Payday Loan Lowdown

–By Sushma Pradhan

Banks provide you loans for all occasions. The only criterion here is the eligibility.
There is no doubt that loans help one sail through turbulent times, but beyond the safety and security, if you make one mistake it will not take much time to hurl you down the ridge.

Here are few loans that we mostly apply for and at times may be unaware of minute matters that matter a lot later.

1. Student Loan: This loan helps the student to bear the burden of professional education expenses.

Advantages
• The monthly payments can be lowered and this is the indication that you can you can divert the money to the other field where you feel that you need to pay attention to.

• You only need to make the payment once a month for one company.

Disadvantages
• Though you pay lower interest rate, the interest savings are eaten up and the chances of discharge benefits may be lost

2. Unsecured Personal Loan: This is the kind of loan where you mostly use it for personal necessities or in the areas of your choice.

Advantages
• It offers great flexibility to the consumers
• Both the property owners and renter are eligible for the loan as it is not secured  against property
• It can get arranged faster than a secured loan

Disadvantages
• Though it is not secured, however, it does not mean that there is no risk
• In case of a default on repayments of your credit, the companies have all the right to sue you to recover the money.
• The worst condition may be possession with respect to the loan amount

3. Fixed rate Mortgages: It is a mortgage where the interest rate do not change during the entire loan term.

Advantages
• The payment need to made monthly and is spread throughout a period of time
• The interest rate do not alter
• In case the rates go up there is protection
• When the rates go down one can refinance

Disadvantages
• The rate of interest is high
• In case the interest rate improves, the rate does not change
• The payment of mortgage is high

4. Balloon Loans: These loans are either partially amortized or not amortized. In most cases, balloon loans have payment lower than that of an amortized loan because of interest only payment.

Advantages
• An attractive initial low monthly payment
• Many balloons have conversion options, which means that one can convert the balloon loan into a new loan

Disadvantages
• A balloon loan has more risk than Adjustable rate mortgages.
• You risk foreclosure, if you are unable to make the balloon payment as the term ends or if you cannot refinance the loan at high interest rate.

5. Standard variable home loans: It is one of the popular mortgages. The interest may vary throughout the loan term in this type of loan.

Advantages
• The repayments may drop if there a drop in the interest rates
• Without penalty one can make extra or additional payments, which allows the payment of home loan faster
• You have the room for taken back the additional repayments
• It has various features and offers flexibility

Disadvantages
• It draws high interest rate than the basic home loan
• When interest rates rise, the chances of repayment also becomes high as the borrower is supposed to make large repayments

6. Fixed rate loans: In this type of loan the borrower’s repayments and interest rate are fixed for a said period, this could usually be one to ten years.

Advantages
• There is a assurance of repayment amount
• There is no change in the repayment amount even if there is a rise of interest rate
• There is a room for future budgeting

Disadvantages
• There is reduced flexibility
• In case the interest rates falls there is no change in the repayments
• There is a limited additional repayment and hence when limits are exceeded there are chances of break costs or fees

7. Low documentation and no documentation loans: These are products for borrowers where they do not have to be necessarily self-employed or possess tax returns

Advantages
• The borrower needs only to fill a simple income declaration form
• Here there is no requirement of tax returns

Disadvantages
• Associates  itself with high interest rate

8. Graduate loans: These are also a form of unsecured personal loans, that lets fresh graduates’ involve in debt consolidation.

Advantages
• It allows debt consolidation at lower interest rate
• It is useful incase you have other debt e.g. credit cards

Disadvantages
• There are possibilities of lenders to encourage you include your student loan and overdrafts
• Students loans have lower interest rate therefore including it will be a wrong step, on the other hand overdrafts are interest free while you are on a student loan, but with graduate loans overdrafts start incurring interest

9. Payday loans: it is a short-term loan, which covers the urgent need of the borrower.

Advantages
• They are cheaper when compared to the charges levied on a bounced check or an overdraft charges.
• They are mostly seen as an short-term solution to the unforeseen financial constraints

Disadvantages
• The interest rates are too high from somewhere between 400% to 1,000%
• The interest makes it too expensive affair for a borrower

10. Wedding Loans: They are expensive yet people go for them. They are categorized as unsecured personal loan. Nevertheless, one can also obtain them as secured personal loan.

Advantages
• The most important advantage is one does not have to put something valuable at risk
• The loan process is not a lengthy affair, and therefore is a speedy transaction

Disadvantages
• They mostly do not carry high rate of interest
• There are many restriction on the money and the mode of spending
• There are lots of hidden possibilities regarding the rate and the terms, therefore the advertised rates may not be the actual rates

–By Sushma Pradhan

Ants are good citizens, they place group interests first. - Clarence Day

Ants build hills that last for years and prosper for generations too. How do we build our house instead? Like the Grasshoppers, in fact most of us believe in living a life of a grasshopper. I am sure you must have heard the story of the ant and the grasshopper.

