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Archives for October 2018

Buying or Renting: The Pros and Cons

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When you’re looking for a home through real estate listings, Canada offers 2 basic options. You can either buy or rent. But which is the better option?

The truth is that the right or wrong answer will not be the same for everyone. It depends on your particular needs and situation, and only you can decide which option is better.

To help you understand, here are the core benefits and drawbacks of each option

Buying a Home PROs

  • The value of the home can increase over time so you may generate more profit when you sell compared to your interest earnings when you leave your money in a savings account.
  • As the home is your legal property, you’re able to use it as you see fit without a landlord limiting you. You can change the home style and renovate to suit your preferences and needs.
  • You can earn income immediately from the home by renting it out. You can then use the rental income towards paying off your mortgage.
  • If you use the property to generate income, you may enjoy some tax deductions.
  • When you make montage payments on time, you improve your credit score.
  • You can use the property as collateral when you borrow money.

Buying a Home CONs

  • You may not pay rent, but you need to pay the mortgage, the property taxes, the home insurance premiums, and the costs of maintenance. Add these expenses together and they can exceed rent by a huge margin. So you better earn enough money to cover them all.
  • It’s very possible that you don’t make profit on the home, especially when you resell very quickly. Real estate is an investment, and there’s no such thing as a sure investment especially for short-term profit.
  • You’re not able to move to another address as easily. You will have to sell your home first.

Renting a Home PROs

  • You’re a lot more mobile when it comes to your home location. It’s a lot easier to move to another apartment. So if you get a new job on the other side of town, you can just get a new apartment in that general area.
  • You’re also able to live in a place where the home prices are simply too much for you. This means you can enjoy the various restaurants, clubs, and services that the more affluent can enjoy.
  • Moving out is much easier for you, compared to how a homeowner needs to find a buyer for the home. You don’t have to find a replacement, as that’s the job of the landlord or property owner. If you signed a lease, you can always find someone to take over or you can even rent out the property.
  • Rent doesn’t cost as much as the expenses involved in home ownership. So you’re able to use your money as you see fit, as your budget is freer. You can put that money in stocks, or even invest it in real estate. Or you can be a renter for all time and you can enjoy life with your spending money.

Renting a Home CONs

  • Your lease or rental agreement limits how you can use or renovate your home. You will need to get the approval of the homeowner if you make any changes.
  • There is no wealth creation. Your rent is lost forever, as you can’t get it back. You don’t put that money in home equity.
  • The amount of rent you pay may increase every year, and you have no choice but to pay if you want to stay.
  • If you have a lease, you’re not sure of it will be renewed. So you have to be ready to move out if it isn’t.

So which set of pro’s and con’s appeals to your preferences and budget? As always, the choice of whether to buy or to rent is entirely up to you.

 

Expanding Your Personal Freedom By Getting a New Set of Wheels: 3 Ways to Finance a Car

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Buying a car requires you to make the right decisions. There are many options buying it outright or buying it on finance. In fact, buying a car is the second most expensive asset after your house. So, it is important to select the best way to buy a car. Don’t rush into making decisions because they’ll cost you in the long run. Instead, take your time and make sure you got the right decision. Below are three ways to finance your car without losing much.

1) Opting for a Shorter Loan and a Cheaper Car

Car dealers are very smart when it comes to persuading buyers to purchase a car. They will use all techniques to convince you into buying a car; not just a car, but an expensive car that will make you have to repay the car loan for a longer period of time.

Some car dealers will try to lure you with low monthly payments. Don’t accept that kind of deal because their main aim is to generate more interest from you. Instead, choose on a plan that will see you repay your car loan after a short time.

By opting for a shorter loan, you will be able to save more money on interest they would have charged you if you opted for the low monthly payment. Doing this will not only help you cut on cost, but also build equity in your car as fast as possible. It is therefore better to be very careful with the car dealers. Don’t let them fool you with their offers.

2) Don’t Finance a Car with a Bad-Credit Loan

You don’t have to lie low to car dealers simply because you have a bad credit score. Instead, find ways in which you can get approved before you start shopping around. Some companies always offer Auto loan. Be sure to check.

You need to first check your credit report to ascertain that everything is okay. There are sites where you can check your credit report for free. Just search the sites on Google and confirm that everything is okay.

Once you are certain with the nature of your credit report, you can go ahead and negotiate with the car dealer on fair grounds. It will prevent the car dealer from exploiting you or taking advantage of the bad credit score. So, go ahead and be sure your credit report is excellent before you start shopping around for the best car.

