Giving can be its own reward? Yes!
Being leader of BonaResponds (coolest volunteer group in the world! Ok, maybe I am slightly biased) has led me into some interesting discussions on charitable giving. Some strict classic economists have argued that charity and other selfless acts do not make economic sense. To that argument I always remind them that people (and I guess monkeys too!) maximize utility and not money. Here are some recent articles that give further credence to the charitable giving can be economically justified and what at first glance appears irrational may be just the would-be economist looking at the wrong metric.
Neural Responses to Taxation and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motives for Charitable Donations
" consistent with warm glow, neural activity further increases when people make transfers voluntarily. Both pure altruism and warm-glow motives appear to determine the hedonic consequences of financial transfers"
Monkeys Enjoy Giving To Others, Study Finds:
"Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have shown capuchin monkeys, just like humans, find giving to be a satisfying experience. This finding comes on the coattails of a recent imaging study in humans that documented activity in reward centers of the brain after humans gave to charity."
NowWeAreTalking offers still more evidence of the benefits of giving homes loans
"...researchers at the University of British Columbia and the Harvard Business School found that individuals report significantly greater mortgages happiness if they make charitable donations or give gifts to others rather than spending on themselves (March 21 edition, Science)."
Which is really just to say that some of the things that appear irrational, are actually rational when utility and not just risk and return are considered. Need other examples? Excess trading, buying high flying stocks to be able to brack about them, even lottery tickets if they allow you to dream of winning big.
BTW if all of this talk about giving makes you want to be happier, BonaResponds is always ready to accept any and all donations of money, food, tools, just about anything. As the leader, I will guarantee it gets put to good use!
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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
In the waning days of the housing-market bubble, lenders lowered their standards, and that made the downturn worse. There is growing evidence that standards also came down for bad credit card loans, and rapidly rising default rates could be the next dilemma for the staggering financial sector.The amount of auto loans that were past-due or written off as a loss moved sharply higher in the last part of 2007, according to analysts.
2.06% of prime auto loans made in 2006 were more than 30 days past due in November, according to a Standard & Poor's Corp. survey. That past-due number for loans in their first year exceeds the historical high rate recorded in 2001 -- and it is well up from the 1.75% for prime auto loans made in 2005, S&P says.
The past-due numbers for loans made in 2007 are even worse than the 2006 credits -- a trend that exists for both prime and subprime loans, according to S&P. Labels: Loan
If you’re like most people, you don’t spend too much time thinking about death, or life insurance, but it is something that everyone should pause and consider once in awhile, especially if you are part of a family or group of people who rely on you either financially or for your other contributions on a daily basis. That is the purpose of life insurance - to enable those that you care about to continue on after you pass on to…other things.
Term Life
Term life policies are the simplest most straightforward type. Usually set for a certain period of time (5 years, 10 years, 20 years, etc.), this type of life insurance has the lowest premiums and pays a specified amount to your beneficiaries when you die. This type of policy simply allows your family to replace your contribution to the family (whether financial or otherwise) as well as take care of your final arrangements. Your premiums are set by the term you choose when signing up for the benefit and will not increase for the duration - though they may go up when the time comes to renew your policy for a new term.
Whole Life
Whole life insurance policies basically serve a dual purpose: They pay your beneficiary a set amount after your death as with term life insurance, however, whole life has the added benefit of building up a ‘cash value’ account at the same time. For this reason, premiums for whole life insurance are generally higher than just term life policies. This account is managed by the bank and with whole life policies you are usually free to cancel your policy at any time and receive the amount you paid into the tax deferred account back to you. Also with most whole life policies, sooner or later you will reach a point where you are completely “paid up” and no longer need to pay premiums (but are still covered for a death benefit).
So What’s the Bottom Line?
The Term life policy has its advantages in that you know your premiums will never increase, the premiums are generally very low, and the entire process is simple to understand. Whole life policies have an ‘added benefit’ of the cash account which is essentially tax-free savings up to a point. Also you know that after you’ve paid the increased premiums for a set time, they will go away. Whole life generally tends to be a “whole life” commitment to get the best benefit and value from it, while term life policies are for saving on your premiums and just being prepared for those sudden situations that may come up in anyone’s life. Whichever you choose, make sure you shop around for the best rate and policy that suits your needs.
