Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Plan For the Life You Want

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May 13th, 2012

It is possible to plan for all of life’s eventualities, including the unforeseeable.

“Money doesn’t create happiness. It can provide you with temporary happiness, but lasting happiness comes from what you do with your life,” Craig Torr says. As we age, we tend to want to do things rather than to buy things, he says. Financial planning is about living a great life and not just about making a good living. You choose the life you want to live, and your choices affect how you live at every stage of life, he says.

Planning ahead

The foreseeable includes buying a house or starting a family: children will fall sick and they have to be educated, so it is imperative to have medical cover and to save for their education, he says. The unforeseeable, such as untimely death, disability or contracting a serious illness calls for more complex planning, Torr says. Here you need to consider how much life cover, health insurance gap cover and income protection will be enough. To do this, meaning to cover your risks and protect your assets sufficiently, you need to understand your assets. Torr says assets fall broadly into four categories:

Assets

Business assets: These are not just the tools of your trade, but essentially the skills you use to earn an income. These assets fund your lifestyle and lifetime assets.
Lifestyle assets: These include your home, motor vehicle, holidays and “toys” such as a bicycle or camera equipment.
Lifetime assets: These are your investments, including shares, retirement funds, unit trusts or an investment property. These assets generate an income for you and are used to fund your retirement.
Surplus assets: These are assets that you do not need to maintain your lifestyle, what you may have inherited or plan to bequeath to charity.

Planning

Planning for both untimely death and eventual death is a critical aspect of your financial plan, Torr says. This is all the more important if you are married and the family is reliant on both your income and your spouse’s, he says. Traditionally, financial planners would assess your risk, by establishing your tolerance for risk through a risk profile questionnaire, and then selecting asset classes accordingly.

Post-retirement

A new and better planning approach is to start with the post-retirement lifestyle that you want to live, Torr says. Your chosen lifestyle will determine the investment returns that you need to achieve. The returns you need to achieve will drive the asset allocation that is required, Torr says. And your asset allocation will determine your risk profile. Some trade-off may then be required if the level of risk required is not one you can tolerate.

Retirement decisions

If you are unhappy with your retirement plan, you have only four choices, Torr says. You can:

Delay retirement;
Save more before retirement;
Spend less in retirement; and
Take more investment risk.

Retirees run out of money because they:

Do not have a game plan.
Make bad financial decisions.
Underestimate how long they will live.
Retire too early.
Over-spend.

Tags: Financial planning, Investments, Retirement, Savings
Posted in Advance Cash Loan, Assurance / Insurance, Business, Economy, Finance, Personal / Internet | No Comments »

We Are Living In the ‘Sail Age’

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May 11th, 2012

Awash with romance in a new age of sail

If you reach into your pockets you too can experience the luxury of a super-yacht worthy of an oligarch in the Mediterranean. In an age of mega-size cruise liners, there are some ships that still resemble ocean-going vessels rather than floating hotels. Perhaps the most romantic are masted sailing yachts, which offer the charms of a relaxed, intimate atmosphere and the ability to moor in small harbors or drop anchor in secluded coves.

Want to sail away from the crowds…

Budding sea dogs might want to sail the Med on Star Clippers’ five-masted Royal Clipper, where you can volunteer to help hoist the sails or climb a mast. A four-night cruise from Civitavecchia, the port that serves Rome, takes you to Corsica to moor overnight, Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda and finally to Elba, where Napoleon was briefly held captive.

Automated sails

On the three yachts of Windstar Cruises, there’s no need for anyone, crew or passengers, to climb the rigging: the sails are fully automated. The sleek part-yacht, part-cruise ships have a casual dress code and the mood is laid-back luxury. Wind Star – one of the two smaller vessels, with just 74 cabins – has a six-night cruise from Rome to Barcelona departing on July 15, costing from $1,500 per person. You’ll call at Elba, Porto Vecchio in Corsica, Alghero in Sardinia and Palma de Mallorca. Alternatively, you can head to the Baltic Sea on the magnificent, five-masted Wind Surf, one of the two largest sail cruise ships in the world, on a week’s cruise from Oslo to Stockholm leaving July 27.

