گذشته حال آینده

گذشته حال آینده

در میان برفها
قدمهای استوار برمی داری
کودکان خیال را بینی
قدم بر جای پای تو نهند
در افق نگری
دوستانی در راه مانده
حال قدری از تو فاصله گرفته اند
بی اعتنا گامی به جلو برمی داری
آرام آرام فرو می روی
ناگاه مردی آید که دست به سویت دراز کرده
و چراغش دوردستها را روشن کرده
خیز بر می داری
چشمانت را می بندی و باز می کنی
خورشید طلوع کرده
و مرد تاریکیها ناپدید شده است.

You are in financial trouble if...

You're surprised by your bank balance or credit card statements.
In today's financial world, you can't be caught napping. "Float" -- the time it takes a transaction to clear your account -- has all but disappeared, and financial services are eager to penalize any lapses, such as a bounced check or an over-limit transaction, with hefty fees. At the very least, you need online access to your financial accounts, and you need to check them often -- at least once a week, more often if you've bounced a check or incurred any other fine in the past six months.

You have no savings
You don't necessarily have to keep thousands of dollars stuffed away somewhere, but you do need some kind of financial cushion to cover unpredictable expenses.

You're carrying credit card debt
Don't fall for the myth that credit card debt is normal or that the average American carries huge balances. In reality, the most U.S. households have no credit card debt, according the Federal Reserve. Only one household in 14 carry more than $10,000 in credit card debt and uses cash advance on credit cards. Credit card debt not only costs you ridiculous amounts of interest, but it drastically reduces your financial flexibility, since any balance you've charged is credit you can't access in an emergency. If you've got balances on your plastic, making paying them off a priority.Take a hard look at the real choices

You have no discretionary income
If every paycheck is spent before you get it, or your fixed expenses eat up most or all of your income, you need to fix the problem, now. You may have convinced yourself that you have no choices, but chances are good that you do; you just haven't been willing to really consider them yet.

You don't know what kind of mortgage you have or when the payment resets
One out of three homeowners, when asked what kind of mortgage they had, confessed to pollster GfK Roper that they had no idea. Unless you have a traditional mortgage -- with a fixed rate for the life of the loan -- your ignorance could be expensive. The payment that's currently affordable could skyrocket, leaving you among the rising numbers of homeowners losing their homes to foreclosure. Call your lender now to find out whether and when your payment can change, and get an estimate of how high it can go; then consider your options. You may be able to cut other costs to compensate for the bigger payment, or you may want to explore refinancing or even moving.

You're underinsured
If your job doesn't provide adequate health insurance, you need to look for another job. In the meantime, read "A survival guide for the uninsured." Also check the liability limits on your auto, home and/or renters policies. Liability coverage protects you if you get sued; if your policy limits aren't high enough, you risk losing much of what you own plus big chunks of your future income. Make sure the limits are at least equal to your net worth (what you own, minus what you owe). Finally, if you're a homeowner, adjust your coverage limits if necessary.

Your business (or rental property) is losing money
As a fellow business owner, I understand how much you want your venture to succeed. But too many months of red ink will sink not only your business but your personal finances, especially if you're using your personal credit or savings to stay afloat. Come up with a plan to fix the problem and set a (relatively short) deadline; if your business or real estate isn't generating positive cash flow by that deadline, then pull the plug.

You're ignoring an elephant
This catch-all refers to any big, ongoing money problem you're consciously avoiding or pretending doesn't exist. Maybe you've got a car payment you're struggling to pay. Or you've got adult kids (or parents) constantly turning to you for financial help. Or you're retired and your nest egg is shrinking faster than you'd planned.Whatever the problem, you need to assess the toll it's taking and find a solution before you're backed into a financial corner.

You're borrowing from one lender to pay another
This includes using cash from one credit card to pay another, but it also includes tapping your home equity to pay off credit card debts if you don't have a plan for avoiding credit card debt in the future. You've missed a payment on any loan. Skipping a payment, or failing to pay the minimum specified, is a very big deal. Missing even a single payment can knock 100 points off your credit scores and trigger higher interest payments on your credit cards. Fall much further behind and you could face collection actions, lawsuits, repossession (if you're late on a car) and foreclosure. Don't wait until things get awful; fix them while they're still just bad.

You've taken out a payday loan
The payday loan industry would love you to believe that borrowing money at triple-digit interest rates is a normal and reasonable thing to do. It's neither. If you're borrowing from payday lenders, your financial house is on fire and you need emergency help. A legitimate credit counseling agencies (one associated with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, for example) can provide budgeting help as well as debt repayment plans.

