Finance Tips

When you are putting together a short sale package, here are the essential pieces to the package: 

Authorization to Release – This gives the lender permission from the borrower to talk to you.
Hardship Letter – This is a letter from the borrower to the lender briefly explaining their situation.  Preferably, this is legibly handwritten.  It should only be 5-7 paragraphs and should be written as if the borrower is asking a friend for a favor.  Loss Mitigators are people and ‘dumping on’ them is not a good method to get their approval of your settlement package.
Financial Statement – Often, the lender has a specific version of this form.  Use the lender’s when possible.  This is just a overview of the borrower’s income, expenses, assets and liabilities.
Recent Pay-stubs – The lender wants to see proof of the current income of the borrower to determine if payments could be made.  Usually, the last 2 pay periods are sufficient.
Recent Bank Statements – The lender wants to see proof of the cash assets of the borrower.  Usually the last 2 months of statements is sufficient.
Recent Tax Returns – The lender wants to see what the borrower has reported to the IRS for income and expenses.  Usually, the last 2 years of returns is sufficient.
Purchase Contract – This is the contract that describes the purchase of the house.  Obviously, the purchase price is going to be less than the amount owed or it wouldn’t be considered a short sale.  There may also be ‘seller’ concessions that the lender will need to pay – resulting in a smaller payoff.  The contract should be signed by both the sellers and buyers and should have a clause that says it is ‘subject to lender approval’.  This clause protects the seller from being forced to sell at the specified price when a lender rejects the offer (the seller would need to make up the difference at closing).
HUD – This is the settlement statement that shows the expenses of closing and the eventual payoffs that the lender will receive.  The HUD will need to show that the seller will receive ZERO dollars at closing.

These are the essential pieces of the short sale package.  Remember that the lender is being asked to ‘take a hit’, so they will want to make sure that they are not the only ones doing so.  The lender will not want the borrower to walk away with a lot of resources – cash in the bank, lots of extra income, possibly retirement accounts.

Also remember that a short sale is an agreement between the borrower (seller) and the lender for the lender to take less than a full payoff.  Any misrepresentations in the package may be considered mortgage fraud.

The truth is email-based marketing is more competitive compared to a few years ago. People are bombarded with email solicitations all the time, probably just as much as they have been with junk mail. Email marketing is still effective and the challenge these days is to provide value to potential customers. What we mean is build a relationships first, then present your sale items later on.

The question most asked is, why build a list of subscribers?

How often do people buy things over the internet cold? The answer is not to often. When you are marketing online you are selling a product or a service, the conversion rates are very low when it comes to first time sales. The reason you need to build a list is for branding and repeat sales.

Another way to look at it is a customer makes a one time purchase and in most cases you never see them again, building a subscriber list solves this problem. Your conversion rates go way up if you take the time to build a relationship with your customer.

We already have the proof from other internet marketers that list building payoffs in the long run. For example: If we take the subject of personal development, there is a long list of things you can offer a customer. If you try to sell a first time buyer this list chances are you might make a sale or two, but that’s it. On the other hand once you build trust with that person, once you helped them, the chances are much better that they will purchase more of your products over the years to come.

This is a much better business model if you are looking for long term income.

Business is all about building relationships and networking. The technical side is easy, you need an autoresponder service. Once this is in place you need an offer, maybe a free e-book which you will give your subscriber once they give you their email and name.

Once you have your database of potential customers built you send them more information concerning the subject matter they are interested in. This process builds trust, after a few weeks you will slowly introduce your product and work with your list from there.

You list will become an asset, you will have no worries about SEO or Google rankings, this is how a list works.

You Need a Free Offer – As mentioned this can be an e-book. Make the contents valuable, make it pertinent to what your potential customer wants.

Your autoresponder service will provide you with options to customize your subscription form, make this a Grab Their Attention type of form. Place it where it can’t be missed.

Be Patient – Don’t be to quick to sell someone. Build trust first and you will have customers that will by from you for life.

Building a list has been used and will continue to be used as a very successful way to make online income. The reason is customers are your business, without them there is no business and trust is at the center of being a successful internet marketer.

