The financial institutions want you to pay the instalment amount they ask you each month. If you pay more than this amount it is fine but don’t think that you can use the additional payment of this month to compensate next month’s instalment. The large corporate financial institutions system can’t work that way. Even if you pay more into your account over a period of months than you are supposed to pay, the financial institutions will not accept this if you miss a month. You will be branded a nonpayer.

Don’t think you can explain this to the call centre operator. If you work for a salary there is no problem to pay this amount at the same time every month, but when you work for yourself or get irregular income like commission or contract workers it is not always possible to pay at the same time. Take for instance a property agent. They only get paid once the property has been registered and sometimes there are hick ups that prolong the registration process.

You would think that financial institutions would take this into account, but wait the financial institutions have no idea how the real world works, only how to make money with other people’s money. Let us not burst their bubble. We don’t want millions of homeless people on the streets that can’t survive out here in the real world.

Now we can speculate for hours why the bank does this. Personally I think the longer you take to pay your credit card the more interest the bank earns seeing that credit cards has some of the highest interest rates.

The best way of getting past this is to pay only the monthly instalment required by the bank and pay the additional funds into a savings account for times when you can’t pay the instalment. When the amount in your savings account reaches the outstanding balance of your credit card you can pay it off.

The above applies to any instalment account you may have, whether it is a clothing account or paying off some furniture. Luckily businesses are a bit more lenient and understanding.

Soon after getting up and running again my account got permanently suspended because I am a repeat offender of the policy. This time for something different. I was not the only one as a good friend and fellow online marketer got his account suspended as well.

Many disgruntled website publishers eventually give up the fight with the mighty Google and go the “Linux way”(people working together) or find another ad company. It is fine to lose a client here and there, but biting the hands that feed you is a different story.

When I worked for a large corporate bank we once had a motivational speaker and he told us that we don’t have to worry about the client that makes a big fuss as we could make changes and solve his problem. We should worry about the client that keeps quiet and just leaves. You will have to spend thousands if not millions in advertising to get him back and there is no guarantee. Once he has moved on chances are that no matter what you do you’ve lost him forever.

When I first read John Chow dot com’s blog on why he does not have any Google AdSense on his site, it started me thinking but I was not convinced, but when Google suspended my account for a second time and this time permanently it made me think again. So many people that I know has had their AdSense accounts suspended and you don’t get specific reasons. Just that your site does not comply with the policies.

You spend days and even weeks to just get unsuspended while you could have been working on your traffic or something else.

Just so you know when you use AdWords, your landing page are not allowed to have the recommended ads according to Google AdSense policy. You should also not place them where Google recommends above the fold.

If one of your campaigns get suspended you still OK, but if you make another mistake you will get suspended, permanently.

What bothered me most is that Google send ads to my site that does exactly what Google says I’m not allowed to do. Is there a different set of rules for small advertisers? If your budget is big enough does Google look the other way?

It seems like Google got too big to be bothered about the smaller people, but like they say the bigger you are the harder you fall.

New and innovative ways to stay on top and get sales up again are being researched all over. New regular content seems to be the best to counter this loss in traffic. Businesses with well-designed websites will have to create ways to add new content if they want to use the Internet as a marketing tool. Having a website with sound information is not good enough anymore.
A Practical Guide to Restaurant Placemat Advertising

Small to medium sized business are being hit hardest as they do not have the budget to continuously add new content or pay someone to regularly add new articles and blog posts to their website. With an online business this is not that a bigger problem as this is their main source of business and they are always busy with updating and improving their websites, but with a business that sells more offline but need their contact details if someone searches for them, there is not much hope.

Offline businesses have a certain product and with most people searching online rather than looking through a telephone directory where their details would have stayed the same for at least a year and in most cases never change, would now have to fabricate new information just to make it worth their while.

Most small businesses consist of one to three or four people and in most cases they are all doing ten peoples work. Getting one person to update their website will mean that something else are not done or another person will have to be employed who knows nothing about the business to update the website.

You will have to look at other ways to promote your business online as it has just become more difficult to stay on top.

It all comes down to How profitable is Google Read the article

Make sure to pay the normal premium you would have paid on your car to pay back the amount over the same period of time.

If you do not have funds on your home loan to use or do not have the ability to get a home loan then you can by paying additional amounts on your car finance account. The interest is calculated on the outstanding amount. By paying only R100 additional on your car every month you can reduce the payment period with even more, and save more interest. At a monthly premium of R2500 this will save you R10 000 on a R100 000 initial loan. Download the Finance Calculator to find out how much you can save if you pay different additional amounts.

