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Older drivers have the highest percentages of fatal and incapacitating crashes and the ultimate accidents per mile driven, researchers say.

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Teenagers turned down by their first-choice colleges are in pleasing association: Warren Buffett, Tom Brokaw and other prominent Americans including received rejection letters.

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We negotiated to have the basement finished with the same materials as used for the upstairs. You can negotiate allowances for finishing the basement or remodeling a portion of the home that just isn’t very attractive. All rights reserved.

Each point you pay is equal to 1% of the loan amount.

Even though there are some scattered signs that the housing market is picking up, in most areas, it is still very much a buyer’s market. (We also negotiated to have the air conditioning installed.) Now, we have a finished downstairs, professionally built, rather than having done it ourselves. Many sellers will knock off a few thousand dollars (usually between ,000 and ,000, depending on the degree of damage) to allow for the fact that you will need to re-paint or re-floor. You can lower your interest rate by asking the seller to pay points on your mortgage.

Bonus: seller-paid points are actually tax-deductible for you.

Closing costs

It’s pretty standard for sellers to pay closing costs, especially if you are a first time home buyer. If you need more time, you might be able to arrange that as well. In most cases, each point will reduce your interest rate by 1/8 of a percentage point. The exception is when the seller is offering the house “as is.” Even so, you can still negotiate for repairs. If you need to get into the house quickly, you can negotiate a faster closing date. If the seller can’t get out, you might be able to negotiate an allowance for the storage of your stuff, or a place for you to live. However, you can negotiate to have the seller pay closing costs even when you are moving up. It might be more difficult, but in a buyer’s market, with sellers looking to do what they can, there is chance that you can get your closing costs paid for.

If you are careful to consider what you can negotiate for, it is possible that you will be able to lower the overall costs associated with buying a home, saving you money and letting you use that extra breathing space in your budget for other things.

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money management, points, down payment, housing market, buying a house, closing date, home loan

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Source: 6 Things to Negotiate When Buying a House from Moolanomy Personal Finance, written by Miranda Marquit (Staff Writer).

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Copyright © 2007-2010 Pinyo Bhulipongsanon. You’ll get a better interest rate, and you will be able to negotiate with the seller to help you save a little more money.

Photo by MichiganMoves via Flickr

Here are 6 things you can negotiate when buying a house:

Repairs

Every home has to have an inspection. That means that you have some pull when it comes to buying a house. In most cases, major problems that makes the home less habitable have to be repaired by the seller, including heating, air conditioning, wiring, plumbing and structural issues. You might also be able to negotiate that the seller arranges for and pays for paint and flooring before you move in, rather than just providing an allowance.

Finished basement or remodeling

When my husband and I bought our house while it was under construction, it was originally supposed to come with an unfinished basement. You can suggest that you rent the home for a few months in order to save for a bigger down payment. In some cases, you might not be able to get the full amount, but you can maybe negotiate to split the cost.

Closing date

You can speed up or slow down the closing date. So, if you have low credit card debt, a good credit score, a decent down payment, and a stable job, now is a good time to go house hunting. Once the home inspection points out the necessary changes that need to be made, negotiate repairs, or negotiate an allowance for repairs.

Paint and flooring allowances

If the flooring looks bad, and the paint is chipped and peeling, you can negotiate allowances for these items. As long as the mortgage is getting paid, the seller might not mind.

Points

If you want to reduce the amount of money you pay in interest, you can pay points.

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Or you might ordinarily not be offered a job and never apprehend why. In some cases, the acknowledgment might be yes. If you find that troubling, here’s what you can do.

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Hedge-fund king John Paulson made a winning wager that homeowners equaling Jack Booket and Stella Onyeukwu wouldn’t be able to pay their mortgages.

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This ability to trade a fund intra-day is unique to ETFs as mutual funds can only be bought and sold at a single daily NAV. When you take into account the effect of compounding, these fees can result in huge difference in long-term performance. Most investors agreed and have poured money into Index ETFs, with global ETF assets crossing the trillion mark recently. Given a choice of the two, it sounds like a no-brainer right? Allow me to draw an analogy: If you are given a choice between receiving a guaranteed or a 10% chance to win 0, I’m willing to bet that most people will take the chance, despite the odds against that choice. While the details of this process are quite technical, essentially what it means is that the portfolio manager doesn’t have to sell holdings, which can result in capital gains and hence taxes, whenever a redemption is made from the fund. None of the material above and elsewhere on EtfsHub is intended to endorse or promote any company or its products. And in fact, in 2009, for the first time, Index ETFs had more assets than index mutual funds.

