Due to the current economic climate in the UK, borrowing money has become extremely difficult. In such a volatile financial market lenders check how reliable and trustworthy you are by looking at your financial history.

When you apply for any type of credit, the lenders will check your financial history by looking at your personal credit record. The healthier your personal credit record appears to the lender, the better your chances are of being approved.

Being turned down for finances is a horrible experience so to try to stop this from happening; you need to understand your credit record so that you can improve it if you need to.

Credit reference agencies like Experian, will provide you with an up to date credit record for a small fee, and they normally offer the first report for free. It’s important that you know the specifics of your report because the smallest hole in an application can see you get rejected.

Your total credit

The first thing you should look at on your credit report is your total credit, as this is what lenders will look at first. If you have too much credit it will have a negative effect on your rating, and it doesn’t matter if you have 5 credit cards that you don’t use; the fact is that you have 5 credit cards worth of credit available to you. It’s said that the ideal amount of cards to own at any one time is 3.

Late Payments

If you have ever paid any bills late then this will affect your personal rating. Making late payments may make you look like an unreliable borrower. In order to improve your credit record make sure you pay all of your bills on time, and the easiest way to do this is to set up payments by direct debit as your payments will be automatic.

Be Honest

When a lender checks your personal credit record, they will analyse it thoroughly, and they don’t necessarily need to find an error to reject you. Make sure then when filling in a credit application, you are as honest and as truthful as possible as leaving something out by accident will have a negative effect.

Dispute Incorrect Info

An important aspect you should always remember is that you should dispute any incorrect information on your credit report. If there’s something you don’t agree with then give the credit agency a call and tell them it’s incorrect.

Build Your Credit History

If you have no personal credit history then companies won’t trust you, if you’re in this position then start building your history as soon as you can. Start with store or cash back cards as they easy to be approved for and they give your rating a boost. Also, you could consider credit builder credit cards as they are specifically designed for building your personal credit rating.

Never Be Close To Your Limits

To give your rating a big push, try not to be close to your overdraft or credit card limits, as this indicates to the credit agencies that you are struggling financially, you want to appear as financially comfortable as possible.

How budgeting can strengthen your financial stability as well as marriage

Planning your wedding is the most important and exciting thing that can ever happen in your life. Read on to know how you can strengthen your financial stability before marriage and avoid any debt options in the future:

Don’t keep your finances secret

Since you’re getting married, you must not keep any secrets from each other including your finances. You as well as your spouse must know how much each of you earns and what are your savings. Since you’ll be sharing everything with each other, it’ll be better if you know each other’s financial background. You must also tell you spouse how much you owe, if you have any debts and also should inform him/her about any other money related issues.

Budgeting and fortifying your finances

Getting married to the person you love has many advantages such as you can discuss your financial problems with the person as well as make plans regarding budgeting your finances. This will further prevent you from going to any debt consolidation companies for help. You must create a budget and change it every week so that you can easily manage any sudden expenses. There are many budgeting software available on the Internet which can help you understand how to do it. You can also create docs and excel sheets for noting down your savings and expenses and work accordingly.

If you have debts, pay them off

When you get married, you’ll have more expenses than when you were single. Your spouse will also contribute to the expenses but if your money goes in paying off your debts, it’ll be quite long before you enjoy your married life. Take help of debt management plan and also other debt reduction options to get rid of debts quick. Inform about this to your partner also so that he/she may help you overcome debts.

Plan your marriage according to budget

You can have a themed wedding based on a healthy budget. You can have most of the hand-made objects in your marriage and for the caterers you can appoint someone you know so that you can save spending much on food. For the venue, you can have a simple canopied wedding in the country side with great view which will be inexpensive. Plan your wedding beforehand and both of you must contribute to it to save money for your honeymoon.

There are some lovely ways you can really save while planning and budgeting your marriage. These tips will surely keep you away from any kind of debts and you can lead a stress free life after your marriage.

