Employees Encouraged To Budget Rather Than Time Waste

Employees Encouraged To Budget Rather Than Time Waste
Employees across the UK spend an average of 50 minutes a
day indulging in activities at their desks such as texting,
using social networking sites and making personal phone
calls, yet are reluctant to spend time getting to grips
with their finances, according to the latest research from
Axa.

Ahead of its initiative known as My Budget Day, where the
company is urging employees across the nation to spend an
hour a month working on their finances and evaluating any
loans they may have, Axa has found that 14 hours a month is
taken up by what it calls social not-working.

The research reflected that every week, employees in the UK
spend around 42 minutes emailing friends and family and in
the region of 26 minutes on social networking sites. This
is time that Axa suggests could be better used looking on
the internet for online loans, searching for a loan quote
or otherwise evaluating and planning their financial
situation.

Axa is encouraging employers to get involved with the
budgeting drive by allowing employees an hour a month to
plan their financial future and ascertain their current
financial situation, making the best of this non-working
time.

Pat Brady from Axa said: “A lack of motivation to
deal with financial matters is arguably at the heart of our
country’s enormous personal debt problem. If
employers can help people to recognise the value of
spending time reviewing their finances it could go some way
to addressing this.”

Activities such as gambling, gossiping and booking holidays
also make up employees’ non-work time, with certain
regions of the country more affected than others. The east
and west Midlands were found to be the biggest users of
online portals shopping at work - time that could perhaps
be better spent looking for a personal loan on the
internet. The north-west was the place for gossips, while
texting was a popular work time-waster in Scotland.

Greater London was found to be the place where a number of
activities were most prevalent, with emailing friends and
family, booking holidays, gambling, making personal phone
calls and using social networking sites all happening for a
longer amount of time there than anywhere else in the UK.
Axa is suggesting that such time could easily be put to
better use, especially with the aid of the internet, to
find online loans or to plan a budget more effectively.

The proposed move has been welcomed by union Unite and its
national officer, David Fleming: “This initiative is
providing employees with an opportunity to help tackle a
great cause of stress in the workplace - financial worries.
Unite welcomes this scheme as a positive step in addressing
the widespread issue of financial exclusion.”

Last month, Chris Tapp from Credit Action highlighted the
need for consumers to spend more time planning their
finances suggesting that interest rate changes had caused
consumers to struggle with repayments on mortgages and
other loans. Mr Tapp said that more people are visiting
services such as Credit Action to ask for advice on how to
repay their mortgage.

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Abbi Rouse writes for All About Loans. Our visitors are
offered advice and information all about loans, they can
also apply online for tenant loans and secured loans for
any purpose, including self cert loans for the self
employed. Visit today: http://www.allaboutloans.co.uk

A Real Estate Investor's Guide To Basic Real Estate Principles

A Real Estate Investor's Guide To Basic Real Estate Principles
It is important for Real Estate Investors to have an
understanding of some of the basics of real estate so you
can be a more-informed investor.

In real estate, there are two categories of property, real
and personal. Real property is defined as the land and
whatever is attached to it, known as improvements. Personal
property is everything that is not attached to land or
buildings. This is often known as chattel.

A fixture is an item of personal property that has been
converted to real property by permanently attaching it. Two
examples include chandeliers and cabinets. When they were
at the store, they were personal property. Once they are
attached to the property, they become real property.

A listing agreement and an agreement of sale specify what
is considered as a fixture. If you are purchasing a
property, you should carefully inspect this clause to see
what you are getting and what you are not getting.

When you purchase real property, you get what are known as
a "bundle of rights". These are the rights of ownership.
They include the right to occupy, to use, to allow others
to use, to rent, to restrict, to construct buildings, to
keep others off, to leave and abandon, to convey ownership
and to encumber.

A freehold estate refers to an ownership interest in
property for an undetermined period of time. It is a form
of ownership that you get when you purchase a property.
There are various types of freehold estates, with the most
preferred type being called fee simple. It is the highest
and most complete form of ownership possible. It gives you
the full bundle of rights, including the right to pass your
ownership interest on to your heirs when you die.

There are different forms of taking ownership to a
property, and it is a good idea to understand each one and
what it means. They are severalty, tenancy by the entirety,
joint tenancy and tenancy in common.

Ownership of real property can also be held in a trust. A
trust is a legal instrument that is used to protect family
ownership interests. A trust has three parties, a trustor,
a trustee and a beneficiary. The trustor conveys ownership
of the property into the trust, which is then held by the
trustee. Based on some event according to the terms of the
trust the property is eventually conveyed to the
beneficiary.

Title is the right of ownership of property. There are five
basic kinds of title - naked possession, color of title,
right of possession, good title and complete good title.
The purchase of title insurance will insure a "good" title.
A title company, or abstract company, will do a complete
title search to discover if there are any "clouds on the
title".

A deed is a written document that conveys title of real
property to an owner. The person who gives or grants the
deed is called the grantor. The person who receives the
deed is the grantee.

There is a difference between title and deed. Title is the
right of ownership of property. A deed is a written
document that conveys title to the property. Title is a
right. A deed is a document. The two most basic types of
deeds are the quitclaim deed and the warranty deed.

A general warranty deed provides a guarantee of good title
not only by the seller, but back through the chain of title
through all the previous owners of the property. It
provides the strongest title protection to the grantee, or
buyer.