The advantage of going under Debt Review is as soon as you have signed the agreement with a debt review company and paid their fees as well as the lawyer and court fees you are protected from creditors and they can no longer come to your house and take your belongings. In actual fact they cannot even contact you anymore. They have to work through the debt councillor.

Going under Debt Review rather than sequestration has the benefit of being considerably less costly and once you have paid off your debt you will have a clean credit record, where with sequestration you have to wait five years to be rehabilitated. Yes with sequestration your debt is written off and with Debt Review you still have to pay off your debt.

You cannot go under Debt review if judgement has already been taken against you.

Debt review only applies to debt made on items or services purchased. Where you have a cell phone contract or a hire purchase agreement or residual lease with a bank for your car or your monthly rental of a house or your electricity bill, you cannot place these under debt review.

If you have purchased your vehicle with an instalment sale you can place it under debt review.

One thing to watch out for is if you miss or make a late payment while under debt review, you will stop being protected and your creditors can demand full payment.

You will have the benefit of paying a fixed monthly premium that you can afford. Should you pay off one of your creditors the part that went to that creditor will be distributed amongst the remaining creditors.

The creditors cannot inflate the interest on your loan and has to abide by the court ruling on what is acceptable.

Should your financial situation change for the better you may opt to stop being under debt review and start paying the normal monthly instalments. You may also stay under debt review and pay additional amounts towards your debt paying them off faster.

If you or your spouse go under debt review the other party may not also go under debt review.

While under debt review you may not make any new debt or enter into a new monthly contract for debt. Banks and finance houses will not grant you a loan.

What is a residual value?

A residual value is when the bank takes a part of the cost of the vehicle off the purchase price and then finances the balance. You will then have to pay the difference with your last payment at the end of your finance term.

What Are The Benefits Or Not?

When you purchase a motor vehicle with a residual value at the end it brings down your monthly premium. This is good if you cannot afford the higher premium. You should, when you can afford, make extra payments towards your loan to reduce this res value. Before you know it your term is up and you must make one large payment that at that time you do not have. The saving is normally not that great. You might save 25% on your monthly payment, but have to pay a 40% residual value at the end.

The 40% residual value attracts interest over the period of your lease agreement.

Let the bank give you a quote on both residual or not. If you could rather give a bigger deposit it would help a lot.

I purchased a Ford Fiesta 1.4 for R110 000 and financed R100 000 of it. After paying R2000 per month for 54 months I still had to pay R44500 residual value after paying R108 000. I did not miss one payment or pay any one late, but when I wanted the bank to refinance they refused and I did not have this money lying around. Fortunately I had a client with a long standing relationship that was willing to lend me the money.

You can refinance the outstanding amount and just keep on paying it off if your credit allows it and the loan giver is willing to give you the loan at that stage. You can borrow the money from someone else and settle your debt with the bank.

The problem with refinance is if you cannot come up with the money you have to return the vehicle to the bank and lose all your payments you made towards it. Further the bank will send an assessor to evaluate the vehicle and any faults found would be for your pocket.

Advice

Give a bigger deposit.

Extend the loan term.

Negotiate a better price with the salesman.

Do not take an air conditioner. This would have saved me R10 000 and I seldom use it because of petrol price and because it is a small car it reduces the power and make the car sluggish.

The colour of the car pushes the price up. Any metallic colour costs extra

Buy a cheaper car.

A bargain is an item or service that is sold or given at a better price than what is normally charged for it, provided you have the means to buy it or pay for it. The price should be considerable lower than normal.

Another way of looking at a bargain is something sold at a perceived reduced price. Where an item is a Known Value Item where everybody knows the price more or less like a bottle of Coke or a 2L milk jar, it is not a perceived reduced price.

A perceived reduced price is where an industry sells a certain product at a price from a minimum upwards and nobody really knows what it should cost and it is sold for a price way under the minimum, like in the case of installing network points for a computer network. Nobody really knows what it should cost.

It can also be that for one person the price of a house is ridiculously high and the next perceive it to be a bargain.

A lot of people think that they are buying this bargain item on an online auction because the price is lower than what they would pay in a store, but when the shipping cost is added they pay more or less the same price.

You can also think that you are buying a bargain if the item you are buying is not really what you think it is. Like these Minolta cameras with the little sun and cloud on them. Everybody knows that Minolta cameras are good quality and relatively expensive so the perception is that you are buying something of great value, but in actual fact you are buying an instamatic.

Be very careful when buying items off the street. The vendors give the impression that they are selling a high value item, but if you go to your regular flea market or Asian traders you will find the same item at a fraction of the price. The vendors give the impression that the item was stolen and trick you into believing it is of more value and you can get it at this wonderful price.

Other items sold with the impression of being of value at a reduced price are fake brand names or fake trademarks like sun glasses, sports ware and clothing.

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