10 Creative Ways to Save Money

This post was written by Elizabeth Cutten. She is the Editor for FindSecuredCards, a blog helping people get out of debt, as well as showcase some of the best credit cards to get back on your feet.

If you're anything like me, saving money is the name of the game. There are so many ways to save money, you're going to find that no matter what you do in life, there is going to be a way to save. I wanted to come up with a simple, yet creative list that you can use that will help you save $100s, if not $1,000 this upcoming year.

Image Courtesy: tke.org

#1 Always use coupons – Whether you're going to go out to eat, or maybe you're going to go to the grocery store, be sure to use your coupons. You're going to find that there are so many deals / coupon blogs online that you can take advantage of. Join their email list, search for printable coupons, as well as join them on Facebook.

#2 Rent movies with the library – Why do Netflix, when you go to your local library, and get many of the movies that you love for free, if not a small fee? Yes, my local library has all of the new releases, and you will find that this is a great way to save a few bucks.

#3 Try and buy in bulk – Whether you're a family of 10, or a family of 2, places such as Costco are a fantastic way to save money, when you need soaps, toilet paper and more. I can't recommend this place more than enough for friends. It's well worth the yearly membership, trust me on this one!

#4 Create a cash budget – Let's say that you only want to spend $100 on your grocery bill. Instead of going in with your credit card, go in with $100 and that is it. This is a great way to make sure that you only spend the money that you want to spend. Do this with all the stores that you want to shop with.

#5 Shop your local thrift stores – Your local thrift stores are a great place to not only find gently worn clothing that are name brands, you can also find many other items for rooms such as your kitchen, and more. This is a great way to get clothing for next to nothing!

#6 Install a programmable thermostat – I can't stress this one enough, and what you will find out is that you can save a lot of money, when you program it to be low at night when you're sleeping, as well as keep it off when you're at work, or set it low in the Winter, or high in the Summer.

#7 Try to cut out the credit cards – I switched to my debit card, and I have found that when I use the debit card, I'm able to save a lot of money. Since a debit card withdrawals money from your bank account, it allows you to only spend what you can afford.

#8 Use price comparison tools – Shopping online allows me to save almost 95% of the time. Use great price comparison tools such as PriceGrabber.com, as well as Google.com/products. This is a great way to see what companies are offering the cheapest price.

#9 Pack your lunch – There's a good chance that you're eating out a lot if you're working outside of the home. If you can, try packing a lunch with a simple sandwich, bag of chips and apple. Do it the night before, so that you're not too tired to do it in the morning.

#10 Evaluate your home services - If you have a home phone still, consider getting something such as MagicJack. If you still have cable TV, you may want to watch your TV via Netflix, or via other ways. There are so many reasonably priced services today that you can take advantage of.

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Sino-Indian trade tonic

India and China today decided to increase two-way trade by two-thirds to $100 billion over the next five years and to set up a Sino-Indian chief executive officers' forum, which would help evolve trade and investment policies of the two nations.

In a joint communique, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also decided to reduce the trade imbalance between the two countries, which stands at about $20 billion, by giving Indian products and services greater access to the Chinese market. Indian and Chinese banks were also allowed to set up branches in each other's territories.

"There is enough space in the world for the development of both India and China and indeed enough areas for India and China to cooperate," said the communique. The two sides have shown interest in cooperating in bidding for energy assets abroad instead of bidding against each other, with Wen underlining the possibility of such cooperation in his talks with Indians. Though this policy had been advocated by India earlier, China had not taken it seriously with gas and oil field prices still at reasonable levels and the value of its forex reserves at an all-time high. However, with oil asset prices rising and the dollar value falling, China, analysts said, was now willing to look at cooperation possibilities.

The two nations that have fought a war over a disputed border in 1962 and have been seen as economic and political rivals welcomed "each other's peaceful development" and regarded "it as a mutually reinforcing process". They believe their growing relationship offers increasing opportunities to advance their cooperation. India "welcomed Chinese investment in infrastructure", an euphemism for allowing China to invest in power and roadway projects, areas where investment proposals were regularly held up on security concerns. "They agreed to encourage greater mutual investment and project-contracting cooperation between businesses of the two sides, appropriately handle economic and trade frictions and differences and jointly oppose protectionism in all forms," said the communique. The two sides also agreed to expand economic cooperation, especially in infrastructure, environmental protection, IT, telecommunications, investment and finance. 

Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com

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Loan Rehabilitation is a Great Defaulted Student Loan Help

Defaulting on a student loan can result in serious repercussions for the defaulter. It is common to find defaulters getting sued in such cases. They are served with a notice for wage garnishment by the lenders who obtain a legal permission from the court to do the same. As per the terms of wage garnishments, the lenders can withdraw up to 15% of the defaulters' disposable income. The defaulted student loan status remains like a dark shadow over their credit report for as many as seven years from the day of default and debars them from borrowing money further. Owing to the defaulted status, they may be deprived of Federal benefits such as social security retirement, income tax refunds and disability benefits. Defaulted student loan help is the only effective solution to get over all these consequences.

