Homes at Risk

There is a rather shocking story in the Times about a family who had never missed a mortgage payment, receiving a demand from teh Royal bank of Scotland to repay their mortgage within 30 days. They do have another loan secured on the property, but they told RBS about it when they took out their mortgage. The most likely reason their mortgage is being terminated is that RBS is not making much profit from their deal, where they pay 0.4% above bank base rate, which is 2%.

It turns out that most mortgages in the UK have a clause in them allowing the lender to demand repayment at short notice. The FT also reports that many flexible mortgages have a clause that allows the lender to demand higher payments if the customer's loan becomes more than 90% of teh property's value due to house price falls.

How can you take precautions for this sort of thing? There is no legal recourse, so the main way to deal with it is to remortgage. However, with property prices falling, if the equity in your house is less than 25% the value of your home, you will find it impossible to remortgage.

Try to build equity in your home by paying down the mortgage if your agreement allows you to without penalty. If your mortgage applies a penalty for overpayment, save money in a savings account, just in case, so that if the worst happens, you can remortgage with a smaller loan.

See the following article on Ways to Raise Money for ideas how to boost your income that you can sue to pay down debt.

Moth Traps

Certain moths, such as the Indian meal moth and Mediterranean flour moth are attracted to kitchens and storerooms where food is kept (particularly grains and flour), and will attack and ruin the food. The worst thing is that they lay eggs in the flour, and become an ongoing nuisance. It is possible to get rid of them easily using a pantry moth trap lined with sticky substance that will work for several months. Once the trap is full, simply dispose in the garbage.

Incentive to join Associated Content

Associated Content are currently offering an incentive to join them. If you submit five original articles (no creative writing or poetry allowed) to their exclusive channel before 31st December 2008, they will pay you a bonus of $10, in additional to their usual payments.

To read about how Associated Content works, click here. To join Associated Content, click here.

Ways to raise money

Need to raise money in a hurry? Perhaps to pay off the credit card balance, or to reduce your outstanding mortgage? Or perhaps you have lost your job and urgently need a way to pay the monthly mortgage payment? Here are some articles that tell you how to do this:

Make money by taking part in medical trials (UK)

Make money taking in lodgers

Make money renting out your garage/driveway

Make money house sitting (UK)

Make money renting your stuff out

Make money renting out space

Make money from YouTube

Make money writing articles online for Helium

Make money from newsvine

Earn money freelancing online

Earn money with get-paid to read sites

For Texas Hold'em Fans

Low Limit Holdem is a Poker strategy site that is aimed at beginners and intermediate players who wish to learn and perfect how they play Texas Hold'em.

The site goes through every single aspect of the game, step by step, with many articles and examples highlighting traps to avoid, how to bluff, how to calculate probabilities, an explanation of all poker terms and so on. They also explain what resources online poker requires (some of the software consumes a lot of computer power) and show how to customise poker software to improve the speed of the game. For those with questions, they have a blog and a forum where you can chat with like-minded poker fans and swap tips.

The website also provides reviews of all the poker books and poker software on the market, as well as reviews of all the online poker rooms out there. When reviewing poker rooms they state whether they are OK for USA players (some sites don't comply with US law and thus don't accept American players), they rate the site, advise you on the skill level of your potential opponents, review the software of the site and tell you what sort of bonuses to expect.

Given the number of poker rooms mushrooming on the web, it's worth checking out this site first before taking the plunge.

Vouchers (UK)

Several online companies have now sprung up offering online voucher codes and discount information. Here are some of them:

VoucherStar . You don't have to join this site to use it (though you can register if you want them to send you email alerts). They cover most UK online retailers.

My Voucher Codes Similar to voucherstar. Most UK online retailers are featured, and again you don't have to register to use the site.

Discount Shopping Another British voucher/discount site.

Other UK voucher sites already covered on this blog are fixtureferrets, which specialise in supermarket vouchers, and HotDeals, which is a community site.

You might wish to use this voucher sites in conjenction with cashback sites. i.e. click through to the retailer from the cashback site, and then enter your voucher code. See this guide to cashback sites for a list.