In case no then I will let you know in a nutshell. The ant slogs day after day in the scorching heat to prepare for the upcoming winters, on the other hand the grasshopper, hops, and jumps, enjoys, and thinks that the ant is a fool.

Now when the winter is here, the ants are happy and gay, whereas the grasshopper is sad and stiff in the deathbed, due to severe cold. We humans at times, tend to behave as the grasshoppers and forget that the future may be bleak and gloomy. We tend to care for the future and live only for the present.

We tend to believe that ‘I am the one, I rule the world.’ I would say incorrect, how very incorrect. Have you looked at the ants minutely? They are tiny but yes! Definitely not dumb. There are ample of lessons to be learnt from this tiny creature.

1. United we stand: The first lesson that we definitely need to learn from the world of ant is the unity. The collective behavior that is so much a part of the ant world is a successful image of a self-organization in a large-scale. This trait of the ants help them a great deal in finding food and help them supply with the food that can suffice their entire colony, throughout the trying times.

2. Adaptation to the environment: The colonies of ants are very quick in adapting themselves to their environment. In a condition where one or more ants fail to carry out their duties, there is no mismanagement of work. The most important point however here remains the least intrusion of the top-down control.

3. Logistics: The natural application of the ant world is the food-furnishing algorithm. A small example with a vast difference by adapting the ant logistics was tremendously felt by the Southwest Airlines. This airline used the ant intelligence to restructure their cargo operations. On following the ant structure, the company saved around ten million dollars a year.  Their smart moves made them cut down on freight transfer rates and slash the workload for people carrying cargo. The result was, the airline still made money even if the plane was partially loaded.

4. Traffic Rules: The ants are known to adhere to strict traffic laws. However, in the ant world, there are no traffic violations, and there are no issues of tickets either.

Because, number one, such circumstances does not arise here at all and number two, the ants do not believe in violation. A study carried out by the Princeton University of New Jersey, researchers have revealed that the ants create lanes, which efficiently manage and flows the swarm of ants quickly.

The ant use pheromones to create their path and follow a rule that is simple and socially acceptable in their world. Theirs is three-lane traffic, the two outside lane for the outgoing ants and the middle one for the returning ones.

It is time that we humans learnt a lesson or two on traffic rules from the ants. We all know rules are to be followed but once when we are stuck in the traffic jam then, then it is, Traffic Rules! Huh!

5. Its Ant and not Aint: That is right there is no place for ‘I’ in the ant world. Be it for traffic or any other job, genetically they have inherited the behavior of moving continuously. For the ants, it is very important to do their job and mostly importantly do it well too. The colony’s benefit is their target and focus and perhaps this is the most important trait in them that drives them to do their work with utmost sincerity. Nevertheless, with us, we have to accept that we do tend to be selfish at times.

6. A never-ending quest: If one observes ants minutely, one will find that they overcome various obstacles to reach for their food and bring it back to the colony. Similarly, noticing these finer details of the ant to fight every hardship through their undying effort, many software companies have developed highly sensitive software that not just copes with the varied conditions but is also fast, automatic than the traditional ones.

If ants are such busy workers, how come they find time to go to all the picnics? - Marie Dressler

7. A highly effective networking: It is so right, they sniff, and they invade and they are all over, crawling and feasting over the food, which they merrily drag away from right under our nose. Apart from the menace, have you ever thought how is it they sniff the food so soon? Ants efficiently use the method of tracking their food back through the help of pheromone, a chemical that attracts other ants. The ant that returns first to the nest informs the other ants about the food and thereby retreats to the spot by the help of the pheromone marked path.  In fact, this is a strong computing system.

8. Telecommunications: Eric Bonabeau, a leader who has excelled in the field of swarm intelligence believes in applying the ant concept to the human world of problems such as telecommunications routing.
Bonabeau says that routing is essential because mostly the large-scale telecommunication networks are not fully connected for cost effectiveness, therefore the messages have to be guided to make them reach their destination. Instead, he started using virtual ants and made them leave virtual pheromone at the nodes of the network to optimize the routes used by the message. This technique in fact created wonders to the telecommunications.

9. Self-organization: Human beings need to learn this quality and earn from it too. We tend to have a centralized mindset. If you check out the way ant build highways, bridges, nests, chains and furthermore even complex activities like the defense mechanism, foraging, cleaning and nest care, it is completely different and amazing, this is so because they are self-organized and carry out their work through interactions, both direct and indirect.

10. Constructively Strong: Now let us look at their constructive excellence, ants are known to build anthills that last generation after generation, whereas we humans build a home that hardly last a generation.

The ants may be tiny but their feats are amazing. If you destroy their nest and force them migrate to a new place, the ants will do so efficiently. However, the key point here is, in case you repeat your act of destroying the nest again, you will find that this time they are not only efficient but also quicker than before in building one.

–By Sushma Pradhan

The art of tipping began centuries ago when the medium of communication was through coachman. The coachman was given some cash as a bribe to ensure promptness of the communication. This is how the art of tipping began.

