InvestorBlogger

Needing a little help calculating your mortgage payments? Try this calculator. It may not be 100% accurate because of all the possible variations, charges, etc.., but with declining mortgage rates over the past few months, it will help you to do back-of-the-napkin type calculations to check your mortgage isn’t being grossly overcharged.

I noticed in my own bank statements how quickly the local bank was to raise rates in the past two years, but I am still waiting for a commensurate fall in the rates. I could very well be using this when I go to the bank to update the passbook.

Calculator is provided by Mortgage Calculator.

This article is guest written by Adam Hefner, and examines the different kinds of mortgage rates you may end up paying. I hope you find this useful.

How to calculate a mortgage payment is one of your most important decisions when purchasing a home. Rather than be a mathematician, you will just need to learn a little bit about the process and what it is all about. You will have many choices when it comes to figuring out what your payment will be. Key to the process is what your credit is and what you will want to borrow.

What kind of mortgage do you want? Whether you choose an adjusted rate mortgage (ARM), a fixed, or a balloon type payment will depend mainly on how much money you make and what your credit score is. These variations will cost you dearly if you are not well informed about their differences!

If you get a balloon mortgage you will have to pay it off or refinance it every 5 or 7 years generally. Interest rates can change daily and so will your ARM. Your rates could start as low as 5% and go up passed 8% in a short period. The rates don’t stop there either; they could go very high, with no cap. Don’t make the mistake of comparing a low ARM rate to a higher fixed rate, the fixed rate won’t change but the ARM will. With a fixed rate of 7% what you start with is what you will end your mortgage rate with.

Do you have a large or small income? When a loan agent reviews your loan they will look at you using between one fourth and less than one half of what you make monthly or yearly. The best bet is not to spend more than a third of the money you make each month on your house payment. Basically you can look at it like this, if you are bringing home $1200.00, you will want your house payment around $400.

Are you aware of your credit score? The four basic categories for credit scoring are poor, fair, good and excellent. If you have good or excellent credit, the interest rate that you are offered is usually going to be lower. If your credit is in the low ranges, you can expect to see higher interest rates. Most mortgage loans are based on simple interest.

One type of simple interest loan, the amount of interest is added each day. If your payment on the first day is $360, the next day would be $370 and so on. Each day your interest is added until you pay for that month. When you have made your payment, your principle will go down (the base loan amount), and interest will be added to that smaller amount. So you will be saving money each time you do this by paying less interest.

Mainstream mortgages are usually calculated as monthly simple interest. Regardless of what day you pay your mortgage it will not change what you owe because the interest is charged monthly, as long as you pay on time. When using a mortgage calculator it is important to know which type of interest you are going to go with, daily or monthly.

When you decide on how to calculate a mortgage payment, make sure you are familiar with all of the terms associated with your loan. You will have a choice of simple or advanced models. You will get a bigger financial picture when you use the more advanced mortgage calculators.

Save time and learn the best way to calculate a mortgage payment from your own home. For more, visit http://www.MortgageLoans-101.com where you’ll find this and plenty more on your mortgage loan needs.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adam_Hefner

It seems everyone is getting in on this thing called Earth Hour. It was a stunning participatory success when it was tried in 2008. But did it really hit home? Did it change people’s attitudes? I wonder… I got a lot of comments from people who asked me why I was not participating in it last year.

Well. Why? Because I already did my part last year. We cut our electricity usage from an average of NT$3650 per month to about NT$2650 in the space of 18 months. And we’re trying to figure out how we can reduce more without impacting our business.

We replaced several older computers with higher power requirements with lower power Asus Eee Boxes, and a newish PC and a notebook. We only have one remaining PC that is less energy friendly. All our monitors have been replaced with LCD types as well. It’s difficult to estimate how much wattage we cut: but it’s easily 50%.

We cut our wattage on spotlights alone from over 450 watts to just under 300 watts. I’m planning to switch totally to LEDs when the technology is ready. But spotlights like the LEDs tend to be very weak in light output. But this is a fast changing market… so it’s likely I’ll replace them all within 3 months. This is a huge saving on carbons since we use these lights almost 7 hours every day.

