firestormedia

A home renovation or remodel project may include the exterior of your house, one or more rooms and an addition or two. No matter what the scope, renovating your home is sure to be painful if you aren’t prepared.

Start by defining the scope of the remodel project. Decide what areas of your home that you would like to have renovated. Put together a wish list of what you want included in the project. What you can and cannot do will be, in part, decided by your finances.

Once you have defined the scope of the project the key issues you will want to consider are:

Local laws and permits

The need for neighbor approval.

Financing and budgeting.

Choosing an architect.

Choosing a contractor.

Selecting an interior designer.

Moving out during the construction process.

Packing and cleaning.

When undergoing a renovation project people most often start with an architect. While an architect is absolutely required for a renovation project, you may want to consider starting your due diligence with your interior designer. Chances are they can help you to fine tune how you will use your space, the intended look and feel and ultimately help to make your dream a reality.

More often than not, designers, architects and contractors work together on major renovation projects to ensure a cohesive approach to carrying out the client’s vision.

From a design perspective, since your designer will be the resident expert on the ultimate functionality of the space, having them involved early allows you to have more control over important things we take for granted such as placement of electrical outlets, task lighting and architectural detailing.

Once your renovation plan has been completed and approved by you, you can identify if you will need to purchase new furniture or accessories or re-purpose existing items that you have.

It is important to know that your budget and timeline of a major renovation project will change at least once if not more during construction. Experts recommend that you plan for the budget to increase by twenty-five percent and the time involved by thirty percent.

When your renovation project is complete you will undergo an inspection and be provided with an occupancy permit. Do a final walkthrough of the project with the architect, contractors and designer to make absolutely sure that everything is working as required. Create a punch list of little tasks that are undone and assign someone the task of finishing each task. Make sure that everyone reports back to you or your project manager/renovation coach by a specific time to make sure everything is finished.

Once your project is underway, you may find yourself overwhelmed or stressed out from all of the activity, keep drawing and photos of your finished project easily accessible so that you can remind yourself of the beauty that awaits you.

2008, Style for Life Interiors. Copying of Contents, in its entirety is permitted provided that author by-lines are kept intact and unchanged. Hyperlinks and/or URLs provided by author must remain active.

With more than two decades of design experience, designer Paul Andrew’s style and intuition has matured and helped to build Style for Life Interiors into a full service design firm that offers home staging, art acquisition, shopping trips, renovations, and new construction consulting. Style for Life Interiors has performed more than 100 transformations for its residential and commercial clients. Having decorated homes in the suburbs of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, Paul especially enjoys creating townhome spaces that give owners the opportunity to be engulfed in special spaces that are uniquely their own. Paul can be reached at http://www.styleforlifeinteriors.com and pandrew@styleforlifeinteriors.com

Much has been written about the sub prime mortgage crisis in the US and even more has been said. Most analysts placed the blame for the implosion in the credit market on the adverse credit mortgage. This is a type of home loan that is issued to a borrower with a less than impressive credit history and financial resume. However there is another factor which may have been overlooked. This same factor may be about to spur a mortgage bonanza in the least likely of places – Africa.

In addition to issues billions of pounds of mortgages to people who had little chance of repaying them, the increased liquidity in the financial markets is mostly to blame for the current sub prime crisis. Banks and other financial institutions were simply too cashed up in the late 1990s and early 2000s and lowered their lending standards accordingly. Lenders had so much money they were almost forced to dream up new products to market to home owners and first time buyers in a marketplace that was already at full capacity.

This is why lenders eventually got to a stage in which they began to approve adverse credit mortgage products to just about anybody who applied. They weren’t the only product available at the time and although they may have been the trigger for the collapse in the financial markets they were not the only contributor.

This excessive liquidity is currently being experienced by several of the biggest banks in sub-Saharan Africa. While this market is tiny in comparison to Europe and the USA some of the factors which were prevalent in those markets ten years ago are emerging in several African nations today. This is opening up the prospect that Africa may be about to experience a small boom in their mortgage market.

Unlike the European and US markets, however, the African home loan market is far from overcrowded. A minority of the population have a bank account or use any type of banking facility at all let alone have a mortgage. The home loan market is exclusive and usually only available to the elite but there is a growing middle class demographic with an appetite for home ownership.

