TWDA

There are many paths to becoming wealthy, one of the more popular mechanisms is to use residual income. Residual income is where you do a job once, but continue to be paid for that work for a very long time. For example, if you buy a house (a one time payment) and become a landlord, you will receive rent payment every month for so long as the house exists.

Other ways to produce a residual income is to work in network marketing, where you receive income based on the work that others that you recruit to the company do. This arrangement works well as it is in your best interest to support the people you recruit and make them successful.

What business couldn’t do with a little more capital to expand? New business credit cards such as the citi business credit cards offer 0% interest for up to 12 months. The deals offered by the credit card companies are constantly changing, so it pays to keep up to date on new business credit cards as they are offered.

Other great deals include the below prime rate card from Advanta. This card gives you 15 months on balance transfers at 0.26% below the WSJ prime rate. Advanta also have some very good deals on ‘life of balance’ transfers, which give you a low rate on the balance transferred until it is paid off in full.

A Certificate of Deposit (CD) can be the best way to save and invest money. CDs are free from risk as they are backed by insurance, and they provide high interest rates. One possible negative point against CDs as an investment is that your money is locked in to the investment term that you choose, so if an unplanned emergency should arise you are not able to access your funds without severe penalties.

When choosing a CD there are several things to take into account as well as the highest CD ratese done with the interest earned (paid back to you or re-invested to compound the interest).

Have you ever taken out a secured loan and wondered if you were getting the best value product? With so many different loan providers on the market it is really difficult to be sure that you are making the right decision. That is where Accepted.co.uk comes in. They have a free service which searches through over 250 different financial products to find the best secured loans to suit your own personal financial services.

All you need to do is fill out a short form (less than 2 min!) and they will perform the search for you. There is no charge and no obligation, and no credit checks are made.

Rolling on from my last post about great sites to find advice relating to financial agreements such as loans and credit cards here are another three sites that will help out if you have financial questions. Again, they are published by the government, so you can trust what you read there, and no-one is going to try and sell you anything or sign you into an agreement.

Money Made Clear
Impartial information from the Financial Services Authority, the UK’s financial watchdog.

Consumer Direct
The money and finance section of this site covers all aspects of consumer issues with clear and practical advice. Factsheets can be downloaded.

Citizen’s Advice
The Citizens Advice Bureau online. CAB offer free impartial advice through their network of volunteers.

Today we are looking at financial services websites. The best financial services websites for loans and credit cards are run by the governement. By using the government websites to research financial products you can be sure of getting impartial advice (and it is free). Two of the better sites for researching before you take out a loan or credit agreement are Advice Guide (from the Citizens Advice Bureau) and Money, Tax and Benefits. These sites provide a wealth of information in themselves, but if you need further advice they also show you where you can get it local to you, and usually for free.

Examining the past has always been a good indicator of what the future may hold, and this is especially true when looking at financial markets. By viewing the history of the Wall Street Journal Prime Rate (or Historical Prime Rate) it is possible to identify trends and calculate averages.

If you are interested in predicting possible changes to the Prime Rate which may have effect on your savings or credit agreements then I recommend visiting the WSJ Prime Rate website, which features a historical database of the Prime Rate since 1947, the current Prime Rate, and Prime rate Forecast.

Find out more about Prime Rate history and the WSJ Prime Rate.

Following on from my recent post about the real estate business, I thought I would give a quick insight into the world of mortgages and home finance.

It is important to always compare mortgage quotes before entering into a financial agreement when purchasing property. A real quick way to get a mortgage quote from top lenders across the US is to use the mortgage comparison service from LoanNetwork.com.

The service is simple, it only takes two minutes to fill out the online form and no social security number is required. This way you can get a good overview of offerings from different lenders with no commitment.

In my work on Internet projects I generally pay contractors using my credit card (usually via paypal). The great thing about doing this is the improvement in cashflow; I don’t have to pay interest for a month or so until the payment is due. Recently, however, I have had a great deal of bills. Combine this with Christmas and New Year spending and I have been landed with a huge credit card balance

My savior from credit card hell has been transferring the balance to a 0% credit card. Many of the major card companies including Discover, Citi and Chase) offer these promotional rates to attract new customers. Often the deals are for up to 12 months interest free, so it can get you out of a tight spot, and give you some financial breathing room.