Archives for December 2017

The Shortcuts of Student Life

When you’re a student you have a lot of demands on your time. There’s the responsibilities of studying and meeting your deadlines for reading and for writing essays. On top of that you’ll have time you want to devote to any clubs and societies you’ve joined: student theatre is no small commitment, and neither is joining a university sports team. Finally, the university experience wouldn’t be the same without the friends you make there and having free time to spend with them is a vital thing to preserve.

Today, let’s have a look at some of the shortcuts you can use to get the most out of your time as a student and make sure you’re living life to the full!

Moving House

Regular house moves are an unfortunate fact of life when you’re a student. Most people find themselves moving two or three times in the course of a standard three year course, and this carries with it all the stress of a house move later in life.

One way to cut down on the stress and worry is to look into student storage (visit byStored for more details and rates). You can pack the essentials of your life into a storage unit while you search, and even leave them there during the summer holidays so you can return and unpack at your leisure, rather than trying to fit in a house move at the beginning of the academic year!

Beating Procrastination

Procrastinating is the bane of many students’ lives. While you’re too intimidated to start a big essay, the time you spend procrastinating isn’t actually spent doing anything else useful or fun! Pointless tidying or busy work you do to avoid working isn’t time spent with your friends, it’s wasted. If you can just start, and get your essays written efficiently, you’ll have much more time to actually spend on things you want to do.

Try the Pomodoro Technique to cut big tasks down to size. Set a 25 minute timer and work with your full concentration for those 25 minutes then take a five minute break and reset the timer. Every 4 intervals take a longer break to avoid burning out. This cuts even the biggest task down into manageable chunks and helps you maintain a high level of concentration!

Getting Up on Time

If you can get up on time, you’ll have a few more hours to spend doing valuable work in the morning, meaning you’ll have more time for fun in the evening! Try putting your phone in a mug to magnify the sound of your alarm and make sure you can’t ignore!

Tight budget? There are solutions

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Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, there simply isn’t enough money. Bills are piling up, the raise you got at work is barely enough to cover the raise of your rent, commute expenses, and your weekly grocery run. So you resort to taking a loan, or a credit card cash advance, and things snowball to a point where you can’t pay the minimum balance on your card either. Don’t worry, there are always solutions.

The first one is to consider a debt consolidation loan. They are loans that will put everything you owe on your car loan, personal loan, credit cards, and so on… under one roof, with one monthly payment that is usually lower than what you pay on all your debt combined. Sounds good, right? Usually, the interest rate is also lower than what you used to have on your average debt. But because the term of the loan is longer, you will end up paying more money. This is a very convenient short term solution to allow you some breathing room in your budget, but what you want to do most importantly, is start spending less than you earn. And that is achieved by a combination of the following: spending less and earning more. As you increase the gap between earnings and expenses, you will have enough funds to start saving extra cash, to repay your debt, start building an emergency fund, and prepare for a great financial future.

Spending less is not as hard as it seems. A lot of the time, the money we spend day in, day out, is mindless spending. We get out of work pretty late, so we pick up take-out on the way back. How about trying to prepare your meals at home on the weekends, so you can have a portion of something healthy and satisfying ready to warm up in the fridge when you had a long day? The average household spends over $800 a year on food they throw away, that would make a big dent in your debt without affecting your lifestyle. So try to be more conscious about waste. Turn off the lights when you are not in a room. Use your car when you absolutely need it, and run errands on the way back from work. Don’t be tempted by lifestyle inflation or by your friends saying you need to do this or that. Instead, ask the people whose lifestyle you admire for financial advice.

When it comes to earning more, there are a few easy solutions too. Try to stay a little longer at work if you are paid by the hour. Even 20 minutes every day will add up to almost a day at the end of the month. See if your company needs extra skills that no worker has, and study for that on your spare time, then ask for a promotion since you are doing some extra work. You can also pick up a little side hustle such as walking your neighboors’ dogs in the evenings together with yours, or baby-sitting their kids while they are going out.

Getting out of debt is like going on a diet. You won’t get financially fit overnight, but with the right habits and mindset, you will slowly build a strong foundation for a better financial future.

Life Insurance is Getting Easier to Acquire – Here’ s Why

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Life insurance is one of the best investments that you’ll ever make for your loved ones. It’s one of the best ways to ensure that your family has the money that they need, even if something tragic were to happen to you.

Shopping for life insurance can be a frustrating and overwhelming process. Nobody wants to sit and think about their death, but it’s important that you plan for the things that you can’t avoid. Once upon a time, shopping for life insurance was a long, drawn-out process. Thanks to the Internet and all of the technology, getting life insurance has never been easier.

Life Insurance Online

One of the easiest ways to buy life insurance is to buy it online. Several insurance companies specialize in selling insurance online. These companies allow you to buy life insurance, without having to go into an office or spend hours on the phone with an agent.