It is also unlikely that African banks will be developing adverse credit mortgage products similar to their Western counterparts. This is largely because many Africans simply do not have a credit history and therefore do not have impairments to their credit files. Instead, home loans are issued only to workers who are paid a salary and who have stable jobs. It is common in Africa for lenders to be paid their monthly mortgage repayments directly from the borrower’s employers instead of from the borrower’s bank accounts. This helps reduce risks to the lenders and as a reward the borrowers are often granted lower interest rates.

In the wake of the adverse credit mortgage crisis an unlikely beneficiary may therefore be Africa as lenders are increasingly looking for new markets to conquer for profit. It will be many years before the Western home loan market are fully repaired so it could be Africa’s time to shine.

Submit your details to get expert Adverse Credit Mortgage advice from an independent mortgage advisor through www.adversecreditmortgagesource.co.uk today

If you hold credit debts and are concerned about how you will meet future debt payments, it is time to take stock of your situation and the reality of the fall-out from the global credit crunch.

Many people experiencing credit debt problems, might imagine their first port of call being debt consolidation via non-profit debt counseling agencies. And rightly so, these credit debt management services have provided ‘life-lines’ to many distressed debtors, enabling them to consolidate their debts with affordable monthly payments at reduced rates of interest. In some instances, debt solution services have even been able to negotiate as little as 0% with credit card companies.

But at a time when the prevailing credit crunch is seeing a knee-jerk reaction from some credit card companies, credit card credit debts seem poised to worsen. It would seem that some lenders’ fears over further credit debt losses in the current climate, has led to previous concessions being stripped away and there appears to be a general clamping down on credit card credit borrowing. These include:

- Drastically slashed credit limits

- Increased rate of rejection for new credit card applications

- Increased interest rate charges

- Refusal by some credit card companies to lower rates for those needing to consolidate credit debts

What The Experts Are Saying About Credit Card Debts

The picture for credit card debt - UK or elsewhere, couldn’t look any more bleak, especially in light of the findings that nearly one in eight Britons have at least four credit cards, with 28% of people applying for a new card over the past 12 months (http://guardian.co.uk).

MoneyExpert.com report that ‘around 13% of people have four or more credit cards, with 3% having five cards and 4% having more than five’. This suggests that credit card consumers are juggling with credit debts by transferring balances from card to card. While this strategy is perfectly fine if people are making full use of 0% transfer deals for credit debts reduction, it is most certainly not a good position to be in if they are struggling to make ends meet.

Yet, at a time when a number of research and surveys shows the true picture of the spiraling credit debt problem from credit cards and mortgage equity release, it becomes all the more worrying where over-reliance on credit for every-day essentials such as food, bills etc., has become the reality for some people.

Those who have addressed the issue of credit debt by releasing equity from their homes to pay off debts, might well have earned much needed credit debt relief. However, for those individuals who have not only released equity to reduce credit card debt, only to find they are still holding substantial credit debts, there may be very little options open to them.

At a time when nearly every expert seem to be predicting the credit crunch and ensuing credit debt crisis is going to escalate, what possible salvation can there be for people who need serious debt advice as well as more practical debt help? Given the clampdown by some credit card companies, what other workable credit debt solutions are there to effectively reduce credit debts?

There is hope! This hope comes by way of….

Read The Remainder Of This Article By Visiting The Link Below

Olga Graham Try is a qualified Social Care Practitioner and Life Coach: Read The Full Article Here:

Everyone knows that the younger you are when you start paying into a pension, the more you’ll receive when it’s time to pay out on your retirement. Nevertheless, there are still many who delay making that start and a frightening number of people who believe that their entitlement to a basic State pension will be enough to see them comfortably through old age. While they might be right about the entitlement to a State pension, they are most unlikely to find that the State pension alone will ensure anything like a comfortable retirement. But if taking care of your own pension arrangements is to be an option, where do you go for the best pension advice?

Even a cursory look at the subject of pensions will tell you that it can become a pretty complicated topic, with a bewildering range of different products, to suit different ends and purposes. For example, you might be aware that your employer runs a pension scheme and, indeed, you believe that the employer contributes to your pension on your behalf. But is this an occupational pension scheme. If it is, do you know whether it is salary-related or whether it is a defined contribution or money purchase scheme?

