How To Avoid The Debt Trap

Being in serious debt is one of the most unpleasant experiences of life. While having a debt may sometimes be unavoidable, for example when buying a house, most of us do not have the privilege of paying all in one lump sum but have to secure a loan from the bank.

One small debt may not hurt us financially, but if we start to accumulate more and more, we will be swallowed up by them eventually. Below are a list of what to do to avoid being caught in a debt trap.

1. Take Debts Seriously

Do not throw your bills to the bin in frustration thinking it will go away naturally if you ignore them. Your creditors will never forget you because their job or they salary depends on collecting debts from you. They could resort to legal action to get their money back if you continue to ignore their notices.

2. Do Not Overspend

Do not live a $50,000 lifestyle on a $25,000 salary as your debts will keep mounting every year. Living within your means may not be glamorous but it is definitely a smart thing to do and to have a peace of mind.

Make sure you spend less than you earn and save the difference. This is a simple surefire way to avoid serious debts.

3. Close Your Door To Door to Door Salespeople

If you are one of those who are easily influenced by smooth talking sales people, do not open your doors to them. You may end up buying expensive items that you do not need and regret later.

4. Be Careful With Credit Cards

Credit cards is a tool that can be for us or against us.

When we buy something with a credit card, you will be billed at the end of the month and will be given another month to settle the total bill. We should settle all outstanding balance by the end of the next month without incurring interest charges. This way, you are like getting a two month interest free loan from a bank.

If we pay the minimum sum every month, we could end up paying much more than what the item originally cost because of the interest charges.

5. Delayed gratification

Do not buy on loan and pay later. It may be fun to obtain something we cannot afford now but we will end up paying more than what it originally cost because of interest charges. Instead practise delayed gratification by saving your money at the bank and earning interest at the same time till you can afford it.  Do not think any attractive price offer is a once in a life time opportunity, there will always be a better one in the future unless our planet will be destroyed by an asteroid soon.

6. Fixed assets

Do not buy fixed assets like a house or a car yet if the monthly repayments are a burden to your finances. It is better to save while we rent or use public transport till your salary and savings are adequate enough to pay the monthly mortgage.

7. Acting as a guarantor

It is best not to be a guarantor to anyone because you are agreeing to settle the other party's debt if he defaults.  His bank will hold you totally responsible for the debt like as if you were him. The impending outcome will not be pleasant especially if it is a big loan.

8. Do not gamble

Yes, it is possible to get that one lucky strike or a winning streak but it will always come to an end. You

may win some money in the short term but gamblers will always lose in the long run. Don't think for a second you  can become rich or can make a living out of gambling. I have yet to see anyone making a comfortable living by being a full time gambler. It is the casino operators who become rich through making money from the majority of gamblers losing money to them.

How Students Are To Manage Their Time

This article is about how to manage your time throughout your student life to put yourself in the best possible chance to get good results. Whether you are a student or a working adult you have to prioritise the list of things to do as they are not all equally important or urgent. They are all either important (goal directed) or not important and urgent or not urgent. Important goals are the things that lead us to our goals and non important ones do not. The activities can be classified into four and their order of priorities is as follows:

A1. Important and urgent

A2. Important and not urgent

B1. Not important and urgent

B2. Not important and not urgent

A1. Important and urgent activities are the ones which are goal directed and require our immediate attention and if ignored we will be in trouble. Examples are starting a project assignment or homework to be handed in the next day, burning the midnight oil to prepare for tomorrow's test  or  exam. They are important because those activities involve working towards the outcome of our results and urgent because they must  be done as soon as possible and they are very stressful and often lead to average or poor results. People who procrastinate will find themselves in this category often and it should be reduced as much as possible. All A1 activities have to be done first and they are usually stressful  and thus need to be reduced by spending more time on A2.

A2. Important and not urgent activities are the ones where effective people spend most of their time. The work here are similar to important and urgent because they are goal directed but do not need our immediate attention. The due dates are usually weeks or  months in the future, thus if they are left till the last minute they become urgent and lead to stress and poor results again. Examples of important and non urgent activities are starting your projects and assignments straight away, prepare for your final exams early, do  frequent exercise and eat healthy food to ensure that your mind and body are in tip top condition during the examination period. Average or poor students do not have the discipline to start important work till the last moments. If they spend most of their time in this category, they will find that working on them are not stressful and can think clearly and give their best which will lead to good results. They will notice that work is not stressful and may even be fun.

