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Using prepaid credit cards

September 4, 2011 / Staff

Fortune has an interesting article about the entrepreneur who created prepaid credit cards.

When the card was rolled out, kids didn’t show much interest but adults who couldn’t get checking accounts or credit bought the cards in droves, using them for such prosaic tasks as paying household bills. “I thought, ‘We have the right product, just the wrong target market,’ so we retooled,” Streit recalls.
Streit rechristened the company Green Dot (GDOT), got backing from Silicon Valley venture firm Sequoia Capital, and now is the largest provider of prepaid debit cards to the “underbanked” in America, a class estimated at 73 million people. Green Dot went public in 2010: Sequoia’s original $5.8 million stake is now worth around $270 million.
Its breakthrough came in 2005 when Wal-Mart (WMT) partnered with it for the Walmart MoneyCard, which customers load with money when they cash a paycheck or tax refund at a Wal-Mart. The retailer now accounts for 60% of Green Dot’s revenue, which hit $117 million in 2011’s first quarter, up 26% over 2010. With 4.3 million cards outstanding, it is far ahead of its closest rival, netSpend (NTSP), with 2.3 million. Wal-Mart was so impressed that it bought 9% of the company last year. Even the U.S. Treasury has started a pilot program to issue tax refunds on Green Dot cards.

It’s interesting how the card was created for students and then became popular with people who couldn’t get credit cards.

Budgeting, Personal Finance

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Expect the Unexpected – How to Handle Life’s Many Curveballs

August 18, 2011 / Staff

Curveball.

Potential Curveballs

Life throws plenty of curveballs at unsuspecting individuals, and overcoming these can be difficult. Some are small, while others are life shattering and may require outside help to overcome the emotional trauma related to encountering such an experience.

Job loss
Those who have encountered this may feel unable to pay their bills and make ends meet. This is an extremely stressful experience; some might feel like they will never find another job they love.

Divorce
This is always a very difficult time for couples, and is becoming more common as the divorce rate continues to climb. Individuals going through the divorce process might suffer through feelings of depression, loneliness, and fear of the unknown.

Death
Just about everyone will experience the loss of a family member, friend, or loved one. Thoughts of missing the person and memories can be very difficult to deal with, and often will trigger a lot of emotion.

Unexpected illness or medical issue
This can be overwhelming and very expensive, especially for those who have no health insurance coverage to help soften the blow.

Coping Methods

When facing a problem such as one of these, there are several good ways to cope with the stress and fear. Expressing feelings through some sort of outlet, such as crying, laughing, or even just talking it out with another person, can often result in a feeling of release. Caring for and serving another can also be a great way to get outside of the mind and give to someone else who may be in need. Exercise is one of the top stress-relievers, since it produces endorphins, which help to increase feelings of self-worth and positivity.

Getting Cash Quickly

Those who are struggling with a financial hardship can also get cash quickly with Plain Green Loans, which offers a lump sum to applicants who qualify. This option can eliminate many of the fears of getting bills paid on time, and customers can feel at ease when choosing a payment plan to repay the money.

Dodge or Hit

In baseball, a curveball results in two options: dodge or hit. Those who dodge may ignore or avoid the problem, pretending as if it’s not happening and burying themselves in other things. Those who choose to try to hit the curveball are facing the issue head on and figuring out ways to cope with the stress. Are there any other positive ways to deal with stressful situations?

Lifestyle

Is it cheaper to buy than rent your home?

August 16, 2011 / Staff

For many parts of the country, this is becoming true:

As the national real estate slump deepens, home prices in many cities have crossed a worrisome milestone.
It’s cheaper to buy a home than to rent onein 74 percent of the country’s largest 50 cities, according to the real estate site Trulia — findings that confirm the national epidemic of depressed housing prices remains in full swing.
Trulia’s research, which compared the median list price and median rent for two-bedroom apartments, condos and townhomes in America’s 50 largest cities, found that renting is more expensive than buying in dozens of markets, particularly in Miami and Las Vegas, as well as Mesa, New Mexico, and Arlington, Texas.

Of course, you have to have the credit to buy a home, thus this doesn’t apply to everyone. That said, if you have good credit, with mortgage rates so low, now is a good time to start looking if you want to purchase a home.

Real Estate

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8 Sure Fire Ways to Raise Your Car Insurance

August 13, 2011 / Staff

Road Trip.

