Personal Finance Tips

Almost everyone has a credit card with a rewards program, but are you getting the most credit card rewards that are available? Are you truly maximizing the rewards your card has to offer? I’m going to give you a few tips on how you can increase the rewards you receive from your credit cards reward program.

First let’s get one thing straight. If you carry a balance on your card you are defeating the purpose. You will pay far more in interest than you will ever get out of the rewards program. Let me illustrate. Say you have a balance of $8,000. I just picked out a number. Most credit card companies charge from 12 to 18 percent interest. We’ll just use 15% for the sake of argument. In a month you would pay $100 in interest. Over the year you would pay about $1,200. In order to earn $100 in rewards points you usually have to spend about $10,000 because the average program pays about 1% in rewards. So remember first only use a card that you can pay off the balance each month. This is critical.

Once you have your credit card ready you need to organize. Yeah, I know, it sounds like a little overboard for a small reward each year, but if you do it right it could end up being a large reward or bonus to you for Christmas. What you need to do is jot down all of the things you spend money on each month, including the bills. This is one area that takes a little more work but can really increase the rewards you receive.

After you have a list, look at all of the things you normally pay cash for or use your debit card. These could be things like buying groceries, paying for gas, paying for school lunch for the kids and many others. These are the first things you need to change. It adds up to hundreds of dollars a month and equals lots of points. By the end of the year this could be thousands of extra points.

Next go down your list again. Look at al of your monthly bills. There is the phone, cable, water, gas, electricity, auto insurance, health insurance, cell phone. Remember, these should not be loans you are paying down, just monthly bills. Most of the ones I listed here can be set up to be charged to your credit card with rewards each month. This adds up fast, especially during the summer when the air conditioner is running a lot.

A third tip is to use your credit card for large purchases, even if you have the cash saved. For example if you are buying new furniture. This could cost thousands of dollars. If you already have the money, why not put it on your card and then immediately pay off the balance. This is key. Don’t let the card cycle and accrue interest, it will cost you more than the reward you get. Remember be creative and always offer to use your card first. Sometimes you can even put the down payment for your new car or pool on your rewards card.

I just want to share one more tip. When you have accumulated a boatload of rewards do not spend them on that super cool item, like a bike or golf clubs. Odds are you could get a gift card for the retail store that sells them. For example, I was looking through the rewards offered on one of my rewards cards and they had a Wii. It was something like 50,000 points. Well with 50,000 points I could get $500 in gift cards to Best Buy. I could buy the Wii and a bunch of games to go with it. Remember, almost all of the time the gift cards will get the best bang for your buck.

It takes a little discipline but if you follow these simple tips and always look for new ways to use your rewards credit card you will find that accumulating thousands of points does not really take that long. In fact, you could get hundreds of dollars in rewards each year.

The major thing to remember when searching for health insurance quotes is that the bigger companies are not always the best choice to ask for quotes. Although they have multiple carriers, their sites don’t often offer side-by-side comparisons of one plan to another. That’s what you want – a site that gives you the ability to see what others offer at the same time. It’s a novel thought, and yes, there are sites on the Internet that do that.

Don’t base your search for health care insurance on price alone. You might find that a rather radical thought, because trying to save money leads logically to shopping for the least expensive plan. However, you may not want to do that because when you go for the cheapest options, you often end up foregoing benefits you may need later.

Here’s where your local health insurance agent comes into play. Call them; that’s what they’re there for – to provide you with a health care insurance quote that is tailor-made for your specific circumstances, not everyone else’s. The advice is free, and it can save you a ton of money while getting you what you really need in terms of health care coverage.

When talking to the health insurance agent, tell them precisely what you are looking for based on what you need for you and/or your family. Tell them all the circumstances, such as pre-existing conditions, your family size and plans for future children, or conditions you currently have under control through the use of medication.

All the information you give the agent is confidential and will help them to provide you with a plan that works. There are thousands of options out there, and you can’t read about all of them online. That’s what health care insurance agents are for, to make choosing a health care plan a whole lot easier.

The big name online companies might not always be the best option for you either, largely because they don’t always have the same kind of plan flexibility as a smaller company does. Brand name companies, like brand name drugs, don’t always do what you think they will do. Ask smaller companies to provide you quotes while also taking time for a free consultation with the insurance broker. You will be pleasantly surprised.

Rating disability insurance companies is important to ensure that you are only investing in the best policies that can back you up financially. There are certain points to follow in order for you to assess and compare the reliability and performance of the insurance company.

When you are bombarded with a variety of benefit options, business insurance promises, and lifetime pension opportunities, use these features to eliminate other companies that do not serve the best of your financial and professional interests.

Disability is a boon, especially to starting business owners and beginning employees. Your presence is virtually the most important factor in keeping the business running and making a living; and without good and qualified disability insurance, your chances of returning to work may be slim. Some features will be helpful in rating disability insurance companies, in order for you to choose only the best, in accordance to your needs and preferences, during periods of disability.

Most companies are primarily rated on their financial strength, which pertains to the funding that allows compensation to policyholders. Financial strength is the foundation of the policy, so you need to know how much funds are allocated for certain disability benefits and quote preferences. You would not want to keep paying for a premium if you know financial security is compromised or jeopardized because of the company’s lack of funding.

Health insurance rating analysts are available to help you determine exactly the financial strength of your chosen insurance company. Analysts also have independent companies; and all you need to do is write a letter and pay a certain fee and the rating company will deliver an insurance rating system that depicts essential information about your disability insurance company, to help you know its strengths and weaknesses.

Policy benefits are also included in most insurance rating systems and these show you the current options you have with your existing disability insurance company and rate it against other companies, which, in turn, will leave you only with the best offers to avail of. Provisions governing the whole insurance policy are also indicated, which states updates and better options and preferences in benefits and waiting periods, tax exclusions and advantages, and many more.