B1. After you have finished A1 and A2 activities, then we can afford to go and do the not important and urgent activities (B1). They are not important because they are not goal directed but urgent because they need to be done straight away. Things like answering the ringing telephone, going to the movies with friends, watching the next episode of your favourite T.V. series, answering emails are urgent. Too much time spent  here will lead back to A1. Time spent here can unwind us and relaxes the mind.

B2. Students who spend most of their time in not important and not urgent activities are lazy and unmotivated. Examples of B2 activities are things like spending too much time on watching T.V., sleeping, surfing the internet, playing computer games, etc. They are usually fun activities and can be addictive. If you notice that you are spending much of your time on B2 activities, then you will get poor results. You should only spend your time here after A1, A2 and B1 activities are accomplished.

Successful students spend 60% of their time on A2, 20% on A1, 15% on B1 and 5% on B2 activities. Discipline is essential for success in anything and they have the discipline to start their goal directed activities early and as a result minimised the need for A1 activities. Average students spend most of their time oscillating between A1 and B1 activities.

An analogy would be our health. If we take care of our health in life by eating healthy food, exercise regularly, go for frequent medical  checkups (A2 activity) then this will reduce the chances of contracting a serious health problem later in life that need urgent, expensive medical treatments to save our lives (A1 activity).

How To Spot Scams

The examples of online scams in this article are by no means exhaustive. Old scams will evolutionise to new variations which can catch people off guard. People who are naive, desperate and greedy are prime candidates for being scammed. How do we know whether an opportunity presented to you is a scam or genuine and what are the common ones used by scammers out there.  One rule of thumb is, if a stranger offers to share money with you with very minimal effort from your part, it is almost certain that it is a scam. You can end up losing all your money if you participate in the scheme.

Below are some examples but they are only the tip of the iceberg.

One of the most common and notorious scams is from West Africa especially Nigeria also known as "Advance Fee Fraud Scheme". The fraudster who claimed to be a top official of their government or a bank will send the victim an email claiming to have a huge sum like 30 million U.S. dollars in trapped funds. The problem is, they cannot acquire the funds in their own names because of their position but they can transfer the millions to a foreigner (the victim) with a foreign account. In return for that simple favour, they will reward the foreigner 20% of the transferred sum which is $6 million and the remaining 80% wired back to them. Once the victim agrees to help, all sorts of things will go wrong with the transfer. The victim will be asked to pay a never ending sequence of fees, taxes and bribes to the fraudster until the victim wakes up and realises it's all a scam. Eventually the fraudsters disappear and never can be contacted again. Some victims have been reported to have lost up to $400,000.00 or more to the fraudsters. There can also be follow up scams where the first scammer sells the victim's email to another scammer who will contact the victim informing him the first scammer had been caught and the money lost would be returned to him if he sends more fees to release the stolen money.

Lottery fraud is another one where the victim is contacted by email or phone that he has won a big lottery that he did not enter. Next, for the money to be released, like the "Advance Fee Fraud Scheme", the victim has to send a sequence of fees and taxes to them. When the victim realises he has been scammed, the fraudsters are nowhere to be found. One simple way to avoid this kind of scam is, if you did not buy a lottery ticket, you have not won anything and yet many people still fall for it.

Worthless checks that take advantage of the banking system can be a very effective tool for scammers. The victim receives an email from an overseas company that they are looking for someone in the U.S. to represent their interests and collect money for them. The victim represents the company to receive their customers' checks. These 'customers' are their collaborators and the victim is required to deposit the checks into the victim's accounts. Three days later, he thought it was cleared which in fact it had not because the bank was just advancing the money to him. He then wired 90% of the deposited amount and keeps the remaining 10% for his effort. Four to five days later, the victim gets a call from the bank saying that the check has bounced and he now has to pay that 90% amount wired out back to the bank. Online lovers from another country also use a similar technique to scam their lover victims. They tell their 'lover' that they have problems cashing their checks in a foreign country where they are temporarily working. They would then need the victim's help to cash it in the victim's country by sending the checks to the victim, once cleared, send the whole amount to the scammer. The end result for the victim is the same as the one mentioned earlier in this paragraph.