Alternatively, is your employer offering a stakeholder pension scheme or running a group personal pension scheme? You have heard that it is possible to set up your own stakeholder pension. How would this differ from your having your own personal pension arrangement? Is one or the other – a stakeholder or a personal pension scheme – something you should be setting up for yourself?

These are all perfectly reasonable questions, but how on earth do you go about answering them? It’s very much a specialist subject and the ground rules seem to be changing all the time. You have might also have heard, for example, that the government is introducing changes requiring all employers to offer a pension in the future and to make contributions to the schemes set up. This can be the employer’s own scheme or the government’s new central scheme that is being established.

Yet further changes will affect the minimum age at which you can start drawing your pension benefits. Subject to the rules of your particular scheme, the minimum age is currently 50, but this will go up to age 55 by the year 2010 (though you will no longer need to stop working altogether to be able to draw the pension, provided continued employment is allowed by the rules of your particular scheme). To phase in the higher age level, pension fund managers have been given the period from April 2006 until April 2010 to raise the age limit. Clearly, you will need to know when it applies to you.

All in all, therefore, it is clear that questions about pensions can become quite complicated. They are further complicated by your need to know exactly how your own individual circumstances should affect your pension options and decisions. A pension is a long-term investment, which accumulates many thousands of pounds of your hard-earned cash – it’s important, therefore, that you are guided towards the right decisions.

Given the importance of getting it right, the sensible course of action is to consult an independent financial adviser about your existing and future pension options. This will ensure that your decisions are based on the best, professional and expert, independent pension advice.

Steve Wright is Managing Director of Wrightway Financial Consultants, Independent Financial Advisers specialising in Pensions, Investments, Mortgages and Insurance. One of their major areas is pension advice.

At the risk of sounding facetious, an independent financial adviser is someone who gives independent advice on financial matters. In fact, stating the rather obvious in this way put an important stress on the three vital components of the independent financial adviser’s role.

Independent

The independence of the adviser is critical. When an independent financial adviser is consulted, it is important to know that he or she has no vested interest and will not be influenced in any way by selling a single company’s products. Independence means that the client can expect the adviser to act completely impartially, entirely in the client’s best interests, and not because there is an established dependent relationship between the adviser and one particular supplier. The importance of this independence cannot be stressed enough. The adviser needs to be licensed by and is regulated by the Financial Services Authority, and independence is something that is central to such recognition. The client’s faith and trust in the adviser stems largely from the latter’s independence.

Financial

An independent financial adviser needs to have expert professional knowledge of a huge range of financial products and services. Since it has one of the most highly developed financial services industries in the world, the sheer range of products available on the British market means that knowledge and professionalism must be of the highest order.

Because of the sheer range of subjects with which an independent financial adviser needs to be familiar, there is a correspondingly wide range of qualifications available to individual advisers. For example, the adviser might have professional qualifications awarded by the Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) Institute, the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), the Institute of Financial Planning (IFP), the Personal Finance Society (PFS), the Pensions Management Institute (PMI, the Securities and Investment Institute (SII), or others. Above all, however, the adviser knows that his is a constantly changing market, with new products and services emerging all the time. He or she will make it his or her business to stay completely abreast of these trends.

Adviser

As an adviser, the third and vital component of the independent financial adviser’s role harks back to the first of his or her qualities, independence. The financial advice given must be “best advice” when recommending any product or service. That is to say, the advice must be the advice that is genuinely in the client’s best interest. It is as though the adviser had stepped into the client’s shoes and was giving advice entirely from the client’s perspective. In this way, the client can be assured that the advice is truly independent, objective and impartial advice that will satisfy the interests that the client himself or herself has identified.

Summary

It is surprising just how much meaning can be packed into the three words that describe the role of the independent financial adviser. But as the above brief, thumb-nail sketchy has shown, each of the three words encapsulates a fundamental and vital part of this professional’s job. Each word describes the obligations that the adviser has towards each of his clients, so that the clients, for their part, can rest absolutely assured that they receive genuinely independent, well-informed and expert financial advice that will serve their own best interests.

Steve Wright is Managing Director of Wrightway Financial Consultants, Independent Financial Advisers specialising in Pensions, Investments, Mortgages and Insurance. One of their major areas is being a Independent Financial Adviser.