There are guidelines on how to rate disability insurance companies, based on financial strengths, insurance benefits, policy specifications, and time periods. Some companies may claim to have scored high in every feature but, the truth is, you always get what you pay for in insurance.

You may have paid a lesser premium with more benefits without knowing. Benefit periods may have been prolonged or that benefits were made taxable, so make sure that you have checked every feature as you plan your disability quote.

Most top-rated disability insurance companies are excellent when it comes to financial strengths and provide immediate reimbursements. They rank high in their ability to pay under insurance policies and agreements.

Other special features are their excellent skills in handling senior policies, investment strategies, business ventures and operations, and underwriting commitments. Services should be very satisfactory and they all should simply have the resources to deal with the most severe economic conditions with less risks overall. These added features are determinant in guiding you in boosting your disability insurance company ratings.

The world is often a confusing place and nowhere is the confusion likely to be so complete as in the tax system. Here we have the best brains in the Government taking on the best brains in the private sector. The Government wants the maximum tax take. The private sector wants to arrange things so that no one with money ever has to pay any tax. Somewhere in the middle the two world-views collide and, usually, some tax is paid. Anyway, when President Obama signed the healthcare reform bill into law, some of the largest employers in the US let out a collective sigh of pain. As an example, Caterpillar is the world’s largest manufacturer of excavators and bulldozers. The day after the President’s signature, Caterpillar announced it was taking a charge of $100 million to earnings over an expected loss of tax benefits. A number of other influential corporations have also made allowances in their accounts. The reason is that the healthcare reform ended a tax break given to cover the cost of supplying drugs to early retirees.

Let’s take this step by step. If a person continues to work, he or she will be covered under the employer’s plan. All other things being equal, working up until you are entitled to Medicare gives continuity of coverage. But there was always a problem if someone took early retirement. Health insurance companies were reluctant to insure older people who might more quickly develop serious medical problems. So, to give people aged between 55 and 64 a bridge until they became eligible for Medicare, employers were given a tax break to enable them to pay for their ex-employees’ drugs. With the disappearance of the tax break, employers were therefore left with an obligation to pay for drugs without any relief.

Acting through Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary to the Department of Health and Human Services, President Obama has announced a $5 billion package to offset the loss of the tax break. This will run from June 2010 to January 2014 when the individual health insurance plans offered through the new exchanges should come onto the market. It is estimated that about 4,500 private and public employers will be eligible to claim from this new fund. The intention is to provide continuity of coverage under the current health plans and it will be condition that the employers maintain their contributions, i.e. federal money is a top-up not a substitute for payment by employers. Ms Sebelius has also made it clear that the individual health plans offered to early retirees must include coverage for chronic and high-cost diseases and disorders. Employers cannot cherry pick the diseases to be covered. That means the victims of heart attacks or those diagnosed with diabetes and cancer will get continuing support under the plans if federal funding is to be drawn down.

In general, the business community has been slow in showing its gratitude. The feeling seems to be that Government made a mistake when pushing through the reform bill and was now offering a fraction of the total money required to fill in the hole. Nevertheless, the President has recognized the problem and made funds available to help offset it. Whether these funds will prove sufficient is something we will have to wait and see. For the retirees, it should mean access to benefits with fewer hassles.

The game played by politicians is to take an idea from their own agenda and then frame it in a way that sells it to the other side. When the politicians meet in the middle, bipartisan solutions to problems emerge. This reflects the fact there is no monopoly on good ideas, only simple good solutions to difficult problems. In the healthcare debate, one of the solutions proposed by the GOP was to allow people to buy their insurance across state lines. This sounds a good idea. As the law stands, every state regulates the sale of insurance within its own borders. This limits the size of the market. If insurers had to compete with each other on a regional or national level, the premium rates would fall and every citizen would get a better deal. Well, let’s look a little more closely at how it would actually work.

At present, every state has a Department of Insurance to regulate the insurance companies licensed to sell policies. This is a reasonably effective system for consumer protection. But if regional or national insurers could sell policies into many states, it would break the regulatory system. It would no longer be local supervision of local companies. Insurers would decide where to establish and would, of course, choose the states which had the weakest consumer protection regulations, i.e. where they could make the most profit. Think banks and finance companies. These companies broke the US economy and produced the recession because their sales of subprime mortgages and associated derivatives were unregulated. Now apply the same thing to interstate insurance. As a final thought on this issue, remember all US states have different laws and one state cannot enforce another’s laws. That is sovereignty for you. So the state where an insurer is based cannot protect consumers under another state’s laws.

Secondly, opening the market across state lines allows insurers to cherry pick the best people to insure. Without regulations to limit the right to discriminate against people for pre-existing conditions and to increase premiums as people get older and fall ill more often, insurers will just take their profit from all the healthy people and forget about the rest. Thus, instead of increasing consumer choice, it would have the reverse effect. Most insurance companies would close their branches in individual states. Those that remained would keep all the aging and less healthy people. As their claims rise, the companies will make a loss and close. Without a law to mandate regional or national companies to offer some health coverage, it is likely the number of uninsured people would rise.

When you add all this up, it is a good thing the GOP’s proposal was rejected. Health insurance plans are complicated enough without having to change a whole mass of federal and state laws to allow interstate sales. This is not to say that consumers might benefit if there was more competition in the insurance market generally. With a real free market, properly regulated, consumers would get a better deal both in the terms of coverage and in the premium rates they pay. As it is, you must get multiple quotes to find cheap health insurance. Anticipating their profits will take a hit following this reform, insurers have been raising their premium rates. You must shop around to find the most affordable policy.