07.29
Ask the expert…
0 Comments | Lincolnshire Echo, Jul 28, 2010
Inheritance Tax after the Emergency Budget David Wood, solicitor, Langleys The effect of the Government’s announced freezing of the Nil Rate Band for Inheritance Tax at Pounds 325,000 for at least five years until 2015 should not be underestimated.
‘Since October 9, 2007, married couples and registered civil partners have enjoyed a transferable Nil Rate Band, effectively giving a married couple a combined Nil Rate Band of Pounds 650,000.
A couple who presently have assets including the house, investments and savings (but excluding business assets) of Pounds 650,000 would not presently pay any Inheritance Tax on their deaths. Assuming however the value of their assets grows by just seven per cent per year, they will be worth a combined Pounds 911,000 by July 2015. If our couple were to die in July 2015, the Inheritance Tax payable on their combined estates would be Pounds 104,400.
Couples in their seventies would do well to consider their Inheritance Tax affairs and to undertake any necessary planning sooner rather than later. This could make a very significant difference to the financial well being of their beneficiaries in due course.
The estates of farmers and business men and women will usually only bear a disproportionately small amount of Inheritance Tax because of the very valuable Business and Agricultural Property Reliefs. Given the present state of public finances it is perhaps surprising that these reliefs were not restricted or reduced in any way in last month’s emergency budget.
What is much more surprising, given that most of the population would prefer not to pay more tax then they absolutely have to, is that people often give little or no thought to preserving or maximising these fabulously valuable reliefs.
A little planning can make a huge difference.
Business owners who are selling a business should contemplate a gift of some of the business (which would benefit from Business Property Relief), perhaps into trust, before it is sold. Once the business has been sold, no Business Property Relief will apply to the sale proceeds and the opportunity to use the relief will have been lost.
For those business owners who own business assets when they die, the opportunity of recycling the Business Property Relief and therefore using it twice, where they are survived by a spouse should never be overlooked. Recycling the relief effectively increases the rate of Business or Agricultural Property Relief from 100 per cent to 200 per cent.
In reality, what this does is to give Business Property Relief on non-business assets such as the house or savings and investments
inheritance tax
07.29
Business Wire, August 16, 2006
MAYFIELD VILLAGE, Ohio — Drive(R) Insurance from Progressive, the largest writer of auto insurance through independent agents and brokers in the U.S., has signed a joint marketing agreement with Homesite Insurance Group, a national provider of home insurance products. The agreement paves the way for a test that will allow selected Drive agents in three states — Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oregon — to provide their Drive auto insurance customers quotes for homeowners, renters and condo insurance policies underwritten and serviced by Homesite.
In the test, independent agents will use Drive’s ForAgentsOnly.com (FAO) Web site to provide eligible customers with homeowners product quotes, leveraging existing state-of-the-art technology and making the transaction of selling two monoline policies — auto and home — seamless and easy. New or existing Drive Insurance customers are eligible for a homeowners quote from Homesite if they have prior auto coverage without a lapse and at least 100/300 liability limits.
Drive and Homesite will work together to identify a hand-selected group of about 150 agents in the three states to whom this program will be offered. Drive agents will sign an agency agreement and will be appointed by Homesite; the agent is then the agent of record and owns expiration rights to policies sold.
“It is our goal to make the Drive brand a ‘must-have’ for all growing, successful independent agencies,” said Sharena Ali, product manager, Drive. “Providing agents with more flexibility in packaging home and auto policies and leveraging existing easy-to-use technology can help us to solidify our core position in their offices and give us an additional opportunity to grow together with them.”
The three-state test will launch in late 2006; if the test is successful, that is, it helps Drive agents sell more Drive policies, further rollout may happen in 2007.
“We are excited about this opportunity,” said Fabian Fondriest, CEO, Homesite. “As a monoline home insurer with technology that is highly compatible with Drive’s, we look forward to providing packaged home policies with the ease-of-use that Drive agents have come to expect.”
About Drive Insurance from Progressive:
The Progressive Group of Insurance Companies, in business since 1937, provides drivers with competitive rates and superior claims and customer service. The products and services of the Drive Group of Progressive Insurance Companies are marketed to consumers under the Drive(R) Insurance from Progressive brand through more than 30,000 independent insurance agencies in the U.S. Progressive companies using the Drive brand make up a group that is the largest writer of auto insurance through independent agents and brokers in the U.S., based on premiums written. Drive is also a leading writer of commercial auto, motorcycle, boat and RV insurance. Agents and brokers can log in to ForAgentsOnly.com to get an at-a-glance summary of everything they need to manage and grow their Drive business, including referrals, quotes, customer policy information, state and countrywide news and more. For more information, to find a Drive agent, or to get a quote, go to www.driveinsurance.com
renters insurance quotes
07.29
Business Wire, July 28, 2010
City, nonprofit Prevent Hate, veterans erect ADA-compliant home in one
day
LOS ANGELES — Veterans with disabilities resulting from military conflicts such as
those in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated their abilities in rapidly
erecting a temporary home featuring high-performance SolarWorld
solar panels this week on Los Angeles City Halls south lawn.
