January 15, 2010
15 or 30 year mortgage?
There are multiple schools of thought on this question and most of the time the answer will depend on the person buying the house. How much discipline does the buyer have with money? Do they need help making payments or are they able to make extra payments easily? There are lots of variables that are specific to each situation but here are some things to consider.
Would you rather have a bigger monthly payment for a shorter amount of time? With a 15 year mortgage you have to make big payments each month, no exceptions. If you buy a cheap enough house this could be easy for you. The biggest advantage is saving a ton of money on interest, the biggest disadvantage is the much larger payment that reduces your cash flow.
If you choose the 30 year mortgage and pay only the minimum each month you are looking at twice the purchase price of your home just in interest payments. Do you really want the bank to make that much money off of you? If you are able you should may additional payments in order to whack away at the total interest you’ll pay over the life of the loan.
I would say never get an interest only loan. This is just begging for trouble and is how a lot of people started a snowball called the great recession. Between that an a variable interest rate loan the country is in shambles and people are very far underwater on their mortgages. Always gets a fixed rate loan for a fixed amount of time.
In our case we have tremendous financial discipline so we chose the 30 year mortgage and made large additional payments. We refinanced the note in order to get a very low interest rate and kept getting a 30 year note each time. As a result our mortgage payment is very low so if we need to pay only the minimum we can. When we are flush with money we can also choose to make bigger payments to pay it off faster. Having the flexibility is very important to us, but it only works because we have such discipline.
About the Author
The author enjoys writing about a huge range of interests including sling backpack and garment steamers by conair.
Filed under Beyond Random Ramblings by Arjuna
October 1, 2009
Capitalizing on Real Estate Today in Depressed Cities
Savvy investors are now beginning to see exceptional bargains in real estate that we simply didn’t have a few years ago. When the market is down you need to approach things a little differently. You do not want to have to restrict yourself to buying properties you have money for. Many locations now have a large amount of properties with little equity. You will not be able to profit much higher than what the market brings. This is why you need to buy at a huge discount to make a good profit if you are doing this the traditional way. This also gives you more flexibility. This is where creative options in the real estate market come into play.
The opportunities keep getting better. Currently, property flippers will start by researching on prices in the local markets. Then, they search through home listings with the words must sell, needs work or OBO. Many investors who are being more creative in real estate investing and thus doing much better in today’s market. Learn to apply low risk real estate investing strategies to profit in today’s market.
Filed under Beyond Random Ramblings by Arjuna
August 20, 2009
The Most Dangerous Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
Affiliate marketing is a very basic concept and it offers a lot of flexibility and automation for the person making money with it, but there are certain rules, steps and procedures that you need to follow in order to making a stabile and healthy income with it. To neglect these things would be to put your entire business model in danger.
I want to talk to you about some of the most common mistakes that people make when starting in affiliate marketing. These things cost people their income and can be easily avoided. They concern your commissions, your process of promotion and many other factors involved.
When we talk about affiliate and internet marketing, we have to know that there are three main parties involved and they are the merchant, the costumer and the affiliate. The affiliate refers the costumer to the merchant’s site where the costumer then spends money on a product. The merchant then proceeds to pay the affiliate the established commission for the sale.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the most common mistakes that people make.
In my opinion, one of the most serious and costly mistakes that people make when starting out is directly promoting the affiliate sales page. This means that they spend advertising dollars, their time and effort to send traffic and targeted visitors directly to the merchant via the affiliate link. Instead, what they could do is create a conduit or a funnel with their own sites, where they can presell the visitor, build trust and credibility and maybe even get a repeat visitor or two.
Also, this would be a perfect opportunity for you to build a list of subscribers to whom you can promote and offer many different products on a regular basis. For a lot of marketers, this often becomes the largest portion of their income and each email broadcast that they do creates a real traffic swarm to their affiliate links. If you want your visitors to visit the website again and again, offer them some kind of free benefit like free gifts, software or e-books.
Another great mistake is creating a site full of affiliate links, flashy banners and graphics.
There are many different drawbacks to this problem. First of all, people do not like to wait for a site to load and this is what a lot of heavy graphics can do to a site. Second, they don’t like to click banners and much more prefer to click contextual links that revolve around a topic of their interest. Third, if they get a feeling that all that you have on your site are affiliate links, this visitor will be off before you blink.
In conclusion, an affiliate marketing beginner should really take notice of these issues and make the best of the resources that he has. A simple and elegant site with informative resources and a clear layout will do more for you than you know.
Filed under Beyond Random Ramblings by Arjuna