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Consult A Car Accident Attorney And Make Sure You Avoid These Common Mistakes After A Collision

 Personal Finance  Comments Off
May 232013
 

Being involved in an auto collision is a scary and overwhelming experience in any circumstance, whether you’re able to walk away or have suffered serious injuries. You can be the world’s best driver and still become the victim of a negligent driver or cause an accident because of factors beyond your control. There are several common mistakes many people make after a collision, and knowing ahead of time what actions a car accident attorney would advise you to avoid should you or a loved one have the unfortunate fate of either falling victim to a car wreck or being the one at fault can help prevent further complications down the road.

Don’t Hit and Run

A car accident attorney is sure to tell you that there is no worse error you can make than leaving the scene of an accident you’ve been involved in. It’s normal to be in a state of shock and confused or scared, but that will never be a good enough excuse for driving away and will only turn a car crash into a much more serious crime. Staying at the scene and making sure to take the proper next steps with authorities and other drivers is the only responsible route to go down.

Don’t Fail to Call the Police

Calling police to the collision scene and filing a report is important no matter how minor the damage may seem at the time. A police report may serve to protect you later in the case of a lawsuit or claim of personal injury. You may be in a hurry to get on with your day and away from the accident, but taking a little extra time to give a statement of what happened and get advice on how to proceed can go a long way in helping your case.

Don’t Neglect the Accident Site or Forget to Gather Information

Documenting the site of the wreck and all vehicles involved, gathering personal and insurance information of the other driver and talking to witnesses regardless of how minor damages are will keep you from potentially having problems later on when dealing with the ins and outs of insurance companies, car repairs and personal injury claims. Even if you deem yourself a trustworthy person and think the best of others, it’s imperative to acquire photos of damages and the location and have witness accounts in case your statement is disputed.

Don’t Decline Medical Attention

Many people believe they don’t need to receive medical attention if injuries aren’t immediately apparent at the time of the accident, but this is often not the case. It may take time for some injuries to settle into your body and begin to cause you problems, and it will be harder to prove as more time goes on that they were actually a result of the collision. Receiving a proper checkup will allow medical personnel to ensure there are no internal injuries to watch out for and give you documented records to refer to if you should need to seek compensation.

Don’t Disregard How a Car Accident Attorney Can Help

An experienced car accident attorney can help you to understand your rights whether you are the victim or at fault. The days following a wreck are generally confusing and difficult to deal with on your own, and a lawyer will understand how to proceed on your behalf with insurance companies and possible legal ramifications.

These mistakes are all too frequently made by people every day, and they don’t have to be. Trying to remain calm and keep a clear head if you are ever involved in a collision is the first step to preventing these missteps and then consulting a car accident attorney can further protect your rights.

My name is Tiffany Olson and I live in Northern California. I like to blog on topics that I have personal experience with. I’ve been in several car collisions and the last one I was in was when I was on a camping trip in Eureka, CA. Someone referred me to this car accident attorney in Eureka and things went really smoothly.

Life Insurance – How Much Do I Need?

 Personal Finance  Comments Off
May 232013
 

Whether you are looking into buying life insurance, or you already have a life insurance policy, you may wonder if you have enough coverage. After all, you do not want to leave your beneficiaries hurting financially if you were to pass away suddenly. Yet you may not know exactly how much you should spend on getting life insurance costs. No worries. Here are some things you should consider when it comes to looking for life insurance:

Two things you need to think about regarding how much life insurance you need

LifeHappens.org, the life insurance industry site, says that you need to think about two things when determining life insurance costs and needs. The first is how much money will your beneficiaries need if you were to pass away “to meet immediate obligations.” The second is “how much future income is needed to sustain the household.”

Here is what you need to figure out the first part of the equation – add up what your “final expenses:” would be. That includes several parts. The first consists of “uncovered medical costs, funeral expenses and final estate-settlement costs.” The second part of that includes “lump-sum obligations.” If you have an unpaid mortgage, credit card debts, college loan costs, and other bills that would need to be paid, this would follow into it.