Taken from : http://www.lifeinsurancerates.com/whole-life-or-term-life.html
Cash Value Insurance – Insurance that, in addition to paying out a death benefit, also accumulates cash value over time which may be withdrawn after a certain period.
More detail on Cash Value Insurance
Cash value life insurance policies come with a higher premium than other life insurance policies and this is due to the fact that part of your premium is put into an interest-bearing account for you—tax free—which becomes available to you after a certain period of time. These insurance policies are generally lifetime policies rather than term life insurance which is coverage planned only for a certain period of time (5, 10, 15, 20 years).
The Cash Value Account
All life insurance policies are somewhat different so you will want to check the specifics of a cash value life insurance plan before you sign any paperwork. A cash value policy pays part of your premium into an account for you where your money makes interest and grows for you until a certain amount is reached (again, check your policy). Once that amount is reached, you have the option of stopping premium payments altogether and keeping your insurance policy, or you can continue to pay into it to grow the cash value of the account. Technically this money is used in the same way a bank uses the money you put there in savings. The insurance company invests with it to their own ends while keeping your principal safe for you. This cash value account also has the advantage of helping to pay the higher costs of insuring you as you grow older, so your premiums do not increase.
Your Benefits From the Cash Value Account
Once you have paid into the cash value account for the specified period you have several options of what you can do with it. You can either:
- Stop making premium payments and let the amount in the account “pay” them for you. This does not decrease the principal amount in your account and keeps your life insurance policy active for you for the rest of your life for ‘free’.
- Continue making premium payments which will grow your cash account significantly for the future. Many people like to think of it as a second retirement account which, after a long enough period of making payments, could equal several hundred thousand dollars.
- Take Out Loans From the Account. This has the effect of making you your own lender. You can borrow money from the account, which may be taxed, and you do not necessearily have to pay it back. If you choose not to pay the loan back, the amount borrowed plus interest will be deducted from your death benefit if you die.
Other Things to Consider
Cash value life insurance policies have the added benefit of the extra account for your use once you have reached a certain amount deposited, but the higher premiums are criticized for some as not being worth it. Many agents recommend simply using a term life insurance policy and taking the savings in premium amount and investing it in other retirement portfolios to achieve the same effect as the cash value account. The downside to this, however, is that if your term policy reaches its natural end, renewing it or getting another policy could be significantly more expensive based upon your age. One of the benefits of a whole life, or cash value policy is that your premiums will not change as you get older, so if you begin a policy when you are relatively young, you will be paying next to nothing (or literally nothing) for life insurance through the rest of your life. The increased premium that you pay now could balance out later in life when others are paying higher premiums to renew their term life policies - and do not have the cash value account.
Another consideration for cash value insurance is that there may be a substantial penalty for canceling your policy early. Early is defined as the period before your cash value account is fully paid for. Once your cash value account has matured through your making enough premium payments, you may cancel your account at any time, though doing so may not be the wisest move since you have already invested a good deal of money into the policy and essentially may now keep it for the rest of your life without paying another dime.
http://www.lifeinsurancerates.com/cash-value-insurance.html
Most applicants are generally aware of how their life insurance premiums are calculated, in that the premiums reflect variables like age, health status, lifestyle, etc. However, very few people understand the actual risk assessment process that life insurers go through when evaluating applicants for coverage. An applicant’s information is assessed and classified based on algorithmically-based insurance tables. The applicant’s premiums directly depend on his/her classification according to these tables. To understand the risk assessment process, though, you must first understand how insurers formulate the tables and determine the exact premium the insured must pay. In this post, we will offer a window into the life insurance risk assessment process and how it affects premiums.
Quantifying Risk
Insurers define risk as the likelihood of loss. When you purchase an insurance policy, the risk of loss is transferred from you to your insurance company. To make the transfer of risk a profitable endeavor, insurers have to figure out the number of losses that will occur. However, this is impossible to do on an individual basis, so insurers instead rely on the statistical principle of the law of large numbers. In doing so, they are able to predict fairly accurately how many losses will actually occur within a group of individuals.
