Simply Junior

Across the UK and throughout the world, association football is the single most popular sport. In fact, this sport boasts having an audience that is twice that of the Olympics. It’s not surprising for passion to run high whenever so many people love the sport such as this. Thousands of youngsters all across the world everyday are starting their love affair with football. The first step for these young aspiring players is to find the right pair of football boots which will allow them to develop as footballers.

The fact of the matter is there are thousands of different football boots that you can choose from throughout the UK, let alone throughout the whole world. When it comes to finding your first pair of football boots it can be a confusing time. Several factors are involved such as the brand of the boot, which colour to buy and most importantly the price of the football boots.

When buying football boots you also have to take into consideration the playing surface that they will be used on. This is a vital part in deciding what type of boot to buy. You need to ensure that they provide sufficient grip to avoid injury and other potential hazards. They also need to provide the ankle with enough support to avoid strains and ligament damage which are common injuries amongst footballers.

Football boots have also got to be durable, as you don’t want to spend your hard earned money for them to just fall apart after a couple of uses. You can buy boots in several materials ranging from leather to synthetic materials. You also have to take into account the weight of the boot. They key is finding a balance between the weight and material to give maximum comfort to the player.

One of the best ways to be able to find suitable cheap football boots is online. You would be amazed at what you can find on web sites these days. Not only that, many people sell football boots at a much smaller price than what you would pay in the store. It is the single best way to be able to show your love for the sport.

That’s exactly what the media wants you to believe. Unfortunately their doing a great job convincing everyday hardworking Americans who are losing their homes that this is the current state of the Real Estate Market all over the United States. The fact of the matter is, real estate investors who understand market cycles are flat out creating wealth. You need to know how to identify cash cow REO deals in your market and capitalize on one of the greatest real estate investing opportunities in the history of United States.

First you must know what is that you are looking for. In most cases
we are looking for homes in bread & butter neighborhoods that are 20 years or older. These areas generally consist of a stable rental market with blue collar workers that have lived there for sometime. Some other signs to look for to determine if an area is good for rentals. Is simply to see how many of the homes within a half mile to a mile radius are owned by absentee owners. If you don’t know what an absentee owner is, that simply means someone owns a property, but it is not their primary residence.

You also want to check the comparable sales in the area as well as the rental rates to make sure that the houses you are making offers on will be able to have a positive cash flow. You can usually contact a local real estate agent to get this information. If you don’t have access to any realtors leave a comment on my Blog or send me an email, and I will send you some great resources for that information. Now that you have identified the rental rates and the value of the property its time to start submitting offers.

Now when it comes to dealing with banks you have one of two choices, A. uses a buyer’s agent to represent you or B. deal directly with the listing agent for the bank. I personally would choose B. and simply put the selling agent will be more motivated to get your offer accepted knowing they get to keep the full commission for themselves and not have to split it with a buying agent. The only caveat with that is they technically do not represent you unless you do a duel agencies agreement which is beyond the scope of this article. Plain and simple use the selling agent to make your offers.

Now when we want buy REO deals from the banks or other wholesalers we do not want to pay no more than 60 cents on the dollar minus the repairs. I generally offer much less than that when negotiating with banks, usually around 45 cents on the dollar minus repairs. You just want to be able to get a dialogue going between you and the bank. Hopefully the selling agent will do their job and try to get your offer accepted, once your offer has been accepted now its time to close deal.

In part 2 of this article we will discuss how to finance these deals, and even flip REO property. Until then take care and happy investing!

It’s an all too common scenario:

Child says, “I want that.” Mom replies, “I don’t’ have any money.” Child, trying
to be helpful, quickly replies, “That’s OK, just use your card.”

Unfortunately, the child in this story usually equates swiping the
plastic–whether a credit card or ATM card–with “free money.” Without realizing
it, many moms are teaching their children to become future “spendaholics.” How?
By overusing the credit card–and by acting like their children’s personal ATM
machine.

What kids buy with their allowance teaches them good, solid financial principles
that will stick with them the rest of their lives. However, what kids buy with
your money (or with your credit card, as the case may be) does little to develop
their understanding of sound spending and saving habits.

What Kids Buy with Allowance–And Why Parents Give Allowance in the First
Place

What is an allowance for, anyways? An allowance should be given to promote
healthy money management. It should not be given as compensation for chores.
Chores are an everyday part of being a member of the family. The praise and
thanks for completing chores is remuneration enough.

Some parents might ask, “Why give kids money for free?” Good question! But the
fact of the matter is, you already do give them money for free by doling out
cash for treats, clothes, games, toys, books…you get the picture. Even without
an allowance, you’re still giving your kids “money for free.”

