Been Naughty or Nice?

Loans to your nearest and dearest usually aren't a good idea. But if you feel compelled, do it formally -- and put it in writing.

By Liz Pulliam Weston

With three words, you can sum up the most common advice about lending money to your relatives: "Don't do it."

Financial planners warn that intrafamily loans can lead to trashed relationships, shattered finances and even trouble with the IRS. People who've lent money to family members often complain about ingratitude, missed payments and strained holiday dinners. Even the borrowers grumble, especially when their benefactors start quizzing them about their spending.

"Suddenly, (the lender) is looking at the vacation they took and saying, 'They owe us money, how can they go on vacation?'" said financial planner Karen Ramsey, author of "Everything You Know About Money is Wrong." "The borrowers pick up on that judgment, and they get resentful."...

Since The Czar Obama is not helping us out anytime soon, here are a couple options in lieu of the Govt handout. Here's a quick look at the Personal Loan BLOG's or at the P2P Loan Website

First is Lending Club, a Peer to Peer facilitator. This company has potential of offering the largest personal loan limit, $25,000.  The funds are not from a bank or broker but rather individuals like you & I. Thus eliminating the middle man  & resulting in potential for superior rates / terms for borrower  & lender alike:

Second, OnlineCash911. This company provides the means of obtaining a "payday" loan up to $1,500 online:

Third there is  Safe Online Cash. This like Online Cash 911 is a "payday" loan company, only it is limited to $1,000:

Finally Cash Net USA.  Another "payday" loan company. This company unlike the others offers Instant approval. With that though its maximum loan limit is just $550:

Personal Loan BLOG's

AFTER taxes this year, I found myself in the curious position

of having a decent-sized refund and absolutely no idea what do with it.

See, I’m one of the hundreds of millions of Americans without a degree in finance. I also live in a state where foreclosures are high

and 14 community banks have closed since the economic crisis began. If you look, you can see the seams tearing — empty houses and vacant stores beginning to rot because their owners have lost their shirts, the cost of using public transportation going up,and Atlanta’s property taxes being raised just to keep from having to close more fire stations.

No doubt we all have heard people saying it’s time to get out, especially after that tax increase was announced, but where are they going to go? California? The GoverNATOR just essentially rendered Cali BANKRUPT. Who is going to buy their houses?

They’re stuck.I know I’m one of the lucky ones: I have a spouse, a child, a dog, a car, a mortgage and, thankfully, I still have a job. And all I want is to grow — or at least, not shrink — my nest egg.

Easy? Not easy. Not when you add the rest of the story:

The country’s soaring deficit is making the dollar less valuable. State budgets are collapsing...

...If I were rich, none of this would matter. If I were poor, none of this would matter. But

this recession is an absurd kind of middle-class-only limbo. So in an attempt to salvage my economic status I spent a couple of

days calling and visiting banks around the state, asking them why I should bank with them. It didn’t help.

“Aren’t most of the same folks who started this mess the ones working on fixing it?” I kept wondering. “Aren’t those bad loans

still out there? Why isn’t anybody talking about the 45 banks that have closed in the United States this year? Is your bank safe?”

Most people I met scoffed or shrugged when I asked my questions. Almost all parroted the line that my money was covered by

the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It seemed this was the best they could do, but finally a few bankers sat down with me and assured me that they hadn’t made risky loans, hadn’t needed bailout money, that their institutions were stable and drama-

free.

Which is how I ended up using my nest egg to buy a couple of low-interest certificates of deposit. By low, I mean abysmally low.

But in the most stable, most conservative places I could find — Georgia Federal Credit Union and an Atlanta branch of the Royal

Bank of Canada.

However, I still felt a fool to believe anything anybody in the banking industry told me about making, not losing, money; so my

anxiety-fueled mind kept churning. Where does the F.D.I.C. get all that money to do its insuring? Does it have a vault with enough cash in it to cover everybody?According to its Web site, F.D.I.C. funds come from premiums paid by banks (that have no money) and from interest on its own investments in securities at the Treasury.

Can’t I cut out the middleman and deal with the Man myself? Lo and behold! It turns out, I can. No intermediaries, just me and Uncle Sam. All I have to do is open a free account at the Treasury’s Web site. Hey, it’s as good a deal as any to be had at the banks, and it’s safer. I can invest my dollars directly into the busy goings-on of the government. I can buy and sell securities. I can be my own F.D.I.C.

