Cast B2007

Archive for September, 2011

Although the rain fell and floods came with Hurricane Irene, it was not quite on a Biblical scale, but it was certainly devastating to many communities that had never before believed it possible they could be the victims of flooding. Yet, in upstate New York and Vermont, entire communities have been introduced to a new reality of flooding and mudslides. No matter what you think about all these stories of global warming and climate change, there’s an underling reality you can’t deny. This has been a bad year for weather. Read any of the hard news sites and they will all tell you the same story. Property and auto insurance claims have already broken records this year. By the time we’re through December, the year 2011 will have gone into the books as the most expensive for weather-related insurance claims.

Perhaps not surprisingly, insurers have been receiving a lot more calls asking about flood insurance. Obviously, many homeowners have discovered their own policies exclude flood damage. In the hope of reducing future losses, they now ask what’s available and this is not good news. The majority of private insurers withdrew from covering floods some years ago. For a number of reasons, insurers have found they cannot make flood insurance profitable and they are not prepared to cross-subsidize from other types of cover. Most now only offer the Federal Flood Insurance Program which is funded out of tax revenues. As an aside, even this insurance may be lost if Washington fails to renew its funding allocation by the end of September 2011.

Assuming the Federal Program survives this budgetary crisis, it’s not really designed for the majority of homes. The first states that asked for federal help were on the Gulf Coast and the majority of properties built close to the sea don’t have basements. The cover for basements is therefore limited to the replacement of mechanical equipment like furnaces and water heaters, and the main cover only applies to the first story and above with a maximum of $250,000 for rebuilding. If you live further north, basements are common and rebuilding costs are higher. This suggests you will always need to top up the Federal Program cover. You will always need a basic home insurance policy to cover all the other ways in which your property can be damaged. The Federal Program limits contents claims to $100,000, so you will need a policy to increase the rebuilding and contents limits. The cost of this supplemental covers varies quite significantly depending on the weather patterns and geography of your state. It might surprise you to know there have been quite serious floods in Arizona, but they are quite rare. Where the risk of flooding is low, you can probably find additional cover for as little as $300 a year. In states where the risks are higher, the home insurance rates are likely to be between $600 and $800 a year. After a while, you will come to a hard decision. In states where the risk of flooding is actually quite small, how long will you pay the additional premium? According to the insurance industry, most people allow these supplemental policies to lapse within two to four years.

Investment banking can be a very useful tool for generating needed funding for expansion. Such firms can help you create your value proposition and tailor your bid for funding to really align with potential investors.

1. Determine How Much Capital You Need to Raise. In determining how much capital you need, you are able to ascertain what type of investment banking firm would be a good match (e.g. middle market, or larger).

3. Reputation. Do your research on the firm you use. The stability of the firm is important.

4. Keeping to your vision. Talk to other clients of the firm and find out if the firm really listened to and understood and acknowledged where the client was looking to take their company. Or did they require that the client alter their expansion plans, not really listening and truly understanding the value of the original expansion plans.

5. Biggest is not Necessarily the Best. Some investment banking institutions established their name in the market long ago, but it doesn’t mean they are the best. Shop around and find the firm that really listens and has the track record to really deliver what is needed and wanted. In fact, the really good firms can not only help you obtain the funding you need, they can also help you strengthen your business.

6. Fees. Again, shop around. Fees can vary from firm to firm. Do your best to gauge what you will be able to get back based on what you put in.

Another thing to keep in mind is that whether you are looking for Chicago investment banking, or elsewhere, the right firm may be local or not. Good firms are willing and able to help clients whether they are local or not.

The secrets for how to get organized with paper are neither mysterious nor difficult. Paper organization like any other organizing task simply requires an understanding of the entire process of how paper gets into your house and what to do with it once it does.

Here are some tips for how to get organized with magazines, newspapers and mail. These are the three biggest sources of paper clutter in any home.

Magazines

If you want to know how to get organized with all your magazines you must take a good objective look at your magazine subscriptions. That means being really honest. You might love every magazine but do you really read every magazine cover to cover? If you do, make sure you toss it in the recycling bin after you have read it.

If magazines pile up because you do not read them then the best paper organization tip for handling magazines is eliminating them. Stop magazine subscriptions for those magazines that you do not read from cover to cover. You are much better off financially just purchasing a copy at the news stand every few months rather than having them flood into your home.