                    Image Courtesy: 4educationloan.com

The most commonly sought after defaulted student loan help is student loan rehabilitation. Student loan rehabilitation programs allow defaulters to reinstate their defaulted student loans. When a person goes defaulting on his student loan, the information is conveyed to the credit bureau and the default status gets recorded. Hence, it adversely affects the defaulters' credit score and credit history. Rehabilitation of his defaulted student loan assures the defaulter of the above-mentioned Federal benefits by wiping out the stain of defaulted loan status from the credit history. The defaulted student loan help gets the defaulter rid of the penalties like wage garnishment and inability to borrow more loans that have been levied on him.

Rehabilitation of defaulted loans is advisable to students in case they ever default on the borrowed money. This option is available for Federal student loans. Rehabilitation of private student loans is possible when the lender offers any such program. Apart from student loan rehabilitation, another type of defaulted student loan help is student loan consolidation.

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Guest Post: Tax Benefits of Home Ownership

Image Courtesy: blogs.myhome.ie

Even with occasional dips in the housing market, there are a variety of advantages to home ownership. While not every homeowner may end up making a bundle of cash on his or her home through price appreciation, there are ways in which you may increase the odds of making your property investment profitable. There are numerous benefits to owning a home, including various tax benefits that you might be able to take advantage of during your time as a homeowner.

Mortgage Interest Deduction

Being able to deduct mortgage interest on your federal income taxes is probably one of the most widely recognized tax benefits to owning a home. This advantage can be especially valuable to those who have taken on a mortgage without much of a down-payment or who are early into the term of a mortgage and paying much more on interest than principal. Unless a homeowner refinances a mortgage, this benefit will gradually fade with time as more of the mortgage payment begins to be applied toward principal than interest.

Property Tax Deduction

Taking advantage of the property tax deduction upon your personal income taxes is another tax advantage of home ownership. Like mortgage interest, the amount you pay in property taxes may be deducted from your federal income taxes each year. Between interest and property taxes a homeowner could end up easily realizing thousands of dollars per year in deductions.

Property Tax Exemptions

A homeowner might be eligible for certain exemptions upon their property tax bill, which could be another beneficial aspect of homeownership. Some exemptions that might be available to a homeowner could include senior, military, disabled veteran, and the standard homeowner exemption. It’s important to check with a county’s tax assessor’s office to see what types of exemptions are offered in a particular area and what restrictions or requirements might apply.

Energy Efficient Modifications

Certain energy efficient modifications to a home could be eligible for federal income tax credits. Items such as windows, doors, HVAC units, roofs, solar energy systems, geothermal heat pumps, and similar items installed within your home might qualify for these tax benefits and could increase the value of the home itself as well. Visit http://www.energystar.gov/ to learn more about these possible tax benefits of home ownership.

Consider asking neighbors and community officials about other possible tax benefits in your area as well. Federal, state, and local tax laws change regularly and missing out on such opportunities can be costly.

Anastacio Mindiola is an accomplished attorney and business owner. His company helps home and business owners protest property taxes in Houston and the surrounding counties. For more information on how you can lower your property taxes visit http://www.republicpropertytax.com.

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Ups and downs of diesel price in India

 It likely to take a call on deregulating diesel prices before the follow-on public offers of Indian Oil, and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd hit the market in the last quarter of this fiscal.

State-run IOC, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) sell diesel at a loss of Rs 4.71 per litre. “It is extremely difficult for the government to pass on the entire burden to the consumers. We will have to go before the empowered group of ministers (eGoM),” oil secretary S. Sundareshan said. On June 25, the eGoM had freed petrol prices and decided to make diesel rates market-determined in due course. The decision resulted in a hike of Rs 3.50 a litre in petrol prices in Delhi. At that time, the government had decided to raise diesel prices by an ad hoc Rs 2 per litre even though the difference between the domestic retail price and the imported cost was almost twice the amount.

"Unfortunately, crude prices have been consistently going up since June," he said. Global crude rates have risen over $10 per barrel to over $85-86 a barrel since June. During April-September, Indian Oil, BPCL and HPCL suffered a loss of Rs 31,367 crore on selling fuel below cost. Compensation by upstream oil companies ONGC and Oil India Ltd of Rs 10,486 crore and a budgetary support of Rs 13,000 crore have met part of the loss. Sundareshan said the budgetary support was less than Rs 15,683.30 crore sought by the oil ministry. For the full fiscal, the three retailers are projected to lose Rs 65,839 crore.