Copenhagen

It stays overnight at Copenhagen and calls at Rugen in Germany – where you can see spectacular white chalk cliffs that flank one of the two national parks, and also the Danish island of Bornholm, with its dramatic landscapes and historic buildings. The cost is from $1,200 per person. Built as the identical twin to Wind Surf, Club Med 2 sails on a variety of itineraries around the Eastern Mediterranean for the French holiday company. A seven-night cruise from Bodrum to Athens costs from $1,500 per person.

The French option

A French option for lovers of Gallic chic is the Compagnie de Ponant fleet. Le Ponant is a three-masted sailing yacht for 64 passengers. The company also operates L’Austral, a new ultra-smart super-yacht launched last year. It has 132 cabins and suites. A week aboard Le Ponant sailing from Nice on July 7 to St Tropez and western Corsica costs from $1,500 per person, and a ten-night cruise on L’Austral from Venice to Croatia and Montenegro sailing on August 10 is from $1,750 per person. The price includes 150 Euros per person onboard credit.

Mega-yachts

On glamorous twin mega-yachts SeaDream I and II, there are plenty of attractions to lure you out of your luxury cabins. In the evening you can go to sleep on deck in a ‘Balinese dream bed’. SeaDream say their itineraries visit the intimate ports, harbors and yachting playgrounds larger ships cannot reach. A week sailing from Dubrovnik to Venice on SeaDream I, departing August 4, is from $2,300 per person including tips and open bar.

Posted in Business, Economy, Finance, Personal / Internet, Technology, Travel | No Comments »

Someone Out There Is Waiting For You to Drop Your Vigilance

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May 9th, 2012

A stolen credit card is better than cash

Online shopping, one of the latest innovations to society has opened many new doors both to serious shoppers and to serious thieves. It highlights the importance of protecting your credit card. The responsibility lies with credit card holders to safeguard their credit cards. Here is a list of "do’s and don’ts" to safeguard your credit card.

Basic Tips

Never allow anyone else to use your card.

Never write your personal identification number (PIN) on your credit card.

Do not give any credit card information to individuals soliciting sales over the phone.

Do not sign a blank charge slip; draw a line through the lines above the total amount and destroy any carbon and canceled receipts immediately.

Do not leave expired cards lying around.

When buying things online, generate a one-time-use virtual credit card number.

Never leave your card lying around. If someone were to slip in your home, it could put you into a large amount of debt.

Always make sure your credit card is with you at all times and that no-one knows where you leave it or what your pin is, this could tempt the person to take the card and use it for his own personal use.

Make sure you ask for references and information before you extend your card details to a company.

Calls

If you receive calls from a party claiming to be your card issuer and the caller asks for your account number, do not give it. If the call is from your card issuer, the caller would know your account number. If you ever doubt the caller, ask them to note the reason they are calling on your file and then return the call using the phone number on the back of your credit card.

Handing it over

Try not to hand your card over to anyone. This is not always possible. Take the restaurant: the waiter arrives with the check, you look at it and place your credit card on the little tray and he takes off, hopefully in the direction of the cashier, to print out your bill. When he comes back with the bill and your card, check to make sure that it is your card he is bringing you.

Watch the guy behind you in the line

That person behind you in line at the supermarket or ATM may just be another shopper, or they could be paying close attention to you in hopes of seeing your account balance or PIN. Shade the monitor area with your hand when typing in your PIN and try to block others’ view of the screen. It’s even a good idea to do this when no one is around; some thieves use binoculars or install cameras so they can watch you from far away. Last week my neighbor reported that after she had filled her car at a gas station, the person behind her filled his car on her account as well. There is no end to crime business development!

Tags: ATMs, Credit Cards, identity theft, Stolen credit cards
Posted in Bankruptcy, Business, Credit Cards, Finance, Identity Theft | No Comments »

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