Making sure you are covered from that unexpected home repair that could happen at any time is extremely important if you are a home owner or landlord. I hear more and more people protecting themselves with a home protection plan these days.

Currently Melinda and I are renters but I do know that our landlord has a home protection plan through American Home Shield. I know this because in the last year and a half our landlord has had to use it twice once for the AC and once for the garbage disposal. It seems pretty easy to do, all my landlord had to do was call American Home Shield’s toll free number or request service online. Once the request was placed one of their licensed contractors contacted me to setup an appointment and they came out to determine what the problem was and if it was covered under the current plan that my landlord carries. Once that was determined the contractor fixed our problem and we were back in business.

For each service request, you will pay a Trade Service Call Fee to each contractor of a different trade (plumber, electrician, etc.) who visits your home to diagnose a problem or perform service. This fee typically will range from $60 to $125 dollars. There is the possibility of additional costs being associated with the repair or replacement of covered items. Details will be included in your contract.

In my opinion a home protection plan is like a warranty you purchase when you buy a new car or electronic device. It is something you are hoping to never need to use but are extremely happy you have it when you actually do need to use it.

History of the Small Business Administration (SBA)

Today’s technology is crazy and I can remember the days of when you wanted to meet someone you needed to do it face to face but web conferencing has changed that thinking all together.

We can now have online meetings and host online events saving time and money. Today’s world is so fast paced that we are all about saving time and getting things done as quickly as we can but in my opinion nothing beats a good old fashion face to face meeting. People tend to be more comfortable in person and it is easier to relate to people in person where online seems so impersonal and cold. I do understand the need for online conferencing and I am not against it because I do understand that people may not be able to meet face to face.

Web conferencing vehicles like Skype have made keeping families connected easy as could be. It is handy for parents who travel, parents that may be overseas in the military or grandparents who just want to keep up with their grandkids developments.

Like I mentioned I understand the need for online meetings and conferences but in my opinion nothing can ever replaces that in person one on one meeting.

Do you prefer online meeting or in person meetings?

I can remember when I was a kid going with my parents while they got new glasses for themselves and what a long boring process it was. Thankfully to this point in my life I haven’t needed glasses but my day may come. To me the process of getting new glasses seems like such a pain and something I am not looking forward to.

What I like now is you no longer need to drag yourself to the store anymore to buy glasses but can now go online to places like glasses.com. I am sure most people tend to go to a physical store to get a feel for what sort of frames they like then go online to save money.

Glasses.com has a nice selection of glasses and sunglasses for men and women. Even though I don’t wear glasses I did browse the men’s glasses to see what I would get if I did wear glasses and I saw a decent amount of frames that I could see myself in. What I like about Glasses.com is their satisfaction guarantee. If you don’t love your glasses send them back and Glasses.com pays the shipping. That is an awesome guarantee considering glasses aren’t that cheap.

Like 1-800 CONTACTS, Glasses.com is committed to the highest standard of customer service. We know what we really sell is service and that, in this case, glasses are just the product we deliver.

If you are in the market for a pair of prescription glasses or sunglasses stop by glasses.com. They offer free shipping both ways, a virtual try on to see how you look and then allows you to compare and a satisfaction guarantee that they stand behind. Where else can you get service like this?

Below is the Science Behind The Hot Flash:

Do Americans like buying cars? Not sure about you but I am not a fan of new car shopping at all. You know going in that it will be a day process and you will be going back and fourth with the sales person on price and stuff like that. I remember when we bought our last car it was a two day process and I actually needed to go back the next day to pick up the car. Sad thing is it has become a part of life and driving.

It seems that a lot of people these days share a lot of personal information about themselves on the web and it is extremely important to safeguard as much as you can if not everything.

When you use your computer a lot of websites will use what is called flash cookies to track where you have been on the web. Flash cookies are a new way of tracing your movement and storing a lot more information about you than with normal cookies. One major disadvantage of flash cookies is that you can’t locate them in your browser but you are able to view them with Adobe. The crazy thing is in most cases you can’t tell what website are even using flash cookies to track your movements.

Security in this day and age is key in every aspect of our lives. Say you have a mutual fund account or investment account and you are looking to make a large withdrawal from or you want to totally close the account you need what is called a signature validation program stamp. Signature Validation Program Stamps are used across the investment industry to protect shareholder accounts from unauthorized maintenance or non-financial requests. An officer of a financial institution reviews the proper legal documents pertaining to your request, witnesses your signature, and verifies that your signature is genuine by stamping the form.

More and more people are trying to keep their personal information safe and companies are trying to do the same. Companies are making more and more employees use digital signatures when sending confidential information via the web due to its secure nature. A digital signature is a “stamp” that is placed on data which is unique to the person sending the data, and is very difficult to forge. In addition, the signature assures that any changes made to the data that has been signed can not go undetected. Using a digital signature ensure your document makes it to the proper person and ensures that it was not altered or forged along the way.

When you think about everything mentioned about using the internet can be kind of scary and a little uneasy but if you take just a few precautions you will be pretty successful in keeping your personal information and data safe.

If you read any financial website or newspaper they are constantly mentioning the real estate market and how it is still down in the dumps while home foreclosures are up.

I can remember five to six years ago when the housing market was booming and everyone and their mother were buying new homes.  Some were for permanent residence and some were for vacation but it didn’t matter if people were able to afford them or not because lenders were offering interest only mortgages which allowed almost anyone to buy a million dollar home with no money down and a low monthly payment.  Funny thing is these people buying million dollar homes using an interest only loan knew they couldn’t afford it under a normal 30 year fixed mortgage but that didn’t stop people because they got sucked in with a low monthly payment.  What these people didn’t think about was what would happen in five or ten years once their interest only loan resets and then they need to get a new fixed rate mortgage.  In most cases home owners were forced to default on their mortgage and the housing market took a dump.  People with interest only mortgages were never able to build any equity in their homes causing them to be upside down meaning they owed more then the house was worth. 

What is sad here is most lenders knew what they were doing was wrong but they continued to lend to people who couldn’t afford it because they were making money for themselves and their company.  Now for the last couple of years our housing market has been in the toilet big time now making it almost impossible for people to get a tradition 30 year fixed mortgage.  To this day the housing market as well as the people who got mixed up in this fad are now trying to recover and get back onto their feet.  I have a few friends that got mixed up in this and are still trying to get out of the bad situation that this caused.

Hopefully people learned from this situation and this will never happen again.

Between Melinda and I Melinda is the one who is the expert in using image editing software and photo editor. I always turn to her when I have a question about cropping photos for the blog or when I need to know what size YouTube video will fit on the blog.

In regards to graphic design neither Melinda nor I have any skills what so ever which stinks because I think Melinda wants to make some changed to our blog. Yes, we can pay someone to redo our blog which is fine but I really wish we were able to do it our self. I would love to know how to create a custom header and have the design know how to make our blog look really awesome. Not that is doesn’t look awesome now but for some reason when you do something yourself it just looks that much better. That is what I get for being a finance major instead of graphic designer, LOL.

So not sure if we will actually make any changes but there are talks of changing the look of our blog. Not sure I want to redo our header image but I would definitely like to redo the header and make it a little smaller and sleeker looking.

Guess we will wait to see if Melinda or I get a bug up our butt to make any changes.