Are Your (top 100 wealth advisors) Finances Prepared for Disasters?
No commentsBy Mervin Hester
Home is where most people feel safe and comfortable. But sometimes - say, when a hurricane, flood, tornado, wildfire, or other disaster strikes - it’s safest to pack up and go to another location.
When it comes to preparing for situations like weather emergencies, financial readiness is as important as a flashlight with fully charged batteries. Leaving your home can be stressful, but knowing that your financial documents are up-to-date, in one place, and portable can make a big difference at a tense time.
Here are some tips for financial readiness in case of an emergency:
Conduct a household inventory. Make a list of your possessions and document it with photos or a video. This could help if you are filing insurance claims. Keep one copy of your inventory in your home on a shelf in a lockable, fireproof file box; keep another in a safe deposit box or another secure location.
Buy a lockable, fireproof file box. Place important documents in the box; keep the box in a secure, accessible location on a shelf in your home so that you can “grab it and go” if the need arises. Among the contents:
- your household inventory
- a list of emergency contacts, including family members who live outside your area
- copies of current prescriptions
- health insurance cards or information
- policy numbers for auto, flood, renter’s, or homeowner’s insurance, and a list of telephone numbers of your insurance companies
- copies of other important financial and family records - or notes about where they are - including deeds, titles, wills, birth and marriage certificates, passports, and relevant employee benefit and retirement documents. Except for wills, keep originals in a safe deposit box or some other location. If you have a will, ask your attorney to keep the original document.
- a list of phone numbers or email addresses of your creditors, financial institutions, landlords, and utility companies (sewer, water, gas, electric, telephone, cable)
- a list of bank, loan, credit card, mortgage, lease, debit and ATM, and investment account numbers
Social Security cards
- backups of financial data you keep on your computer
- an extra set of keys for your house and car
- the key to your safe deposit box
- a small amount of cash or traveler’s checks. ATMs or financial institutions may be closed.
- Consider renting a safe deposit box for storage of important documents. Original documents to store in a safe deposit box might include:
- deeds, titles, and other ownership records for your home, autos, RVs, or boats
- credit, lease, and other financial and payment agreements
- birth certificates, naturalization papers, and Social Security cards
- marriage license/divorce papers and child custody papers
- passports and military papers (if you need these regularly, you could place the originals in your fireproof box and a copy in your safe deposit box)
- appraisals of expensive jewelry and heirlooms
- certificates for stocks, bonds, and other investments and retirement accounts trust agreements
- living wills, powers of attorney, and health care powers of attorney insurance policies
- home improvement records
- household inventory documentation
- a copy of your will
Choose an out-of-town contact. Ask an out-of-town friend or relative to be the point of contact for your family, and make sure everyone in your family has the information.
After some emergencies, it can be easier to make a long distance call than a local one.
Update all your information. Review the contents of your household inventory, your fireproof box, safe deposit box, and the information for your out-of-town contact at least once a year.
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Tips on Trading Foreign Currency
By Mervin Hester
Foreign currency trading is done in a foreign exchange market where one type of currency is exchanged or traded for another type of currency. Currency trading is regarded as the largest financial market in the world. Players participating in currency trading within a FOREX market are the large banks like Citibank and Deutsche bank, nationalized and government banks, multinational firms, financial institutions and investment companies. The daily volume of the present global forex market is around US $3 trillion. Given the huge size and high liquidity of the markets worldwide, small players cannot easily do trading in a FOREX market.
Trading within a market is done in levels, where a player in a level doesn’t have access to other levels. The top level is the inter-bank market comprised of large banks like Deutsche bank, Citibank, Union bank of Switzerland and other banks across the world. The top ten players sweep off 70% of the total business done in the FOREX trading. In the top level, the difference between the bid and ask price known as Spread is very minute and is not available to other circles outside. As the levels descend, the difference increases mainly due to the volumes traded. Level of access for a player is determined by the ‘line’, the money with which one is trading. Currency trading has almost doubled today since 2001 mainly because of the recongnition of FOREX trading as an investment and asset class and also an increase in the fund management assets of pension funds and hedge funds.
