tcrickett

Variable / Tracker Mortgages Northern Rock 2.79% 2 year deal with £595 arrangement fee, 4% ERC until 1st March 2012, max 70% LTV ING Direct 2.79% (BoEBR + 2.29%) 2 year deal (24 months exactly) with £795 arrangement fee (£195 booking fee), 2% ERC for 24 months, max 75% LTV Co-Op Bank 2.99% 3 year deal with £199 application fee, 3% ERC until 31 January 2013, max 60% LTV Woolwich 3.19% for term, no arrangement fee, 1% ERC until 31 January 2012, max 70% LTV All of these deals look... Read Full Story

I came across this CPA Arbitrage e-learning product today whilst browsing Click Bank . I had a good read of the website, watched a few of the videos that were on there, mostly they just showed affiliate accounts with lots of money in them that the owner of the CPA Arbitrage system was running. In fairness to the chap, he had made well over $500,000 in the last few years from internet marketing, but that was just his turnover, I wonder what he spent on advertising? You see that’s the thing... Read Full Story

I can hardly believe that next month is December, which means that 2010 is nearly upon us. At the start of this year I assumed that interest rates would only be low for a few months before rising sharply, back to a more normal range of 3-5% - how wrong I have been! With the economy still not fully recovered from the effects of the credit crunch, and many experts believing that we still have more doom and gloom to come, I can only imagine that the Bank of England base rate will not be rising... Read Full Story

Buy to let mortgages work very similarly to regular mortgages, with the distinction mainly being that the property being used as security for the mortgage is an investment property and not your home. Yes there are some other subtle differences and a vast array of regulations that govern the transaction, which I will cover here. For a start, on a conventional mortgage the ability to borrow is governed by the deposit you can put down and your income. The larger the deposit, as a percentage of... Read Full Story

I read an interesting article in yesterdays paper (not sure which one, think it was the Gaurdian) about a London based financial advisor that specifically helps his clients to maximise their investment returns solely by holding and trading gilts. He is a very cautious investor/advisor and stated in his bio that he hasn’t been invested in the stock market since 1986, when at which point he was invested in the Nikkei at around 40,000, and got out at the right time. Currently as I write this... Read Full Story

I recently read The Richest Man In Babylon by Charles S Clason and was absolutely engrossed in it for about a week - it’s only a short book so didn’t take too many evenings to read it. The book was written in 1926, though it still feels very relevant today, and what’s more, the lessons that it teaches are written in the context of the residents of Babylon circa 500 BC. This is what so fascinated me, the notion that the secrets to wealth and happines are the same today as they were thousands... Read Full Story

I recently read The Richest Man In Babylon by Charles S Clason and was absolutely engrossed in it for about a week - it’s only a short book so didn’t take too many evenings to read it. The book was written in 1926, though it still feels very relevant today, and what’s more, the lessons that it teaches are written in the context of the residents of Babylon circa 500 BC. This is what so fascinated me, the notion that the secrets to wealth and happines are the same today as they were thousands... Read Full Story

When I worked as a mortgage broker, I made a substantial portion of my income from remortgaging my clients properties, mostly just helping out those rate tarts that wanted a cheaper deal for the next 2,3 or 5 years, but sometimes I would do a remortgage as part of a debt-restructuring exercise, rolling up much more expensive loans and credit cards into a cheaper rate on the new mortgage. Now when the base rate was between for instance 5%, this pretty much always made sense, as the... Read Full Story

When I worked as a mortgage broker, I made a substantial portion of my income from remortgaging my clients properties, mostly just helping out those rate tarts that wanted a cheaper deal for the next 2,3 or 5 years, but sometimes I would do a remortgage as part of a debt-restructuring exercise, rolling up much more expensive loans and credit cards into a cheaper rate on the new mortgage. Now when the base rate was between for instance 5%, this pretty much always made sense, as the... Read Full Story

When I worked as a mortgage broker I dealt with a broad cross section of society on a daily basis, some professionals, some civil servants and teachers and quite a few tradesmen. Now you would think that the more educated the clients were the better they would be with their personal finances, not so. What I discovered whilst dealing with the various clients I dealt with was that some people just seem to have a natural instinct for personal finances, and others seemed to need a helping hand... Read Full Story