Independent financial advice is needed by anyone wanting to ensure that their hard-won money works its hardest for them. There are good ways and there are not such good ways, there are efficient means and less efficient means of literally getting the best value for money – and independent financial advice will point you in the direction of the best routes and the best financial products available.

Britain has one of the most developed and advanced financial services industries in the world. This is great news for the consumer, of course, but it does mean that there is a positively bewildering array of different financial products on the market. Independent financial advice will help to make sure that you are choosing not only the best, but also the most suitable for your particular needs.

Savings and investment

If you want to make the most of your savings and investments, for example, would you know where to start? Could you pick your way through the maze of unit trusts, individual savings accounts (ISAs), Open-ended Investment Companies (OEICs), investment bonds, inshore or offshore investments, or ethical investments? Would you know where to go for reliable stock broking or comprehensive savings plans? The choices are almost overwhelming and this is the point at which you would want a well-informed, qualified and independently expert adviser to step in and advise you of the pros and cons of each.

Pensions

One of the major areas of development and sophistication has been that of pensions planning. Once again, independent financial advice will be essential to ensuring that you make the most of your money for the longest possible time. Whether it is advice and guidance on personal pensions, annuities or finances on retirement, consultation with an expert will pay dividends.

Personal finances, protection and insurance

In today’s uncertain economic climate most people want to make sure that every penny counts. Independent financial advice is essential to the best management of your personal finances and that of your family. In the field of personal and family insurance, for instance, there is already a huge range of products to choose from – and the choice is growing all the time. Whether your interest is in life insurance, critical or serious illness insurance, health insurance, or endowments, independent expert advice will be needed to ensure that you and thoroughly understand what you are buying, but that you have chosen the most appropriate cover for you and your family’s needs.

Although sound, independent financial advice might have helped you to manage your debts in a sound and stable way in the past, if problems have begun to appear or debts seem to be getting out of control, then advice can also be given on debt consolidation or other debt management solutions.

Mortgages

A whole field of independent financial advice is also available to those looking for help in obtaining the right mortgage. Today’s mortgage market, of course, is something of a minefield and expert advice is needed to tread a clear and confident path through the available offerings and choices between repayment, fixed interest, interest-only, endowment and pension mortgages (to name but a few).

Steve Wright is Managing Director of Wrightway Financial Consultants, Independent Financial Advisers specialising in Pensions, Investments, Mortgages and Insurance. One of their major areas is independent financial advice.

When the investment in your personal pension plan reaches maturity when you retire, you will need to transfer its accumulated value into a regular income for the remainder of your retirement. This is achieved through the purchase of a pension annuity – a seemingly simple and straight forward transaction that exchanges the final value of the pension fund into which you have been paying into a regular income.

Whilst the principle of a pension annuity is seemingly very straight forward, however, things are rarely quite as simple as they seem.

The first and probably most critical aspect of buying a pension annuity is that it is a long-term, one-off commitment. You have just one shot at it, since there is no going back and asking for a refund of all of the capital simply because, after the event, you have found a better deal elsewhere. In other words, it is very important that you make the right choice.

Making the right choice is made no easier by the fact that a host of different annuities all offer a host of different annuity rates – i.e. will offer a different level of income for the same amount of pension investment.

The difficulty is further compounded by the sheer number of different types of annuity available these days.

Standard annuity – the most conventional form of annuity is one that pays you a fixed income throughout the remainder of your life. The income is known in advance, so you have the security and peace of mind in knowing just how much that will be;

With profits annuity – as the name suggests, this relates the income you receive to an element of your initially invested sum that is in turn invested again in equities, bonds and gilts. In this way, your annuity reflects some of the risks inherent in such investments;

Unit-linked annuity – this is probably the choice for those prepared to take the greatest risk on an annuity that is entirely subject to the fluctuations of the investments made;

Immediate (”temporary” or “purchased life”) annuity – this form of annuity needs to be purchased either from the cash element of your matured pension fund or some other cash resource. The advantage of this kind of annuity is that part of the annuity is treated as a return of your initial capital and, therefore, is not taxed, whereas the whole of your pension annuity would be subject to income tax;

Impaired life annuity – this is a type of annuity designed for those whose actuarial life expectancy is lower than someone of the same age in the general population. Different annuities will operate different definitions of what amounts to “impairment” of life, but it is generally a question of an existing serious illness or lifestyle factors such as smoking, obesity or past occupation.