Mesothelioma

Pretty much everyone knows that a crucial by-election was held in November in the Scottish constituency of Glenrothes. But what many people don't know is that the reason there was a by-election was that the sitting Member of Parliament, John MacDougall, died of mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a horrible disease caused by asbestos, and many people like MacDougall become ill due to working in heavy industry in the 60's, 70's and 80's when the use of asbestos was not regulated. There is no known cure, but sufferers may be able to ameliorate the symptoms with modern medicine.

ParkAtMyHouse.com

Have discovered a new website, ParkAtMyHouse.com, which allows you to rent out parking space in your driveway.

The site is available for the following countries: UK, Ireland, Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and The Netherlands. You register free, and then specify which days of the week you are willing to rent your drive out for and which hours. For instance, if you live near a city centre that has parking problems, you could rent your drive out to office workers in working hours. Likewise those who live near football stadiums may find you can rent your driveway for a good price when home games are playing.

Once you have successfully rented out your drive way, they charge a 10% fee. As to how much to charge - this varies - check on the site what others are charging for parking spaces in your area. If you are in need of extra cash and have an empty driveway or garage, you may wish to explore this.

If you need to find somewhere to park yourself, you also register free and then search for a space. Those looking for spaces arn't charged by the site.

Other related useful posts:

Increase your income by taking in lodgers

Increase your income by earning online

Earn money participating in medical trials (UK)

Fallout from the credit crunch

As the government concentrates on trying to get lenders to be fair to mortgage holders (for instance trying to avoid repossessions), banks have turned to people with credit card debt to try to get money off them. Many people have found that their credit limits have been reduced. Struggling customers who have had an informal arrangement in place may find that arrangement withdrawn and demands for full settlement made (complete with threats about being taken to court).

What can you do in these circumstances? It's possible to negotiate to make a credit card settlement, that settles the debt, even if you don't quite pay all of it (the lender is relieved to have got some of their money back and they don't have the admin hassles of trying to get a stream of small payments from you). But where to find the money to make such a payment? Go through your house and see if you can sell stuff in a hurry on Ebay. Try and earn some quick money going round your neighbourhood and offering window-cleaning services/gardening/car-washing, anything really that will raise you some money. Ask your parents if they can loan you the money. If your relationship with your mortgage company is good, (i.e. you have never missed a payment), ask them if you can borrow an amount to settle your credit card bill. Do whatever you can to raise the money, as the feeling of being debt-free is priceless.

Sites I use for Article Marketing

I have been trying to promote various blogs and blog articles I have through article marketing and have had some success in increasing traffic. Here are the main sites I use for this:

Newsvine: Newsvine is actually a social bookmarking site like Digg or Reddit - but they allow you to write original articles and you can embed links in them if you know basic HTML, and this is what I use it for mainly. As a side-effect Newsvine also share revenue with you. Here's a Guide to Newsvine that tells you all about their site.

Helium: From 1st November Helium allows you to embed links into your articles, which again helps you generate traffic to your blogs/sites. They too revenue share. Here's a Guide to Helium.

Today.com: This is a site that allows you to set up a blog, where they pay you for articles of at least 100 words and allow you to embed links in them. Unusually all their links are do-follow, so they are of value. Note that they won't pay for articles that have affiliate links in them, but it might be worth writing these articles anyway if they generate traffic to your main sites. See this Guide to Today for details of how their site works.

Gather: This is more of a forum cum writing site. People put articles up, some good, some awful, and other users leave comments. You cdan however use the articles to promote your sites as they allow you to embed links. Here's a Guide to Gather.

Christmas Games

All sorts of websites are putting Christmas games up on their home pages, and one of the sweetest is Snowballs to Christmas - The Game, which reminded me of the old pacman-type games we used to pay on the Commodore64 in the eighties. Essentially, you sit there with your curser and try to hit as many people in the game with snowballs as possible. If you have a small child whom you need to keep busy for an hour or two, this is an easy innocent game for them to try.

P.S. the website the game is on belongs to mapsinternational, which produces such things as globes, maps and atlases (great if you want a Victorian-type educational gift for your child).