The one big kicker for our fuel bills was replacing two aging AC units, both of which were old, inefficient and difficult to repair. We opted for a more expensive variable motor type instead of the traditional on-off type unit and the energy savings have been substantial on these two units. The only downside with those units is that the external power units are larger than traditional ones making for space problems for us. We still run four traditional smaller units, but we’ve already decided when we purchase new ones what kind we’ll choose.

All of our school lighting has been replaced with fluorescent tubes or CFL quite a while ago (there were a few recalcitrant bulbs that managed to escape the first round of replacments).

For a minor inconvenience, a few complaints about lighting (which we rearranged), we’ve saved nearly 1/3rd of our energy bill over 2005. It’s difficult to predict the patterns for 2009 yet as some of the equipment is still new. But there could still be additional energy savings.

We will replace our spotlights in the next few months with LEDs to cut an additional 150 watts or more, we will replace one PC for sure, and we’re considering re-engineering the lighting for the classrooms. That alone will be the biggest challenge: each classroom has 16 to 24 strips of fluorescent tubes each burning 18w. We’re loathe to replace these with CFL because it will make the classrooms feel darker. Our main office area is lit with 8 CFLs at 22 watts and that is bright enough, so we could use that model for the classrooms. So there is room for improvement there.

One of the other big changes was turning off the water heater for the drinks unit: it had a lower power chiller for cold water, and a higher power (900 watts!) for hot water. We simply substituted a traditional kettle. And to think we used to leave that machine on all day and night.

So, why wait till Earth Hour to turn off your lights for one hour? You can save that energy every day by being smart. And your wallet will thank you, too.

This is my personal credit card report which highlights my spending for this month. In fact, I have two credit cards: One of which I use primarily for online transactions courtesy of Shanghai Bank, and one for general use courtesy of Taishin Bank.

Be CAREFUL with your Cards

With the second one, we had a bit of a fuss this month. I had just finished upgrading the server at school, when I decided to replace one of the staff computers, too. It was partly to save money on electricity that we switched to low power computers and to save carbon (specifically, the Asus Eee Ebox 202 series, which is a fine complement for teachers in our school).

So I ordered an extra computer from our local supplier. It came, and I took out my credit card to pay the bill. No success. Tried again. Turned out the credit card had been canceled and that it had been fraudulently used abroad somewhere towards the end of 2008. Since I hadn’t noticed any odd transactions, I can only assume that the anti-fraud measures banks use had been successful in preventing the abuse of the card.

I’m still surprised that it happened. The gentleman at Taihsin International Bank was surprisingly polite and efficient. I had my new cards within just a few days, and was able to use them again. But I still have no idea when or how my card details were skimmed. I have checked my PCs for viruses and bugs and other nasties. All of them are totally clean. My only guess is that someone skimmed the details when I was in the UK, perhaps with a small hand scanner, at one of the hotels or restaurants or stores I went to.

This month’s report. Anyway.

Personal Shopping Purchases

1. For school, we bought several memory cards which were unbelievably cheap (2 cards at about NT$200 each for 2MB), a PC computer extension cord with lots of extra sockets, and a USB socket charger for the wife so she can charge her MP3 player without worrying about access to a PC. That cost NT$2477 in total.
2. The mobile phone bill was for two months at NT$376. Google AdWords was NT$8. I pretty much stopped my campaigns for the time being as the clickthroughs were really bad for both my personal sites and my business sites. In fact, the visitors clicking through were just bad quality.
3. We also paid our car insurance again this year for NT$3864: of course on the form that we received we noted that our car had devalued again! It’s quite surprising how F-A-S-T an NT$500K car becomes only NT$200K. And our regular payment of NT$2000 was also made as usual.
4. The biggest shopping purchase damage in January was our trip to Mitsuokoshi at Taipei 101 right at the end of December. Christine bought ear-rings for herself and her sister at NT$4480, and two pairs of shoes that she really liked which cost NT$6552.

