Insurance Gimmicks You Can Do Without

You know insurance is part of a solid financial plan, so you?ve made sure all your bases are covered with the right kind of coverage. Then you see a commercial or hear about a new type of insurance that sounds pretty good?like an extra layer of protection. How bad can that be, right?

That ?extra protection? can just be a gimmick?expensive coverage you shouldn?t waste your money on. Here are a few to watch out for:

Any Life Insurance For Kids

There is no need to buy a life insurance policy for your children, even one like Gerber life insurance, which is a whole life policy that claims to help you save for college. The best way to save for college is with an Education Savings Account (ESA). If you want the security of knowing final expenses are covered should you tragically lose a child, add a rider to your life insurance policy that would simply pay for funeral costs.

Accidental Death Insurance

As the name implies, an accidental death policy pays your beneficiaries if you die in an accident. But no matter how you die, your family?s financial needs won?t change. A term life insurance policy will meet those needs. You?re not double-dead if you die in an accident, so there?s no reason to pay extra for double coverage.

Mortgage Protection Insurance

We all want our families to be secure in their own homes if we die unexpectedly. So many people buy mortgage protection insurance to pay off their mortgage in the event of their death. Again, the proper amount of term life insurance will be enough to pay off the mortgage and support your family. Plus, mortgage insurance is more expensive than term life, and the benefit actually decreases as you pay down the mortgage balance. The same goes for any credit life insurance designed to pay off a specific debt if you die?you simply don?t need it.

Supplemental Insurance For Medical Issues

Insurance is all about transferring risk. If you can afford to take the risk, you don?t need to pay for insurance to protect you. With good medical insurance and a fully funded emergency fund, you won?t need supplemental insurance to help you pay for short-term medical issues. However, you should protect yourself from long-term medical problems with long-term disability insurance.

Cancer Insurance

Cancer is a scary word, and nearly everyone has either seen or experienced its emotional and financial tolls. But your medical insurance covers cancer just like any other disease, so buying cancer insurance is simply adding coverage you don?t need.

Whole Life Insurance

What could be better than providing for your family in the event of your death while saving money at the same time? Well, almost anything else would be better, but a term life policy for 8?10 times your income is the best choice. Whole life insurance includes a built-in savings plan, but the fees are high and the returns are historically subpar. Dave considers it to be the worst insurance product available.

Talk To A Pro About Your Insurance Needs

If you have any questions about the coverage you have or the coverage you need, talk with one of Dave?s insurance Endorsed Local Providers. Dave?s ELPs are insurance professionals who will recommend the same coverage Dave does. Your ELP is also an independent insurance agent, which means he?ll work for you, not the insurance company, to find coverage to meet your needs and budget. Contact your ELP today!

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Source: http://www.daveramsey.com/article/insurance-gimmicks-you-can-do-without/lifeandmoney_insurance

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Tips On Choosing A Credit Counselor

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Due to the recession, rising price of gas & food, and the unemployment rate credit counseling is the most popular for of debt solution for individuals with high levels of credit card debt. The credit card debt had reached $800 million in 2008 and has surprisingly been on a steady decline since then but that doesn't mean that there are American consumers that aren't suffering. This article will hopefully shed some light for those that are seeking credit counseling.

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The World's Highest Five Star Hotel Just Opened In Lhasa


St. Regis Lhasa

Situated 3,600 meters (11,811 feet) above sea level, there is no other five-star hotel that even comes close to the height of the new St. Regis in Lhasa (naturally, not inside a skyscraper).

The hotel has 162 rooms, including suites as well as three restaurants. We are, of course, not considering the tallest man-made hotel, which would be the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong.  Mind you, this one simply occupies a part of a skyscraper, and does not occupy the whole building itself.

Features of the St. Regis include a beautiful spa with an indoor pool. The cuisines on offer include the local Tibetan delicacies, traditional Chinese food as well as an international restaurant. The design of the hotel is typically Tibetan.

The Tibet Autonomous Region’s first five-star hotel, the St. Regis Lhasa Resort, is one of five planned to be built by 2015 under the region’s five-year plan, according to Wang Songping, deputy chief of the tourism bureau of Tibet. The ShangriLa and the Intercontinental Hotels will be the next ones coming up in Lhasa.

This post originally appeared at The Rich Times.

 

 

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/749VaaqIfq8/the-roof-of-the-world-gets-its-first-five-star-hotel-2011-6

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Debt Consolidation: Take Back Your Freedom!

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If you want to be free from debt caused by today's financial crises or high interests of credit card bills, debt consolidation might be one of the better solutions for you. This process is basically taking on another debt of a lower interest rate to pay off other debts in full. This takes the burden out of high compounding interest rates and penalties especially on credit card bills.