And this is why an allowance is so great: it allows you to keep the spending on
your children in check (actually saving you money!) while teaching them valuable
life skills at the same time. Allowance shifts a lot of the spending decisions
to your children–and what kids buy with their allowance teaches them practical
financial lessons that last.

This doesn’t mean taking a 100% “hands-off” approach to your child’s spending
habits. Instead, it calls you to help teach them the basics of finances so they
can go on to manage money on their own. It requires you to set up guidelines for
how much money they can save and how much money they can spend. Then, after the
financial foundation is laid, what kids buy with allowance is up to them.



Can You Control What Kids Buy with Allowance?

On page 178 of my book When You’re About To Go Off the Deep End, Don’t Take
Your Kids With You, I discuss a money management plan that both kids and
parents can appreciate and enjoy. I call it “piggy banking with a twist,” and
here’s how it works.

In order to start receiving an allowance, your child simply has to agree to use
the “piggy banking with a twist” system. Instead of having one piggy
bank, you want them to have four!

The four piggy banks and their purposes are:

1. Super Savings Pig – This is your child’s long-term savings. As money
accumulates over time in this bank, your child will learn the benefits of
delayed gratification.

2. Play Dough Pig – This is your child’s fun money. It is to be spent on
a weekly basis for immediate gratification stuff like candy, small trinkets, or
whatever they want!

3. Grand Goal Pig – This pig helps your child save toward a specific
goal, usually a special toy they really want. Many moms report that their kids
take far better care of the toys they have bought with their own money than the
ones they’ve been given. What kids buy with allowance gives them a sense of
pride, accomplishment and ownership.

4. Kind Charity Pig – This account helps instill the value of giving to
others. Get your children involved by discussing and visiting various charities
and letting them decide where their donations go. And when your children are
ready to make their donations, ensure they are the ones who mail or
hand-deliver them–not you.

How much should go toward each pig? Most kids find it easiest to put 25% in each
account. Older children can flex these guidelines a bit, but a good rule of
thumb is to put at least 10% toward charity and another 10% toward savings.

You Bought What?!

What kids buy with allowance will often seem like plain ole’ junk to you.
Sometimes your children will want a cheap toy that you know will break shortly
after they purchase it. Or maybe they want candy that you would rather they
didn’t have.

The best thing to do in these situations is to allow your children the
experience without any interference from you. The natural consequence of having
the toy break is a wonderful learning opportunity. When it comes to candy,
whatever junk food is not allowed at all is what they will want even more. So
allow your children to spend their “play dough” money as they wish. This is a
form of respect and can teach your children how to spend wisely.

In the end, what kids buy with allowance is more than material goods. As you
implement an allowance system and stick to it, you will be teaching your
children valuable lessons–lessons about how to spend, how to save, and how to do
both wisely.

If you need to file your taxes and you are looking into free tax filing services you should be sure that there are some hidden costs involved most of the time. While many services boast a lack of hidden costs, it is almost inevitable that you will pay something, though the service claimed to be free. The fact of the matter is that many services claim to be free, but then you will pay to file the returns electronically; therefore the services are not free at all!

The way that online free online tax filing services get away with calling their services free is that they say that the service is free; you simply have to pay a convenience fee as well as the price of filing electronically. What this means is that you can end up walking away from your free tax preparation with a bill for $50 or more. This really isn’t a bad deal, but when you think that you are getting something for free it can be quite a shock to receive a bill for this dollar amount.

There are cheaper tax service options out there, but generally if you want to have your taxes done right you will need to pay a bit. Other than the actual hidden costs of convenience and electronic filing, you should be aware that many tax service options that say that they are free don’t charge you, but you lose money because the system is not able to pick up all of the deductions that you may be able to take. This takes money out of your pocket. Many people end up owing money to the IRS when they use these services when they could have had a refund if they had used a different service or done their taxes on their own.

The hidden costs of free online tax preparation services can cost tax payers quite a bit of money. This is why you should be assure free tax providers really know what are they doing and will go to bat for you looking for deductions that will save you money, and perhaps get a great refund for you. Ask about the systems that they use and also ask for credentials before you accept the supposedly free help from someone. The saying that says “you get what you pay for” applies to free tax filing services as well as other things.

Is it my imagination, or did I hear somebody out there complaining about real estate commissions?

Anyone who complains about real estate commissions now, is not going to be thrilled if banks have their way and are allowed to sell real estate, something that the American Bankers Association (ABA) has been tried to do by lobbying, pressuring Congress – and paying millions of dollars in the process by way of special contributions – for the past seven years. And it does not matter if banks are not allowed to share commissions. All banks simply need to do, once they are permitted to step into real estate, is to buy brokerage firms and they can share all the commissions in the world without ever once breaking the law. They do not even need real estate licences.