If you receive an email from your friend asking for your urgent help in sending money to him because he is in a foreign country and has lost his wallet for example, be careful. The email could have been sent by a fraudster using your friend's email address. The fraudster got your email from a virus that went into your friend's email account and spreads that same email message to all his friends in the his address book. The best way to find out whether the email is genuine is to call his telephone number to find out whether he is really in that country.

Strangers do not share money with other strangers, period. So if you receive an email or a phone call from a someone  offering to share money with you and you do not know them, it's a scam. Avoid him like a plague.

How To Excel In Maths Exams

To get an A or distinction in Mathematics or any subject, it is not whether you have the intelligence or not, it is more to do with whether you have the commitment and the willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve that noble goal. This is very important, before you read on, please read the words of this paragraph again one more time.

For each chapter, there are a fixed number of question types that can be asked, these question types are the constituent topics of the chapter. An example, if the chapter is Coordinate Geometry, then the topics can be:-

A) Distance between two points

B) Division of a Line Segment

C) Area of Polygons

D) Equation of straight line

E) Parallel and Perpendicular lines

Within each topic, for example topic A, there are an infinite number of variations in which they can be asked. The good news is, each one can be solved using similar steps and it is only the numerical values that are different. The questions asked in topic A can be of variations A1, A2, A3, A4 etc, they are still topic A questions nevertheless. If the student can confidently answer A1, A2, A3, then A4 to A100 should not be a problem.

One common blunder students make is, they spend a long time practicing a long list of questions on topics A and B only thinking they have thoroughly revised the whole chapter since they have done so many questions from the chapter and missed out on topics C, D and E, thus oblivion to the fact that their revision on that chapter was not complete.

To have thoroughly revised this chapter, one needs to have done at least four questions from each topic of each chapter. If this is done, then the student has done all different types and variations that can be asked of him in the test or exam.

At the beginning of the semester, get a collection of the previous six to seven sets of past year questions and about one third through the course, attempt all those that had been taught in class and the rest of them without exception as the examination date nears and ensure that your answers are correct.

If you are stuck on any of them, enlist the help of your teacher or your friend who knows how to answer it. This will give you a feel of what is expected of you in the exam.

For almost any Maths exam, there will always be topics that are asked more frequently than others and some topics will virtually come out every year.  Browse through each section of each paper and note down those topics and then make sure to practice more of them than the others. If questions on

topic E is asked often, then do more of the questions from topic E.

Students must not lose confidence in themselves if they do not get the correct answers first time round. This is very normal and with enough practice, I can assure you that you will gradually improve. There is no secret formula to excel in Mathematics, it is just a matter of practice and more practice of all the different types of questions.

It is also a good idea to redo the questions that had been correctly answered before especially those which you couldn't do them at the first attempt or had been done many months ago.

Answering Mathematics questions needs a lot of focus and concentration, it is important to sleep one or two hours earlier the night before the exam in order to avoid costly human error due to lapses of concentration because of lack of sleep. Burning the midnight oil before any exam is definitely not advisable.

Tips On Excellent Customer Service

1. Right kind of business

Make sure you enter a business that best suits your talent and interests. That way you will not only put in more effort, but will always look for improvements because you will enjoy what you are doing and ultimately this will lead to excellent customer service which will attract more customers. Put yourself in the position of your customer, would you want to do business with someone who hates or loves what's he's doing?

2. Customers first

Do not be too overly money minded. Customers come to you because they have a problem that they need to be solved. Always place their needs first and help them with whatever problem they need solved by either selling a product or provide a required service. Customers always want to know what you can do for them not what they can do for you. Always think in terms of how you can help them save money and/or how you can help them make more money.

3. Small and big account customers

Treat them with equal importance because the small account customers could well become big account customers one day. Do not place most of your time and attention on the big customers because they could be persuaded to take their business elsewhere anytime.