The project to build a universally accessible house in a matter of hours
was one element of a 20th anniversary celebration of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, which recognizes and protects the rights of Americans
with disabilities to participate in U.S. work, commerce and community
life.
The LA Department of Disability, the nonprofit group Prevent Hate and
veterans from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Long Beach
Healthcare System staged the home project to demonstrate a joint
training program to foster empowerment in at-risk and marginalized
populations. The dwelling exemplified an ADA-compliant structure that
can be quickly deployed during emergencies, used to reduce homelessness
and constructed easily by people with disabilities. SolarWorld
Sunmodules were placed, but not installed, on the roof. Prevent Hate
promotes community empowerment and intergroup relations.
SolarWorld,
the largest and most experienced crystalline solar technology
manufacturer in the Americas, was premier sponsor of the temporary home
project on July 26
home solar panels
07.28
Experience has a structure inside our minds so if we change the structure, we change the experience.
As human beings, we are driven by a large number of automatic ?patterns’ or ?programs’ that are largely outside of conscious awareness. An NLP practitioner will concentrate less on ?why’ the client is experiencing the issues or problems they are experiencing and more on ?how’ the client uses certain ?patterns’ and ?programs’ to hold the issue, problem or limiting belief in place.
So, the practitioner will focus on understanding the context of the problem (when/where does it occur… when doesn’t it occur?), the process the client goes through in order to produce the problem (what triggers the problem off…
pain relief
07.28
Jordan has no right preaching to jobless work in the entertainment industry; “You say ”
0 Comments | People (London, England), The, July 25, 2010
Letter of the WEEK
wins pounds 50, the others pounds 10
KATIE Price resents the fact that some of her tax pays for people who don’t work (The People, last week).
I’m sure that many more people would go to work if they too were paid extortionate amounts of money for taking their clothes off and had a clever manager who paid people to design perfume, clothing and write books in her name.
Some people can’t afford to work as they can’t afford childcare.
Many more do work to keep a roof over their children’s head.
How can Katie, or her alter ego Jordan, compare herself to people like that? She is too dim to realise that she’s just been lucky in life. She shouldn’t judge others before she’s walked in their footsteps for a while.
Sarah Treweeks, Birmingham SO the Conservative Party claims the pounds 21,000 donation from a private firm to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley had no influence on policy (last week’s The People).
Even if true, they shouldn’t be surprised if people jump to that conclusion.
Have politicians learned nothing from the cash for questions and honours fiascos – or are they just past caring? David Bennett, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs I WAS deeply disturbed to read that several Tory MPs – including Andrew Lansley – have taken donations or have links to private health firms.
The fact that Lansley got pounds 21,000 from the owner of one of the biggest care firms in the UK is a disgrace.
I am even more annoyed that they think just because it’s legal it’s ok and to state it has no influence on policy is really assuming we are all fools.
Donations should be banned full stop. We need state funding of political parties.
Mark Earnshaw, Leeds OF course sweets and drinks in cinemas are way more expensive than in supermarkets, as you reported last week.
So why on earth do people persist in allowing themselves to be ripped off? Management may frown on filmgoers bringing in their own treats, but seeing as it’s pitch black in screenings I can’t see how they can do much to stop shop-bought, much cheaper goodies being consumed. H Dennis, Coxhoe, Durham
DAVID Cameron’s Big Society is more like a big con. It is just a way of getting unpaid volunteers to do the jobs of paid employees, and everybody can see where this could lead to
industrial roofing
07.28
the bounty of words! Bless the words.
Swooning with language, I dig my hands into the patch of garden closest to the door, to feel myself on this earth, and the surprising scent of mint arises,
I inhale
a breeze drifts by
carrying on it the smells of cut grass, Durga Rose incense, nutmeg, the Indian spice shop in Berkeley, the Asian supermarket in the International district, the cedars on Bear Island… Now I swoon with scent.
Now the inspirations come with the force of love:
Images of New York skyscrapers,
seeing a really great piece of theater, or a really bad one,
Peggy’s baby pictures,
an early fall morning in the Appalachians,
a bonfire on the beach during the winter,
someone’s truth heard I (even if it doesn’t match mine),
synchronicity,
live concert,
a productive work-out,
the birth of precious grand babies and nieces and nephews,
cats and more cats, purring as they parade by,
beads (oh the colors),
and
being hugged with big love.
I have to lie down.
My porch is cold under my robe.
Quiet descends, the quiet of driving in the car without the radio……being with others in silence…
image consulting
07.28
Greek mythology the inspiration for iconic symbol of Games [Edition
0 Comments | Grimsby Telegraph, Jul 27, 2010
THE Olympic Flame or Olympic Torch is a symbol of the Olympic Games.
Commemorating the theft of fire from the Greek god Zeus by Prometheus, its origins lie in ancient Greece, where a fire was kept burning throughout the celebration of the ancient Olympics.
The fire was reintroduced at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam and it has been part of the modern Olympic Games ever since.