The Law of Large Numbers
A life insurer has no way of determining which individual policyholders will die, but as the sample or group becomes larger, the predictions become more and more accurate. With statistics, the insurer can accurately predict the number of policyholders that will pass away within a large group. This is where the law of large numbers comes into play: the bigger the group, the more accurate the prediction of future losses over a certain period of time will be. A good example of the law of large numbers if the flipping of a fair coin. If you flip the coin only two or three times, you will likely get skewed results that inaccurately favor either heads or tails. However, as the number of trials increases, the frequency of heads or tails will get closer and closer to 50%. The law of large numbers is critical in the insurance industry because it guarantees consistent results over the long term for otherwise random events.
Exposure Units
With insurance, an exposure unit is the piece of property or individual that is insured. For the law of large numbers to work, insurers must combine a large amount of homogeneous exposure units. Applied to life insurance, the exposure unit is the monetary value of the policyholder’s life. As the number of exposure units in a group increases, the amount of error in predicting losses drops. Insurance companies focus only on average risk because, in doing so, the extremes of the loss spectrum cancel each other out.
Actuaries
Actuaries are mathematicians who collect and evaluate statistical data related to risk and exposure units. It is this data that is the basis for the formulation of life insurers’ morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death) tables. Using these tables, actuaries predict the likelihood of future losses resulting from death and illness. The tables factor in many variables that can raise or lower the loss risk, such as age, medical history, tobacco use, etc. Each applicant is classified and his/her premiums are determined according to where his/her profile falls based on the tables.
Where Premiums Come From
So how does the risk assessment process finally translate into the premiums that an applicant will pay? Basically, premiums are what a life insurance company charges in order to provide for expenses, profits, and the cost of anticipated losses. The amount of loss expected is based on the insurer’s past experience with average risk. Of course, some applicants will far outlive their life expectancy, and thus will pay premiums for a much longer time than expected. However, for every applicant like that, there is also one who will die prematurely after paying premiums for only a very short period of time. Consequently, both the high and low extremes negate each other, which leaves the average risk as the basis for determining expected losses.
Taken from : http://www.lifeinsurancerates.com/risk-assessment-revealed.html
Money Making Tools For Networking, Direct Sales and Home Based Businesses
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Be a Successful Entrepreneur - 3 Free Marketing Ideas That Work
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Term insurance provides protection for a limited period of time, such as 10, 15, 20, or 30 years, and pays a benefit if the insured dies during this period. Although term policies do not accumulate cash value, many do offer a feature that allows you to convert to a permanent policy within a certain time. This can be beneficial if you'd like to buy a permanent policy but your budget right now does not allow it, or you like having the option to convert to a permanent policy later on.
Term Essential® is a budget-friendly entry into insurance, with premiums that remain the same during the initial period and an option to convert the term policy to a permanent one.
- Premiums remain the same for your choice of 10, 15, 20, or 30 years. We guarantee it!
- If you continue coverage beyond the initial term, premiums are not guaranteed and will increase annually to age 95 (80 in New York), but will never be more than the maximum stated in the contract.
- The policy can be converted to a permanent policy.
- Premiums remain the same for your choice of 10, 15, or 20 years. We guarantee it!
- If you continue coverage beyond the initial term, premiums will increase annually and are guaranteed to age 95 (80 in New York).
- The policy can be converted to a permanent policy. This is available to age 65 or 5 years from issue, whichever is later.
- If you convert the policy to a permanent one within the first five years, you can receive a credit, which is applied toward the permanent policy's first-year premium.
- Premiums remain the same for your choice of 15, 20, or 30 years.
- If you continue coverage beyond the initial term, premiums will increase annually and are guaranteed to age 95.
- Your out-of-pocket premiums are guaranteed to be returned to you at the end of the level premium period. Any loans taken and not paid back plus interest owed on loans will be subtracted from the amount returned to you. Note: any premiums waived under the Waiver of Premium will not be returned.
- The policy can be converted to a permanent policy. This is available to the earlier of age 65 or 10 years from issue, with a minimum period of 5 years from issue.