Source : MSNmoney

Getting the best deal on Airfares

I came across these good tips for getting the best airfares at TheStreet.com.

Be Flexible

Flexibility in your travel plans will go a long way in helping you find cheap airline tickets. Here's a look at some of the considerations:

Departure times: Most people don't like to fly in the very early morning or on "red eye" overnight flights, but sometimes airlines need to schedule these times to get their planes to a different destination. If you are willing to fly at odd hours, you may be able to save some money on your ticket.

Days: If you don't have to arrive or return on specific days, then you can usually get a better rate flying on a day that is less crowded (usually Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays). Many of the top travel sites allow you to factor in a window of a few days into the travel dates you search. If you do find a better deal on one day over another, be sure to take all factors into account. If you save $50 by flying in on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday, but then have to pay an extra $100 for a hotel room and have to rent a car for an extra day, you can actually end up losing money.

Booking windows: The earlier that you know you will need a ticket, the better chance you'll have of getting the best price. Airlines have booking windows of 21 days, 14 days and seven days in advance of a travel day. Ticket prices usually increase when these windows come and go. In addition, if you want to use frequent flier miles to get your ticket, you must reserve as far ahead as possible, since getting these seats is quite competitive.

Alternate airports: Smaller airports on the outskirts of cities often are less expensive to fly into and out of than the main airport. This is the concept the new airline Skybus, which offers ten $10 tickets on every flight, uses. Check prices at all the airports near your departure city and arrival destination to find the best fare. Again, be sure to do the cumulative calculations. If you save $50 on the ticket, but the extra travel costs to and from the smaller airport exceed this, then you really aren't saving money.

Time: If you're not on a tight schedule, sometimes flights with stopovers will be less expensive than direct flights. This will mean you'll have to spend more time traveling to your destination, in exchange for a less expensive fare. Be sure to calculate what your time is worth. If you're saving $25, but spending five extra hours getting to your destination, it probably doesn't make sense to get the lower fare. Also be aware that stopovers will increase the chances that your luggage gets lost or delayed, possibly costing you more time and money.

Let's Make a Deal

Once you have determined how flexible you can be, it's time to start hunting for the best ticket prices. Unfortunately, this will take some digging. It is worthwhile doing each of the following steps in order to find the best price.

Comparison Web sites: Your first step should be to head to the main airline comparison sites, such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity. They do a good job keeping up with the latest fares, but they don't list all the airlines. Prices may even vary between these sites.

Airline aggregators: These sites look for the best deals from among all the travel sites. Some of the ones you may want to try are Booking Buddy, Cheap Flights, Fare Chase, Kayak and Mobissomo.

Airline Web sites: Once you have found the best deal from the main comparison sites and the aggregators, visit that airline's Web site directly. Since the comparison sites charge booking fees to make their money, you can often find the same ticket on the airline's site at a cheaper price. Also check the Web sites of discount airlines like Southwest Airlines and JetBlue, which are not available on the comparison sites. As mentioned above, Skybus is the newest player in the discount airline business. All flights must be booked through its Web site.

Travel Once you have found what you believe to be the best ticket price, contact a travel agency to see if they can come up with an even better one. If you find a good travel agent, it's surprising the number of times they can find something that you missed in your own searches.

Travel packages: If you are going to need a hotel and rental car once you reach your destination, be sure to compare the cost of bundling them with airfare in a travel package. Such packages often will offer a price less than you can get by securing all of these needs individually, even at the best prices.

By understanding that there is no one place that will get you the best price on a ticket and taking time to search various options, depending on your flexibility, you will greatly increase your chance of securing the best price on your airline tickets in the future.

Consistent Efficiency Is Key

Task:

• Find today's calendar period starting and ending date, where if the starting date is the 1st then the ending date should be the 15th, and if the starting date is the 16th then the ending date should be the last date of the month.

Short of writing the date with a string, which of the two following methods demonstrates a clear logical thought? (Disregarding the conciseness of the code).

Method #1:

 

Method #2:

 

When seen from the biggest picture, i.e., a total development project cost (and/or tco) of $1, the two methods above demonstrate a difference between:

• Getting much less value of the $1 payout albeit with a lot of code line count (and a potential debugging and maintenance nightmare); versus,
• Getting much more value from the $1 payout including clarity of thought, code conciseness, ease-of-debugging and most neglected value of all savings in maintenance cost.

Green Card: All EB categories Prioirty Dates are current !

Wow! Talk about moving forward.
All EB categories priority dates are CURRENT!
That means everyone (in case of EB3) who has their Labor and I-140 approved can file their I-485 application with USCIS.

Below are the details from the Visa bulletin for July 2007.