Business Purchases

1. With the most recent set of fusses at the Server, I started migrating my domain registrations from Dreamhost to NameCheap. It has cost quite a lot of additional money to do this as I had to pay additional registration fees for extending the registration period. Given that I now control over 20 domains, you can imagine. Fortunately, NameCheap has been running special offers for domain transfers (US$7.99 for the first year). I have to say that I have been solidly impressed with the quality of the help and service I have received from NameCheap. It has been absolutely outstanding as they have dealt with three queries of mine: billing, DNS issues and non-transferred domains. On each occasion, the issue was satisfied. Good service. Damage to my wallet: NT$3241. I know there is at least one other bill coming for about NT2500 as well in February.
2. Dreamhost bills came up twice in December for December and November: total NT$1181 which included one domain renewal. There was another NT$101 for something that I can’t quite remember. I’m still checking what that was for. In fact, that was a payment to Scratchback. I had about US$15.00 in their system that had sat for months. I decided to stop using the widget on my blogs, so to get the money out, I bought a slot myself with one paypal address. And then I was able to withdraw the amount as it met the minimum required. It did cost me a little, but I figured it was better than letting the money sit in Jim Krukal’s Paypal account.
3. A New Theme: I promised a new theme for InvestorBlogger for 2009. And indeed I purchased the theme for InvestorBlogger (to be revealed) at about the same that this server was attacked and it was useless. I implemented it on EeeBlogger for a while, and discovered that there were some issues with the premium theme I bought. I’m still hoping to use it on InvestorBlogger soon, but implementation is a real pain. NT$2385.
4. Database and Scanner: Our business (a language school) decided to start categorizing and organizing the books we have for children to read. In other words, we felt we should have some facilities to start a small lending library. So we purchased software and a hand scanner to start cataloguing the books. We’re hoping to find out how many books we have, how much we spent on them, and have facilities to keep tabs on the books, too. Perhaps I’ll review the software one day. NT$2719.

Final Note: I use Paypal a lot for my online purchases, it’s pretty handy. But it’s difficult to keep tabs on what money goes out and how. So I’ve opted to use one account for money received, and one for purchases only. It hasn’t quite worked out like that yet. But it’s getting there.

Oh, and I earned a little cashback on one of the cards: NT$46.00. There were no penalties, no interest charges, or other surprises, and the total amount owed on each card WILL be paid in full. But I stupidly let over 4000 bonus points expire without using them. What a shame. I just noticed that they expired on the last day of January. Oh, well.

With Christmas just around the corner, it’s getting tough in this economic environment to justify spending a lot of money on anything other than the essentials: rent, food, fuel and clothes. With Christmas just a short month of shopping days left, parents everywhere are scratching their heads wondering what gifts are affordable and desirable for their kids.

One Christmas my parents bought me a toy called FlightDeck. I wonder if anyone remembers that! The object was to land a plastic aircraft via a pulley system on the deck of an aircraft carrier. I loved it, and it was no doubt fairly expensive. But it suffered three main flaws: it was pricey, it was easily broken, and its play value was limited. In fact, I broke on Boxing Day, and couldn’t play with it after that! I was sorry, and never told my parents.

It’s not a mistake I would repeat on buying presents for any kids of mine! I’ll always try to find toys that have extended play value, such as Lego, Games, etc… One such toy that is perpetually popular: cars for the little boys. If I was able to play ‘secret santa’ to some little boys in our school, I’d be heading for the toy car section in the local department store looking for popular models or familiar models.

I was enchanted especially with the character cars from the movie created by Pixar. This set provides three vehicles for kids to play with as they recreate and relive the scene from the movie “Cars”. Of course, my own favorite has to be Lightning McQueen, but that’s a personal favorite.

For the little girls, perhaps a disney figurine would be great, too. Either way, perhaps the easiest way to a kid’s heart this Christmas is to buy them a gift that helps them to rediscover their innate imagination and story telling skills (or yours!). Three simple cars, like this, can recreate hundreds of variations on the scenes in Cars. Who knows? Perhaps they’ll be able to play with them even when some of the parts have gone missing, or the toys are broken.