- You must be alive at the end of the selected level premium period and the policy must still be in force at the end of the policy term you selected for you to receive the return of your premiums.
Term Elite®, Term Essential®, and Return of Premium Term are issued by Pruco Life Insurance Company, an AZ corporation, except in New Jersey and New York, where the issuer is Pruco Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, both located at 213 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102. Policy form numbers are PLTI-2007, PLTIC-2007, and PLTIR-2006, respectively. Both are Prudential Financial companies. All guarantees are based on the claims-paying ability of the issuer. Each company is solely responsible for its own financial condition and contractual obligations.
Life insurance policies contain exclusions, limitations, reductions in benefits and terms for keeping them in force. Your licensed financial professional can provide you with costs and complete details. The issuing company may have the right to contest the policy for misrepresentation or to apply a suicide clause.
Source : http://www.prudential.com/view/page/public/11385
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Source : http://www.prudential.com/view/page/public/11385
4 Simple SEO Tips For Better Search Rankings and More Traffic
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If you're like most people, you're looking for ways to drive more organic search traffic to your web site by getting higher search engine rankings.
It seems like everyone has an opinion on how to get these top rankings with proper search engine optimization. Unfortunately, you have no idea what to believe. After all, it all sounds good.
So how do you do it?
Here are four really simple SEO strategies you can put in quickly that will help you increase your search engine traffic.
1. Perform proper keyword research
Grab every keyword that is relevant to your site.
Think of keywords that may describe your product or services, even words relating to geography, accessories, relevant industries and even uses for what you're selling (think photography keywords if you're selling digital cameras).
2. Build A Great Site
A great site doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be more than basic HTML. It just needs to be easy to navigate so your visitors can find what they are looking for on your site without feeling overwhelmed or lost.
Use title and meta tags, a sitemap and natural-word URLs. A clean site without a whole lot of code is more friendly to the search engines.
3. Get Links
Quality links to your site plays a huge role in how high your site will rank in the search engines.
Develop a good web 2.0 link building strategy and start generating links from sites like Digg, Propeller StumbleUpon, Hub Pages, EzineArticles, and Blogger.
4. Manage Your Keyword Traffic
Once you are getting traffic to your site you need to analyze your stats.
After awhile, you'll be amazed at the number of keywords being used to find your site that you didn't even create content around because you didn't find that keyword or they keyword tools said they would get very little traffic.
Source : SEO Labels: Free E-Books, TutorialHealth Insurers Offer to Accept All Applicants, on Condition
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WASHINGTON — The health insurance industry said Wednesday that it would support a health care overhaul requiring insurers to accept all customers, regardless of illness or disability. But in return, the industry said, Congress should require all Americans to have coverage.
The proposals, put forward by the insurers’ two main trade associations, have the potential to reshape and advance the debate over universal health insurance just as President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office.
In separate actions, the two trade groups, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, announced their support for guaranteed coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, in conjunction with an enforceable mandate for individual coverage.
In the absence of such a mandate, insurers said, many people will wait until they become sick before they buy insurance.
Members of Congress said Wednesday that they wanted to pass legislation next year, as proposed by Mr. Obama, to expand coverage and rein in health care costs.
The new position taken by the insurance industry — the industry that helped sink President Bill Clinton’s plan for universal health coverage in 1994 — could ease the way for passage of such legislation.
But the industry’s position differs from that of Mr. Obama in one significant respect. Insurers want the government to require everyone to have and maintain insurance. By contrast, Mr. Obama would, at least initially, apply the requirement only to children.
In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, that was a major point of contention between Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. Mrs. Clinton said that everyone should be required to have coverage. Mr. Obama said he wanted to be certain that insurance was affordable and available to all before considering such a broad requirement.
Asked on Wednesday for reaction to the insurance industry’s proposals, Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the Obama transition team, said, “We are declining comment.” Mr. Vietor cited Mr. Obama’s view that “we have only one president at a time.”
In many cases, people with cancer, diabetes, traumatic brain injuries or other serious afflictions have found that they cannot obtain health insurance at any price.
Research suggests that some insurers turn down 10 percent or more of applicants for individual coverage because of their pre-existing medical conditions.