3) Finance Your Car with a Credit-Union Car Loan

Credit unions are different from banks in that they are member-owned, unlike the banks that are mandated to make profit for their shareholders. Always ensure you check your car loan eligibility before making any decision.

Therefore, you can be guaranteed that a credit union car loan will provide you with lower rates as compared to the banks. The only challenge is that you first have to be a member.

Some credit card unions have strict rules. For example, Wings Financial Union only accepts members who live in Saint Paul or Tacoma. Though some credit unions can allow you to qualify for their membership, regardless of your city or your place of work. You should be able to find that better.

Final Thoughts

Once you have the best possible car loan, make sure you are not exploited in any way by the car dealers; get the best deal that will not let you regret later. But make sure you follow the guidelines above to avoid any poor deal.

Economic Ramifications of Legalized Sports Betting

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There’s been a lot of anticipation about the revenues that would be generated once sports betting is legalized in the US. While some states prepared for the expected revenue increase, others were wary about it.

It is a known fact that illegal gambling

brings in a lot of money. That’s the reason that many people believe legalized sports betting would be profitable. However, this equation is not as easy as it seems. This is because there are a lot of indices that affect the profitability of any enterprise.

The infographics below by NJ Games is meant to help you understand the economic ramifications of legalized sports betting. But before we get into it, let’s give you a summary.

Understanding the Dynamics of Legalized Sports Betting

Just like the days of the Californian

gold rush, the days ahead would witness a lot of wild drama. There are a lot of players in the field of sports betting: the bookie, the bettor, the bookmaking giants, and even the government. All would seek for ways to get a cut of the pie. This would, of course, lead to a lot of wheeling and dealing.

How would the sports leagues make the kind of profit they feel is worthwhile? How would they combat the issue of illegal sports betting that has already gained ground? These are some of the questions the leagues and fans are faced with. This is mainly because even highly rated legal bookies seldom
make anything higher than 5% net profit per year.

Furthermore, some states are considering the issue of “integrity fees”. These are fees that would be paid to the leagues for supervising some exceptional betting activities. This fee is the charge for providing statistical data and would make it even harder for the bookies to compete favorably with illegal sports betting operators.

While optimism about the profitability of legalized sports betting is high, there are still some lingering doubts.

Check out this infographic and get deeper insights into the economic ramifications of legalized sports betting.

The Best Ways to Grow Your Money

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Another month has passed and just like the month before, you managed to set 20% of your paycheck aside for your emergency fund. Now it’s been two years and your emergency fund is actually starting to be big enough. The next money you put aside – should you use it for travelling, should you buy something nice (although, maybe useless) for yourself, should you give it to charity? All of them are good options, but there’s also (at least) one other option. Now that you have your emergency fund built, and you really should keep that money safe, you could start thinking of using all the future “spare money” to try to earn with it. To make it grow. And there are several ways of doing that.

Obviously, you could consider playing Powerball online and although the odds are low, the size of your potential winnings is unimaginable. But that’s not really growing your money, that’s hoping for the best. For actually growing your money there are a few different options.

Investing in stocks
It doesn’t necessarily need to be stocks, it could also be forex or cryptocurrencies as well. But investing in stocks is usually a lot better option, because there are some important differences between stocks a cryptocurrency market. Investing is long-term, and you should choose stocks with huge potential. Even if you see actual results only in 10 years time. At this point one good bet would be anything related to Elon Musk. But that’s just my personal take.

Real Estate
While we’ve all heard of and been part of the booms and crashes, by the end of the day real estate market is the best market to invest in. The safest one. Long-term real estate prices are growing. Obviously you still need to do your research about where to buy and for what prices, but in general even today it’s the most fool-proof option. The negative side is that investing in real estate usually assumes a huge investment, at least compared to stocks or cryptos.

Loans
There are a number for crowdfunding lending sites out there which according to a number of friends of mine can actually give you a return of anywhere between 5 and 20% a year. Which is a pretty decent ROI already. Of course, should you join any such platform – again, firstly do your due diligence and make sure the platform is legit. And never lend all of your money to one person but rather split it between 50-200 different people. So that even if some loans will go bad, and they will, you’ll still be making money, not losing it.

Living on a Budget: 7 Unnecessary Expenses You Can Easily Get Rid of Without Sacrificing Too Much

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It’s tough to get by sometimes, with living expenses increasing so fast year after year. Many people look into a variety of ways to survive, from re-mortgaging to downgrading and of course we’ve all heard about payday loans This type of loan is high-interest so you really need to know you can repay it, and with something like a car loan or remortgage you have a high value item tied into the loan, so you really have to be sure. These are generally emergency options and not something that would be looked at voluntarily.