Contributed By: Jason Holmes

But the creators of Family Guy aren’t the only people who have been providing fresh insights into Santa’s operation. A new infographic from Confused.com highlights just how much Santa has to spend on insurance – including pet insurance for his reindeer, unlimited travel insurance and dental insurance to cover all of his mince pie eating.

First of all, Kevie’s story proves that you don’t need to invest a lot of money upfront in order to start a successful business. A six pack of beer costs under ten dollars. In order to make a profit, all Kevie had to do was raise the price slightly before reselling the beer. Another way to decrease your initial financial investment in a business is to do things yourself instead of hiring someone else to do them. For example, Kevie could have hired someone to buy the beers and deliver them. Instead, he chose to save the money and do it himself.

Another thing we can learn is that opportunities always exist. Maybe they’re not obvious, but if you think hard enough, eventually you will come up with a money making opportunity. Walk through your neighborhood and try to see if there are any stores or services that are not being offered in your neighborhood. Kevie may have come up with his business idea after seeing the empty bar and realizing that he could take advantage of the fact that no one else was currently running the place.

Even if you have a great idea, nothing will happen until you actually get started. Kevie didn’t sit around and drink himself into oblivion while dreaming of a better future – he did something, albeit illegal, in an attempt to change his financial situation. If someone in such a bad situation could get his act together, so can you.

Finally, think back to the end of Kevie’s business – the part where he got arrested. Kevie committed several illegal acts in order to get his business running. If you’re clever enough to think of sneaky and illegal schemes, why not try devoting time to coming up with ingenious legal ideas? Cheating may look good in the short term, but eventually both the cops and karma will show up.

Author Byline:

This post was authored by Tom Medalla from the financial website LifeCover. Click here to visit their website.

That’s right. It’s funny news season. It turns out that insurers are really thinking of cranking up the premiums for households that make use of social networking. The concern is that too many people announce to the world when their houses are empty and ripe for plundering.

The director of pricing and underwriting at Legal & General, Malcolm Cooper, told the Daily Mail that;

“It’s a challenging one for the insurance industry. Just because someone is burgled, you can’t prove that it’s down to details posted on Facebook.

“It could be that we start asking how many youngsters are in the home for example.”

The comment is worth thinking about. Legal & General must associate social networking with youngsters.

It may be that older people are just as common on social sites (there’s debate as to whether teens even bother with Twitter at all) and just as likely to announce when they’re on holiday.

Earlier this year an American couple announced they were off on holiday and had a 10 hour drive to their 2000+ followers on Twitter only to come back to a burgled house.

The new ad will feature an opera singer called Gio Compario. The website gio-compario.com has been registered by GoCompare but, at the time of writing, isn’t currently in use.

The first ad airs tomorrow on UK TV and will feature Gio Compario signing the classic Over There by George M Cohan but will insert the words “GoCompare” into the lyrics.

The new ads will replace the current run which keeps the focus on GoCompare’s star rating system. The stars are actually quite controversial as they edge the “price comparison” service closer towards giving out financial advice. Financial advice is a dangerous thing to give out and requires all sorts of checks and passes (one of the reasons why Cashzilla never does it).

… and for the curious, here’s the actual chorus to Over There. We imagine Gio Compario may simply switch “Over there” with “Go Compare”.

Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming
The drum’s rum-tumming everywhere
So prepare, say a prayer,
Send the word, send the word to beware
We’ll be over, we’re coming over
And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there

When Roger came to ask for mortgage for a $385,000 property in Mapua the bank refused. On top of his NZ $190,000 in cash Roger was also going to sell his $110,000 campervan. That would leave the bank with about $90,000 to loan and that’s well more than the %20 deposit they require.

So why did Westpac refuse the mortgage? They pointed out that Roger Griffith is an artist without a regular income and therefore doesn’t qualify at all.

