Avoid Scaring Potential Home Buyers; How to Get Rid of Pet Odors

Posted by Genry Read in Financial Reviews | No Comments

Cats, dogs and other furry friends are members of our families. But when it comes to selling your home, many potential homebuyers dont want to meet these family members and they certainly dont want to smell them as they walk through the front door.

If youre in the process of getting your home ready to put on the market, you have a lot of work ahead of you. One of your primary goals is going to be to ensure that your house doesnt smell like your pets. Fortunately, you can be proactive about this and lower your risk of turning off potential home buyers.

Temporarily Relocate Pets

Talk with family members or friends you can trust to take care of your pets during the home selling process. Getting your pets out of the home allows you to work on getting the pet odor out and keeping it out.

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Lending Club Returns Continue Upward Trend At 11.44%. Lending Club Passes 500 Million In Loan Originations

Posted by Genry Read in Financial Reviews | No Comments

Ive been investing with Lending Club for a couple of years now, and Ive gone from a skeptic when I first started investing with the service, to someone who is convinced that Lending Club can be an integral piece in any persons investing strategy. Ive seen good returns since I started, and despite warnings from a variety of sources about how the site was a flash in the pan and not something youd probably want to put your money in, Ive stuck with it. Over the years Ive used the site Ive only had one loan get charged off.  Since I was diversified, however, Im still getting 11.44% returns. Not too bad.

This past week Lending Club announced that they had reached $500 million in loans originated since inception (2007), further showing just how strong the platform is.

Lending Club, the leading platform for investing in and obtaining personal loans, today announced that $500 million in loans have been originated via the platform since inception.
Lending Club serves the needs of prime consumers who choose the lower interest rate loans available through Lending Club over more expensive credit cards.

The San Francisco-based company commenced operations in 2007 and has exceeded 100 percent growth in loan volume each year since.

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Planning for retirement: Be introspective and extroverted

Posted by Ginger Makales in Financial News | No Comments

Recent findings from the New Retirement Mindscape® City Pulse index suggest that a person’s gender may influence the ways they plan for retirement, and it appears both men and women can learn a lot from one another. Regardless of your marital status, it’s beneficial to understand that the ways you approach retirement may be different from your spouse or partner, family and peers. Though there may never be absolute agreement among couples or families when it comes to planning financially for retirement, different perspectives are often very valuable.
But before you can gain perspective from others, you must understand your own strengths and weaknesses – and recognize those of your partner or family members. For example, you or your spouse might be financially-minded and focus energy on your portfolio, while the other thinks about things they want to accomplish during retirement, like travelling or going back to school. Instea (…)

4 Ways to Build a Strong Real Estate Investing Financial Education Today

Posted by Clifford Mato in Best Financial Tips | No Comments

  

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. Unknown

Your first real estate investment should be a solid financial education

If you are like me, you’ve probably made a few mistakes in your investing career. Every successful real estate investor has made plenty of them. However, you can limit your mistakes and increase your odds of success by building a strong real estate investing financial education.

My biggest investing mistake happened because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t have a team around me with experience to guide me away from danger and it cost me in both time and money. But that is a story for another day. Today, with all the education available, this does not have to be the case. You can limit your mistakes and make more money in real estate investing by having a solid real estate investing financial education.

On the flip side, by learning a few things at a seminar we attended, we were able to immediately apply what we learned to turn a potential disaster into a real asset. For example, we turned a potential $75,000 environmental mess on one of our properties, which was preventing us from being able to sell it, into a property we could sell, had a government program clean up the mess, and made a $125,000 profit. What was that seminar worth to us? Well… about $200,000 on that deal, and the event cost less than $1,000. Talk about return on investment.

Below are 4 things you can do today to start building your real estate investing.

Become a student of the industry. If you want to be successful in commercial real estate, read everything you can on it. If you want to be a successful multifamily investor, subscribe to newsletters and read blogs on multifamily real estate investing. There are numerous free information sites available including blogs, free reports, and industry publications. After that, buy a few really good books on the industry. It’s amazing how much information you can pick up that you can apply to your business.

Pick an area and focus. There are 100+ diff

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TurboTax Tax Freedom: Free Online Tax Filing for You!

Posted by Ginger Makales in Financial News | No Comments

Wondering where to find free online tax preparation and e-filing? The IRS is once again offering it’s Free File Alliance program. The program makes online tax preparation and e-filing available at no cost to low and middle-income taxpayers.

IRS Free File Alliance is a public-private partnership between the federal government and private tax preparation companies, including TurboTax maker Intuit.

People with an adjusted gross income of $57,000 or less can select from more than a dozen online tax preparation services.  That means about 70 percent of all taxpayers, or 95 million people, are eligible to use these free services.

Intuit has supported the Tax Freedom Edition for nearly a decade. In that time, we’ve donated more than 22 million federal and state tax returns through TurboTax Tax Freedom Online, to low and middle-income taxpayers.

For tax year 2011, anyone who qualifies for EITC, or is on active duty military with an AGI of $57,000 or less, or has an AGI of $31,000 or less can use TurboTax Online Tax Freedom Edition.

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The Northern Gateway project is a Canadian decision

Posted by Genry Read in Financial Reviews | No Comments

Not many Canadians realize the number of foreign special interest groups attempting to sway Canadian decision making. Fortunately, Kathryn Marshall has researched this for her article below and it makes for some compelling reading.

I expect that foreign funded NGOs are working hard to sway First Nations opposition through whatever means they can in this battle for public opinion as well. Personally, I love pipelines. We have one in our  backyard. The house would be very cold without it and we’d have to install a coal chute.

Check out as well. 

Troy Media - .On January 10, the federal government opens public hearings to determine whether to approve a new pipeline to deliver oil from Alberta’s oil sands to the B.C. coast

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