Get your subscriptions and newsletters delivered online. Many magazines are now offering online subscriptions which greatly decreases the amount of paper clutter in your home.

If you have to keep a magazine subscription then just keep the article and not the magazine. Simply cut out the article you want and place it in a plastic page protector and slip it into a binder. Now you have your favourite articles all in one spot. Recycle the remainder of the magazine, it is mostly just advertising anyway

Newspapers

When it comes to paper organization with newspapers, less is best. Try to limit your newspaper subscription to one daily. Keep a good size recycle bin close to the door where the newspaper can be easily deposited at the end of the day. Establish good paper clutter control habits and always put the newspaper to bed in the recycle bin before you go to bed yourself!

Mail

Never respond to junk mail of any kind. The information you provide on your response to junk mail is put onto a mailing list and the list is sold to other direct mail marketers. More junk mail will follow.

Keep a recycling bin close to where you open you mail and get into the habit of using it. Toss any junk mail and all the envelopes and paper packaging.

If you pick up your mail when you come home from work, make sure you sort and decide right away what to do with each piece of mail.

Two questions are necessary:

do I need to act on this (pay a bill or follow up with correspondence or a telephone call) is this information that should be retained, perhaps for legal or future reference.

Place anything that you need to act on in a special file for action and place anything that needs to be retained for reference purposes into a filing cabinet in its own file.

Making the toss, act, retain decisions right away when you have your mail in your hand will help you to sort through your mail quickly and have everything filed and put away before you even take your coat off!

When I think of how to get organized with paper I think of eliminating it completely! As much as possible get your bills sent to you electronically and arrange for internet banking or automatic money transfers to pay your monthly bills. Not only is this a clutter control strategy for paper organization but it saves you time and money as well because you have no more stamps or cheques to purchase and no more trips to the post office.

These easy and simple paper organization tips for how to get organized with magazines, newspapers, and mail will help you reduce and manage the many pounds of paper that come into your life. Once thing is for certain, without a clutter control system in place you could soon be buried in paper!

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Like everything written down, the Affordable Care Act sounds the perfect answer to all our problems. Except, of course, when it comes to turning the words into action, problems can emerge. One of the battlegrounds is turning out to be the insurance marketplaces or exchanges. These are supposed to make it easier and cheaper to buy insurance. They should allow people to compare prices, and discover whether they are entitled to any assistance like tax credits, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Every state is supposed to have one up and running by 2014. Should any state default, the federal government is apparently ready to step in and run one. The principle matches the mandate. If everyone is required to buy a policy, buying a policy should be made as easy as possible.

As we come in the Fall, ten states have already passed the necessary enabling legislation and are on their way toward getting their exchanges in place. Seven more states have bills pending. Legislation has failed in sixteen states. The rest of the states have either decided to take their time or are flatly refusing to make progress. Such is the world of politics with the Republican party dead-set against exchanges. Some GOP governors have sworn oaths on a stack of Bibles they will never sign an enabling bill into law. Yet this is not necessarily good politics.

Because the federal government will impose an exchange if the state refuses to act, the arrival of an exchange is unavoidable. Some GOP governors are therefore interested in negotiating terms. If they have no choice, they might as well try to influence the outcome to their advantage. So this September, health officials from the majority of the states will be attending a conference organized by the Department of Health and Human Services. Most GOP governors are prepared to talk about a partnership approach to give them some political leverage. Equally, if the states actually do less of the work, the budget requirements will be lower. For example, some states are offering to run local call centers to guide people through their choices. This is fairly uncontroversial. More problematic are the offers of some states to run outreach and education programs to bring their citizens into the exchanges. If staff hostile to the notion of the exchanges are involved, the exchanges may not get the expected number of applicants.

When the dust settles at the end of all the negotiations, we can hope for a health insurance exchange or marketplace in every state where citizens can be guided between federal and state aid, and the private section plans. With supportive staff working in the call centers, everyone should end up with the level of cover appropriate to their individual needs. Significantly, the exchanges are also intended to help small and medium-sized businesses navigate the new laws. Many business people are as confused as ordinary citizens. If everything works as it should, we should all find access to affordable covered significantly easier. However, with their opposition to the central principles of Obamacare undiminished, we can expect the GOP to find a whole new set of ways to slow down this health insurance reform. Your vote in the next election will help decide matters.