“The second variable is a bit trickier,” LifeHappens.org says, because “it involves calculating the ‘present value’ of future needed cash-flow streams.” For example, if you have $100,000 worth of stocks right now, how much would that stock be worth if you were to pass away tomorrow, or 10 years from now. If your house is paid for, how much would it be worth over time? Would it increase significantly, or stay stagnant?

And what about other investments your family may have? How much will these investments be worth over time? It’s hard to figure out that number, because what may seem like a great investment now could be a disaster 10 years from now, while an investment that does not seem so great now could be a bonanza in the future.

In addition, you need to figure out what expenses your family may have in the future. For example, does your spouse work? If not, would your spouse go back to work if you were to pass away? And if you have children, how old are they, and how much will their education cost? This is something you need to think about when determining how much of the best life insurance deals you should buy.

Several ways to calculate these figures

There is a life insurance calculator on the lifehappens.org website, in which you can figure out how much you may need to have in life insurance to meet future obligations. You can also simply use this figure to determine how much you would need for life insurance – simply multiply your income by seven to ten. While this figure is not perfect, it can help you figure out a guesstimate for how much life insurance you might need. To learn more, click here.

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Lisa Swan writes on on a variety of life insurance topics. She lives in New York City.

Review Of The Main Points From The Citizens Advice Bureau Survey, Looking Into Payday Lenders

 Personal Finance  Comments Off
May 232013
 

CAB survey in light of Good Practice Customer Charter

In July 2012, the British Government announced the four main trade associations that oversee payday lenders had agreed to implement a Good Practice Customer Charter. This Charter was implemented on the 26 November 2012.

After its implementation the Citizen Advice Bureau (CAB) wanted to ensure that payday lenders were sticking to what they’d agreed. To this end they launched a payday lender survey in order to get customer feedback on the specific points. The initial results of the survey were published in May 2013 and span responses received between November 2012 to March 2013. They intend to continue to publish updates over the coming months every four to six weeks.

What they have found so far?

Over the first four months of the survey the CAB received 1,270 responses from members of the public using payday loans. This is what they have found so far.

Cost of the loan

One of the requirements of the Charter is that all payday loan companies should tell their customers how much their loan is going to cost. This must include an example of the cash cost for each £100 they borrow. However,   22% of respondents were not clear about the total repayment costs.  Considering this is one of the requirements in the newly set out Charter there should be no reason for this figure to be so high. Out of the 1,270 members of public that filled in the survey a staggering 279 didn’t understand the full cost of the loan they had taken out.

How to repay

In order to repay the loan most payday lenders will set up a Continuous Payment Authority (CPA).  This allows the lender to take payment using the borrower’s debit card. This method of repayment is also often used by gyms and magazine subscriptions. The Charter expressed that payday lenders must explain to their customers how a CPA works and that the customer had the right to cancel. As with understanding how much the loan would cost, the survey discovered that 21% of customers were not sure of how to repay their loan. 

Affordability

Under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 it is a legal requirement that any company lending money must carry out affordability checks.  This helps ensure that the customer can afford the loan and they themselves are being a responsible lender. Only 35%, which is 445 of the respondents to the survey had been asked about their personal finances to see whether they could afford to the loan.  This is a serious breach of law that has affected 65% of the respondents. 

 Repayment difficulties

Given the serious lack of affordability checks it is hardly surprising that 75% of respondents had difficulties repaying their loans.  From those that responded only 28% felt the lender dealt with them sympathetically; 16% were offered to freeze interest and charges if they made payments under a reasonable repayment plan; and only 8% were told about the availability of free debt advice – with some lenders actively discouraging borrowers from getting the advice that they needed by adding more charges if the customer asked an adviser for support.