With time, the art of tipping has taken a new form in this service-oriented society. We have to pay gratuities in places that grow more in number with every passing day. In most of Europe, the service industryis seen as a noble service, however, things in the United States is quite different, this profession does get the kind of respect it should. To understand tipping it is very necessary to understand the perspective of tipping. This profession mostly involves immigrants, students, single parents looking for flexible hours and many other who are struggling in their fields.

One most important point what most people fail to understand is that the servers are not the sole owners of the tip you provide. The percentage is more of 50-60. The popular or nicer the restaurant, the more is the division of the tips and less percentage to the server.

Here the point is, what and where is tipping appropriate. To simplify the art, here are the list of service providers that we usually come across and may need tipping.

Hotel Housekeeping: If you are staying in at a cheap hotel accommodation, the tip could be $1 per day.

Message: It was a wonderful effort to make everything so smooth and comfortable.

On the wackier side, have a heart to write, “If you think you deserve more than this, this is not the place for you”.

Taxi Drivers: 15percent is nearly good but you can reduce 5percent if the drive is nearly dangerous and hand over 10percent.

Extra: Pay $3 to $5 as extra, if the cab drivers are generous enough to help with your luggage, and help you to rush to your destination safely in situations where you were getting late.

Message: It was a pleasant drive around (ignoring the times we nearly held our liver in the mouth)

On the other side, it could be “Had it not been rude, I would have deducted the extra from your pay, to clean all the puke over me”.

Shuttle Driver or the Hotel Porter: The tip may not be extended to a buck per bag.

Extra: For your special deliveries and request, $2 to $3 is ideal. Keep in mind that tipping means avoiding carrying trouble for yourself later. Gosh! Imagine you reach home and realize that your bags carrying important things are gone, instead you have carried a bag that is nothing but trouble because it was identical to yours.

Car Wash Attendant: For a regular car wash, the attendant should be getting $3, but if it  is a service, where you feel privileged, your paying $5 is justifiable. Your tip will ensure you a further better service in the future. Do not worry your tipping will never go vain.

Valet Parking: The share of tip that a valet parking deserves is $3, if it is a place you visit once in a blue moon. On the other hand, if it is a place of regular visit, $5 is ideal. Most importantly, if your car is returned as good as you sent and furthermore if it was not taken for a joy ride during your momentary absence, then your tip is worth it.

Extra: You may tip an extra $15 if the car is parked right at the front and center on your way back.

Restaurant Servers: The tip of 15 to 20 percent, is good enough, if the service was wonderful and the grub was hot, while delivering at your table.

Extra: You may add 5 percent extra as bonus if the restaurant servers did a good job. Like served you the delicacy the way you had expected it to be, and checked if everything was fine throughout the meal, checked regularly with your drinks. These are the points you may ponder on while deciding the tip for the restuarant servers.

In case the Restaurant is well established and a busy one, do call ahead and let them know that you will be there. One more thing, offer some tip the moment you arrive, and rest be assured to get the table that offers the best view.

Message: There is no reason why not to come back here repeatedly, the food, the ambience, and the service is class in itself. Keep it up.

On the wackier side: God grant me mercy, the continental dish tasted 100% oriental, are you sure, your senses are right! Or perhaps my taste buds have goofed up.

Hair Stylist: The ideal tip for the hairstylist should be around 15 to 20 percent of the bill and yes excluding the taxes.

Extra: Extra attention from your hairstylist means wonders to your looks. Whether you have just gone for a regular haircut or to come out with a polished finish depends on the generosity of your hairstylist.

So next time when you walk in, they will willingly spend some extra time to set things perfect for you.

The Coat Checker: I would suggest one should not be paying anything to the coat checker. There are times when the coats are misplaced and mismatched.

Extra: If you feel that job is well done and there is other help offered $1 to $3 is perfect.

Washroom Attendant: Have some pity, that poor guy is surrounded by shit all day long, so hand over $1 to $2 to him.

Extra: None if you smell poop, when you have actually gone for a pee. The best option here, run out as quickly as you can.

Bartender: You should be tipping your bartender around 15 to 20 percent per drink.

Extra: If you have to wait a long, twenty to twenty-five minutes in a crowded bar that’s bad, so a $5 is fine. Nevertheless, if you need personal attention of the bartender for the rest of the night generously give away $20 per drink and enjoy your drink along with the service.

Food Delivery Person: Stick to the standard form of tipping. 10 to 15 percent, if the promise of delivering you on the stipulated time is maintained.

Extra: Tip an extra 5 percent if the food was delivered when you were on the verge of acting like an early man. Remember this 5 percent will take you long. You can say good-bye to waiting long hours in future.

To give a final addition, it is essential to remember that you always fold the cash in thirds or half and pass it on the person, with your palms facing downwards. It is highly rude attitude to pass the cash up in the air or with your hands in the air. Be grateful they are doing their jobs, had it not been they, who would have done that job? Why don’t you try? Self-service? Unless you feel the little tip would shake the monthly budget, then forget it , just walk away. However, the choice is yours