Carnival of Personal Finance #140 - Prison Break Edition

Oops, it appears I totally forgot that the Carnival of Personal Finance #140 went up over at The Financial Blogger

Some of my picks are

Move-to-Portugal is talking about Re-mortgaging

The Great Money Challenge provides the top 10 things to he does to save money

Finance Blog gives a list of 10 Financial products to avoid.

I was fortunate enough for The Financial Blogger to include my update on fixing the home loan interest rate.

Share your support and visit The Financial Blogger for more fantastic PF articles.

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Carnival of Personal Finance, #139 - Valentine's edition
Carnival of Personal Finance, #121

Would you miss a meal to pay your rent?

The Age newspaper reported that some people are forgoing some of life necessities to pay their rent, in some extreme case, missing meals.

Missing meals is pretty extreme, and I am the first person to admit that for some people, the situation is extreme and it does call for sacrifices such as missing meals. I am very fortunate that I am not in that situation.

However, I try to imagine myself in an extreme situation such as that, and imagine what I would do. Firstly, determine if I am actually in trouble.

1. I would draw up a very detail map of where our spending is. Currently, we have a pretty good idea of where our money are going but we don't have a precise knowledge of where they are. By having a very precise view, we are counting the very last cent and accounting for its spending. The tools to accomplish an notebook to take a note of all your spending, and strict discipline to ensure that a log of the spending is kept. Every cent has to be accounted for!
2. From the detail plan, I would classify which of the spending are "must have", "should have" and "nice to have". Food, rental and utility bills falls into "must have". Newspaper and the morning coffee at Gloria Jeans are "nice to have".
3. Evaluate the items in the "must have" to ensure that it is actually a "must have".
4. Work out what income we have to pay for the "must have" expenses.
5. If the income coming in does not cover the expenses, we are in deep trouble.

Once we have establish that we are in trouble, we need a plan. Perhaps the following would work.

1. Inform the creditors that we are having problem paying the bills as early as possible, and attempt to negotiate a better deal. This is a definite must for the creditors providing the "must have" products and services.
2. Inform the family that there are going to be some tough time ahead, and prepare themselves for the tough times. However, tell them that there is a plan in place and I am committed to meeting the plan.
   
3. Looking into supplementing the current income, probably with a second job.
4. Over the recovery period, keep evaluating the items under the "must have". If the items ever get classified as a "should have" or a "nice to have", we are going to stop doing it.
5. The most important part, have a time frame which you can get out of trouble. An open ended plan is difficult to achieve as there isn't any targets to aim for.

At the end of the day, I can not begin to even appreciate the situations some of the families are going through and coming to a decision that they are going to miss a meals here and there.

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What to tell the kids if your family is in financial hardship?

20th Teddy Bear's Picnic

If you from the Frankston area, or are thinking about visiting the Mornington Peninsula this Sunday, consider visiting the 20th annual Teddy Bear's Picnic. It is conducted by the Frankston Toy Library. The library service is something my family uses quite a bit and wholesomely support. It is a great day, and your kids will guarantee to have a great day.

The details of the picnic is

Date: Sunday, 24 February, from 11:00am-4:00pm
Location: Frankston's George Pentland Botanic Gardens, corner Foot and Williams
Cost: Entry is $2.50 each with children under 18 months free
Map: here

If you wish to give some support to the wonderful services that the Frankston Toy Library has provided for over 30 years, consider attending the picnic.

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Frankston Toy Library, a wonderful service

Interest rate fixed

Today was day where a load just came off my shoulders. We made a decision to fix our home loan interest rates for four years.

The way we see it, over that four years, we know exactly what our repayments are going to be and we will also be protected against the any interest rate increases. However, we will also miss out on any interest rate decreases as well, but with the current economic situation, I don't think that interest will be returning to the 5% mark in the short term.

The current interest rate of our current home loan is 8.42% and the fix interest rate what we should be on is 8.54%. This small increase of 0.12% is certain to be smaller than any interest rate increase that the RBA is going to impose.

We also decided to stay with the same bank as changing banks will incurred too much renegotiation fees. By breaking our current mortgage and going to another bank, we are essentially borrowing on another home loan to pay off our current home loan. Some of the major renegotiation fees components are:

1. Mortgage insurance as we will be borrowing more than 80% of the value of the property. - a couple of thousand dollars
2. Establishing fee with the new bank - usually about $700
3. Legals - $200
4. Contract breaking penalty with the old bank - about $700
   

We estimate that it would cost at least $3000 in fees.

By staying with the same bank and switching our home loan from its current terms and conditions to a fix interest home loan, we only had to pay a renegotiation fee of $200. The only part of the loan that change is interest rate. The term of the loan did not change.