Most people who go to Cyprus feel a little confused when it comes to Cypriot currency. If this sounds familiar don’t panic, with this easy to follow information you will soon be purchasing the right currency to spend in the Cypriot sunshine. To start with you need to think about whereabouts in Cyprus you are heading as this will determine which currency you need. So if you are going to be holidaying in the Republic of Cyprus you need to buy Euros, but if you are on your way to Northern Cyprus you will need Turkish Lira.

Since the Cypriot Pound was replaced by the Euro in 2008 there has been a fixed exchange rate of 1 Euro = 0.585274 Cypriot Pounds. Today it is still possible to exchange old Cypriot currency in the form of banknotes (but not coins) at the Central Bank of Cyprus. This offer is valid until 31 December 2017 – so if you have old currency you still have enough time to get it changed.

As you have probably realised the exchange rate for Cypriot currency has got slightly worse since Cyprus adopted the Euro. So holidaymakers from the UK have found that, at the moment, they are not getting as much for their money. However the exchange rate does vary, so keep an eye on this and buy your Cypriot currency when the rate is good, that way you will get more currency for your hard earned cash.

If you need to change any money during your holiday you will be able to do this at any of the banks in Cyprus. You will be able to change travellers cheques or cash which are in any of the major currencies. So if you are coming from the UK you will have no problems exchanging your sterling for Cypriot currency.

When it comes to being out in restaurants you should expect to pay a tip of around 10% of your bill. So if you want to return to keep the waiting staff happy you need to be aware of this and have the extra cash to hand. You should also be aware that in both the Republic of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus there is a tax of 15% added to the majority of services. It is possible to bypass this however in shops that offer tax free shopping – shops that offer this will display a sign advising you of it.

So now you know all about Cypriot currency you can relax and have a fantastic holiday. Just remember to check the exchange rate and buy your currency when it is at a great rate. Then you can start counting down the days to your holiday in Cyprus.

In the long-distant past, the law of the land was directly administered by the rulers. They sat as judges on all major disputes and dispensed justice as they saw fit. It was not until civilization spread a little that we saw anything like today’s courts and lawyers emerged. This was a law-and-order strategy. Before courts, people used to resort to a little self-help to get what they thought they were owed. Blood feuds and riots were therefore quite common. Giving people “independent” judges to decide matters defused the violence and kept the peace. All we had to wait for was the inevitable corruption to die away. In theory, today’s judges are to recuse themselves if they know any of the parties or have a financial interest in the outcome. Yet there’s still great unhappiness with our legal system, many people blaming our law of tort for many of our economic ills. Attorneys are routinely attacked for distorting the legal system in order the maximize their profit rather than to protect the interests of their clients.

The real problem comes from the simple rule in tort that, if you cause loss or harm to another, you should pay money to that other to make good the loss. This sounds a great idea. It’s financial responsibility in action. In a shop, if you break it, it’s yours. The only problems are the delays in getting a case decided and the cost. There are too few judges to deal with all the cases efficiently. Months can therefore pass before it’s your turn again to move forward a little. Then attorneys seem to think they can charge you for breathing the same air as you. So, to cut out all the delay and reduce costs, some twenty-four brave states decided to abandon the tort system in favor of no-fault. In effect, everyone in those states is self-insured. If you’re injured in an accident or you need to repair your vehicle, your own insurance company pays out no matter who’s to blame. The only question when you submit a claim is whether the amount you ask for is a reasonable estimate of the loss. This can usually be agreed quite quickly and life goes on.

In other countries, the no-fault system has produced major savings. With the need to pay attorneys almost completely removed and staff levels in the insurance companies reduced to a minimum, everyone enjoys excellent value for money. Unfortunately, our wise law-makers decided to add in a few zingers which have conspired to keep the premium rates among the highest in the land. As a result, we’re down to only twelve no-fault states today plus Puerto Rico. It’s a case of a good idea largely sabotaged in the implementation.

However, when it comes to pricing the car insurance rates, the measures and classifications are basically the same. No matter what the legal system for resolving claims, the insurers are still estimating the number of accidents and the total amount of losses. Once they have those numbers, the total is divided among their policy holders, they add their administration costs and profit margin, and there you have the final rate. Car insurance may sound like rocket science but it a Model T rocket.