A Mortgage Broker Can Be Your Best Friend

That is right. A mortgage broker can be your best friend, or sad but true, your worst nightmare. Some people have not had a positive experience with a mortgage broker, it is a true fact. But so often a negative experience can be avoided. It is a matter of truly understanding what you need, and what you can afford before going to the mortgage broker to obtain it.

In many instances where the mortgage broker did become a nightmare, it was able to be tracked back to poor communication between the person looking for a loan and the broker. Good communication between you and your broker is a must at all times during the process. A completely understood set of parameters between you and your mortgage broker before he moves forward into finding you a loan is essential to success for both of you. Do everything you can to communicate openly and honestly ?with yourself and with your broker.

One has to keep in mind that the mortgage broker has the job of finding the right loan for you. And sometimes when he is finding the precise loan that truly will work for you, it requires that you sit down at the table, take a deep breath and honestly review all that he has presented to make sure you will be able to keep the commitments that he has laid out. If you look at the potential loan that the mortgage broker has presented with a brutally honest prediction factor of your own future, then you should have no trouble knowing if the loan is right for you. Don?t let your own desire cloud your own good judgment.

And if you cannot, with certain confidence, maintain that loan as it is written. Tell the mortgage broker. Let him know before you sign the papers and find yourself in the soup in the months or years to come. If he is truly operating in your best interest, then he will take that offer back to the lender and review the terms, rework the prices and bring you a better offer. If he can?t get a better offer with that lender, and if he is any good at all as a mortgage broker, then he will shop around for a different lender who truly can give you a loan that you, with good conscience, can uphold.

The mortgage broker is there to work for your best interest. He is there to make sure you get a loan that works for you for the long term. The mortgage broker has the job of presenting your case to the potential lender and finding an arrangement that will work for both you and the lender.

Remember to empower him with all the right information so he can empower you with an excellent loan. You will end up with a mortgage broker who actually is your best friend if you do! Don?t be surprised if you even invite him to dinner, just to say thanks!

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Life Insurance ? Medical History Increases The Cost For 66% Of Applicants

Lucky applicants for life insurance can be insured within 48 hours and at the premium quoted - but 2 in 3 applicants are faced with delays plus the prospect of having their premium loaded.

So who are the lucky ones? Basically, you'll have to be as fit as a flea with no family history of serious illness, under 45, in an office type job and probably applying for less than ?250,000 cover. For everyone else there is going to be some hassle.

When an insurer provides an initial quote for life insurance, all they know is your age, sex and smoking status. They use these details to make an initial prediction of how long you are likely to live and on that basis they give you an initial quotation. They call it their 'standard Terms?.

If you want to progress your application you'll have a multi-page application to complete. This isn't as daunting as it may seem, as most online operators take your details over the phone and send you a copy of the completed application for you to check over. But the questions are extensive and if you miss out anything that later turns out to be significant, your insurance may well be invalidated. So be warned and take care!

The insurers use your application details to look out for anything that signals current or future concerns about your health or life style. Besides the obvious questions that reveal health problems, they also evaluate your weight, alcohol and nicotine intake, and any potentially inherited health problems. So if your father died of a heart attack or mother died from breast cancer, they'll be concerned.

Then there's your life style. If you're in a type of job where accidents do happen, construction jobs are a good example, or you are involved in any form of dangerous sport or flying, your premium is in line for loading. They'll even want to know whether you regularly travel to countries that are known to represent health risks for visitors. And whilst the law doesn't allow discrimination against same sex relationships, the insurance companies will almost always insist on a medical for these applicants.

Insurers freely admit that the number of questions they ask is increasing. They claim it's to reduce the number of claims they refuse. Whilst that may be partly true, the trend has also coincided with an increase in the proportion of applicants who are seeing their premiums loaded. Some years ago it was nearer 40% - today's for some insurers the level is virtually 66%.

How much extra might you be asked to pay? That's a bit like how long is a piece of string. But to give you a feel, a woman aged 40 receiving medical treatment for post-natal depression was recently faced with a 50% loading on an initial quotation of ?7.60. A woman whose mother had breast cancer similarly faced a 50 % loading. Seriously overweight people can also expect loadings of 50% to 100% or even refusal.

Faced with a loading what can you do? It's important to appreciate that the insurance companies giving the cheapest initial quote are also likely to have particularly choosey medical criteria. That's how they keep their quoted prices low. So if you're faced with a loading, the best advice is shop around, Try one of the more expensive providers like Friends Provident who are sometimes a bit more lenient.

Whilst this may sound overly complicated, remember that over the years, an extra ?10 a month on a 25 year policy represents ?3,000 of your hard earned money. If you don't have the experience or time to do this, and after few of us do, speak to an online life insurance broker.

Competition is high on the Internet and online brokers will normally reduce your premium by cutting their commission. Their systems are also well versed in finding alternative providers to alleviate loading problems. So keep things simple. Let your keyboard fingers do the walking and let the online broker do all the hard work!

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Playing Resistance Levels With Better Trades

I have been on traveling a lot recently, and it is amazing to me what people are saying about the stock market. Most reply, wow this is not a good time to be in the market while I am thinking "what an INCREDIBLE time to be in the market"!