Summary

The seemingly simple and straight forward question of converting the final value of a pension fund into a regular, income-paying annuity actually requires the kind of advice you can best receive from an independent financial adviser, since:

• Your pension annuity decision is of a one-off type that you need to get right the first time;

• There is considerable variation in the level of income paid by any one annuity – naturally, you would want the highest paying;

• There is a wide range of different types of annuity – some higher, some lower, risk – an independent financial adviser will be able to help you choose the one you want.

Steve Wright is Managing Director of Wrightway Financial Consultants, Independent Financial Advisers specialising in Pensions, Investments, Mortgages and Insurance. One of their major areas is pension annuity.

A brief scan of the financial pages of the national press might give you some idea of the number of employers these days why are eager to switch their employees from final salary pension schemes into other, personal pension, plans. Many employers are so keen to encourage such a switch that they are offering a lump sum cash inducement for those who elect to transfer their pension rights in this way. Despite such an apparently attractive inducement, however, where can the employee get pension transfer advice that he or she can feel secure in knowing the transfer is in their own best interest?

The reason for many employers wanting to shift employees away from final salary schemes is that such schemes tend to be relatively expensive. For the employee, however, the attraction may well be the certainty offered by a final salary scheme, since it will be known all along just how the pension is calculated and what it is likely to amount to. A personal pension plan, however, will depend on the performance of the pension fund’s investments and the equally unknown variations in annuity rates. So, the personal pension plan could do better, or it could do worse than, the occupational final salary scheme. How can the employee begin to compare the two, therefore, to know whether to accept the employer’s incentive to quit the safety and certainty of a final salary scheme?

The answer is that it is an extremely difficult decision to make and not one which should be made without dependable pension transfer advice. The complicated nature of pension transfers is no idle judgment, but one that comes from the financial services industry regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Speaking about the responsibility of pension fund trustees towards any of its members who are thinking about a pension transfer, the Authority states: “Although it is not compulsory, the trustees should encourage members to take advice as pension transfers are complicated and it is difficult to make suitable decisions without advice, even when all the relevant information is provided”.

So, the FSA itself would encourage anyone thinking of transferring from one pension scheme to another – and that includes a transfer out of a final salary scheme – should first consult an independent financial adviser. It is the independent financial adviser, for example, who can begin to make sense of the next most important piece of information you will need in order to weigh up the pros and cons of any transfer. That is a transfer value analysis and an estimate of the benefits that your present scheme would pay. Fairly obviously, this is something that would be needed before any comparison between the existing and new scheme could be attempted. Furthermore, the transfer value analysis is something that only the trustees of your present scheme could provide.

Summary

For whatever reason you are considering taking pension transfer advice, the best-placed source is an independent financial adviser because:

• Independent financial advice is recommended by the Financial Services Authority;

• You will need someone who can help you understand and interpret the transfer value analysis provided by the trustees of your current pension scheme;

• You will benefit from professional advice in weighing up the benefits and drawbacks of your present scheme compared to any alternative.

Steve Wright is Managing Director of Wrightway Financial Consultants, Independent Financial Advisers specialising in Pensions, Investments, Mortgages and Insurance. One of their major areas is pension transfer advice.

If you know more or less all there is to know about investing directly in stocks and shares, or in collective forms of investment, or the management of your investments, or the tax implications, or the pros and cons of offshore investing, then you might not need much more in the way of financial investment advice. Unless you happen to be one of those very rare individuals, however, you will almost certainly benefit from the sound and impartial financial investment advice of a professional, independent financial adviser.

Types of Investment

Direct Investment

Your choice of investment types fall into two basic categories – direct investment in the shares of a particular company or its issued bonds or, in the case of government-issued bonds, its “gilt-edged stock”. The price of company shares, of course, will fluctuate as they are traded on the stock market and the dividends to which you are entitled as an owner of those shares will be determined by the performance of that particular company.