Marc Fitten, the editor of The Chattahoochee Review, is the author of the novel “Valeria’s Last Stand.”

If you are under water on your mortgage - in negative equity with a loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of more than 100 per cent - it is likely that you will only be able to move once you can clear your mortgage, otherwise the bank is likely to prevent a sale.If you are under water on your mortgage - in negative equity with a loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of more than 100 per cent - it is likely that you will only be able to move once you can clear your mortgage, otherwise the bank is likely to prevent a sale.

In this section »

    * Team Obama's jesters dance to the tune of Wall Street princes

    * Hitching your investment to a green agenda

    * Freezing pensions

Latest estimates suggest that as many as 340,000 home-owners, or one in five homes, are stuck in negative equity, writes FIONA REDDAN.

HINDSIGHT IS a wonderful thing. Looking back at the prices people paid for Irish property during the boom, it?s easy to see how unsustainable they were.

However at the time, despite warnings from everyone from the Central Bank to the Economist magazine that Ireland?s property market was a bubble which had to burst, banks and consumers ignored the advice and ploughed money into property, propping up prices until the inevitable collapse during 2008.

If this is the case, then people who purchased property as far back as 2003 with loan-to-values (LTVs) of more than 80 per cent, will discover that they owe more to the bank than what their house is worth.

Key to a recovery will be easy access to credit, but given how badly banks have had their fingers burnt in the crisis, it is likely that they will continue to use very strict criteria when it comes to lending for some time yet.

Whereas during the boom, banks were regularly lending six and seven times people?s salaries and offering a multiple on discretionary income such as bonuses and commission, they are now taking a much harder look at what people can afford.

Moreover, people?s income has been slashed due to pay cuts, higher taxes (more of which are on the way) and less discretionary income, while banks are also looking for much higher deposits to keep LTVs at about 80 per cent.

So if negative equity is here to stay, who is it a problem for and is there anything you can do about it?

YOU ARE HAPPY WHERE YOU ARE

If you are happy where you are living, at least for the foreseeable future, and can afford your monthly repayments, then being in negative equity should have no material impact on your life. If you consider your house as your home ? and not an investment ? then being in negative equity won?t be a problem as you will always need a roof over your head.

The last time negative equity made the headlines was in the UK in the early 1990s.

However, the market eventually turned around and people actually made profits on their properties when they sold them. So sit tight, be patient and things may improve again.

YOU WOULD LIKE TO MOVE HOUSE

If you are in negative equity, with a LTV of more than 100 per cent, it is likely that you will only be able to move once you can clear your mortgage, otherwise the bank is likely to prevent a sale. But there still are some options.

YOU WANT TO GET A LOAN

As long as you keep up with repayments on your mortgage, being in negative equity should have no impact on either your credit rating or your ability to borrow more money to finance a car purchase, for example.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO GET OUT OF NEGATIVE EQUITY?

Instead of bemoaning your situation, you can take a pro-active approach to getting yourself out of negative equity. While in an ideal world property prices will simply rise again thus lifting people back into the black, this is unlikely to happen for quite some time.

Have you seen a copy of your free Credit Report Report lately? If not did you know that you can get a free copy of it online?

Many companies prepare this information for you, so you don't have to hassle writing to each agency and putting in a

request.

Now that you know that you can get your free Credit Reportreport online. Accounts, loans, mortgages free Credit

Reportcards. can also be transacted online too! free Credit Reportbureaus also collect information regarding your borrowings,

repayments, and whether you have been arrested by the police for any criminal or petty offense, whether you have been

legally sued or whether you have filed for bankruptcy.

The three government agencies individually maintain your history, and collect each and every, personal information about

you, like complete name, date of birth, residence, employment, bank accounts, loans, mortgages free Credit Reportcards etc...

M&S Money is offering consumers a tempting 10% cashback reward on its personal loans, it has been reported.

Customers who take out a personal loan spanning 36 months or more with the firm between June 24th and August 11th will

be able to take advantage of the deal.

Upon their final repayment, those taking out the loan will be granted a refund of ten per cent on the total sum of interest they

have paid during the loan's full term.

It points out that, taking the cashback deal into consideration, the average rate of 8.7 per cent APR on a loan

over 36 months would have the equivalent interest rate of 7.9 per cent per annum.

M&S money was founded in 1985 and has grown to become the second-largest distributor of travel currency in the UK. It was

sold to the HSBC banking group in 2004.

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