If you stick to the basics, looking for good companies at support or resistance, that the odds of the trade working are so much better. However, a stock testing resistance and not being able to break through it seems like such an incredible play in uncertain times like today's market. Even if the market goes up, this stock already did. So when it doubt, looking for stocks that really have a chance of falling is always a good choice when selecting a play.

It is simple to learn how the downside works, whether you decide to sell stock short, buy puts, or write covered calls. Once you have learned the upside plays, learning the downside will only take about 10% of the effort to learn because you already know so much. The sad thing is that most people are missing the best money in the stock market if they are not playing the downside. Falling stocks mean FAST PROFITS! Who could ask for anything more?

A big secret to playing a trade, when you are not quite sure of the market direction, is to set alarms (bracket trade). I set alarms in my REAL TIME MARKETS that go to my cell phone and my computer. These alarms are real time and come to me instantly, which is critical. It takes my broker a few minutes to call me when I set them with him. The alarms allow me to follow my plan, and not have to worry in between. The alarms also give me TIME FREEDOM and I don't have to watch real time charts, which most of the time get you out at the wrong times. If you set the alarms, make sure you have one set to get you out immediately if a trade goes against you, but you can check first to see if the stock is just kissing good-bye a price and heading the right direction before you get out. You can find REAL TIME MARKETS on my home page. Just one trade will be worth the fee for the whole year!

Looking at the statistics that may give us some direction of what the market is possibly going to do is the Put-Call ratio, the VIX Index and the Commercial Traders.
1. As of last week the Commercial Traders increased their shorts from 4.8% to 5.2%. This means they were 4.8% more short than long in the now they increased their shorts another .4% from the week before indicating a bottom is not yet formed in the market. 2. The put call ratio has tested the high of a soft resistance but has a lot more to go to test the lows we saw this last two years. This is a second confirmation that the bottom is not yet hit. 3. The VIX index is the same situation, it tapped almost 40 - a soft resistance, but a market close price of 50 is a more serious number that called that last two market bottoms. This makes a third confirmation of a bottom not being reached in this last pullback.

Based on these we might consolidate and head up some, but it seems like we have some bearish movement due us to get to a serious bottom still.

In my LEAPS class I teach you some bearish trading - as a matter of fact, I teach you when you write covered calls how you can make money twice when you are falling versus just once - along with how to insure a stock or an entire portfolio. Would it be wonderful to trade with peace of mind in any market? You bet it would.

Darlene Nelson with BetterTrades

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Playing Resistance Levels With Better Trades

I have been on traveling a lot recently, and it is amazing to me what people are saying about the stock market. Most reply, wow this is not a good time to be in the market while I am thinking "what an INCREDIBLE time to be in the market"!

If you stick to the basics, looking for good companies at support or resistance, that the odds of the trade working are so much better. However, a stock testing resistance and not being able to break through it seems like such an incredible play in uncertain times like today's market. Even if the market goes up, this stock already did. So when it doubt, looking for stocks that really have a chance of falling is always a good choice when selecting a play.



It is simple to learn how the downside works, whether you decide to sell stock short, buy puts, or write covered calls. Once you have learned the upside plays, learning the downside will only take about 10% of the effort to learn because you already know so much. The sad thing is that most people are missing the best money in the stock market if they are not playing the downside. Falling stocks mean FAST PROFITS! Who could ask for anything more?

A big secret to playing a trade, when you are not quite sure of the market direction, is to set alarms (bracket trade). I set alarms in my REAL TIME MARKETS that go to my cell phone and my computer. These alarms are real time and come to me instantly, which is critical. It takes my broker a few minutes to call me when I set them with him. The alarms allow me to follow my plan, and not have to worry in between. The alarms also give me TIME FREEDOM and I don't have to watch real time charts, which most of the time get you out at the wrong times. If you set the alarms, make sure you have one set to get you out immediately if a trade goes against you, but you can check first to see if the stock is just kissing good-bye a price and heading the right direction before you get out. You can find REAL TIME MARKETS on my home page. Just one trade will be worth the fee for the whole year!

Looking at the statistics that may give us some direction of what the market is possibly going to do is the Put-Call ratio, the VIX Index and the Commercial Traders.
1. As of last week the Commercial Traders increased their shorts from 4.8% to 5.2%. This means they were 4.8% more short than long in the now they increased their shorts another .4% from the week before indicating a bottom is not yet formed in the market. 2. The put call ratio has tested the high of a soft resistance but has a lot more to go to test the lows we saw this last two years. This is a second confirmation that the bottom is not yet hit. 3. The VIX index is the same situation, it tapped almost 40 - a soft resistance, but a market close price of 50 is a more serious number that called that last two market bottoms. This makes a third confirmation of a bottom not being reached in this last pullback.

Based on these we might consolidate and head up some, but it seems like we have some bearish movement due us to get to a serious bottom still.

In my LEAPS class I teach you some bearish trading - as a matter of fact, I teach you when you write covered calls how you can make money twice when you are falling versus just once - along with how to insure a stock or an entire portfolio. Would it be wonderful to trade with peace of mind in any market? You bet it would.

Darlene Nelson with BetterTrades

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