My Insurance Insider and Finance Blog

 
photo credit: eric731

Today we’re passing through a difficult phase due to credit crisis of financial market. Lehman Brothers became bankrupt, Merrill Lynch has been sold out, AIG(insurance giant) is in the ICU and trying to survive on life support with billions of dollars federal bank loan  and many more companies probably are in the queue. There are countless of job loss happening world over.

If you’re a victim of job loss, medical emergency or other cause of income loss, you may be one of the millions of individuals facing a pile of debts that you cannot cover. If you miss one or two payments, you will get a call from a debt collector.

Calls from debt collectors trying to find you at your place of employment can be humiliating. But every debt collector may not be so unsympathetic and not everybody has the same story. They are also handsomely rewarded for their efforts in collecting the debt with a commission.

But why are they allowed to do these sort of humiliating act?

Debt collectors are allowed to contact you in person, by mail, by telegram, by fax and by phone, at home or at work - unless they know your employer would disapprove or you have agreed to. They must contact your attorney unless you don’t have one.

They may then contact other people to find out your telephone number, work place or address, but in most cases they are not allowed to inform them that you owe money or contact them more than once. You may stay away from them by writing a letter to the collector telling them to stop contact or requesting them to contact your attorney.

But stopping contact will not clear the debt itself. If you feel you do not owe the debt, make that clear in your letter.

But what can you do if you’re harassed anyway?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC in USA) or The Office of Fair Trading in UK have a fair debt collection policy to protect consumers from harassing them. By knowing your rights, you can put off even the most determined collector since they are law-bound. You can get more information,if you’re happen to be an Indian citizen.
Debt collectors are NOT allowed to harass, abuse you or other individuals from your family or friends on your behalf - that includes obscene language, threats of violence or repeated calling in an effort to annoy.

They are never ever allowed to misrepresent themselves or as government agents, attorneys or representing a credit bureau or hide their identity. They cannot imply legal action, including seizing property or garnishing wages unless they are legally allowed and intend to do so.

You can find out more about your rights from the FTC and educate yourself. You can report to against an agent by contacting the FTC or your Attorney General. If they break the law, you have the right to sue them.

photo credit: Ruth L
If you’re in the stock market trading for sometimes now, you probably be noticed that its the timing that makes a whole lot of difference in your investing career. I think this is the key factor in the stock investing that would decide your level of success. It is the only option available for a successful stock market investor.

In order to raise capital and invest in the business, companies issue their stocks publicly (called IPOs) for investors. The prices of possessing of those IPOs may vary depending on the supply and demand. This is the way a stock market trader takes full advantage of it.

The business of stock market trading can offer better profits to the investors (or traders) as compared to the typical investors of ordinary stock enterprises. The stock market offers a wide variety of stocks to choose from for any investor to go on with stock trading. There are always a lot of momentum stocks out there amongst the thousands of others registered. A momentum stock is one in which a huge positive buying is taking place within a short period. Sometimes it called swing trading.

And if you want to book a reasonable amount of profit out of your short-term investment, you need to take advantage of the momentum or swing trading of your targeted stock. However, a careless attitude to proceed with stock market trading can produce undesirable results. I personally had that kind of experience oftentimes. If you fail to predict the market trend properly, you could be a big loser. Sometimes you’ve to be satisfied with a little bit of profits that would also frustrate the purpose of doing stock market trading.

Market Timing

To avoid the adverse effects of poor stock market trading, investors use market timing to forecast when the market will change its course. Market timing presumes that the decisive point can be predicted ahead. The direction of the market is predicted through a thorough examination of the price and economic data.

Best Timing

The consistency of such trend prediction is subject to many factors, that is why the aim of any would-be successful investor is best timing. At first glance, market timing sounds like a guaranteed way to make it big. This however requires exertion of considerable effort and persistence in carefully studying the various factors. Avoid mere speculating. Speculating is a desperate move when the investor hasn’t done his homework.

Investors also buy stocks because they got a hot tip from someone. Most of these tips however prove to be false, as they are mostly given by parties with vested interests.

Market timing requires involvement in research to know the company’s history and calculate the trend by charting the movement of the stock’s price. This involves analysis of the value of the stock to come close to accurate in predicting the trend. This is ideal in developing standards for when to buy and when to sell for the investor must accurately settle on the proper time to sell. One must also correctly determine when to regain, reselling the stock bought when it reaches its peak value. This way, the maximum profits can be realized.

Image via Wikipedia The key to getting the most benefits from your health insurance policy is knowing your policy coverage in details such as-

i) The medical expenses for the specific diseases that your insurance company is going to pay you off;

ii) Certain diseases such as pre-existing conditions, or other specific ones that your insurer is not paying you off at all for a certain stipulated period;

iii) Certain diseases or medical conditions such as outpatient treatment charges, treatment received outside certain geographical locations and so on;

iv) A stipulated amount that you’ve to pay off first for every claim known as policy deductible or excess.

Many people actually don’t read the policy plan book. They may not be aware of the provisions where the insurance companies may pay 100% of certain procedures like annual physicals, charges for breast cancer detection, or charges for certain lab tests. The policy plan book that outlines for you what procedures are not subject to the deductible or co-pay.

Some insurance companies have even shifted their policy from health insurance to health improvement plan and pay for the cost of gym membership, nutritional counseling or plans to stop smoking. By doing so they actually take preventive steps believing in “Prevention is better than cure” and in the end saving up enough money to pay out such expenses. Perhaps you’ll love to take advantage of them at no extra cost when you are eager to loose weight or quit smoking.

By taking full advantage of the free benefits of your expensive health insurance policy, you(including the other members of your family who are covered by the policy)  will be healthier and possibly require fewer visits to your doctors.