New Helium Payment Structure

Helium is a writing site where you earn money writing articles online. Helium have changed their payment structure, so I thought I'd do a post about it to alert everyone.

First of all, for those unfamiliar with Helium, they like articles to be "rated" by the members - that is, for a given title, you are shown a split screen, with two articles, and you have to say which is better. The rating is blind - no names are provided, you are simply accessing on quality, not who has the most friends. Helium like the rating system, because it means the quality articles rise to the top.

To encourage people to rate, they are now only going to distribute revenue to those who have at least one rating star (this means the member has rated about 50 articles in a three month period - not difficult to achieve if you do at least two or three a day). Revenue share is based on hits to your articles. This is the first change (previously revenue share was paid to anyone who got hits on their articles. People who have five rating stars (the super raters) will get paid a $3 rating bonus each month.

Writing stars are accrued if others have rated your article well - see here for how this works. They are now going to make upfront payments IN ADDITION to revenue share if you have writing stars. The payments are as follows:


1 Writing Star – $0.50 per article published
2 Writing Star – $1.00 per article published
3 Writing Star – $1.50 per article published
4 Writing Star – $2.00 per article published
5 Writing Star – $2.50 per article published

However, certain categories won't count for upfront payments -


Creative Writing (1)
Politics, News & Issues
Religion & Spirituality
Society & Lifestyle
Entertainment
Other
All articles written to Debate title

That's because the above don't attract much advertising. They are also introducing "kill fees" for those who sell their articles in the Marketplace to the media.

Regarding those who depend on revenue share only - the way to boost this is to promote your articles and writing on social bookmarking sites and on sites like this.

Update: In addition, Helium have introduced the "Empty title bonus", where they pay you $1 if you are the first to write to a title. This is in addition to the upfront payments and payments for ad revenue.

Please note that you can make quite a bit selling articles in the Marketplace. This is how it works: a publisher (usually an online magasine) will post an assignment, and members of Helium are free to submit articles to the assignment. The articles required are standard journalism articles on politics, legal issues and woman's magazine stuff with titles uch as "Are European women more stylish than American women" etc. The publisher will select the best and use it exclusively in return for payment - payment ranges from $10 per article to $200. The remaining articles are published on Helium's site as normal, and if you have writing stars, you get an upfront payment, plus are entitled to any further revenue share your article earns due to hits to it. Therefore you lose nothing by submitting to the assignments in the Marketplace, as you could make a lucrative sale, and if not, it's the same as writing to the other titles on the site. If you are good at writing and aspire to being a journalist, this is for you.

Do read Heliums FAQs for more detailed explanations of how it all works.

Update 31th March 2009. Have earned $313.38 so far with Helium - this is made up of $133.00 in upfront payments, $60.38 in revenue share, plus one article I sold in the Marketplace for $120.

Update 1st July 2009. Helium have changed their payment structure again. You no longer need rating stars to be able to get upfront payments (though you will need writing stars). But they will only pay upfront for those articles rates in the top five. Therefore if a title has twenty articles written to it, only the top five will get paid. The idea behind this is to steer writers to write for titles with a few number of articles within. I would choose titles with less than five existing articles, and the best option is to write for the empty titles, because then you get the empty title bonus as well. You still need to have rating stars to earn from the profit share though.

Top posts on this blog

Checking with Google Analytics, it appears that posts on the downturn are still the most popular on this blog. Here are the top most requested posts on this blog over the last month:

How to Survive and Prosper in a Recession

Lightspeed Panel

Your Rights on Losing Your Job and Being Made Redundant

Writing Reviews

How to Increase Fuel Efficiency When Your Drive

In other words, three of the top five were about coping with the recession and two were about earning online (through doing surveys or writing product reviews). I think this is a trend that is set to continue. People are worried about jobs and thinking of trying to supplement their income online

Promotional Items

It's coming up to Christmas and this is usually when promotional pens are handed out by businesss. Should you bother this year? Or should you save the budget? It might be worth continuing anyway. The point of promotional items such as pens and mousemats is that they keep your logo and contact details in front of the buyer all the time. At a time when other businesses are cutting back on this stuff, if you hand out the usual freebies, it means that you have more chance of being noticed.