FAMILY BASED

Fam-ily	All Charge- ability Areas Except Those Listed	CHINA-mainland born	INDIA	MEXICO	PHILIPP-INES
1st	01JUL01	01JUL01	01JUL01	01JAN91	22APR92
2A	01JUN02	01JUN02	01JUN02	01AUG01	01JUN02
2B	08FEB98	08FEB98	08JUN98	08MAR92	01OCT96
3rd	15JUL99	15JUL99	15JUL99	08FEB88	01JAN85
4th	01AUG96	01MAR96	08FEB96	22JUL94	01APR85

EMPLOYMENT BASED

	All Charge-ability Areas Except Those Listed	CHINA- mainland born	INDIA	MEXICO	PHILIP-PINES
Employ-ment -Based
1st	C	C	C	C	C
2nd	C	C	C	C	C
3rd	C	C	C	C	C
Other Workers	U	U	U	U	U
4th	C	C	C	C	C
Certain Religious Workers	C	C	C	C	C
Iraqi & Afghani Translators	C	C	C	C	C
5th	C	C	C	C	C
Targeted Employ-ment Areas/ Regional Centers	C	C	C	C	C

You can find the full bulletin here

StumbleUpon Exchange

StumbleUpon Exchange is a new service that allows you to post your sites and have them stumbled by other StumbleUpon users.

You earn "Points" by stumbling other user's sites and you use them by posting your site to be stumbled and having your own site stumbled. You can verify each stumble before you reward Points. You are given 3 Points on sign up, which you can use to post your site to be stumbled. Each stumble they give you cost a point, but once you verify they've stumbled your site and given them a Point back you get a Point. This way the stumbles keep coming as does the traffic!

If you are interested go to www.suexchange.com

Understand how bonds work ?

Walter Updegrave from CNNMoney explains bonds in a simple to understand fashion.

Question:
I'm 71 years old and retired. I know I should have some of my portfolio in bonds, but I'm not very savvy about bonds. Is now a good time to buy into bonds and, if so, what type should I buy? - Norman, Atlanta, Georgia

Answer:
Okay, Norman, I'm going to give you the world's fastest primer on bonds. Ready, here it is: You know how a seesaw works, right? One side goes up, the other down. Well, the seesaw concept is the single most important thing you need to know about bonds.

On one side of the bond seesaw are interest rates. On the other are bond prices. When interest rates go up, bond prices go down. When interest rates go down, bond prices go up.

And the farther toward the end of the seesaw you are - that is, the longer the maturity date before the bond's principal is repaid - the more the price of the bond moves up or down when interest rates change. That's it. End of primer. That is the most important thing you need to understand.

Oh sure, there are other features of bonds that are good to know about, such as credit quality. The more you stick to bonds with higher ratings from firms like Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service, the less "credit risk" you'll bear - which means the lower the odds the bond issuer will default on repayment of principal and interest. (You can learn more about credit quality and other aspects of bonds, by going to our Money 101 Lesson on bonds.)

But as long as you invest in a diversified portfolio of bonds - which in the case of most individuals like yourself means buying bond mutual funds - the main danger you face in owning bonds is interest-rate risk, or the possibility that the value of your bonds will fall when interest rates rise.

So how do you manage that risk? Well, you could try to time your moves in and out of bonds, jumping in when it appears interest rates are likely to fall and bailing out when rates seem likely to rise.

But unless you're clairvoyant, I don't think you're likely to pull off such a feat. Indeed, reading the future direction of interest rates is tough even for accomplished pros, witness the fact that the Pimco Total Return fund, which is run by Bill Gross, one of the savviest bond gurus around, is now languishing at the bottom of the performance charts for the past year.

Instead of engaging in a vain attempt to guess where rates are headed, I recommend that investors adopt a simpler approach - namely, just go with bond funds with short- to intermediate-term average maturities.

Basically, that means funds with portfolios of bonds that mature on average within roughly two to eight years. There are no guarantees, of course, but history shows that intermediate-term bonds typically give you 80 percent or so of the gains of longer-term bonds with about half the ups and downs in price.

While you're at it, opt for bond funds with low annual operating costs (or expense ratios, in fund parlance). Returns on bonds tend to be lower than those of stocks over the long-term, so high annual costs can really eat into your gains.

If you're investing money outside of tax-advantaged accounts like a 401(k) or IRA, you may also want to consider buying municipal bonds. Their yields aren't as high as the payouts on taxable bonds, but, depending on your tax bracket, those lower yields may actually turn out to be higher on an after-tax basis. (To compare taxable and tax-free yields, click here.)