It is important that every Real Estate Owner and Investor
understands these basic principles before purchasing Real
Estate.

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Chris Parks is a Real Estate Investor who has been involved
in Real Estate in one capacity or another since the mid
1980s. As a member of a small group of Real Estate
Investors & Entrepreneurs, and always having the knack for
explaining Real Estate Basics in an easy to understand
manner, Chris created REI for Newbies in order to teach &
assist new Real Estate Investors in a step-by-step,
easy-to-understand manner. http://www.REIforNewbies.com

Time Decay Strategies for Options Trading

Time Decay Strategies for Options Trading
Time decay, also known as theta, is defined as the rate by
which an option’s value erodes into expiration. The
value of the option over parity to the stock is called
extrinsic value.

Since an option is a depreciating asset, meaning it has a
limited life, the extrinsic value in the option will wither
away daily until expiration. This “decay” is
not a linear function meaning it is not equally distributed
between all of the days to expiration.

As the option gets closer to expiration, the daily rate of
decay increases and continues to increase daily until
expiration of the option. At expiration, all options in the
expiration month, calls and puts, in-the-money and
out-of-the-money must be completely devoid of extrinsic
value as noted in the time value decay charts below.

As more time goes by, the options extrinsic value
decreases. Again, it is important to note that the rate of
this decrease is not linear, meaning not smooth and even
throughout the life of the option contract. An option
contract starts feeling the decay curve increasing when the
option has about 45 days to expiration. It increases
rapidly again at about 30 days out and really starts losing
its value in the last two weeks before expiration.

This is like a boulder rolling down a hill. The further it
goes down the hill, the more steam it picks up until the
hill ends.

By selling the option and owning the stock, the covered
call seller captures the extrinsic value in the option by
holding the short call until expiration.

As mentioned earlier, an option’s loss of extrinsic
value over its life is called time decay. In the covered
call strategy the option’s time decay works to the
seller’s advantage in that the more that time goes
by, the more the extrinsic value decreases.

Key Point – The covered call strategy provides the
investor with another opportunity to gain income from a
long stock position. The strategy not only produces gains
when the stock trades up, but also provides above average
gains in a stagnant period, while offsetting losses when
the stock declines in price.

We have now seen how a covered call strategy is constructed
and how it is supposed to work. Keep in mind that the trade
can be entered into in two ways. You can either sell calls
against stock you already own (Covered Call) or you can buy
stock and sell calls against them at the same time (Buy
Write).

Example 1

You own 1000 shares of Oracle at $9.50.

The stock has been stuck around this level for a long time
now and you have grown impatient. You finally give in and
sell the front month (November for example) at-the-money
calls. The at-the-money calls would have a strike price of
$10 if the stock was trading at $9.50.

You sell the calls at a $.50 premium per contract which
creates a $10.50 breakeven point. Remember, in a buy-write,
the breakeven point is the strike price plus the option
premium. Let’s look at what our returns will be in
each of the three scenarios.

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Brett Fogle is the president of Options University. Brett
and his veteran traders teach safe and effective options
trading strategies. Free strategies can be found at
http://www.optionsuniversity.com/blog

Credit Cards - How They Affect Your Insurance Rates

Credit Cards - How They Affect Your Insurance Rates
How do credit cards affect your insurance rates? The idea
sounds absolutely preposterous; doesn’t it? Even the
thought that having too much credit card debt, or possibly
paying your credit card bill late, or even becoming
delinquent on your credit card bill, could affect your
insurance rate is just too far fetched; right? Wrong!

What many consumers don’t know is that in many
states, insurance companies have lobbied, and won the right
from the legislature, to gain access to your credit report.
Laws have been passed that allow insurance companies to
check your credit to determine your insurance premium
rates, or even deny coverage based upon your credit rating.

Supposedly, the argument by insurance companies has been,
that if a consumer pays their bills late, or is delinquent
on their bills, or is irresponsible in accumulating too
much debt, then the consumer is obviously irresponsible in
all aspects of life. This would supposedly include,
driving irresponsibly and paying insurance bills late.
This in turn; as they argue; would make the insured a
high-risk driver.

What’s most interesting about these laws, is that
many states require consumers to have a minimum amount of
liability coverage on their automobiles. Many states can
impound your vehicle, issue hefty fines, or even jail
offenders who refuse to pay for mandatory automobile
insurance.

Okay, so what if you have such a bad credit score, that you
can’t get automobile insurance? Hmm...that’s a
good question. In the states that force consumers to buy
automobile insurance at rates that are determined by the
insurance industry, based upon your credit rating, there
are usually special state-run insurance programs that are
for high-risk drivers and consumers that have bad credit
score. So if a consumer can’t get automobile
insurance because of a bad credit score, then they would be
grouped along with high-risk drivers.

What is a high-risk driver? A high-risk driver, is someone
who has been convicted of driving while intoxicated,
driving under the influence, vehicular manslaughter, drug
possession, or it could just be anyone who has an excessive
amount of traffic tickets or numerous accidents on their
driving record.

Now back to the initial question: “How do credit
cards affect your insurance rates?” Answer: Too much
credit card debt, too many late credit card payments, and
any credit card delinquencies on your credit report, and
you’re looking at a hefty insurance rate.

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Bryan Pringle, Ph.D., has written many articles on the
credit industry, and is the webmaster of websites offering
news and information regarding credit cards. For more
information, please visit:
http://www.apply-forcreditcards-online.com