According to legend, the torch’s flame has been kept burning ever since the first Olympics.
The Olympic Torch today is ignited several months before the opening celebration of the Olympic Games at the site of the ancient Olympics in Olympia, Greece.
The Olympic Torch Relay ends on the day of the opening ceremony in the central stadium of the Games.
07.28
That means 80-90% has to be eliminated by the body, which can be very taxing on your system. It also means that for every $100 you spend on nutritional pills, about $85 goes down the toilet. Liquid, on the other hand, has an absorption rate up to 98%.? This lowered bioavailability of pills is due to the fact that they have to be processed by the gastrointestinal system to become digestible, whereas liquids come ready-prepared for almost instant and complete absorption.
It must be borne in mind, however, that not all pills are created equal. They differ widely in quality and type. Cheap generic tablets are often be made from low quality ingredients that in some cases are relatively useless to the body and in other cases render the tablet indigestible, causing it to pass through the body with no absorption at all. On the other hand, reputable manufacturers often use pharmaceutical-grade enteric-coated pills which are designed to pass through the harsh stomach environment before being readily absorbed into the bloodstream via the walls of the upper intestine. Indeed, it can be argued that this is the best delivery method for some delicate compounds which would otherwise be destroyed by stomach acids.
Another widely praised aspect of liquid supplements is that they are prepared from fresh natural ingredients, as opposed to the powdered and processed ingredients often used in pills.
medical sheepskin
07.28
Investors: Are you your own worst enemy?
0 Comments | Jerusalem Post, Jun 17, 2010 | by AARON KATSMAN
With so much information available on the Internet and around- the-clock business TV, the rallying cry from these media sources has been for investors to manage their own funds. Investing is easy, they say. Not to mention that if you pay very low fees, you can trade and trade and make lots of money.
Well, if that is the case, why does study after study point to the fact that do-it-yourself investors continue to underperform the markets? What mistakes do individual investors commonly make, and what can they do to prevent them?
INSIDE INFORMATION
Many individual investors believe that when they read an article about a particular company, they now possess information that is not widely known. They forget that the only reason they read about it is because it is now public. Princeton’s Burton Malkiel has argued that markets are “efficient.” This means that all relevant information pertaining to a specific company is reflected in the company’s stock price. From this perspective, attempting to outperform the market is futile.
If this was entirely the case, then a stock’s price should never move, unless there is new news on the company. But in reality we see stock prices move day to day without any news coming out. Why? Because it’s not necessarily important that all the information is public. What is important is how investors continue to reevaluate their analysis of the news.
It may be that the reason individual investors continue to underperform is because the system favors large institutional investors and not regular Joes. According to Terrance Odean, a finance professor at the University of California Berkeley: “Even when the little guy thinks he’s in the know, he is often clueless about what’s going on behind the scenes. Not so the big guys…. For an individual to not believe that he’s at an informational disadvantage when he’s trading against guys from Goldman Sachs is naive. It’s like deciding to play one-on-one with a professional basketball player. You’re going to lose.”
HERD MENTALITY
Another mistake investors make is that they tend to buy the same stocks that everyone is buying. This can create a situation of buying once the stock has already moved up aggressively. The goal for an investor is to buy low and sell high – not the other way around.
Forbes recently reported about a 2006 study in which Odean found that “like children fighting over the same toy, investors are often attracted to stocks because others want them. In fact, individuals are much more likely to buy and sell the 10 percent of stocks mentioned in the news and ignore the other 90%.
“The problem with buying stocks when they’re popular rather than on the basis of fundamental value is that they tend to be expensive and susceptible to changes in investor sentiment. The day after a stock ranks among top performers, two-thirds of all trades by individual investors are buys (institutions, by contrast, tend to wait for dips in prices and trading volume). Over the following month these hot issues underperform the overall market by an average 1.6 percentage points.”
OVER-TRADING
A third mistake investors tend to make is that they trade way too much. It’s very difficult to always be right when trading stocks actively. In fact, if you trade too much, instead of investing in a company, you are basically gambling as to which direction a stock will move. I can’t tell you how many people have told me that they trade “just to make a hundred dollars a day.”
Inevitably, after about two weeks, they give up on that strategy
internet article marketing
07.28
There are some affiliate programs that offer fixed fees for each click through the affiliate sends to the merchant?s site. This program offers a low commission, but it is not necessary for the visitor to buy anything for the affiliate to get a commission.
The residual income affiliate program is another affiliate program offering recurring income to the affiliate. Here the recurring income can range from about 5% to 50% of the sales earned for all sales generated by the affiliate. As we can see, this look attractive but for certain reason, not many people consider this option.
Sometimes the one-time high paying commission affiliate program may pay you more than the recurring income program. However, this payment is only a single payment paid when the sale is done. In the case of a residual income affiliate program, you are paid regular commissions for that single sale. So this basically means that for the same amount of effort, you are paid multiple times while earning recurring income in a residual program.
So supposing there are two online merchants offering a choice between both these affiliate programs.
rogue clickbank profits plugin