In the case of bonds issued by a company, or gilts issued by the government, however, you will be assured of the rate of interest on what is effectively your loan to that company or the government, and you will be assured of the full return on your investment once the bond or government stock reaches its maturity date. Because of these in-built certainties, there is a lower risk inherent in the investment in corporate bonds or government gilts, and the returns, therefore, tend to be lower than in the more volatile market for shares.

Both corporate and government bonds can be traded in the market, however, before they reach their maturity date. During this time, their price will be determined by the prevailing rates of interest in the stick market, compared to the rate attached to the bond itself.

“Collective” Investment

If you want to avoid putting all your eggs in the one basket of a particular company’s shares, it is possible instead to spread the risk of your investment by pooling it (with other investors) into a range of different investments. In this case, the pooled investment is managed by a professional fund manager, who makes decisions on the range and types of investment. Such collective schemes fall – again, broadly – into three different types: unit trusts, investment trusts and Open-ended Investment Companies (OEICs).

Once you have reached this level of investment decision-making, however, the vast range of unit trusts, investment trusts and OEICs available can open up a veritable Pandora’s Box of choices. In order to avoid making potentially very costly mistakes or rash investment decisions, therefore, this is the stage at which – if you have not done so before – you should consult an independent financial adviser.

Summary

Financial investment advice is wisely taken because of the sheer range of investment vehicles available:

• These fall into the two broad categories of direct investment or “collective” (pooled) investment;

• Direct investments include the purchase of stocks and shares or corporate or government (so-called “gilt-edged” stock);

• The principal types of collective investment are in unit trusts, investment trusts or Open-ended Investment Companies (OEICs);

• Whatever your personal intuition regarding the best investment type for you, however, the best financial investment advice is going to come from an independent financial adviser.

Steve Wright is Managing Director of Wrightway Financial Consultants, Independent Financial Advisers specialising in Pensions, Investments, Mortgages and Insurance. One of their major areas is financial investment advice.

Everyone would like their money to be working as hard and as profitably for them as possible. The problem is that, with generally low rates of interest, hoarding any spare cash in the relative security of a bank or building society account is not going to achieve a very attractive return. There are other investment opportunities available, of course, but just where should you start to look? The safest and most reliable source is to turn to your independent financial adviser for investment advice.

There are literally thousands of different products you can choose from in order to invest or save your money and an independent financial adviser can help you pick the ones that are best suited to your own personal circumstances. That, of course, is the beauty of consulting an independent adviser. The adviser will not be offering you an off-the-peg, one-size-fits-all solution, but something tailored uniquely to your particular needs. This is made possible by the thousands of products available – provided, of course, that you know what there is and you know where to look. And that is precisely the financial adviser’s job – a job demanding financial knowledge and expertise, delivered in a totally impartial and independent manner, with advice that suits only your own best interests (not his or anyone else’s).

So, you do not have to negotiate the bewildering maze of choices between individual companies in which to invest; or whether you should instead choose one of the Unit Trusts as a way of investing in a collective of companies; or whether you would be better off with an Investment Trust or with an Open-ended Investment Company (OEIC); or whether you should really be going for the tax-efficiencies of an Individual Savings Account (ISA) – The independent financial adviser can be there to guide you through this whole maze of competing products and identify the ones that will work best for you alone.

These sorts of decisions might once have been the preserve of only the very wealthy. These days, however, investing is increasingly regarded as a way for the majority of people to invest in their future. Investment is a way of making your financial future more secure. So what better way to provide for your future than a pension based on the investments under your own control?

So, if you are looking to invest in your future by way of a pension savings and investment plan, the independent financial adviser is once again the best man for the job. His combined knowledge of investment options and of the vast range of pension plan alternatives makes him the ideal counsellor and someone without whose advice you probably would not want to make a decision.

Summary

If you are in search of investment advice, remember that:

• An independent financial adviser is best placed to guide through the maze of competing financial products;

• The advice will be entirely independent and tailored to your needs – an no one else’s;

• If your concern is for an investment and savings plan to meet your pension needs, the independent financial adviser is once again the person without whose advice you would not want to enter into any commitment.

Steve Wright is Managing Director of Wrightway Financial Consultants, Independent Financial Advisers specialising in Pensions, Investments, Mortgages and Insurance. One of their major areas is investment advice.