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Why Congress Added The Means Test To Bankruptcy

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Since the US Bankruptcy Code changed back in 2005, filing bankruptcy has taken on a new complexity that many have trouble understanding. One of the main changes that is hard for many people to grasp is the means test. Congress added the means test to bankruptcy law when they changed the code.

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What The US Can Learn From The Eurozone Mess


Greece Austerity Riots

Greece's finances are out of control. Its bonds are downgraded to junk, and without a German and European Central Bank bailout, it will be forced to restructure its debt.

Greece doesn't have a liquidity problem -- it is insolvent -- because no amount of spending cuts or tax increases can cure its budget woes. Investors are demanding such high premiums on outstanding bonds that rolling over debt, as those bonds come due, will be prohibitively expensive.

German and European banks would take huge haircuts in a restructuring. Therefore, to avoid immediate pain, the Germans and the ECB may find a way to buy more Greek bonds.

This would continue the charade that Athens can find a path to solvency through economic reforms and austerity. But the longer this folly persists, the greater the haircut for Athens' creditors.
The U.S. is losing control of its finances too, and bond rating agencies have threatened to downgrade its debt.

Like Greece, U.S. health care and retirement programs are spinning out of control, and Congress has padded the federal payrolls with new programs and bureaucrats that slow, rather than foster, growth.

President Obama and the principal U.S. creditors -- most notably, China -- are in denial. The president talks about raising taxes on families earning more than $250,000, but that will hardly dent the problem.

Substantial spending cuts or higher taxes would suffocate the economic recovery, and a second credit crisis and deeper recession would likely cause chaos for China's exporters and banks. Hence, Beijing continues to print yuan to buy dollars, convert those dollars to U.S. bonds, and suffer rising inflation when those yuan return to purchase Chinese exports.

Eventually, the U.S. will be insolvent too, the global economy will shatter and American sovereignty will be thrown into the arms of Chinese creditors.

Europe's Outsized Expectations for Public Benefits

European voters expect a strong, broad and expensive social safety net, including universal health care, income security and early retirement.

These have so reduced individual risks and rewards that population and economic growth have slowed to dangerously low rates. Without more young people and a bigger economic pie to divide, the social safety net is too expensive to maintain in rich and poor countries alike.

With the commercial integration that followed World War II through the European Common Market (initially composed of six nations) and the broader European Free Trade Area (which encompassed most of the noncommunist states), public expectations for benefits in poorer nations and regions (like Portugal, Greece and southern Italy) grew to rival those in richer states. This happened even though these poorer economies lacked the resources to pay for those benefits.

Politicians in southern Europe expanded and enriched social safety nets, but costs rose too, as doctors, teachers and the like expected salaries and benefits more comparable to their colleagues farther north.
The price tag outran the ability of employers and governments to pay, and inflation and national budget headaches followed.

Until the euro was adopted in 1999, southern nations could let their national currencies gradually fall in value against the German mark and other currencies of richer nations.

That would boost exports and tax revenues. The pensions paid by Greece, Portugal and others, denominated in their national currencies, became worthless if spent in Germany and other northern jurisdictions, but these Mediterranean states became great places for northern Europeans and Americans to retire and vacation.

After 1999, national governments in Spain, Portugal, Greece and, to a lesser extent, Italy faced the difficult prospect of telling their citizens they could not retire as young, enjoy the same health benefits or employment security as the wealthier French, Germans and Dutch.

So these governments borrowed heavily and now face severe retrenchment and perhaps bankruptcy.

The austerity Germany and others will ultimately force on these governments in order to bail them out will shatter the myth that the welfare state can be provided equally across Europe. The Mediterranean states may simply choose to quit the euro, destroying the Franco-German dream of European Unity.

Before Americans and northern Europeans chasten their Mediterranean friends too harshly for living beyond their means, remember that northern reluctance to share wealth through a strong central government has much to do with the Mediterranean states' predicament.

In the U.S., the states can't print money and some spend more aggressively than others, but most social benefits are substantially assisted by Washington, which can tax New York to subsidize Mississippi. But Brussels cannot tax Germany to help pay for Greek social benefits, at least not as aggressively as is needed.


German and other northern European exporters greatly benefit from a single European market, and from the fact that the euro is undervalued for their exports.

However, unless the Germans and others are willing to let Brussels tax them as necessary to reasonably equalize social spending between richer and poorer states, the euro will remain an uncertain adventure and European unity a utopian dream.

Monetary union is simply not possible without fiscal union.

The Threat of Contagion and the Future of the Euro

Greece could be the next Lehman Brothers.

Portugal, Spain and several other countries have similarly shaky finances, and a Greek restructuring could cause investors to demand much higher risk premiums on their existing bonds. Rolling over debt would become too expensive, and those nations could become insolvent too.