Uk government announces help for struggling mortgage payers

The government announced today that they'd reached agreement with eight banks (HBOS, Nationwide, Abbey, Lloyds TSB, Northern Rock, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC) who have agreed to allow struggling homeowners to take a two year payment holiday or reduced payments, rather than face repossession. The idea is that interest owed is deferred (added to the loan), and as soon as the struggling homeowner has another job, they can resume normal payments. The scheme is open to those who have up to £400,000 mortgage, savings of less than £16,000 and have lost their job or one part of a couple with a joint mortgage have lost their job.

Should you take advantage of the scheme? Sure, if you are about to be repossessed. What if you have more than £16,000 in savings? Pay the excess savings against your mortgage/debts to bring them down, and then take the payment holiday. However, if you are not at the repossession point yet, do everything you can to decrease debt and increase savings. As noted in my previous post, the true cost of a mortgage is the amount of interest you pay over the term. Under this scheme, the deferred interest gets added to your mortgage and you will probably have to pay interest on that too. Therefore only use it as a last resort

Multihand Blackjack

If you are a blackjack fan, you can now play multi-hand blackjack at an online casino such as Money Casino. You can now play up to 4 hands in a single round, which speeds the game up, and they've enhanced their platform by including a strategy table, which shows you all the options available to you. The Strategy Table sits at the bottom of the screen and can be opened and closed at a click. They also have considerable help for beginners (articles and explanations of how the game works), so no need to worry that you don't know what you are doing.

They give you a welcome bonus when you join where they match your deposit 100% up to $500. Please note that blackjack and all online games are entertainment, not a method to get rich. Always play with money you can afford to lose - the ideal way to approach this is to allocate a sum that you would spend on a weekend's entertainment out on the town. This is your limit and the amount you can be expected to lose. Once you reach your limit, stop. If you are lucky enough to win early, stop then too! People who carry on tend to lose what they've won, and it's nicer to get out on a win.

Interest rate cuts

The 1.5% interest rate cut that the Bank of England delivered in November will affect the mortgage payments of those who have tracker or standard variable mortgages this December. There are rumours that the BoE might cut rates again by another 1% this month (which will feed into next month's payment).

Amidst all the doom and gloom, it is often forgotten that circumstances like these provide opportunities. Within a year or so, interest rates will be back up as the economy recovers (and it always does). Therefore the current situation is a once-in-a-decade opportunity if you grasp it. The government would like people to take their extra disposable income and spend it. Don't. Use it to pay down debt and save.

The last time I was in this situation was in the early 1990's. Britain got ejected from the Exhange Rate Mechanism, and interest rates came down quickly. I used the extra money to pay off debt, and then fixed my mortgage rate at the then unheard of rate of 5% (at the time the variable rate was 8% and had reached 15%). It was one of the smartest decisions of my life. It freed up income and I was able to build savings for the first time, and never really looked back.

Use the extra money to pay down debt, and do everything in your power to secure a low fixed rate. At the moment all fixed rates on offer are for at least 5% - hold off and keep paying down the debt to get your loan-to-value down. If fixed rates drop at or below 4%, pounce and secure your deal.

Spectacles for Christmas?

We are all cutting back due to the downturn, and yet Christmas wouldn't be Christmas if there were no gifts. The answer is to give something but to shop wisely. Say your old Uncle Tom has clunky out-of-date glasses. What better Christmas present than to get him a new set of Holiday frames?

You will have to get his prescription, but that shouldn't be too hard with some help from his nearest and dearest. Once you've chosen the frame, fill out the order form, and input the prescription details. (If you are unsure of what all the prescription terms mean, Zenni Optical have a handy help page explaining it all). Once you've proceeded to checkout (they only accept online orders), and paid by debit or credit card, they will manufacture and deliver within approximately ten days. However with the Christmas post being what it is, if you want the glasses in time for Christmas, now is the time to order. I nearly forgot to mention price - most lenses plus frames cost between $20 and $30, though you can get some glasses cheaper. Regardless, it's a bargain, given how much most opticians charge. If you are feeling extravagant, you could even throw in a spare pair!