When the time comes for you to recommend your own product, or an affiliates product, the conversion will be much better with a list that trusts you. You can make a very good living online when you do this right, this has helped me tremendously in my business and I’m sure it will help you in yours too.

A personal financial budget is a money allocation plan which is part of your financial plan enabling you to outline your financial goals. Establishing a personal financial budget is not difficult and has tremendous payoffs. You can better establish and regulate your financial resources, set and achieve your financial objectives, and make advance decisions as to how you want your finances best to function for you.

The main idea in creating a personal financial budget is to put aside a certain amount of money for expected as well as unexpected costs, based on previous expenses and bills, as well as define savings amounts in its optimal state. It therefore enables you to position yourself to build wealth in the long-term. In order to create a useful personal financial budget as part personal financial planning you must do the following:

Step 1. Determine how to allocate your compensation by first identifying your spending habits. Define fixed expenses (e.g., home, auto, utilities, insurances, etc.) thoroughly for a month and write everything down and add it all up. Even if your utilities fluctuate a little you can estimate the cost after an average month. Through proper determination of your “spending patterns”, you can immediately identify solutions for creating an effective personal financial budget for your needs.

For instance, when you have a steady monthly net income (after tax take home pay) of $5,000, you should subtract all of your identified monthly expenses from that income – making a list of the regular monthly amounts. Spreadsheets are often useful for keeping track of this information. Many people often create an excel spreadsheet budget to track expenses. There can be benefits to creating multiple year personal financial budget plans.

Step 2. Next, assess other bills, like those that may occur periodically during the year. These can be estimated and then subtracted from the amount of your income. You have one of two ways of doing this. The first way is to compute the total for a year, divide the total by 12, and subtract that monthly amount by putting the money into savings to build until you need it. The second way is if you have enough surplus you can just budget the full annual, semiannual, or other bill in full or in some other payment arrangement.

Step 3. The balance that remained after fixed costs can now be budgeted across miscellaneous household expenses and savings. Budgeting for savings is often overlooked and therefore often will not get done. A short-term 2-5 year savings goal needs a minimum 2-year personal financial budget plan so you can see where you are going. A short-term impulse buying view is often what prevents people from accumulating savings and building wealth.

Step 4. To best determine how to ensure you contribute to savings, you can do this one of two ways. You could use dollar amounts for a group call miscellaneous like gas, clothing, entertainment and groceries. Some people promote using proportions or percentages. But think about it, if your income increases, does that mean your miscellaneous expenses should or should your savings increase instead? So, using dollar amounts instead of percentages could be advantageous to your savings goal.

Step 5. Ideally you have a minimum of 3 cash or banking accounts. These expenses should be allocated across 2 checking accounts – the first for paying bills and for transferring money to at least a second checking account and one savings account ( if you do not have direct deposit across all of these accounts). The second checking account would be for your household, miscellaneous, spending money and not the recurring bills. Then a third short-term savings/emergency account (later adding longer-term savings accounts of course) but these are beginning steps that many people never put into practice.

These are ways to establish a basic financial plan and to prevent usage of non-allocated money for miscellaneous or impulse expenses. These are beginning steps that many people never put into practice that are beneficial and can be built upon, for long-term financial planning.

When homeowners are attempting to put together some plan to save their homes, one of the key pieces of information they need to gather is how much they owe the bank in total. Without knowing this figure, it will be impossible to refinance the house, sell for a reasonable price and not owe anything later on, or even put together a short sale with an investor.

The best way for homeowners to get a payoff figure is to request the figure specifically from the lender or its attorneys. That will give them the most updated information on how much is currently needed to satisfy the mortgage in full and stop foreclosure. Payoff statements usually have a “good through” date of up to thirty days on them, and an estimated “per diem” interest charge for every day after the payoff expires.

In addition to requesting a payoff statement from the mortgage company, there are a few other ways for owners to get a rough idea about how much the bank is asking for, but these will not be as accurate. Out of date payoff statements, monthly mortgage balance statements, and public records searches can be useful tools to provide estimates if the lender is not being responsive to requests for updated payoffs.