I read today that RBA was actually considering that this month's interest rate should be increasing by 50 basis points instead of the 25 basis points. With news like that, I shall sleep a lot better now that our home loan interest rates are fixed.

I have just been rejected by PPP.

After reading how krystalatwork is back on the PPP bandwagon, and how PPP is working out for her. I thought I sign up and give it a go. It seems like a good opportunity to write a couple of articles and earn some money doing it. So I signed up via krystalatwork's referral.

PPP is PayPerPost. I essentially write a sponsored post about the sponsor's product.

Well, my blog was rejected. At first, I was rather disappointed, so I read the reject letter. This is what it had to say.

In order to be accepted to the PPP Marketplace, you blog must be at least 30 days old with 10 pre-existing posts written within those 30 days.

My first article on the blog was on the 16 April 2007. Since then, it has an average of 11 articles per month. Jan and Feb has seen 21 articles so far.

In addition, your posts must be dated and your blog must be written in clear, understandable english with a readily available and easily navigated chronological archives.

All of my post are dated as it is the standard blogger behavior. I believe that the english that I use is clear enough. The archives are also standard blogger behaviour, displayed in an easy manner.

Blogs must be made up primarily of posts that are at least 3-5 sentences of original content. We do not accept blogs with non-original content, blogs that have content primarily reposted from other sources such as recipes, jokes, poems, song lyrics or product reviews , vlogs, listing directories, blogs kept solely for pay, or blogs with mature content or excessive foul language.

My blog could be in breach of this as I do share the link love around, however I doubt if my blog is consistently doing the link or repost of non-original material.

Although your blog isn't eligible for the Marketplace opportunities, you can still receive offers directly from advertisers by installing the PPP Tools and PPP Direct badge on your blog.

I guess I should be grateful for this opportunity.

I get the feeling that because my blog does not have high traffic, they have restricted the marketplace opportunities from me.

In someways, PPP may not be the right direction to go on this anyway as it may show bias on the products, can anyone say "cash for comment?"

photo credit: Martyna Adamczyk

Link building meme....

I just got tagged in a link building meme Diet Debter.

Simple but strangely addictive. I tagged 5 randomly chosen blogs, write an article about it. If you are one of the five that I tagged, I hope that you shall on-tagged five more randomly chosen blogs, writing an article, and so on and so on. I think you get the idea.

However, in your article you have to include all the links here and add to the five blogs that you were part of.

The Strategist Notebook ~ Link Addiction ~ Ardour of the Heart ~ When Life Becomes a Book ~ The Malaysian Life ~ Yogatta.com ~ What goes under the sun ~ Roshidan's Cyber Station ~ Sasha says ~ Arts of Physics ~ And the legend lives ~ My View, My Life ~ A Simple Life ~ Juliana RW ~ Mom Knows Everything ~ Beth & Cory's Mom ~ A Mind Forever Voyaging~ enjoying the ride ~ Jennifer's thoughts ~ Mom of 3 Girls ~ Amanda ~ Don't Make Me Get The Flying Monkeys ~ ExPat Mom ~ Just Jessie ~ Wilson Six ~Krisitn ~ Nuttier Than You ~ Shonnte ~ Summer's Nook ~ Laura Williams Musings ~ Melissa's Idea Garden ~ Confessions of an Everyday Housewife ~ Blah Blah Blog ~ Stop the Ride! ~Soap, Blings & Girly Things ~ It's All for the Best ~ Keeping Feet ~ Junky Love in Freehand ~ Getting Out of Debt ~ Free From Broke ~ Money Matters ~ Arohan's Investing Life ~ My Investing Blog ~ Finance and Fat ~ Iowahippiechick ~ MakingMoneyJournal ~ Cathlawson.com ~ Life Liberty & The Pursuit Of Money ~ Making Cents Of Debt ~ DebtDiet ~ My Journey to Eliminate Debt ~ Ugly Debty ~ Last In Line ~ Give Me Back My Five Bucks ~ Cheap As Chips

I feel like I am part of the chain tag, sort of using something evil for the something good!

All right, I am going to tag the following blogs

• Embedded in Cork
• Lazy Man and Money
  
• ScottBerkun.com
• Plonkee Money
• Poorer Than You

Quick hot Sunday night post

Just a quick sunday night post to give a shout out to Louise at My Journey to Eliminate Debt where she is running a contest to write the winner a kick-ass resume and a job-wining cover letter. (OK, those were my adjectives not Louise's).

So if you are currently looking for a job and have posted on Louise's blog previously, do yourself a favour by reading her excellent Successful Job Application series of articles, and enter her competition.