According to analysts, the uncertainty over diesel pricing and the way subsidies are split between firms and the government can deter investors from subscribing to the IOC and ONGC floats.

Kazakh deal ONGC Videsh -the foreign arm of ONGC -will acquire a 25 per cent stake in Kazakhstan's Satpayev block in the Caspian Sea by the end of February, Sundareshan said. 

Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com

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Tips on How to Sell your Property Fast without Renovating

I will not give you tips on how to fix up your home, NO. I believe that if you had sufficient fund to renovate the house, perhaps you had not decided to sell it off. Most property agents would suggest you to fix up the house so that it looks attractive to the prospective buyers. Perhaps you do not know that you can sell your house without renovating if you work with cash buyers.

Selling properties in the open market is difficult; the main problem is to find a buyer. It may take several months to find out a genuine buyer. People often take help of property agents who help them get in touch with prospective buyers; of course the agents charge certain portion of the profit once the deal is complete. And there is no guarantee that the agent will be able to find you a buyer at all. Hence, if you need to sell property fast contacting a property agent may not be a good idea.

Common people also publish ads on classified columns of popular newspapers and magazines. They also post property details on online portals and directories. However, there is no guarantee that this process will be successful and that you will be able to find a buyer at all. If you need money immediately chances are you will not be able to do all these experiments and wait for long.

Moreover, due to recent economic slowdown, it is now difficult to get bank loan as the banks have made their rules stricter so that only those who can repay the loan can get through. Therefore, even if some people show interest to buy your house, they simple withdraw when the bank refuses to grant them loan.

How to Sell Your House Quickly?

If you really want to sell your house fast, you should look for cash property buyers in your locality. Most of the cash buyers have their branches and representative all over the UK so that they can get in touch with the homeowners exactly when they need.

Cash home buyers purchase properties of any type – no matter how old it is, whether the roof is leaky, whether the flooring is damaged and the lawn is untidy – the property buyers will agree to purchase it for cash.

To find a cash buyer in UK, simply log on to the internet and search for cash home buyers online. Fill out the contact form available on their website or call the toll free number; their representative will contact you to know your options. Once you agree to deal with them, they start all the legal processes on your behalf and wrap up the deal as soon as possible. You cannot get a faster way to sell your home than this!

Property to let - Leaders, the specialist letting agent in the UK helps you buy, let or rent a property. From marketing properties to finding tenants, our estate agents take care of everything on behalf of the landlord.

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BSNL & it's latest STD rates

State-run BSNL has announced a flat rate of 80 paise to Rs 1.20 for a three-minute STD call to landlines anywhere in the country to arrest the fall in fixed-line connections.

From tomorrow, BSNL fixed-line users can call any landline of any operator and “talk for three minutes in one call unit charge, which varies from 80 paise to Rs 1.20 depending on the tariff plan”, without having to shell out any additional charge. Calls to mobile numbers of other operators will be charged at Re 1 per minute. The facility will be automatically available to the fixed-line customers across all tariff plans.

Private mobile operators, including Vodafone, Airtel, Tata Teleservices, provide STD calls for less than around 50 paise to Re 1 per minute depending on the tariff plan. In 2006, BSNL had started the One-India plan whereby a customer had to pay Rs 299 as monthly rental and could make calls to any landline at Re 1 for three minutes.

“This is a continuation of that plan and is an attempt by the failing telecom firm to gain market share in the fixed-line category,” said Sudipto Basu, an independent telecom analyst. In August, more than 2 lakh BSNL landline subscribers had disconnected.

BSNL’s performance has been touching new lows every year since 2007. The firm’s losses for the year-ended March stood at Rs 5,955 crore, which was offset by an income of Rs 4,132 crore from non-telecom activities.

Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com

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Sahara counters market cop move

The Sahara group claimed it had strong legal opinion that buttressed its argument that market regulator Sebi had no jurisdiction over unlisted entities and was, therefore, wrong to debar Sahara group founder Subrata Roy and two group entities from accessing the capital markets.

On Wednesday, Sebi had taken the extreme step after it detected serious lapses in the draft red herring prospectus of Sahara Prime City.

The action was taken in response to complaints that two group entities —Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Ltd (SHICL) — had issued convertible bonds to a select class of investors which wasn’t disclosed in Sahara Prime City’s prospectus.

While SIRECL had issued optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCDs) in April 2008, SHICL had floated the same instrument in November 2009. The Sahara group has claimed the issue of these bonds by unlisted companies warranted no disclosures in Sahara Prime City’s offer document. It also argued that Sebi had no jurisdiction over unlisted entities and their flotations, which came within the ambit of the ministry of corporate affairs.

The group said its strong body of legal opinion, including former Chief Justice A.M.

Ahmadi, former presiding officer of the Securities Appellate Tribunal C. Achuthan and a former Supreme Court judge, supported this stand.

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