Whatever gifts you choose, especially from a store like Mega Brands Toys, you’ll find that the play value will far exceed the monetary value.

When we were away on our travels, we really had a good time, and we found that Taiwan is really a place for enjoying yourself. For better or worse, we used our credit cards to pay the hotel fees. It was just so much more convenient and we’ll earn the points.

But I failed to have a great system for recording these expenses. I read about using Google Docs to create an expense list from somewhere. So I decided to see what I could create in a few minutes. Surprisingly it was easy.

Google Docs now allows users to create forms. Sign into Google, click on Google Docs and on the right hand side you’ll see a short menu that allows you to create four types of documents. Click on the ‘New’ tab. You’ll see the first item is called ‘Forms’. When you click on that, you’ll be taken to a simple form that is populated with the first item already.

Try it out for yourself or read my full post. As you approach a major spending time, such as summer travel or Christmas, this can be a great way to monitor your spending. You’ll find the tool quite easy to use. For more, read this post on Google Docs and Forms.

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Well, it is true,… all good things must come to an end, and just as I ended the summer in Hyde Park in London, then came back to Taiwan… so the last of my summer trip bills are coming due. And the total damage isn’t pretty. So here goes…

The bill can be divided into three sections: vacation spending, online expenses, and regular bills.

Vacation Spending

I stayed at a little guest house near Toll Bridge in Southern Scotland; then I stayed at the Hanover Hotel in Edinburgh, Ardoe House Hotel in Aberdeen, and finally in Imperial College London. The total damage for each of these places was NT$18,418. Each of the locations was notable for something; but the highlight had to be staying in Imperial College London, which was located so close to Hyde Park, Harrods and the price was amazing. I found at least two of these places courtesy of LateRooms.com.

I also bought a few other items over that period including: a router for Mother which I couldn’t really install properly – NT$1984; a pair of shoes from Marks&Spencer in Inverness – NT$1762; gasoline (wow! That was expensive) – NT$2900; Internet – NT$599 from T Mobile; a cup of coffee at Hong Kong International Airport at 9am on the way back… I couldn’t find any money in a currency I could pay with (no reminbi, US$, HK$ or S$…) so I paid by credit card – NT$165. Grand Total: NT$7410.

Regular Bills

We also paid our life insurance term – NT$2000; a mobile phone bill – NT$1970; and a trip to Carrefour for shopping – NT$585. Total NT$4555.

Online Spending

Curiously there was some online spending too. I paid for writers to produce some work for this site, and for an upcoming Dow Jones website which cost about NT$2199. I also paid NT$95 for Google Advertising. Total NT$2294.

There were also several credits to my account of about NT$155 and for some reason, I wasn’t charged any interest on the outstanding NT$444 that I didn’t pay off last month by mistake.

I also purchased several things on my secondary credit card including renting a car from Hertz and purchasing airline tickets courtesy of BMI both of which were quite expensive… but BMI was well worth the cost as I was able to buy return tickets from London to Edinburgh for about NT$6766. The Hertz Rental car was easy drive (if French!) and I rented it for about 9 days, so the total was NT$25,168 for that.

Total Cost of the Holiday Trip

I can now calculate the cost of my trip:

Airline Tickets: NT$50,766
Car Rental: NT$25,168
Hotels: NT$18,418
Expenses from September: NT$16,438
Cash: NT$31350 (est. because of fluctuating exchange rates).

So the total cost of my trip was NT$145,000. Wow! I had hoped to keep it under control, too. Perhaps the biggest expense was the car rental because of the cost of gasoline. Overall it cost about 1/3 of the total expense.

I was privileged to be able to stay with family and friends around the UK, so whenever possible, I would treat them to meals in restaurants as a way to say ‘thank you’. It’s also a much more relaxed way to visit friends and family! It also helped to cut the cost of travel.

While I feel sad that I had to dip so much into our family’s savings to do this, it was necessary because I hadn’t seen family for three years. They live in the north of Scotland, making additional travel expensive, inconvenient and tiring. It was well worth the expense, and I thoroughly benefited from the trip. I’m so glad to reconnect with people, so it was WELL worth the expense.

