Credit Counseling

You can't drive down the street, turn on the radio or TV without hearing someone say call us and we will cut your credit card debt in half or cut your payments in half or some similar drivel. The problem with almost every single one of these companies is they are scamsters.  Basically you end up paying them a fee and rarely do they help you.  In my opinion, IF you need credit counseling or assistance with budgeting your current bills, there is only one legitimate place to go.  You should contact NFCC.org and they will refer you to a free or low cost counselor in your area.

Refinancing At Today's Low Mortgage Rates

In Florida a huge number of people have lost their homes to foreclosures, short sales or have no equity because of the downfall in the real estate market.  But there are still a few people who have 5, 6 or 7% mortgages and have equity in their homes.  IF you are one of those, this is a great time to refinance.  Refinancing homes and pulling cash out was one of the big mistakes people made when the market was going up up up in value.  I NEVER recommend refinancing your house and taking out cash for ANY reason because I believe EVERYONE should try to become debt free.  That being said, if you can take your current mortgage at 6% and get a 3.9% interest rate for very little cost, then you should definitely consider doing this.  There are several great places to refinance right now including places like your credit union, some online loan companies and even banks.  I will be glad to analyze your situation to help you determine if this makes sense for you.

Links In Emails from Friends

We all have to be getting these.  An email from a friend with no text but just a link to click on.  Or else some text like "This is the best website to buy electronics.  I just bought an iPhone.....etc etc etc and then a link to click on"...

We should all know that our friends are NOT trying to sell us electronics.  We should all know that our friends would not send us an email with a link to click on without any explanation.  We should all know that these links are probably viruses or spyware.  Why take a chance?  If you get something suspicious, it is probably not safe.

Estate Taxes

This is a complicated issue and I am not going to explain every possibility here, but in general, my projection is that most people who have an estate below $3,000,000 don't need to worry too much about estate taxes.  As many of you have heard, the cuts on estate taxes will expire December 31st meaning that estates worth more than $1 million could be taxed but I believe Congress will not touch estates up to $3 million (I have been wrong more than once so keep on top of the news).....

That being said, IF your estate exceeds these amounts, then you should consider making annual tax-free gifts of $13,000 per person to reduce your estate now....

Free Advertising for Your Business

Wow!  What a great Win! Win! these websites are.  Groupon.com and LivingSocial.com are 2 websites I highly recommend for both the end user and the business who wants to advertise for basically free.  I am not going to give you all of the details here, but if you want more information, please let me know.  I have been going on things like Paddleboarding, Segways, etc. all from coupons on the above websites as a customer.  When I did the Segway ride I spoke extensively with my "Captain" and learned all about how these companies work.  In a nutshell, the website gets like 20% of the "proceeds" from the coupon and you as the buyer gets either cupcakes, movie tickets, dance lessons, massages or whatever the business of the day is offering at a super price, and the business gets more business than they know what to do with.  My Segway company received almost 500 new customers from the 1 day coupon and they are a brand new business so this was phenomenal for them.  And even though they sold the Segway ride at half price AND gave Groupon.com 20% of the proceeds, they get to keep 100% of the "upsells" such as the DVD I of course had to buy, etc. etc.  A cupcake company sold 2,000 coupons which was their limit and they reached this limit after about 6 hours......Anyway...as I said, this is Win! Win! Win!  If you have a business that wants to grow....talk to me about this...