Right now, if there was a market that had bad news written all over it, it would be real estate. The housing crisis has made investors jumpy, the economy appears to be tanking and home values are plummeting across the country. Would you believe that this is actually a good time to get into real estate? With the proper choices and management, this is absolutely true.

Down markets are a speculator’s dream come true and they can easily change your entire fortune. While we certainly don’t recommend sinking your life’s savings into a bunch of dead end properties this instant, this is a good time to think about investing in real estate the smart way. Never overextend yourself and always take the time to make smart investments that will pay off in the long term.

Let’s look at that statement a little more closely, especially the last two words – long term. Yes, right now, an investment in real estate is not going to do very well. In fact, it may even lose some value over the next few months. But, what goes down will go back up. Property values cannot stay low forever, and although they may not reach the insane heights they recently attained, it’s easy to make a good chunk of money with the right house.

Instead of looking at an investment in real estate in the tangible form, let’s compare it to an investment in a stock. You purchase a stock at $4 today and while it’s been steadily going up over the past few years, it’s still a pretty cheap buy. However, in eight months, the company takes off and the value of your stock increases exponentially. This would be considered a good investment. How is investing in real estate right now any different?

In fact, in some ways, you can do quite well with an investment in real estate right now. Consider the fact that foreclosures are at an all time high. What does this mean? Thousands of families need a place to live and they’re not going to be able to get a new home loan right away. This means that thousands of new renters have flooded the market and they have to find a house to rent.

Investing in real estate is always risky, but sometimes, the best returns come from taking a chance in a down market. You can easily pick up a property for pennies on the dollar, earn money from renting it out right now until the market changes and then sell it for a profit in a few years.

Remember – if you are going to jump into the real estate market, never purchase a property without first getting an inspection. Some homes that have been foreclosed on will be wrecked by the old owner or may have fallen into disrepair. Never accept anything on face value and insist on seeing the property in person. Pick properties that are solid, located in good neighborhoods and likely to go up back in value once this crisis passes.

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Originally posted 2008-11-19 18:28:36. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Granted, there are a wide variety of different ways that you can ruin your credit over time, but do you want to know what the quickest and most dangerous ways are? Here are five ways that you can quickly and effectively destroy your credit.

Continued from Part 1

By taking so long to pay the debt off, you will be accruing enormous fees through interest and other circumstances, and by the end you may have paid double, triple or as much as ten times what the original debt was, simply for the chance to pay it off so slowly. Why even bother with this? If you do decide to pay your credit card balances off the way that you are supposed to, then you are going to pay at least double or triple the amount that is due every single month if you ever want to get control of your debt.

4 - Make poor decisions regarding balance transfers.

If you balance your transfer from a higher interest credit card to a credit card that has 0 percent interest, it may sound like an excellent idea but it may still force you to be driven into debt if you cannot refrain from making matters worse. While you are paying off the balance on this balance transfer, you may find yourself unable to resist making more purchases. If you carry the balance forward beyond the period of no interest, you will end up being subjected to higher interest rates in the end. If you want to get the most or best use out of balance transfer cards, you should never make any purchases with them, and you should make sure to pay your balance off in full before that attractive introductory period is over.

5 - Finally, to really ruin your credit quickly and easily, never check your credit report to see where you stand.

If you want to create and maintain a terrible reputation financially, then ignoring your credit report is an excellent way to go. There could be enormous mistakes on your credit report that are impacting your credit score and telling lenders and credit card companies to avoid you at all costs. If you would rather not pay heavily for these mistakes on your credit report, then it would be wise for you to request a free report through http://www.annualcreditreport.com. Keep an eye on your credit score from month to month, or subscribe to a credit monitoring service if you need assistance. Disputing credit report errors is a little complicated but well worth the effort if it saves you from hefty credit issues in the future.

A few small, bad decisions can lead to some serious debt related disasters in your life. Luckily, a few small, healthy decisions can bring you out of debt and can put you back in the world of good credit and good financial health.

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Originally posted 2009-04-09 05:54:20. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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While obsessing over a FICO score is not a good idea, this is a number that will have a lot of bearing in your life. This number determines whether or not you will be able to get a house, a new credit card, or in many cases, whether or not you will be able to rent an apartment. Lenders and businesses are relying on FICO scores more than ever, and it is have never been more important to make sure that your score is where it should be.

If you are just starting to build up your credit history, this is the perfect opportunity to watch your score and see how different variable affect it. Over time, with proper management, you have the ability to get your FICO score up over 800, but it will take some work. If you have already made some mistakes and your score is under 600, don’t despair. There are plenty of ways that you can restore your FICO score.

First, you need to know just how bad it is. You may even want to consider purchasing a subscription that will allow you to monitor your score over time. This helps you see what is happening with your credit and can provide you with advance notice if something is going wrong with your credit. We highly recommend monitoring your score, especially if you are getting ready to buy a house.

Once you have an idea of the number you are working with, it is easier to begin the process of restoring your FICO score. The average American has a score that is around 680, which is considered satisfactory. A score over 720 is considered good, and above 775 is considered excellent. However, scores under 620 are considered to be very bad and it can be difficult to get a loan.

