Thanks to recent drops in new car sales, auto financing rates are once again attracting new car buyers. Newspapers are reporting that, in an effort to draw in more customers, car manufacturers have reduced their financing rates to what amounts to be negative interest over the life of the loan. In other words, many companies have dropped their rates to 1.9% interest, which is lower than the overall average rate of inflation in most years. If you shop around, you will even find the occasional 0% interest rate deal. Keep in mind that these super rates all require an excellent credit history.
Many banks are trying to compete with the auto manufacturers by reducing their car loan rates as well; however, those rates are still higher than those of the carmakers. They are still good, but typically 1 to 2% higher, and in some cases as much as 6% higher.
15 Feb
Posted by: Bruce Solorio in: Financial Articles
A few months ago on a Sunday morning, I was looking through my emails when I discovered a bunch of new Google Alerts in my inbox. For all of you who are unfamiliar with Google Alerts, Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. As an online shop owner, I keep track of the competition for all of my main keywords using Google Alerts which tells me when new websites are indexed that pertain to my industry.
Once a week (or whenever Google sends me email), I do a cursory scan of the wedding linens competitive landscape. While most of the new webpages that pop up are from Etsy or Ebay (which I ignore), this time out of the corner of my eye, I happened to notice some content that looked really familiar.
When I clicked on the email and read the verbiage, it was without a doubt my handwriting (I can recognize my writing style).
15 Feb
Posted by: James Pease in: Financial Tips
A large portion of our taxable investments are held in 10 mutual funds (check out my 2010 Year in Review for a list of mutual funds we currently own and asset allocation at the end of 2010). Though it has been a long time since I made any change to our mutual fund investments, I still keep an idea on any new funds, funds closed before now reopened, etc. Not that I really need any overhaul of our holdings, but to see what are out there.
When I check out a mutual fund, the tool that I use most often is Morningstar because, comparing with other mutual fund research websites, Morningstar offers more tools to help me know about a fund’s fundamentals as well as the past performance. In addition to the fund returns, which usually play a big role in my fund selection process (even though I know past returns don’t guarantee future performance), I also pay attention to the fund’s risk. And M Read full post…
15 Feb
Posted by: Bruce Solorio in: Financial Articles
As regular readers know, I’ve been doing Hub Page Experiments. Here’s my profile page if you want to see my hubs in action. Some of them are just rants, some are selling content, etc. All are experiments.
Overall, I’m very happy with Hub Pages though they drive me nuts from time to time as well.
Here’s what I told one person on the Hub Pages forums.
They were raving about a recent blog post at Hubpages where someone told folks NOT to write pages on “short term topics”. Here’s why following that advice would have lost me 1236 Vistiors (to date in less than a month) and over $100:
I understand what they were saying about short lived topics. But I have one hub that is a review of a product being “pushed” in a certain marketplace. It got 1236 visitor
Using personal loans instead of revolving credit is getting to be more common. This is a great for consumers, because revolving credit offered by merchants like department stores, appliance stores, and others, usually carry a high interest rate. In addition, most of the merchants offer very low payments that give the consumer an incentive to be stuck with the debt for several years. That does not mean the consumer cannot pay more each month, but it can be hard to resist a small $15 payment when the money is needed for something else.
Consumers who have credit that is good enough to get them a revolving credit line should be able to get an unsecured personal loan as well. Those who already have revolving lines of credit would do well to get a personal loan to pay them off. The savings over time can be enormous.
This is a great time to get personal loans, and there may never be a time like this.
Time’s Man of the Year. Now the new Moses? The guy who’s invisible connectivity community helped bring down the Pharaoh of Egypt. Mark Zuckerberg getting credit for Egypt’s revolution? We were stunned last night as we watched Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer interview the de facto leader of Egypt’s revolution, the “Google Ganhdi,” Wael Ghonim.
During the course of the interview Wolf Blitzer asked Ghonim where the next revolution would take place. He answered, “Ask Facebook.”
Isn’t the leader of a revolution in a Muslim nation supposed to answer, “Ask God?” In Tahrir Square square you could hear chants, “Muslim, Christian, doesn’t matter; We’re all in this boat together!” Didn’t Obama give a speech about this in Cairo in June 2009? This isn’t your father’s Islamic revol
According to recent figures one third of cardholders have been hit by card fraud in the past five years. The figures show that around fifteen million Brits have fallen victim to card fraud over the past five years, which reflects a sharp increase on the figure eighteen months ago, where the number of cardholders hit by card fraud stood at 27 percent.
According to ACI Worldwide a greater number of Brits have been defrauded on their cards than in any other major country apart from China. However, despite this there was a greater level of consumer satisfaction amongst British consumers with regards to how banks dealt with their claims than there was in other countries.
Around 80 percent of customers said that they were satisfied with how their fraud case had been dealt with by their bank, and this compared to 75 percent in 2009.