Commercial companies do currency trading mainly to pay their customers for their good or services and trade in small amounts compared to large banks. Investment management companies do trading to manage the pension or endowment or investment portfolio of their customers and are usually in large amounts, because they have to invest in foreign equities for which they need to exchange currency to buy those equities.
Let us see the typical characteristics of a FOREX currency trading. Due to the over-the-counter nature, the currency markets doesn’t trade in a single dollar or a euro rate, but rather a different number of rate applicable only to that particular market. There is no central house or hub or exchange or clearing house as traders deal directly with each due to this OTC nature. Usually these rates are close to each other; otherwise special traders called arbitrageurs take advantage of the difference in the rates and make huge profits out of it. Main trading centers across the world are in London, New york, Tokyo and Singapore. As the time zones differ, trading is done almost 24 hours a day. Fluctuations in the rate occur due to changes in the inflation, interest rates of banks, GDP growth, trade deficits and surpluses, cross-border M&A deals, economic situations, financial health and some other macro economic conditions.
Currencies are traded for each other and each pair of currencies is a separate and unique product and usually denoted by XXX/YYY. During creation, the XXX is known as base currency is the strongest and YYY the weakest. Today the US dollar is in almost 88% of the transactions followed by Euro (37%) and yen. The most traded pairs are Euro/US dollar, US dollar/Yen and GB pound/US dollar.
Trading is done through different kinds of instruments like derivatives, spot transactions, forward transactions, options and futures, swaps and exchange-traded funds. Currency speculation is done by speculators who do an important job of transferring the risk from those who can’t bear to those who can bear it. Speculators always face controversies due to the risk they take up. Currency trading is affected by some factors like economic and financial situations, political scenarios, and other psychological issues related to the markets.
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An Overview of Home Information Packs
By Haywood Dickerson
Home owners will soon have just three months to sell their homes or be forced to re-issue the seller’s information pack at an estimated cost of 1000 for the average semi-detached home. This would be in addition to the original 1000 paid out for the original sales pack.
Much has been written about the Home Information Packs (HIP’s). Here we aim to examine the final details, just released.
From June 2007 it will be compulsory for all sellers to produce a dossier containing certain basic facts regarding the sale of the property. Ministers estimation of the costs of this survey are 776, a figure that the experts dispute. They say the figure is much more likely to be 1000. These figures are based on an average semi.
The information given in the dossier includes searches, deeds, description of the property and an energy efficiency rating. However, it appears that there are some rather worrying exclusions in the list. For example, there is no reference to rights of access, ground stability, natural subsidence or effects of mining. Risks of flooding are not included; neither is contamination from radon gas or other substances. Telecommunication links seem to have been overlooked too.
Despite this cost to the seller, it appears that if a buyer is borrowing in excess of 80% of the property value, they’ll still be expected to commission and pay for valuations.
With regard to the three month time limit on sales, it appears that mortgage lenders will refuse to advance cash to buyers where the HIP is over three months old. Also, if house is taken off the market for over 28 days within those three months, a new HIP will have to be obtained. Where the reason for the property being off the market for 28 days was connected with a sale, the rule would not apply.
Where a property is marketed for sale on a private website or even by a for sale sign in the garden, the failure to supply a HIP will result in a fine of 200 per day.
In reaction to the announcement of these regulations, a Tory spokesman was quoted as saying the packs were “expensive, deficient and dangerous. The refusal to tell families whether the back garden will be safe for their children or of potential flood risks, delivers a serious blow to the credibility of these packs.”
.The Law Society are concerned that there may be significant defects in the scheme in the there is no provision in the regulations for information within the HIP to be authenticated or confirmed by the seller. They are of the opinion that there should be a warning that reinforces to the buyer the risk of taking on substantial liabilities and commitments.
When you take into consideration the fact that the VAT alone from these packs will bring in 111m per year into the treasury you realize why the Government has been accused of yet another stealth tax implementation.
So there you have it. It appears to be that, for better or worse, HIP’s are here to stay.
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Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 3:35 pm and is filed under finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