But in the broader scheme of things, only about 10% of assets are passively-managed. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

The 4 main pillars of ETF investing are low cost, tax efficiency, liquidity and transparency — these also carry over to Active ETFs. It’s important to compare these Active ETFs to other instruments providing access to active management, namely active mutual funds, instead comparing them to Index ETFs [Why Active ETFs don’t compete with Index ETFs] which have a completely different underlying strategy. ETFs are more streamlined operationally than mutual funds and result in cost savings which can be passed on to the investor.
Transparency: Today, more than ever, investors are looking for transparency in the funds they put their money into. They could have moved their investments into Index ETFs but those structures would not allow for active management. Because these products are new, most don’t have a long history of performance.

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benchmark, passive strategies, investments, assets, mutual funds, exchange traded funds, ETF

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Source: Should You Buy Actively Managed ETFs? from Moolanomy Personal Finance, written by Shishir Nigam.

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Copyright © 2007-2010 Pinyo Bhulipongsanon. They do it because, up till recently, if investors wanted an active manager – which most people do for the reasons described above – the only choice they had was to go with mutual funds. Even Index ETFs, which are seen as the most transparent of instruments, are not required by law to make daily disclosures.

What’s the catch?

Since that sounds all nice and dandy, the natural question every investor should ask is what’s the catch? Investors believe that they have the ability to pick the star manager that will outperform the benchmark and hence continue to plow money into active mutual funds even though on average, active managers may not be beating their benchmarks.

This investor mindset creates an overflow of money and especially fees accruing to active mutual funds even though they often charge 1-2% per year, while only disclosing their holdings quarterly and trading just once a day. You can visit EtfsHub to find a full database of these Active ETFs and their details.

These ETFs are different from traditional ETFs because the portfolio managers behind these funds are not just looking to track the performance of an index, instead they are making active security selection decisions to beat their benchmark – just like active mutual funds do.

So what is the value proposition that these Active ETFs bring to you? People believe in their ability to beat the odds and this same logic carries over to investing. Neither the information nor any opinions contained or expressed above and elsewhere on EtfsHub constitutes or should be construed as a solicitation or offer by EtfsHub to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments or to provide any investment advice or recommendations. Just this difference alone can result in huge costs savings when compounded into the long-term.

Since exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were launched more than a decade ago, the trend in investing has been towards low-cost investing. This is the result of increased competition in the investment world or what I like to call – the democratization of the investment space.

The most direct consequence of this is how investments in index mutual funds have changed. In other words, investors in the fund don’t have to bear a tax burden just because some other investor decided to take their investment out.
Liquidity: Active ETFs, like all ETFs, trade on an exchange and can be bought and sold like a stock and provide continuous pricing to investors. With all the scandals that are sprouting up, quarterly disclosure of holdings is not enough for most, especially when markets have been moving up or down 30-40% in a quarter alone. And active managers have been around for much longer too.

However, the bigger reason I feel, is the need for people to strive for higher performance – they just don’t want to “settle” for the benchmark return. This tradability is especially important in volatile markets such as those in early 2009 when intra-day market movements can be huge.
Lower Cost: The average expense for an active mutual fund in the US is 1.21% while the average for Active ETFs so far is 0.70%. At this stage, you might ask, then why do investors continue to put their money in these active mutual funds? Active ETFs, by law, have to provide disclosure of all their holdings on a daily basis, with a 1-day lag to prevent front-running by traders. There are few important things you should look out for.

As with any actively-managed product, a track record of solid performance is very important and Active ETFs are no exception. Here’s how they compare to actively-managed mutual funds:

Tax Efficiency: Active ETFs are more tax efficient than active mutual funds mainly because of their ability to provide in-kind creation and redemption.

85-90% of assets are still in actively-managed mutual funds. But that is finally changing.

Actively-Managed ETFs: What’s In It For You?

Active ETFs arrived on the financial scene in 2008 once the SEC approved the launch of these products. Please see full disclaimers here. Active management is alive and well as the large majority of assets continue to lie in actively-managed mutual funds where portfolio managers are striving to outperform their benchmark rather than just matching its performance. If I was a salesman, I’d say “there is no catch!”, but that’s hardly ever the case. That is when I see most investors going into these products with greater confidence.

Also, while the current range of investment strategies available through Active ETFs is relatively limited, in the coming months and the remainder of this year, be prepared for a large increase in Active ETF products because many big players in the financial industry are clamouring to get into this space to get a piece of the action.

Disclosure: No positions in above-mentioned names.

Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed on EtfsHub are those of the author alone and do not in any way represent the official views, positions or opinions of the employers – both past or present – of the author in question, or any other institutions and corporations associated with the author. Today, there are 17 Active ETFs in the United States and also a bunch in Canada. This is despite volumes of research that suggests active managers have a hard time outperforming indices.

So let’s start by addressing a fundamental question up front – why do people continue to look for active management?

Active Management: What’s the pull factor? Hence, it might be prudent to wait till the investment managers behind these funds prove their worth – after 3 years in existence, most will probably be given a Morningstar rating. Investors in index mutual funds – which invest client money passively to track an index – started comparing that to investing in Index ETFs which are identical to index mutual funds in terms of strategy, but are cheaper, more tax-efficient, more liquid and more transparent than index mutual funds. In other words, mutual funds had a monopoly on active management. Part of the reason for that is the existing difference in market size – with so much money in active strategies, active managers have greater resources to market and attract investors than passive strategies. This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers. People are shunning investments which charge an arm and a leg to do something many people feel they could do more easily and cost-effectively. EtfsHub shall not be liable for any claims or losses of any nature, arising indirectly or directly from use of the information on or accessed through the site.

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Walk-away homeowners are reshaping the housing co-op — and the entire economy is changing forth with it.

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Here’s how to do it.      Starting July 1, you can complain directly to a party that put a ding on your reports and force it to investigate.

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With market crashes, high unemployment, bankrupt social security, underfunded pension plans, and more ugly economic factors, the possibility of traditional retirement has been compromised greatly for many Americans.  If traditional retirement is far from a sure thing, is early retirement even remotely possible?

Photo by epicture’s via Flickr

Early retirement is possible for people today even despite a terrible economy.  The factors that make it possible, however, are not the things that people depend on for traditional retirement like social security and a pension.  The factors that can make early retirement a real possibility for you are all driven by you in areas such as frugal living, a non-materialistic lifestyle and hard work.

Defining Early Retirement

When most people think of retirement, they think of goofy senior living communities, sitting on the beach and playing golf.  Well, the retirement vision for most young people today is very different.  It is a time of “working” out of interest and passion rather than necessity.  It is a time of travel.  It is a time of spending time with friends and family.  It is about financial freedom versus having millions.  Golf and beach are optional.

Such an early retirement can be had by resorting to extreme frugal living.  Or a form of early retirement can be found by escaping the traditional “nine to five” job and becoming a freelancer or independent contractor.  Such a move can result in increased flexibility and mobility, two of the traits many are searching for when pursuing an early retirement.

Getting Extreme At A Young Age

Your greatest chance at being able to move towards a form of early retirement is to get extreme at an early age.  Unfortunately, young people these days take the first few years or even decade of their life to climb out of the debt hole from student loans and irresponsible behavior.  Such a time period puts off your accumulation of funds that are needed for an early retirement.  So, your first priority is to not accumulate debt.  By having zero debt, you can get extreme and put money towards your savings account rather than your lender.

When you’re young, the steps you take then will have the largest impact on your future versus any other time period of your life.  This is due to the amazing power of compound interest.  If you can start extreme saving early on in your 20s, you will be amazed at what kind of funds you will have accumulated in your 30s.  This available capital will become a huge asset and allow you greater flexibility in choosing your path whether it is early retirement, starting a business, taking some time off, etc.

If you’re debt free, consider the path of extreme frugality and extreme saving.  The strict financial habits you embrace at an early age will set you up for a myriad of options down the road.

Conclusion

Early retirement is not the traditional retirement that the baby boomers are striving for.  It is a lifestyle that offers flexibility and a variety of ways to spend your time rather than working until you’re 65 at your typical “nine-to-fiver”.  You must realize early, however, that to give yourself the option of such a lifestyle, you need to be both frugal and you must save much more than the average person.  By starting young, you can make significant strides and provide yourself the option of early retirement regardless of whether it is something you will actually do at that time.  Wouldn’t you rather at least have the option?

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quality of life, traditional retirement, saving, financial freedom, frugality, pension plans

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Source: Is Early Retirement A Realistic Option To Pursue? from Moolanomy Personal Finance, written by Kevin (Staff Writer).

Make your money work harder today: Check out the online savings rate comparison, online checking rate comparison, and online CD rate comparison.

Copyright © 2007-2010 Pinyo Bhulipongsanon.

I believe that the younger Americans in their 20s and 30s are more focused on quality of life versus previous generations.  As such, these individuals value experiences, value their time, and value the possibility of early retirement. You are not allowed to reproduce the content within this feed in any manner.

This feed is provided for the convenience of Moolanomy’s subscribers.

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Learn what guarantees you have that you won’t lose your money and why a plethora credit card is more dangerous than a general-purpose card.

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