Now that I’ve established how much it cost to visit the UK, it has me wondering if there are any ways to defray such costs by finding ways to make money while traveling. Could this be the subject of another post?

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Having two or more systems

We’ve all been using one system as our main tool to play, work, do banking, write reports, … etc.. for a number of years now, but slowly I’m coming to the realization: this is not the most secure way to handle things, if you download a new game or driver, you risk compromising not just your games by inadvertently installing spyware or a worm or a virus, but also you also expose your entire online or virtual life. Perhaps even your personal identity is at risk, too!

So, buy two PCs.

Separating your PCs may be the simplest and most effective way, though, to prevent data breaches: for example, use one PC for general browsing and one PC for secure browsing only (not email). The primary machine you can use for non-secure transactions and every day life, while the secondary PC is set up for your financial and personal information (like wills, finances, reports..) ONLY. Just make sure you don’t logon to your personal information on the primary system!

Virtual or REAL PC?

With windows, it’s possible (though tricky) to install an entirely new partition of Windows on your disk. So it is possible to set up a ‘virtual PC’ … in fact, Microsoft have been giving away versions of its own Virtual PC. You may get away with installing a virtual PC INSIDE your current PC. Both of these are affordable, and viable, ways to handle your data, though neither of these is as absolutely secure as purchasing a second machine.

If you purchase a secondary machine (for financial reasons), you will need to make sure that you can isolate the computer in a number of ways:

1. Add only the MINIMUM of software you need to access and use your financial data – secure browser, any banking software and security protocols, a version of OFFICE (or whatever), AV software, and anti-spyware software, too. Avoid using email on this system (though browser-based email may be okay) to remove the risk of infected attachments getting on your system.
2. Avoid networking the system with other computers in your home, so you can avoid infiltration from another system that is already compromised, (if you can). You may still need to share the internet connection, though, so you will need to arrange a suitable firewall.
3. Make sure that other people in your house DO NOT and CANNOT use the system for OTHER purposes. Ensure that they understand this PC is ONLY for financial and personal information. Do not be tempted to let them use it for anything else.
4. You will need to make sure that there few ways to put data on the system to minimize possible transmission routes: Avoid getting a CD-Rom if possible, a 3.5″ disk or similar device. Restrict yourself to data forms that you are sure are already secure, if you decide to use portable media. Of course, minimizing the media options will also cause you inconvenience when it comes to backing up data.
5. Keeping your PC uptodate with patches and updates will be a somewhat inconvenient and necessary step, too, for all OSes. Believing that you have Linux or Mac so you’re safe will simply expose you to more risks. All systems are vulnerable. PERIOD.

I haven’t done this myself as my machines seem to be fairly clean of viruses and spyware, and have been for some time. But perhaps this is just false confidence. It would be too late to purchase a system AFTER my data has been compromised.

One possible and affordable solution is buying one of the new netbooks that are on the market: Asus Eee PC, Acer AspireOne, or any of a dozen other pretenders. This might save you buying a whole new expensive desktop, can be filed away easiy (out of sight!) and is easily portable or storable.

What suggestions do you have for securing your data? Have you taken this route? Let me know…

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Ah! I have to share with you my biggest failing… it has to be ‘carelessness’… And I’ll share with you why I think so…

When I bought my little portable PC, the Aspire One in the UK, I was very careful to make sure that I had all the documentation for a tax refund. The ACER Aspire One was purchased in John Lewis in Welwyn Garden City for GBP299.00 of which I was entitled to a tax refund of approximately GBP20.00 (it’s not a lot, granted, but anything to reduce that credit card bill that is staring at me!).

Well, I lost the paper work, I also lost several other sets of paperwork, after carefully keeping them for three weeks on numerous flights and in lots of different places. Last weekend, I reminded myself that I had to go to the post office, and promptly didn’t go. After that, the paperwork just vanished without a trace. Of course, I could have just filed the paperwork in the UK, as I intended to do, but I procrastinated going to the post office, made all sorts of excuses, and finally I lost the paperwork.

