Showing posts with label home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Tips To Help You Save During The Fall Months

Fall is an especially good time to think about savings.  With the traditional back-to-school in September, children and adults alike can “turn over a new leaf” to start fresh.  The household budget is a great place to start, suggests Nationwide Biweekly Administration.

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The air conditioner can finally be turned off in the fall; it’s also a great time to prepare the house for the cold months ahead.  Be sure to change air filters regularly to help your unit run more efficiently and consider closing vents in unused rooms.  NBA says that fall is a great time to check out insulation deficiencies and to fix drafty windows and doors.  Weatherize your house by caulking and weather-stripping doors and windows.  Setting your thermostat to a maximum of 68 degrees and even lower at night will save energy, and therefore energy costs.  For every degree you lower the thermostat, you will save about 2% in energy costs.  And don’t forget to have an annual service check performed on your heater.  Other great energy and cost saving tips include closing your chimney flue when it is not in use, turning down your water heater to 120 degrees and installing low-flow faucets on showerheads and toilets.

Since food is often one of a household’s biggest expenditures, there is great opportunity to save money.  Nationwide Biweekly Administration suggests organizing meals by the week or even by the month.  On Sunday afternoons, make your meal list for the week.  Start with dinners and don’t forget to think about using leftovers as lunch.  Obviously the less often you shop, the less opportunity you have to spend.  Therefore, stock up when key staples are on sale and buy in bulk.  Meal planning is the single-most effective thing you can do to reduce your food budget.  Cook food in large batches (chili, for example, is often a family favorite and can be made in bulk and then frozen).  Strike eating out from your list this fall and your savings could total in the hundreds.   Nationwide Biweekly Administration says that certain items, such as apples, pears and squash are in-season in the fall and are often on-sale. 

Nationwide Biweekly Administration also recommends that consumers consider upgrading older appliances in the fall.  While there is an initial expenditure, Energy Star-rated appliances are energy efficient and will save you money in utility costs for many years.

Another great way to save big in the fall is to consider switching your cell phone service.  Nationwide Biweekly Administration points out that you may even want to drop your land-line, an increasingly popular move as consumers discover that only one phone line is generally sufficient.  Examine your cell phone usage and make sure your plan is the right one for you.  Keep in mind that if you are a new customer, prices for you are often rock bottom.  Some companies even pay you to switch!  Read the fine print, examine the offer carefully and then switch if the savings are there.

Friday, August 5, 2011

5 Summer Savings Tips

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Nationwide Biweekly Administration Savings Tips.

Saving money is possible year round by being conscious of your energy usage and paying attention to the thermostat. In summer, as temperatures soar and air conditioners work overtime, energy bills spiral out of control and break many people’s budgets.  Here are a few tips by Nationwide Biweekly Administration for saving money during the warmer months

·         Turn off the dryer. Take your freshly laundered clothes and let the sun and summer breeze do the drying for you.   The resulting difference in your power bill will be significant.

·         Cook outside.  Especially in the summer, using the oven creates a lot of excess heat that has nowhere to go except your house, taxing your air conditioning and driving the bills higher and higher to maintain a comfortable temperature.  Fire up the barbeque grill for delicious summer meals that won’t heat up the house’s interior.

·         Turn off the air conditioning.   Okay, this is not realistic if you live in Florida, Southern Nevada, Arizona and a handful of other all hot all the time locations.  In other areas though, where the weather does fluctuate, you can save money by simply paying attention to the weather. In coastal California for instance, you rarely need air conditioning at night as the marine layer cools off the air considerably. Turn off the air conditioning before heading to bed, open some windows, turn on the ceiling fans and enjoy a lower power bill.

·         Check and/or replace your air conditioning filters.  A dirty filter can increase your cooling costs unnecessarily.  Dirty air filters restrict airflow and the efficiency of the air conditioner causing more run time and higher cooling bills.  When you factor in how cheap filters are and how expensive air conditioning bills are, you’re not likely to forget to check your filters again!