4. Stay up to date

One of the fastest ways to business failure is selling or providing obsolete products or services. Keep up to date with the latest trends and customer wants and needs. In this new millenium, the world is always in a constant change and business is never static. Thus make sure that all products and services provided are keeping up with the latest trends and seasonal demands.

5. Integrity

Integrity means being honest with people and adhering to high moral standards. This way your customers will trust you because they know you are trustworthy and will not let them down. In today's world where there is no shortage of dishonest and unethical people, if you act with integrity then the competition for customers will be lesser. Your customers will stick with you if they know you are trustworthy.

6. Shoddy work

Do not take loyal customers for granted by providing shoddy service or sell poor quality products and falsely assume they will remain loyal because "Once burned, twice shy" will be the result. Your customers are different from your friends and will abandon you without second thoughts if they feel that they can get better deal from elsewhere.

7. Extra mile

In today's competitive world where almost every type of business has competitors, it is important to give your customers more for his money than your competitors such that it is a disappointment to them if they opt for your competitors and will return to you. If you do more than what they paid for, they will be more than happy to recommend their friends to you and unknowingly promoting your business for free. Referral from existing customers is one of the main ways of getting new customers.

Are You Too Old To Succeed?

Do you consider yourself too old to succeed?

If you are over 45 and think that you have past your prime in terms of your career, then I have good news for you. A survey of four hundred exceptionally successful people in all lines of work were conducted. It was found that 66% of their greatest achievements were accomplished after their 60th decade.

Between the ages of 50 to 60 years, 25% of the achievements were found. Between 60 and 70, 35% of those achievements were accomplished here. Between 70 and 80, 23% and beyond 80, 8%. So if you are under 60 and think your best days are over, think again.

I am sure we have all heard of McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) fast food restaurants. Ray Kroc founded the McDonald franchise at the age of 52, he was a paper cup salesman before that. Colonel Sanders who founded KFC was broke at 66 and later turned around and became a millionaire at age 73. Coco Chanel started her fashion company at age 85. Retired astronaut and Congressman John Glenn re-entered the U.S. space programme and at age 77 entered space again. Ronald Reagan became president of the U.S. at age 70.

The first 10 years of our lives, we were totally dependent on our parents. From 10 to 20, we were all at school acquiring knowledge and being naughty.

From 20 to 30, we were out working, learning multiple job, interpersonal skills and about life in general. From 30 to 40, we began to have wisdom, more experience and financially more steady than our earlier years. From 40 onwards, with all of life's wisdom, experience and some capital at our disposal,the prime of one's career is just beginning. This decade of our lives is the decade where we venture out to achieve our life's career goals and if we are not successful yet it is because we are still in a trial and error stage. I was moved to tears when I first realised this because I too thought I was too old to succeed.

We need to change our values on what is old. Most of us thought we are old when we have past a certain age, when our hair start greying or thinning, more money spent on anti wrinkle cream, youth features gone, harder to blow out all your birthday candles in one breadth etc.

If you want to be Miss World or a sports star then this is true. You are only old if you have no more dreams, hopes, ambitions and most of your time is occupied with reliving the past, but if you have exciting goals to achieve one after another that keep you in an enthusiastic mood most of the time, then you are not old regardless of your biological age.

We have all heard of and maybe even met people who became millionaires below age of 30, we have to accept that they are the exception rather than the norm. I hope my article has encouraged you to fight on to live your life to the fullest and make things happen and expect the best years of your career are yet to come.

About Me and my Internet viewpoints

Hello there. I am new to blogging. I was born and brought up at a time where computers were seldom used in everyday life.

I first used the internet back in 1997 when I was 32 years old. Compare to those born in post 1990, 32 years old is considered a late age to use the internet for the first time. I do not have much computer technical background and most of my early internet experiences involved surfing the net and receiving and sending emails.

One can derive many positive benefits from using the internet. These include keeping up to date with the latest news, financial markets, learning new skills like how to play the guitar and earn an income online from home etc.

Having said that, negative experiences are possible with the internet. Examples include getting scammed by fraudsters if we're not careful, wasting too much time viewing unproductive but interesting sites etc.