Rollover and extensions

The Charter states that payday lender should not pressurise customers into rolling over their loan and that an affordability assessment should be carried out each time the loan is rolled over or extended. The fact that so many customers are having to rollover their loans indicates that they were unlikely to be able to afford the loan in the first place.  The affordability checks that the companies should have carried out would have highlighted the individuals who would not be able to afford to repay the loan in the allotted time. These bad practices and slack measures may have contributed to customers’ worsening financial state.

So since the introduction of the new Charter has as anything changed?

Despite the new Charter there still appears to be some failings in the system.  Why should it be that some payday lenders get to break these rules?  They make no attempt to explain the loan costs, or ensure their loans are affordable for the customer and they continue to deliver bad customer service. In an effort to improve things, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has given 50 payday lenders until 28 May 2013 to adequately prove they have changed their trading practices or risk losing their consumer credit licence.  Hopefully the pressure from the OFT and CAB will push all payday lenders into following the Good Practice Customer Charter.

 Is there an alternative?

In light of these findings by the CAB it is important to highlight a short term loan company that is different, focusing on affordability; they explain and clearly display loan costs with no need for rollovers.

Smartloan is committed to being a responsible lender. Unlike the payday loan companies highlighted in the CAB article, affordability checks are carried out with every applicant.  They even designed a free household budget tool to help the customer work out what they can afford. Smart Budget is available on their website.

To ensure a loan is suitable for the customers, Smartloan customer representatives go through an income and expenditure with each applicant. They work with customers to make sure they choose the best repayment plan to suit their individual needs.

This article was written by Bex Evans.  Currently she blogs on financial news and SEO topics

Saving With A Partitioned Budget

 Personal Finance  Comments Off
May 232013
 

Partitioning is a very simple, but very powerful concept, and there’s good scientific research behind using a divided budget as a means to control your spending. Amar Cheema and Dilip Soman published research in the Journal of Marketing Research that found partitioning was the best way to limit problem spending and eating.

The psychological problem is essentially the modern world – we shop online with just a click, if we do still make a face-to-face transaction then we tend to hand over a card. The reality has gone out of our perception of spending. Figures on a screen just don’t have the same physical impact as the envelopes of cash and coins that most people were paid in until relatively recently.

Overdrafts and credit limits too have become massively more widespread. This all means we’ve forgotten how to work out how much real money we actually have.

Partitioning aims to answer these questions, here’s how.

What can you afford to spend?

Take a look at your income and expenses and start to get on top of them. A host of money management websites – almost all designed with partitioning in mind – can help you. Organise your monthly bills and get as many of them as you can paid automatically. Then work out how much you need to spend each month. What you have left is your discretionary income, yours to do what you please with.

Saving

Divide your savings goals – goals are important – into short, medium and long-term. Short term is getting an emergency fund together, ideally enough to keep you alive for three months with no income. Medium term should be your own personal goals. Do you want to buy a house, have a dream trip or indulge your passion for music, golf or gadgets? Long term is your retirement plan.

You should have aims in all these areas, and ideally set budgets and automatic payments to deal with them. This is not discretionary spending, it’s something you need to budget for and consider it an essential – draw your lines and stick to them. Remember debt should always be dealt with before you start saving.

Partitions

The days of labelled envelopes are long gone, you can now set your partitions electronically – food, petrol, tax and so on – but the principle is the same. The theory is that by keeping an eye on things and using easily understandable categories to label them you will keep your focus and commitment.  

Change is good

Our psychological experts warn of the dangers of habits in partitioning. The whole idea of this savings system is to make you take a new look at how you spend your cash. We all know the dangers of getting bored of a new exercise programme. You need to introduce some variety or you’ll take your eye off the ball. Setting new savings goals is one way to reassess what you’re doing.

Perhaps you don’t need to budget, but most of us do. If you’ve got a choice of American Express destinations, with only your credit limit to rein you in, then you may not need these tips. However, most of us do. 

Daire O’Shea is a travel and money writer with a penchant for smart saving

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