·         Plan ahead  At the end of summer you’ll notice season ending sales. If you give some thought to next year’s landscaping and garden projects you can pick up the supplies at up to half off.

By following these five easy tips you can reduce your power bills and the strain on your air conditioner greatly this summer.

 Posted By Nationwide Biweekly Administration

 

Monday, June 13, 2011

Lets Talk About The Word Mortgage - Nationwide Biweekly Administration

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Nationwide Biweekly Administration - Mortgage, a nasty word that all home owners hate to say and hear. An astronomically large loan from a bank that a person will spend thirty years of their life repaying. Sounds terrible right? However there are ways around having a completely negative look at mortgages and actually cheating the system. Little tricks from companies like Nationwide that offer bi-weekly payments is a huge advantage. Now bi-weekly payments are beneficial as it is, but they actually are used best and most effective when it comes to mortgages.

            So why are these bi weekly payments so beneficial to paying off your mortgage?The reason being is since a mortgage is a loan over a long period of time, there are tons of payments due. If you make payments every fourteen days instead of every thirty-one then your making thirteen more payments a year! Each extra payment you are making trims a little extra interest off because interest is a cumulative factor. This makes your total loan amount go down! After awhile all these extra payments and little bit of interest trims really start to add up! During a thirty year mortgage if a person continually makes bi-weekly payments instead of monthly they can pay off their mortgage a whole six to eight years faster! Thats almost like cutting off 1/3 of your loan! Since it is paid off in less time, there is less money paid in interest. This means it cuts down the total amount of money you pay, interest and principal. Not only is this saving you an astronomical amount of money but bi-weekly payments coincide with most peoples pay check schedules. This makes it possible to have a continual flow of money to paying off your mortgage. This way you are less likely to fall behind in your mortgage and the best part is even if you do miss a payment you can make it up since your using bi-weekly payments. The reason is because paying every fourteen days instead of thirty-one it cuts your bill size in half. That way if you miss one payment, the penalty isn't as harsh and hopefully by the time the next payment is a due, there will have been ample time for the person to recover. Now I know this seems like a small thing but it really isn't. Falling behind in mortgages is a huge problem and even recently caused the largest economic downturn we’ve seen in decades!

            As you can see when it comes to paying off a mortgage, using bi-weekly payments is definitely the strategy to use! In a mortgage most of the monthly payments go to interest and thats where the costs really start to build up! With bi-weekly payments this eliminates a lot of those costs and cuts down the amount of time it takes you to pay back the loan. With all of these benefits, its pretty simple to see why bi weekly payments is the best strategy to use!

Nationwide Biweekly Administration

Monday, February 14, 2011

Buying Vs Renting: Which Is Better? - Nationwide Biweekly Administration

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Posted By Nationwide Biweekly Administration

We might as well just come right out and say it: Buying is almost always better than renting, for a number of reasons, which will be outlined below. However, only you can take a good, long honest look at your situation and know if you are in a position to make the leap from renter to home owner.  Owning a home obviously means gaining equity and having an investment. But it also carries with it a number of expenses that first time homeowners are not always aware of.  Insurance, no landlord to call when the dishwasher floods the kitchen and property taxes are but a few of the things homeowners deal with that renters don’t.

That said, you are losing money every year by renting your apartment or home instead of buying. It’s a simple mathematical fact that the equity gained in home ownership trumps the savings on handymen, appliance repairmen and property tax.  There is only one exception to this rule. If you are one of those lucky people who have a rent controlled apartment in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco or Los Angeles and your actual rent is a fraction of market value, don’t move. Ever.  We’ve all heard tales of the friend whose next door neighbor has lived in their apartment since 1967 and pays only $300 in rent each month while the friend pays $1500 a month for the apartment next door with the same floor plan.  As the mortgage administrator that Nationwide Biweekly is, this is the Holy Grail of living arrangements for everyone, even us.