The higher your score is, the less impact small good changes will have on it. For example, if you are already at 750 and keep making monthly payments, without opening any new cards, you probably won’t see much change. However, bad changes can have a very big impact on your score. For example, a collection can drop your score by as much as 20%, or a late payment may cause it to nosedive.

It is a lot easier to see more changes when you are working with a lower score, especially when you are rebuilding your credit. If it is in the low 500s, or even lower than that, making little changes can actually give your score a nice bounce. If you do decide to use a credit score monitoring service, these bounces are a great motivator to keep up the good work.

Now that you know what you are dealing with in terms of your credit score, it is time to work on putting together a plan that will help you restore it. Our next post will cover specific steps that you can take to get on the road towards a perfect score.

One resource you should be sure to check out is the blog at Credit Karma. At Credit Karma, not only can you get a free credit score and offers from partners with a pro-consumer vision, but also find extremely relevant information about your credit score or credit cards such as: Relationship Between Age and Credit Scores, How Often Does Your Credit Score Change?, or How A Credit Card Limit Is Determined.

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Originally posted 2008-09-25 05:06:45. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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On the surface, this book seemed like the ideal read. It has a strong premise of how to create multiple streams of income using debt leverage. That is a great premise and one that we follow and put into practice every day. It was such a disappointment that this book failed to deliver on such promise. We really wanted to like this one, but at the end of the day, we simply cannot recommend it.

Let’s go into the good things first. Those who are new to real estate investment will get a lot of information from just the few chapters. The book covers 1031 transfers in a way that makes them so easy to understand. So many books try this and can’t even do that in 200 pages, let alone in a few chapters, so this is a definite plus for this book. They also cover some really great advice on how to actually make money with your mortgage.

The basic premise is that you take out a Smart Loan, using ARM payments. Make only the minimum amount and use the money that would have gone into higher payments into a high interest account. Sounds great on the surface, but it is obvious that the authors thought that the age of low interest rates on ARM loans was going to last forever. That’s simply not an intelligent way to think – the markets have already proved this many times over.

We fear for those that took this advice to heart and are now trying to figure out how to keep their homes. While debt leveraging is a terrific way to make money, and create more than one stream of income, it should never be done in a risky manner. It’s one thing to take out a loan, it’s another to think that interest rates are never going to skyrocket. By far, the best idea is a fixed rate loan, even if it means you’ll be making a little less money. You’ll more than make it up compared with what would happen when your ARM rate explodes.

We would have liked to have seen more than one option mentioned in the book, and it would have made it easier to offer at least faint praise. However, by only providing readers with one option, the authors failed to provide smart advice on smart loans. They always fall back on relying on that ARM to stay low, and this is a mistake that only amateurs make.

While this book is definitely not advice anyone should follow, debt leverage is still one of the best ways to make extra money. However, the key is finding the SMART way to do it an minimizing your risks. There’s no point in going to all of that trouble if one change in the market could drastically affect your fortunes. The book had a lot of promise, but at the end of the day, it simply failed.

Originally posted 2008-08-22 05:06:52. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Anyone who is worried or stressed out about their finances right now has probably had concern over whether or not their budgeting and money management tactics are working. It is important that you learn how to develop good skills for money management in this day and age, otherwise you will never able to appreciate everything that life has to offer. Too many people are out there worrying about having enough money simply to get by, and that is simply no way to live.

Learning all of the ins and outs that are associated with personal finance and budgeting along with money management is ideal when you are younger. Teaching and learning at an early age will allow people to develop healthy money management skills before they ever have any money of their own. The later that someone begins to take the concept of money management seriously, the more potential is present for them to get into problems with debt and even more serious financial straits. Considering how difficult it is to recover from these issues, it certainly is worthwhile to learn more about money management now rather than later.

There are a lot of people who enter into adulthood without ever having learned money management and budgeting techniques. They end up finding themselves feeling exhilarated at the money that they are making, and this leads to overspending and a complete lack for planning for the future. If a person sinks too deeply into debt when they are still young, then they can spend as many as twenty years or more trying to overcome a couple of years worth of mistakes. Even worse, poor money management beyond this point can lead even further into bankruptcy quite easily, which is a blemish on the credit report that can linger for seven to ten years or more.

The ramifications and the consequences that come with bankruptcy are much more than a matter of simply clearing away debts and suffering some damage to your credit report. There are numerous under underlying issues that can come up, and you can lose the ability to get jobs when you file for bankruptcy. Additionally, having filed for bankruptcy can affect your insurance rates, the interest rate on your mortgage, car loan or unsecured loans, and can also be an embarrassing thing to have to explain every time your credit report is pulled.

The fortunate thing is, however, that people who make a real effort to learn about money management and budgeting will stand a really good chance of completely avoiding these disasters relating to money management, such as bankruptcy for example. It is definitely never too late for you to begin improving your money management skills, and starting sooner rather than later is always the best option.

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A great way to help manage your debt is to make the most off of your money by getting money from savings accounts for your free cash. An online bank is usually a good place to find a high yield interest rate on savings. Another good way to keep some money in your wallet is through credit cards. The best credit cards offer cash back on all the purchases you make. If you don't have one you should definitely get one.

Originally posted 2008-12-23 05:32:05. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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