If you’re looking to get life insurance as easy as possible, then purchasing insurance coverage online is going to be the best option. With these sites, all that you have to do is fill out a form, and let your application go through the underwriting process. With some of these companies, you can get life insurance in a matter of hours.

Accelerated Underwriting

Another way that life insurance is getting much easier is thanks to accelerated underwriting. With some companies, when you apply for life insurance, you could wait a month or two to get life insurance protection. Some companies have started using accelerated underwriting, which as you can guess from the name, allows you to get life insurance much faster.

With accelerated underwriting, the whole process is going to be less involved than with a traditional underwriting process. With accelerated underwriting, the company is going to look at your overall health, your MIB records, your DMB records, and they will also look at your current and past prescriptions.

With accelerated underwriting, most companies don’t insure smokers. The goal of accelerated underwriting is to give qualified applicants affordable life insurance as quickly as possible. That’s why these accelerated underwriting plans have strict restrictions, it helps give costs down.

Guaranteed Issue Policies

The quickest and easiest ways to get life insurance is to purchase a guaranteed issue plan. As you can guess from the name, these plans are guaranteed acceptance, which means that regardless of your health or any pre-existing conditions that you have, you can get life insurance protection. These plans are an excellent option for anyone that can’t get accepted with a traditional life insurance plan, but there are several pitfalls of these plans that you should be aware of when you’re shopping for coverage.

One of the most significant drawbacks of these policies is that you’re going to be limited to how much coverage that you can buy. Most guaranteed issue policies will only give you around $25,000 worth of coverage. For most families, that won’t be nearly enough insurance. Not having enough life insurance is one of the worst mistakes that you could ever make for your loved ones.

Another drawback of these plans is that they are going to be more expensive than a traditional policy that has an exam or medical underwriting. The purpose of the medical exam and the health information is to give the insurance company an idea of how much risk you present to the insurance policy. Without that knowledge, the company is taking a much greater risk to give you protection. They are going to offset that by charging you higher premiums.

Independent Insurance Agents

One easy way of getting life insurance is to work with an independent insurance agent. Unlike traditional insurance agents, independent brokers work with dozens and dozens of highly rated companies. These agents can bring quotes from dozens of quotes all at once. Independent agents can save you both time and money on your life insurance. Not only can an independent agent save you hours and hours of time, but they can also answer any questions that you have about the different kinds of insurance plans on the market.

Life Insurance has Never Been Easier

Life insurance is one of the best safety nets that you’ll ever buy for your family, but millions of Americans procrastinate on buying a plan. It’s never been easier to buy a quality and affordable life insurance policy, which means that you have no excuse not to purchase an insurance policy.

Little life changes can create big savings

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You know how the saying goes, penny wise, pound foolish. Sometimes, for focusing too much on saving little amounts here and there, we forget about the big picture. For example, we would skip the latte on the way to work, and make coffee at home. Great! That is a terrific new habit for you to develop if you want to save money. However, we are only talking about a tiny bit of money every month.

On the other hand, there are little life changes or adjustments that do not require a lot of time to set up, and can result in big savings.

One of them is refinancing your mortgage. It can be as easy as sitting down with your banker for half an hour, or filling up your information on Loanable’s website, so you can be matched with potential lenders who could offer you a better deal on your house finance. Because of the huge amount you borrowed to buy a house, and the length of the loan, lowering your payments by even 5% every month will result in huge savings over the life of the loan.

Another great use of your time is negotiating your debt with your other creditors. Your credit card provider, for example, if you carry a balance. Credit cards usually have double digit interest rates, and if you keep on making minimum payment every month, your balance will take years to kill, or might even grow every month. If you have made your payments on time until now, you should have good credit, and be eligible for 0% balance transfer credit cards. Once your balance is carried over there, every payment you make will go entirely to pay off the balance, and not service the debt. Make sure you note the end date of the 0% deal and try to pay everything you owe by then. You can also look at competitors when it comes to student loans, car loans, personal loans, and so on, and call your creditor saying that other company offers such and such terms, and are they able to give you a better deal on your debt. Most of the time they will, saving you time and energy to fill up paperwork with other lenders. But if they don’t, don’t be afraid to shop around for something better.

Negotiating also works really well with utility providers. Every year, you can call your broadband provider, and ask to remain on the new customer discount. It works most of the time. Or just hang up and call back in hopes to find a more inclined customer service representative! Switching your electricity and gas provider is as easy as heading online, entering your postcode and address, and your monthly consumption. You can find information about your usage on your last bill. If you accept to pay via monthly direct debit, you can usually get a great deal, that will be applicable for at least 12 months. Again, make a note in your agenda 11 months from now, and start shopping for bigger savings!

These little changes take barely hours and can save you thousands. By focusing on the big ticket items, you can save way more with less effort.