Assuming that you are not in your 60s or older and living in one of these rent stabilized gems, buying is the way to build equity and save money in the long run. Plus, there is a pride that comes from owning your own home.  There are plenty of online calculators where you can compare the costs of buying versus the costs of renting, but we’ll break it down for you: in the long run, buying is a better deal. Each month you make your mortgage payment and it actually goes towards owning something.  Rent just goes to your landlord and you gain neither equity or preferential treatment from renting.

Perhaps the leap from a modest rent payment to a higher mortgage is off putting to you.  It shouldn’t be, there are many mortgage plans and administrators, like Nationwide Biweekly Administration, who can make budgeting for your mortgage payment easier while at the same time allowing you to gain equity in your home faster.   Here’s an example of how biweekly mortgage payments can save you tons of money in interest over the life of your loan. If your mortgage payment is $1,000 you will spend $12,000 over the course of one year on your mortgage. If you made biweekly payments through Nationwide Biweekly Administration, you would make a $500 payment every two weeks.  Divide 52 weeks per year into 26 biweekly payments and you will have made $13,000 in payments at the end of the year using the biweekly mortgage payment plan.

Now take that same $1000 per month and apply it to rent. What do you get at the end of a year? Nothing.  Take it from the experts at Nationwide Biweekly Administration – buying a home is always better than renting. (The Holy Grail of rent controlled apartments from the late 1960s notwithstanding.) Give us a call today and we’ll tell you how we can make owning your own home a much easier financial proposition.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Nationwide Biweekly Talks About The Rise In Home Sales

Nationwide Biweekly Administration:  Home Sales On The Rise

The economy has been rough these past few years, but there are big signs of a turn around, especially in home sales on the horizon.  After years of bleak outlook on the home sales front, recent data suggests that a larger than expected rise in home sales is a trend and not just an anomaly.   With a surplus of existing homes on the market, prices have continued to fall, making it an ideal situation for those in the market for a new or first time home.

Cities who experienced the biggest growth during the housing boom and have been in a high foreclosure state ever since have the most ground to gain. With home values at recent lows, they have become affordable to a whole new demographic of home buyers. Nationwide Biweekly Administration, one of the country’s leading administrators of biweekly mortgage plans, has been tracking home sales throughout this interesting economic climate the country has faced for the past three years.  The results have made it clear: the uptick in home sales is here to stay.

Economic recovery doesn’t happen overnight, but the long hard climb back to accelerating sales every month in the real estate industry has been taking shape over the past 18 months.  From Hartford to Honolulu, from Milwaukee to Mobile, from Charlotte to Chicago  - home sales are on the rise and excited buyers are in the market for mortgages in higher numbers that at any time in the past 36 months.  

Home buyers looking to make the smart choice will turn to Nationwide Biweekly Administration for its Interest Minimizer plan. A biweekly mortgage plan gives you the most bang for your buck, so to speak. Consider the case of a $2000 per month mortgage payment. Over the course of one calendar year, the home owner would make 12 payments totally $24,000.  If those same home owners had a biweekly plan through Nationwide Biweekly Administration, they would still make payments totaling $2000 per month, but they’d be split into two payments of $1000 each. Over the course of one calendar year, the home owners would make 26 payments totaling $26,000. That’s one full extra payment a year that is applied purely to the loan’s principle. Over the lifetime of the loan that saves the home owners thousands of dollars in interest.

The good news in real estate is that home sales are rebounding at rates that spell economic growth for our country.  People who lost homes a few years ago or people who’ve never owned their own home or people who want a bigger home in a different city – all demographics of home buyers can benefit from a biweekly mortgage plan from Nationwide Biweekly Administration. After all, gaining equity, saving on interest and paying your mortgage off quicker are all good, financially sound ideas!

Nationwide Biweekly Administration