Donald G. Hamm Jr., president of Assurant Health, explained why the industry thought an individual mandate must be coupled with any ban on such underwriting practices.
“In the individual market, people can choose whether or not to apply for coverage,” Mr. Hamm said in an interview. “If they know they can obtain coverage at any time, many will wait until they get sick to apply for it. That increases the price for everyone.”
Insurers say that is just what happened in several states that prohibited insurers from turning down applicants on the basis of their health status.
The new policy statements are silent on two important issues: how to enforce an individual mandate and how to regulate insurance prices, or premiums.
While insurers would be required to sell insurance to any applicant, nothing would guarantee that consumers could afford it. Rate regulation promises to be a highly contentious issue, since it pits the financial interests of insurers against those of consumers.
At present, insurance premiums are generally regulated by the states and often vary according to a person’s age, sex, medical history and place of residence within a state. In the individual market in most states, a person with a history of serious or chronic illness can be charged much more than a healthy person of the same age and sex.
Mr. Hamm, a member of the board of America’s Health Insurance Plans, said the group might offer recommendations to define “a fair and appropriate rating structure.”
Alissa Fox, a vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, said the individual mandate was an indispensable corollary of any approach forbidding insurers to reject applicants because of health status.
“Insurance works best when everyone is in the pool,” Ms. Fox said. “You need healthy people in the insurance pool to help pay for sicker individuals who are much more motivated to buy coverage.”
Insurers did not say how the government should enforce an individual mandate: whether through fines, tax penalties or other means. Politicians have also been reluctant to specify details of enforcement, which could prove highly unpopular.Taken from : http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/us/20health.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin Labels: Insurance
As life expectancy increases, so has the age at which 'life begins' – with many people supporting the idea that 'life begins at 50'. Unfortunately, travel insurance companies disagree. Or at least that is how it seems, considering how rapidly premiums rocket for those who are 50 or over. And as for those who are over 70, many "are shocked to find travel insurers unwilling to provide cover at prices they can afford", says Kara Gammell in The Daily Telegraph. So how do you find affordable travel insurance that won't leave you high and dry if you fall ill on holiday?
Consumers need to think of travel insurance as something they should tailor to their own needs, rather than an off-the-shelf product, says The Daily Telegraph. So one of the simplest ways of reducing the premium is to look carefully at the levelof cover you are being offered and then decide whether you actually need it all within the policy. For example, if you are travelling to Europe, opt for European cover rather than worldwide cover, as the latter includes America, where litigation and medical costs can push up the cost of cover. Also, consider covering personal possessions under your home insurance – and, as always, shop around for the best deal.
The first difference lies in the akadnya. In the Sharia bank, all transactions must be based on the contract that allowed by the sharia. Thus, all transactions must follow the rules and regulations that apply to the contract-contract muamalah sharia. In a conventional bank, the opening of the account transactions, both giro, savings and time deposits, based on the agreement points, but the principle points are not in accordance with the rules of sharia, for example wadi'ah, because the gyro products, savings and time deposits, promising benefits to the level of fixed interest the money paid.
Second, there are differences in the benefits provided. The Bank uses the concept of conventional costs (the cost concept) to calculate benefits. This means that the interest promised in advance to the depositor is a customer fee or fees must be paid by the bank. Therefore, the bank must "sell" to other customers (borrowers) with the cost of higher interest rates. The differences between them called the indicative spreads whether the company is fortunately or loss. If it spreads positive, in which the burden of interest charged to borrowers from higher interest rates given to depositors, it can be said that the bank's benefit. Conversely also true.
Meanwhile, the bank sharia use the profit-sharing approach, meaning that the funds received will be distributed to bank financing. The benefits of financing is split into two, to the bank and to customers, based on profit sharing agreement in advance.
The third difference is the target credit / financing. The depositors in the bank is not a conventional aware that saved money loaned to various businesses, regardless of halal-illicit business.
Meanwhile, the sharia banks, savings and the distribution of the community are limited by basic principles, namely the principles of sharia means that the loan can not be to such illicit business, gambling, drink underway, pornography and other businesses that are not in accordance with sharia.
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