess of 5% on a single source of debt would constitute the first symptoms of ABB. If you have multiple borrowings, then a total of more than 5% could signify problems ahead. Naturally, mortgages and car loans (if they are reasonable proportions or your net salary would be exempt from this).

Treatment

A crash course on debt management would be in order. First you need to take action to find out the sources and rates of interest on your borrowings. Second, you will need to take some difficult decisions on cutting back your expenses, paying down high interest loans or credit card debts as quickly as possible, negotiation moratoriums on repayments if necessary, and refinancing other debts through the use of cheap secured loans, for example.

Compliance

When you start a treatment with your doctor, compliance can be an issue: taking the medication on time, keeping appointments with the doctor, following additional instructions, etc.. This can be a burden, but your health is at stake. Similarly, once your program of debt treatment begins, you need to make sure that you follow your program through to the end. You need to maintain your get-out-of-debt program, otherwise you are sacrificing in vain, and your financial health is at stake!

How NOT to manage things

I found after I came back from the U.K. last year that I had some got nearly NT$200,000 (about US$6500) in debt, through travel costs, hotels, trains, plains and automobiles. Of course I had budgeted much of that money already for the trip, so it was no surprise. However, I ended up paying way too much credit card interest on the amounts, simply because I didn’t figure things out well enough in advance, didn’t stick with my plan of paying things off quickly, and was basically lacking in self-discipline.

It’s important that you set goals in managing your debts, keep working towards those goals, and deal positively with the setbacks! You don’t want to discourage yourself because of your mistakes!

Post Sponsored by AdvanceStart.com.

5 Ways to Manage Finances Better

Posted by

1

beathatquote

Managing my own finances was easy: I simply spent everything, and didn’t worry about tomorrow so much. However, once I got married, things had to change! They had to. My wife was not interested in financial management, so I had to take up the reins, so to speak.

And I did. Beatthatquote.com is sponsoring this post to encourage us bloggers to share our true and tried tips for manaing our finances. In fact, I tried a whole bunch of different ways before settling pretty much on what we do today; and that’s what I’ll write about. These are my ten money management tips:

  • 1. Ration cash: it’s not necessary to have a budget so much as a limit on what you spend. It takes a while to live within the budget before you are successful. But, I also set up a soft limit that helped to control the amount of excess.

  • 2. Have different ‘jars’: don’t just rely on one bank account or checking account, sometimes it’s necessary to make money unavailable or difficult to access to keep your spending under control, especially if the money is for particular purposes.

  • 3. Borrowing Money: Use loans and credit cards sparingly. Know how much your interest payments are at all times, and avoid keeping debt on credit cards more than you have to. The interest rates can be too high: from 11% and up. And, interest payments are almost always expensive when compared to not having to pay!

  • 4. Maximize your Interest: Find ways to consolidate your ‘free’ money into places that pay decent amounts of interest. It’s not worth putting large amounts into your checking account as you’ll get practically no interest in most cases.

  • 5. Saving your Expenses: in many cases, you’ll find that you overpay for financial services if you don’t shop around. So you may need to compare car insurance policies, mortgages, life insurances and so on, it makes to shop around and find better deals. But of course, if you spend too much time trying to save a few dollars or get the BEST deals, you will find that the it becomes counterproductive.

Post sponsored. To encourage you to manage your money better!