European banks, including those in Germany and other wealthy jurisdictions, hold sizable amounts of threatened countries' debt, and U.S. banks hold a lot of European debt too. A banking crisis could easily spread across Europe and then to the U.S., much as the recent U.S. mortgage and broader financial crisis spread to Europe.

As the crisis in Greece and other countries worsened, ECB could step up purchases of sovereign debt, but that would simply replace Greek and other sovereign debt with billions of new euros in circulation and inflation.

The combination of existing debt and public expectations for a generous social safety net may leave Germany and other rich countries with a tough choice: letting Greece and other poor countries leave the euro, or having a combination of high inflation and greater fiscal union in the EU. Regarding the latter, either the north subsidies the south through the ECB printing euros and creating inflation, or the EU transfers tax revenues from richer to poorer countries.

The Germans rightly fear hyperinflation, but granting the EU broad taxing authority to finance a pan-EU social safety net is unlikely. Instead, countries like Greece may be forced to leave the eurozone or the euro will disappear altogether.

This could take several years to play out, but monetary union is simply not possible without fiscal union.

The U.S. government and many states would face similar difficulties but for the fact that the United States prints dollars, the global currency. That could change, however.

The budget published by the Obama Administration assumes GDP growth of about 4% for 2011 through 2015, even though most private economists believe slower growth is likely.

The Obama budget contains the politically less difficult fiscal levers -- repeal of the Bush tax cuts for families earning over $250,000 and cuts in defense spending -- and projected revenues and cost savings from the 2010 health care law, including the new interest and dividend tax.

More realistic assumptions about growth and the cost of health care put U.S. projected deficits on the path to unsustainability -- more than $1 trillion a year for many years.

Congressional Republicans are throwing around grand numbers -- demanding $2 trillion in spending cuts to approve an increase in the debt ceiling. But how those cuts are to be accomplished remains vague, and those come to only about $200 billion a year. Simply put, the GOP plan would just boot the problem past the 2012 elections.

At that point, the U.S. would almost certainly face a downgrade in its bond rating, higher borrowing costs, forced reductions in spending and significant new taxes.

The Democrats have the value-added tax waiting in the wings. However, in the current environment of fiscal indiscipline, a VAT would be a disaster.

The polemic is appealing: Other industrialized countries have one, so now that U.S. social benefits are more like theirs with the passage of national health care, the U.S. should have one too.

Not so fast.

Europeans pay a VAT and have income and corporate taxes, too, but they pay little for health care and higher education -- the government uses those taxes to pick up the tab.

With a VAT, U.S. businesses and individual taxpayers would have tax burdens comparable to Europeans but would still face hefty bills for private health insurance and college tuition that Europeans do not bear.

The reason is simple. Americans pay 50% higher prices for health care services than the Germans and most other Europeans, and U.S. universities are chronically wasteful institutions. And U.S. regulatory costs are higher. Witness how initial public offerings are fleeing the U.S. for Europe and other venues because of higher costs imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting law.


Obama Care contains firm commitments about scope of coverage and benefits guaranteed each citizen, but it offers only vague commitments to reduce higher U.S. drug, medical professional fees, administrative costs and malpractice expenses.

U.S. governments, federal and state, pay for about half of U.S. health care expenses, and a VAT would take away the pressure to chisel down higher U.S. costs.

U.S. higher education is another big hole in household and state finances. Americans pay too much for what they get, except perhaps from their most modest institutions -- community colleges. Too many young Americans are simply unprepared to compete in the global economy.

Without offsetting reductions in personal and corporate taxes, a VAT will only make Americans poorer, with even fewer incentives to work and innovate than the Europeans. It will also cause businesses to offshore even more jobs and tax economic growth to anemic levels.

Without a VAT and absent real and substantial cost cutting for health care and provision of other public services, budget deficits will drive up U.S. borrowing costs to unmanageable levels.

With a VAT and no real cost cutting, the absence of growth will strangle American prosperity, cause the collapse of the dollar standard and throw the U.S. on the mercy of its principal creditors such as China.

Greece is a warning to governments that promise too much and pay too much for what they promise.

The U.S. is hardly free of such folly, and Americans should be prepared to someday accept from China the medicine Germany is now administering Greece.

This post originally appeared at The Street.

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Spurrier, others propose paying football players

Credit Cards Assessing Their Full Costs

When it comes to credit cards, they don’t have to end up costing you the earth. So long as you can keep your spending under control, and are able to pay off your monthly bill in full each month, your credit card will probably cost you nothing. An interest free period of somewhere between fifty [...]

Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2011/06/01/credit-cards-assessing-their-full-costs/

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