In fact, since we are on the subject of commissions sharing, let’s do a little numbers crunching to find out the ‘commissions’ banks are charging consumers today. They do not call them ‘commissions’ – they call them ‘interest charges’, but fact of the matter is that a fee computed on a percentage basis in payment for a service is a commission. So therefore, the user’s fee charged by a bank to a borrower on a percent basis for the use of a certain sum of capital is nothing other than … a commission.

Banks base mortgage rates on a variety of indexes. Among the most common indexes are the rates on one-, three-, or five-year Treasury securities. Another common index is the national or regional average cost of funds to savings and loan associations. A few lenders use their own cost of funds as an index, which gives them more control than using other indexes. To determine the interest rate on a mortgage, bankers add to the index rate a few percentage points, cumulatively referred to as the ‘margin’. The amount of margin may differ from one lender to another, but it is usually constant over the life of the loan. The formula therefore, is: Index Rate + Margin = Mortgage Interest Rate. Most banks use a 2 percent margin minimum. When they offer ‘special packages’ to consumers, they typically apply a 3 percent margin, and then offer a 1 percent ‘special’ discount or rebate.

But let’s take the 2 percent typical margin. To all those readers who think that 2 percent sounds better than the 6 percent commission commonly charged by real estate brokerage firms, let me point out that the 2 percent margin charged by the banks is per year! So, if it is true that the average consumer keeps his property for seven years, the ‘commission’ charged by the banks is really 14 percent. The only difference is that the margin applies to the principal of the mortgage, i.e. the amount borrowed as opposed to the real estate brokerage commission, which applies on the full sale price. But this is of little solace if one considers that almost fifty percent of all mortgage transactions involve 95 percent financing.

Banks have come to the realization that the U.S. real estate brokerage market amounts to some $61 billions, a sum that, if attached to a single firm, would rank 19th on the Fortune 500, ahead of Boeing, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase. To paraphrase Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, this is a market that’s ‘worth fighting for and worth dying for’. To be sure, the tactic adopted by ABA is that of nonchalance. ABA is trying to convince Congress that banks are not really interested in pursuing this line of business even if they were legally able to do so, but that they would like to be able to pursue it … just in case.

The truth, of course, is much different and deeply rooted in the economics of real estate. Brokerage firms charge commissions to Sellers, the recipients of the money proceeds in a real estate transaction, and only when Sellers have received those proceeds. Banks, conversely, charge interest rates to Buyers. What ABA is aiming and attempting to do now, is to charge both Buyers and Sellers. Sort of like eating from two dishes at the same time, so to speak. Give the money to the Buyer to complete the transaction, and charge the Seller for completing it.

So again, how much is the real estate commission ABA would like its members to charge, were they allowed to get into real estate? Let’s see: there is the 14 percent from the Buyer over seven years, there is the 6 percent from the Seller at the time of closing, and then, of course, there are ‘minor’ commissions like appraisal fees, set-up fees, administration fees, loan initiation fees, loan cancellation fees, front-end fees, and then, of course, there is the loan insurance.

Boy, that’s a lot of commissions!

No wonder that Consumers Union (http://www.consumersunion.org/), publisher of Consumer Reports, the independent, non-profit testing and information organization serving only consumers, is strongly lobbying Congress to conduct further studies on this issue.

But besides the added cost to consumers, letting banks into real estate would not only be bad for the industry and bad for consumers – it would be bad for the economy at large. In fact, the notion of a ‘free market’ where all economic decisions regarding transfers of money, goods, and services take place on a voluntary basis, free of coercive influence, is commonly considered to be an essential characteristic of capitalism. But in the eventuality of banks dominating the real estate industry, how free would consumers really be to choose, for example, how to sell their homes, or to negotiate a commission, or to counter an offer to purchase, or to change agent if they do not like one, or to even try to sell their properties themselves?

Did anyone ever attempt to negotiate something – anything at all – with a bank? I have, several times. And I have witnessed personally and can report first-hand on a variety of responses from bankers, ranging from the amicable “no .. no .. no”, to the tap on the shoulder and nod of the head, to the sarcastic smile, all the way to the glacial look and the beyond-the-grave silence. However, I still cannot report a single ‘Yes’ from a bank, after nineteen years in the business. Banks understand negotiating not as a give-and-take, two-way process but, rather, as a one-way street – going their way, that is, only their way. And this is today, when consumers still have the option to walk away. What will happen to consumers when that option will be taken away from them?

Banks getting into real estate? Do not let that happen to you.

Luigi Frascati