Were this the first time, I would’ve been more forgiving of myself but it’s not? I’ve lost items and documents frequently, including…

• 1. leaving my bag with money OUTSIDE all night;
• 2. throwing my passport in the toilet;
• 3. losing my bankbook(s) more than twice;
• 4. losing my ATM cards more than three times;
• 5. lost several wallets; and much more…

I’ve tried all manner of ways to compensate for my own carelessness, including making a much bigger effort to organize myself, file papers and documents properly, and keep money properly… but the systems usually breakdown when I don’t follow it properly for whatever moment of inattention I am prone to. It’s at that point that things go awry. I’m much better organized than before, but still the effort I put into organising my bag hasn’t been successful, so…

When you know your weaknesses, it’s best to work out ways to compensate for them before they become a problem, especially if you can’t fix them!

Have you a ‘financial weakness’? How does it affect your life? What did you learn about yourself because of it?

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Yes, after all the turmoil in the markets, I reached a decision. I have decided to blog about my finances in more detail. While the exact extent is uncertain at the moment, I have decided that I need to track the performance of my investments more regularly.

A step back in time!

In truth, I’ve been keeping (initially monthly but now quarterly) updates for more than 10 years anyway. I can trace the finances all the way back to about 1995 when I had just got married. In those days, the record keeping was pretty unsophisticated, but I did use Microsoft Works 3.0 to tote up my assets.

I think it was around the time of the 1996 Taiwan Straits missile crisis that focused my mind on how much money we didn’t have. While things were pretty tense here, it made me realize how important having some cash in the bank was. Shortly after that, I set aside nearly HK$10,000 in a bank account that earned a pitiful amount of interest for quite some time, but at least the money was there, for an emergency.

High or Low? Which figure?

Let’s take a look shall we! We had $66,000 or thereabouts actually in the bank, I also held about NT$7000 in HK$, an outstanding (but never repaid) loan of NT$25000 which I subsequently wrote off, and NT$75,000 from a hui (read more about a Taiwanese ‘hui’). Overall, I would say that this was a pretty optimistic statement because it counted approximately NT$100K of assets that weren’t in my control! This was about US$6300 (at US$:NT$ 27.43167 – an average for that month) or about US$2670 at the more conservative ‘unkind’ evaluation!

Any guesses on what the current figures are? When did you start doing your Net Worth Statements?

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There are many reasons why the markets are tumbling right now, and poor lending choices are one of the culprits. If your credit ratings have been affected by the turmoil, you may need to spend quite a bit of time, money and personal energy restoring your credit record through credit repair efforts and renewed borrowing. If you are considering bad credit credit cards from sites such as BadCreditOffers (which provide links to different types of cards, different rates and conditions), I would caution you:

1. Know the Credit Card Interest Rates

Rates for most credit cards are typically between 10%~20%, but can go much higher depending on the card, the agreement, and the penalties. Know this and understand this. Don’t be fooled by “Intro APRs”, “Low Rates”, Freebies, or Minimum Payments. Always know the full rate, work out how much you would have to pay at that rate, and calculate how much interest you would pay over 12 months on a typical amount for your own budget. Oh, and beware those N/A statements. Know why they say “N/A”!

2. Read the Agreement before you sign!

Make sure you read the agreement, esp. if you are going to use the card a lot. Make sure that you understand what penalties may be applied, what rights you have under the agreement, and who you need to contact if you have problems. If you don’t understand the agreement, don’t sign it until you are happy that you do. Find someone who can explain it to you.

3. Check those Statements carefully!

When you get your card, keep it safely along with a record of your usage of the card. Then make sure you check those statements carefully each month. Check off each item as it appears and query any that are incorrect. Then make the payment before the due date to avoid penalties.

I am thankful that I can read my statements (even though they are in a language I’m not competent at), I do have someone who can understand the agreement, and I religiously check each and every statement. It really helps to keep tabs on your credit cards and your usage patterns. But I’m assuming you already do that, don’t you?

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