Out of date payoff figures can give homeowners a very good idea of how much the bank will be looking for in the future to pay off the mortgage, but even a per diem interest charge will leave out other potential future charges. Attorneys fees may increase, or the bank may add a property tax payment of several thousand dollars to the total payoff, which may drastically increase the amount needed to stop foreclosure by paying the loan in full. If the statement is not too far out of date, though, it may be a good estimate of the current due.

Many homeowners still receive a bill every month from their mortgage company that indicates the total amount due on the loan. Usually this is just a balance of the total amount of principal left to pay off and does not include late fees, interest charges on late payments, and the attorney and court costs involved in the foreclosure process. A monthly balance statement should probably never be relied on for any actual payoff numbers, but they are useful resources for bank contact numbers which can be used to get a more accurate payoff, if nothing else.

One final way to get an estimate of the total amount owed on a mortgage is to search the public records in the county in which the property is located. Usually, the history of the mortgages/deeds of trust will be available online (or the owners or any other interested party can just call the county recorder and request the information), which will tell them when the homeowners got each mortgage and how much it was originally for. Again, this will not include changes from the time the mortgage was issued, including the charges listed in the previous paragraph and any payments the homeowners made on the loan.

Searching the title will also give homeowners, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, or potential investors a good idea if there are more liens than just the first mortgage. The bank may be willing to take less on a short sale, for example, but if the owners or investors have to come up with more money to pay property taxes, and more to pay off a second mortgage, and more to pay IRS liens, and more to pay utilities liens, then there is a strong possibility they will not end up with a very good deal that will stop foreclosure. Of course, investors could negotiate down these liens as well, but that’s more time spent dealing with lenders who may not cooperate in the end.

In any event, if the bank is still able to provide payoff statements on a mortgage, that means the homeowners are still living in the house and it has not been sold at the sheriff sale yet. The best bet for anyone interested in helping foreclosure victims or buying foreclosed houses may be simply to ask the current owners to request a payoff from their mortgage company. They can give anyone they like a copy and any parties interested in working with homeowners will have the information they need to make an offer or work on paying off the loan and ending the foreclosure.

Each and every sporadic piece of gem has its own interesting history behind its origin. And this mysterious history makes it more valuable and attention-grabbing. There are many snooping people who want to know about the quite exciting past behind the Blood Diamondand African diamond mines. Its history says that a young boy Stephanus Erasmus found it first at theDeKalk farm, in South Africa. He had given it to his neighbor Schalk Van Niekerk, whose hobby was to collect rare stones. He gave it to a traveler and he passed it to the magistrate, Boyes. In 1867, this stone was displayed in Paris at the World Fair and declared as a diamond and named it ‘Eureka’ .And it was the beginning of a black history of Blood Diamond and African diamond mines.

A popular movie, Blood Diamond was also based on the secret behind its beginning which it shared with all gem-lovers.

This movie showed the illegal trading of Blood Diamonds in Africa and how it was accountable for a immense terrorization. As it is said that a large pink diamond was discovered by a fisherman while working as a slave in a rebel- controlled diamond mine in Sierra Leone in 1990. That pink fine diamond altered and finishes many lives. The origin of Blood Diamond has a strong social message that how a mineral resource can fuel the subjugation and carnage of people. Unearthing of Blood Diamond repeated the history related to derivation of ivory and gold in Africa.

Blood Diamond is also renowned as Conflict Diamond. Blood Diamond and African diamond mine has a strong bonding. It is produced in mines controlled by rebel forces and they sell these diamonds, and the money they get from it, is used to securing arms to make their military strong.

Its name also has a history behind it as huge sum of money is at pole and payoffs, fears, and slaughter are modes of operation. As it is an expensive gem stone, many people had lost their lives to being a milliner. So, it is also said to be a beautiful killer that is related to a certain level of bloodshed.

Most of the supplies of these Blood Diamonds are from Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as from Angola and Ivory Coast. The UN and other social groups requisite to ban the trade of these Blood Diamonds as they are becoming an excessive menace to lives of many people. They all want to force a government certification, known as the Kimberly Process to certify all rough diamond exports through valid mining and trades activity. The United Nation has taken a strong step to ban the illegal trade of Blood Diamonds by African diamond mines.

By knowing this obscure history behind this lovely precious stone, we come to learn that every diamond is not forever and a token of love and peace.