You can easily screen for short- and intermediate-term funds with low costs by going to our Mutual Fund screener. Or, if you want suggestions for specific bond funds, you can check out our Money 70 list of recommended funds. I'm a particular fan of the bond index funds on the list since they offer a nice combination of broad diversification and ultra-low expenses.

I'll leave you with one last tidbit about bonds that might come in handy. If you want to know how much the value of a bond or bond fund will go up or down if interest rates rise or fall, you can find the answer in a statistic called duration.

It's too complicated to get into what it actually represents and how it's calculated, but basically it's a measure of a bond or bond fund's sensitivity to changes in interest rates. What's neat about this stat is that once you know it, you have a pretty good idea of how a bond or bond fund will fare when rates change.

So, for example, if a bond fund has an average duration of, say, five years and interest rates rise by one percentage point, the value of the bond fund will fall roughly 5 percent.

If rates rise by two percentage points, the fund will drop about 10 percent in value. The opposite occurs if rates drop. You can find the duration for a bond fund by plugging its ticker symbol into the Quotes box at the top of Morningstar's home page and after the Snapshot page comes up, click on the Portfolio tab on the left. (If you don't know the ticker symbol, go to Ticker Lookup page. If you want, you can even screen for bond funds by duration by going to Morningstar's Fund Screener.

So that's pretty much the skinny on bonds. If you stick to a well-diversified fund that sticks to the short- to intermediate-term range, has low expenses and you don't try to get fancy by timing your moves in and out of bonds based on guesses about the future direction of interest rates, you should do just fine.

City View

Preview - Clique Aqui

City View é um layout simples.

Este template oferece opções de customização de fontes e cores.

Duas colunas, sidebar à direita.

Layout fixo.

Pontos Fortes:

Layout simples e clean.

A imagem do header e o degradê das laterais valorizam o visual simplésimo.

Anúncios contextuais como o Adsense podem ser facilmente integrados.

Boa quantidade de espaço pra os posts e os elementos da sidebar.

Pontos Fracos:

A largura fixa do layout cria uma barra de rolagem horizontal em resoluções de 800x600. Se o layout fosse só um pouquinho mais estreito - e poderia ser, pois são só duas colunas - não criaria a barra de rolagem. Se você se entende com HTML, diminua a largura do layout e seja feliz!

Links:

1 - Preview: Blog Templates - City View

2 - Informação sobre o Template e Instruções de Uso

3 - Download Blog Template City View

Palavras Chave:

- Duas Colunas
- Fixo
- Branco
- Cinza
- Simples
- Urbano

Technorati : Blog, Blogger, Blogspot, Como Faço, Dicas, Layouts, Personalizar, Templates, Tutoriais, Widgets

City View

Preview - Clique Aqui

City View é um layout simples.

Este template oferece opções de customização de fontes e cores.

Duas colunas, sidebar à direita.

Layout fixo.

Pontos Fortes:

Layout simples e clean.

A imagem do header e o degradê das laterais valorizam o visual simplésimo.

Anúncios contextuais como o Adsense podem ser facilmente integrados.

Boa quantidade de espaço pra os posts e os elementos da sidebar.

Pontos Fracos:

A largura fixa do layout cria uma barra de rolagem horizontal em resoluções de 800x600. Se o layout fosse só um pouquinho mais estreito - e poderia ser, pois são só duas colunas - não criaria a barra de rolagem. Se você se entende com HTML, diminua a largura do layout e seja feliz!

Links:

1 - Preview: Blog Templates - City View

2 - Informação sobre o Template e Instruções de Uso

3 - Download Blog Template City View

Palavras Chave:

- Duas Colunas
- Fixo
- Branco
- Cinza
- Simples
- Urbano

Technorati : Blog, Blogger, Blogspot, Como Faço, Dicas, Layouts, Personalizar, Templates, Tutoriais, Widgets

Credit Score Breakup and ways to boost it

Ways to boost your credit score

1. Don't charge anything for at least 60 days before applying for a loan, Johnson said. That way it's likely that all the payments you've made to date will be reflected in your credit score by the time a lender requests it.
2. Pay your bill in full and mail it as soon as it arrives, or at the very least the minimum due. Set up automatic online bill payments so you'll never be late. Or, if you are late one month, be sure to pay off what you owe as soon as possible.
3. Consider opening another credit-card account or two, or taking out a car loan or small bank loan.
4. Avoid applying on your own for a lot of loans and credit cards, particularly in a short period. And avoid excessive card-hopping.
5. Don't close unused accounts when you transfer debt.
6. Order your truly free credit report to keep track of your credit history as I have mentioned in my earlier post Free Credit Check