Finance Security
What is a good credit score?
The first thing anyone should do prior to applying for a loan of any sort is know what their credit score range is. A credit score is the number that FICO (the Fair Issac Corporation), uses to judge your credit worthiness.
The range for the FICO system is 300-850 with the median score being 723. A good score is anywhere from 620-700, which means that you will most likely be able to attain a better interest rate on a loan than others with a score under 620.
A bad score is anywhere from 600 and below. Basically what this means is that you’re in trouble and you need to get working on paying your bills on time. With a score like this you’re also looking at much higher interest rates and not as good of terms as your friends above with their 700 score.
A score is determined by 5 different areas. The first being payment history, this accounts for 35% of your score. Next, your credit utilization, which means the “amount owed”, accounts for 30% of your score. 15% goes towards the length of your credit history, while 20% is divided equally between the types of credits used and the recent search for credit.
The three major credit bureaus in the United States, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian all use this credit score to determine your worthiness to creditors. You’re legally allowed able to obtain a free credit report from one or all of these companies from annualcreditreport.com so that you can check your score prior to applying for a loan or credit card. If you know your credit score prior to applying you’ll able to have a better understanding of what types of terms you are eligible for.
You are entitled to one free credit report in a 12 month period, but with a little ingenuity you can monitor your credit more often. A common technique for this is to obtain one credit report from one of the credit bureaus every 4 months. Since, for the most part, all three bureaus will have more or less the same information you can use this as a poor-man’s credit monitoring service.
Why You Must Save More to Make Your Retirement Wishes Come to Fruition
If you’re like most Americans, you have a variety of retirement wishes planned out far in advance, with ideas of foreign travel, golf, sunny weather and relaxation coming to your mind every time you think about retiring. But are really on the right track to live out your retirement the way you’ve envisioned?
It’s important to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. If you’re like most people, you’re already behind on saving for retirement–even if you’ve been careful to try and stay on track. This is because most people don’t take rising costs into account when they for retirement, or they don’t place enough importance on this factor.
There are several major factors at play with regard to rising costs as you enter retirement. One is inflation, which in the United States will erode your spending power by roughly 2% to 4% per year on average. Another is an increase in your health-care costs due to the natural complications of aging. And yet another is: You know all those retirement plans you have? They’re darn expensive.
Finally, if you’re more than 5 years away from retirement, you should probably assume that Social Security isn’t going to help you. That isn’t to say that the system is definitely going to crumble, but the fund is currently being depleted much faster than it’s being added to. Therefore, you’ll be best prepared for the worst if you assume it won’t exist while you plan out your savings.
There are many great resources available on the web to find useful investing tips for fueling your retirement fund, and you should certainly check them out to come up with a solid investment plan. But making the right choices as to where you put your money can only help so much; just as important, you’ll need to make sure you save enough in the first place to retire comfortably.
Financial Tips: How To Gain Financial Security
With the current economy the way it is, now more than ever people are trying their best to save money and plan for the future. Cutting corners and trying to scrimp by can be difficult at best. However, you can learn to save money by simply apply a few basic, and time tested financial advice to your lifestyle.
The First Step To Financial Security
Believe it or not, but one of the most important steps to saving money, is learning to budget properly. Your budget should keep you on track with spending in each area of your life. Whether it be bills, groceries, clothing, etc. With a budget you will know how to stay on track, and keep from overspending.
If you do not have a budget in place, this should be your first step in learning to save money. There are many resources available on-line where you can download step by step guides on how to create budgets. Or, you can also check out books and magazines on this subject at your local library with no cost to you as well.
Learn To Invest In Gold
Another way you can get ahead on your financial journey, is to invest in gold. There are many different types of investment routes such as gold ETF, to gold mining stocks, and hard assets. However, for a beginning investor we would recommend staring out with hard assets such as gold coins or gold bars.
Investing in hard assets is easy enough, that anyone can do it. You can locate gold coins and gold bars at many different locations such as jewelry stores, pawn shops, and more. The main thing is to keep your eyes open when you are out looking around, as you never know what you may find.
Closing Thoughts
So here you a few simple steps that anyone can learn to apply to their lifestyle. You will reap the great benefits of having a more control financial situation, plus you can enjoy your investments in gold as well. Learn to take it one day at a time, so you don’t get overwhelmed. Before you know it, you will be on your way to a more secure financial future.
Protecting Your Financial Information
A lot of people do not realize that their various creditors and banks have the legal right to sell their information to telemarketers, direct mailers, and retailers among others. You probably do not want your social security number, spending habits, and the balances of your accounts just to name a few used to have someone target you for a product or service that they are selling.
Over the last couple of years you have probably been getting privacy act notices from your bank and other creditors and you consider them junk mail. Well guess what, throwing them away was one of the worst mistakes you may have ever made. Those notices were by no means junk mail instead the Federal government has now made it mandatory that any of those institutions that collect your personal information give you the option to opt out of having that personal information sold to a third party for any reason. If you are throwing those notices away then you are telling these companies that it is actually ok for them to sell your information to anyone who happens to name the right price.
Unfortunately in some cases that right price has actually come from criminals who in turn will illegally use your information to scam you and have been known to cause millions of bogus charges to a variety of different credit cards. This can ruin your credit rating in a matter of minutes. These criminals do not care who they are hurting as long as they get the money that they are after. The crime rate due to scam was staggering last year and it affected over 2 million people across the United States.
So as you can see you need to find ways to protect your financial information. Therefore if you were one of the many that tossed out those privacy notices there is still hope. All you will simply have to do is call each of the financial institution that you do business and tell them that they are not allowed to disclose any of your personal information. Once you do this they no longer have a legal right to sell a single piece of your information. If they do so after you have opted out you have the legal right to sue them for any damages that came as a result.
So as you can see protecting your personal financial information is high priority. If you happen to get one of those legal notices in the mail then you need to be sure that you are opening them. You also need to be sure that you follow all of the instructions needed to opt out of having your information sold. Your personal information is private do not let someone else get a hold of it.