There are ways to avoid drastic steps like this. Just stay on top of your finances and keep expenditures below income, and you’re all good. Raising income is a bit tougher than lowering expenses, so here are some expenses you could look at cutting without much discomfort or hassle.

  1. Subscription TV

Subscription TV is an expense many Americans have already began to cut. Often these subscriptions are years old and there hasn’t been any real attention to how the packages change. Many companies offer great deals for the first few months, after which prices may double or more. With the prevalence of the internet, many people are using cheaper on demand services and cancelling their long-term subscriptions, often cutting the cost by 50-90%.

  1. Eating Out

Eating out is a big expense. Think about how much you pay for a meal, even when it comes to fast food, compared to what it costs for ingredients. You’re usually going to be paying many times more for the ease of having the food prepared and served for you. Getting rid of a night out each week and taking packed lunches for work can save a big piece of your weekly budget.

  1. Unplanned Snacking

Snacking whilst on the go can also add up. A dollar here, two dollars there, and before you know it you’ve spent $5 on food. Doing this three times a week equates to $750 a year! It’s a lot cheaper to buy cheap, bulk snacks from the supermarket and just carry a couple of little bits with you when needed.

  1. Unused Memberships

Check your bank account to see if you’re signed up for services that you aren’t actually using. It might be some type of class, a gym, or even roadside recovery or phone insurance which are already covered by other things. Cut these expenses and instantly free up some cash without changing a thing.

  1. Coffee on the Go

Like the snacks, coffee on the go adds up. $4 a time, around 5 times a week? Say goodbye to over $1,000 for the year. That’s enough for a pretty good vacation! Save the cash and start carrying your own coffee in a thermos.

  1. Supplements/Treatments

This might be controversial for some readers. Basically, take good stock of what supplements and treatments you are using, whether for health, fitness, weight loss or beauty reasons. There’s no scientific evidence behind a lot of these items, so you might just be wasting your money on snake oil.

  1. Entertainment

I don’t mean in-home entertainment, I mean going out. Going to the movies, the theatre, a couple of sporting events or concerts – it all adds up. Yes this one would be painful to cut, but there are some clever ways to save money without cutting it entirely. Plan ahead and shop around, get cheap tickets (first release for example) or see if alternate venues/shows are cheaper. You can still have a great time without breaking the bank!

 

3 Simple Ways To Edit and Improve Blog Videos

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Although recording videos for blogs has become much easier in recent years as people have greater access to devices with better cameras – the one area that can still be tricky is the post-production. Trying to edit and improve a blog video for the first time can be daunting, and you may not even know where to start.

If you’re relatively new to video editing, there are three simple ways in particular that you should try when you want to edit and improve a video for your blog:

  • Split videos into segments – then trim, cut and splice.

One of the easiest yet most useful ways to edit videos is to split them into segments. In most editors you’d just have to position a marker and click a button to split your video at that point.

By splitting a video you can divide it into segments and isolate parts of it. That will then allow you to trim or cut out parts you don’t want, and splice (i.e. merge) videos together more effectively to create the final version of the video.

  • Try color correction

Often the video footage that you capture may not look true to real life, and that’s where color correction comes into play. By adjusting the color settings you can alter the colors in your video to make them look closer to how they actually looked.

The easiest way to get started with color correction is to use the automated white balance feature that is present in most editors. However on top of that you should also try manually adjusting the color parameters and observing how they affect your video.

  • Crop videos to get them in the right aspect ratio

If your videos aren’t in the right aspect ratio, you could technically resize them – but if you do change the aspect ratio in that way it could stretch or compress the video itself. That isn’t ideal, which is why cropping is a far better way to adjust the aspect ratio of your videos.

In most editors you will be able to either select the area you want to remove, or resize the frame of the video so everything outside it is removed. It is possible to improve the composition of the video by cropping it as well, and you could try using the rule of thirds for that.

As you can see the ways to edit your blog videos that are listed above can be performed easily, and don’t require any prior experience. By starting to edit your videos using them, you should become more familiar with the editor you’re using and can learn how to overlay videos, apply effects, add audio tracks, and more. For example you could try Movavi Video Editor to do all of that.

At the end of the day the more you edit videos, the better you’ll get – especially if you make it a point to experiment with various features that you encounter. In time you’ll notice that your blog videos start to look a lot more professional, and have a polished quality to them that probably wasn’t there before.

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