You’re on a road trip with a 19-year-old guy named Joe who’s decided to forgo college to try acting in Los Angeles. He’s had a few accidents and speeding tickets in his old hand-me-down car, and he is not a reliable bill payer. You’re a well-educated 50-year-old married woman who never has accidents, pays her bills on time, and lives in the country with a secure job and no children.
Joe’s car insurance premium is higher than yours, and it’s easy to see why. But there are other factors that determine how insurance rates are decided. Here are eight things you can do to raise your car insurance rate.

1. Be a Man
It’s not the fault of insurance companies that men are involved in accidents far more often than women are. So until those statistics change, women should just enjoy the little perk of paying lower premiums than men.

2. Be Under 25
Young people, due to their inexperience behind the wheel, are far more likely to be involved in accidents. Consequently, teenagers and young adults often pay higher insurance rates. Maybe middle age isn’t such a bad thing.

3. Buy a Sports Car or an SUV
That dream purchase you’ve been saving up for is sure to increase your rate. But don’t buy a bottom-of-the-line clunker, either. Chances are, if your grandma would buy it, it will keep your rates low.

4. Move to a Metropolis
More people mean more cars. More cars mean more accidents. Since living in a big city is considered an accident risk by insurance companies, this means you’ll be spending more money if you like the big city.

5. Speed
Penalties vary, but if you like to put the pedal to the metal, you might as well reach for your wallet at the same time. Speeding tickets raise your auto insurance because drivers who speed often, get tickets and have accidents, which makes them a liability on the road.

6. Drop Out of High School
It turns out that getting an education will do more than help you get a better job – it will help you get better car insurance rates. Maybe you can use this logic to convince your parents to help pay for college – and your car.

7. Don’t Pay Your Bills
If you are demonstrably unreliable, you can’t expect insurance companies to count on you. Your rates will be higher until you can prove you can pay your bills on time.

8. Get in Accidents
Yes, accidents do happen, and if you are unlucky enough to be involved in one, you will see an increase in your insurance rate. It may not appear in this year’s premium, but you will most likely see it on next year’s bill.

You can’t control some factors – like your gender or age – but other factors, such as slowing down, paying your bills, and making sensible choices when buying a car, will help you keep your insurance rates as low as possible.

Insurance

5 Ways to Keep Your Business’ Finances in Order

July 26, 2011 / Staff

Being in business has a lot of issues to deal with. One of the core components of every business is its finances. Between income, expenses, taxes and payroll it can feel like every day money is dominating. Of course, money isn’t everything, but a lack of money can leave a wide swath of damage and cause a lot of stress. When you want to manage your business’s money you have a lot of options available. Some are high tech and some are downright old school. The following is a list of different ways you can keep your business’s finances up to snuff and working well.

1. Go old School

There is nothing so effective for many people as thinking in ink. While it can lead to a massive mess, sometimes you need to just take out a legal pad and a pen and sketch out something. While this tends to be seen as inefficient, this is your business. You can run it any way you like. In some people’s cases, saving receipts in a folder and tabbing them up every quarter is the way to go.

2. Use Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are some of the best inventions ever, because business owners can use spreadsheets to keep everything organized easily. Spreadsheets do all of the math for you, so you can focus on the reasons for expense and income problems instead of wasting mental energy on doing the math. With a spreadsheet you can organize any kind of numerical data and make it easy to read and interpret.

3. Use Online Options

The Internet has all sorts of options to keep both your personal and business finances humming along smoothly. You can use sites like Mint.com to keep things sorted out, and such a site is great because you can access it from a lot of different locations.

4. Hire a Cloud-based Book-keeper

Nowadays you can find all sorts of people who have the skills to keep your info organized. You can go to a site like elance or odesk and hire a trained book-keeper or a professional accountant. This way you don’t have to personally track your income, expenses and taxes. However, you still want to ensure whomever you hire is doing a solid job of it.

5. Use Smart Phone Apps

One of the most popular statements in English these days is, “I’ve got an app for that.” The latest and greatest app is the MetroFax app for the iPhone that allows you to fax documents easier than ever. When you employ the faxing powers of MetroFax on your phone, you can send and receive records as easily as if you had a fax machine in your pocket. Coupled with all the other apps out there designed to track the flow of your business’s cash your smart phone can keep everything in order with ease.

With all of the powers modern business people have keeping great financial records has never been easier. You can track income, expenses and taxes with as much ease as people used to be able to add receipts on an old pocket calculator. Or you can just whip out paper and pen and do things the old-fashioned way. Your cash flow statements will be lined up like soldiers in no time.

Business