The last straw for Roger Griffiths was when Westpac lost $110 million in a loan to Lane Walker Rudkin. He told press;

“They can lose $110 million with LWR but turn down a normal customer who has never missed a loan payment,” he said. “If they don’t have the trust in me after 25 years, there’s a problem for Westpac.”

Roger’s response was not only to withdraw his entire $190,000 savings but to do it in $20 notes.

After a discussion with the bank they finally agreed to have all the money ready in his local branch for 9am. They counted each note out and provided bags for the artist to takehis money away. He did so and carried to the Nelson Building Society.

Griffith’s reason for picking Nelson was that he felt it was part of the community. His final message to Westpac was;

“If you don’t support the community, the community won’t support you.”

As of the 27th Google Checkout will stop accepting Maestro cards. Maestro is run by Mastercard. Mastercard credit cards are unaffected and can still be used. There are more than 500 million Maestro debit card holders around the world and so this is a significant move from the Googleborg.

It’s odd that Google would want to ditch the card. It’s also odd the Google are doing this at such sort speed. In the last week they’ve been sending out this email.

Thank you for using Google Checkout, the fast, secure way to shop at stores across the web.

As of 27th July, Maestro cards will no longer be accepted as a payment method by Google Checkout. You are receiving this notification because your default card is a Maestro card that will no longer be supported.

To ensure that your Checkout account is ready for purchases the next time you shop, you will need to select a new default credit/debit card. Accepted payment methods are listed at http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=105916

You may update your payment information now by clicking ‘Edit payment methods’ after signing in to your Google Checkout account at http://checkout.google.co.uk

If you prefer, you also have the option of updating your payment information when you make your next purchase.

While you will be unable to place new orders with Maestro cards, refunds and chargebacks for previous orders will be unaffected.

We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any further questions, please visit our Help Centre at https://checkout.google.com/support/?hl=en-GB

Kind regards, The Google Checkout Team

As savvy Cashzilla readers will know there are certain risks in storing too much money in sites like PayPal. If someone tricks you out of your password or the company decides to freeze your account then you’re in trouble.

Purchases made this way don’t have the same sort of protection as direct credit card purchases either. Most of all; if you store money in PayPal then it’s not in the bank earning interest.

Zoopla has bought Thinkproperty.com from the Guardian Media Group. In a sign of the teams you could read about this consolidation in the UK property portal market in the Zoopla blog.

Zoopla don’t just get a great brand. They’ve managed to secure themselves as the exclusive search partner for the Guardian.co.uk.

We agree with the wise words of Property Owl who hoot that there are still too many portals and that Zoopla now face the challenge of the integration. In particular Property Owl’s suggestion that an industry wide standard on property feeds would is an interesting idea and worth looking at.

What does all this mean to you?

It means that there are still loads of places for you to discover houses for sale. The fact there is need for consolidation suggests that the current levels of competition are just not sustainable so we might see some reduction in choice and incentives over the next few months but savvy ‘zilla house hunters will still be checking online for years to come.

Interesting news stalwart Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing is to be thanked for bringing this to our attention.

Visa have recorded a $23, 148, 855, 308, 184, 500.00 charge on a prepaid card.

The Consumerist, who broke the story, point out that’s 2,000 times larger than America’s national debt of $11 trillion and that the ever-vigilant billing team at Visa remembered to add the $20 charge for being in the red. Yes; the card was also suspended.

Prepaid cards are an interesting idea. They work in a very similar way to credit or debit cards except you can only spend the balance that has been assigned to the card. In theory this means it is impossible to run in to debt (as there’s no overdraft option) and therefore ideal for giving to teenagers.

Cards are usually assigned a PIN number and can be used at ATM machines, online or even over the telephone.

They’ve become popular with travellers as they’re seen as being a handy as plastic but much less of a risk. They’re often more discreet than cash as well. Normally, that is, unless a drug store tries to charge you all the money in the world and the bill ends up on the internet. When that happens they’re not so discreet.