Every real estate investor dealing in rental homes has done his own clean-up and fix-up, at least in the early years. Landlords also become very skilled at managing tenants after being burned a few times.

You learn the tricks of the trade and how to get the best results for the least cost. Maybe a few of these tips will be new to you.

You can give kitchen cabinets new life with a liberal application of Liquid Gold.

Everyone has at least one chip or scratch in the porcelain on their refrigerator, bathtub, stove (except high heat surfaces), sink, washer or dryer. The solution? Touch up that nick with a tough porcelain glaze called “Porcelain Chip Repair”. Just dab it on with the built in brush and it hardens in 24 hours. If your hardware store does not carry it you can find it with a Google search.

You can quickly clean black scuff marks from vinyl floor covering with a squirt of WD 40 lubricant and a rub with a clean cloth.

Put a shiny new strainer in the sink drain. Then install new handles and drawer pulls and you often have a minor kitchen miracle.

Get rid of globs of sticky adhesive residue with Goo Gone.

When tenants move out they seldom do a really good cleaning job on the oven… or the dishwasher.

I’m sure you have discovered the many effective oven cleaners, but how about that gunk caked onto the inside of the dishwasher?

Try a product called “Dishwasher Magic”… found in many markets and some hardware stores.

The label reads “Removes Lime Scale, Rust & Buildup. Disinfectant”.

You just remove the cap… place the blue, plastic bottle upside down inside the silverware basket and turn the machine on. You might have to use two bottles if your first look into the washer causes you to run screaming from the house.

When vinyl flooring is ready to be replaced use commercial grade floor tile instead. It lasts almost forever and it is cheap to replace a damaged tile now and then.

Have you ever received an unsigned rent check? Here’s a method that often allows you to deposit that check.

Write or type the word “over” on the line where the signature would normally appear. On the back of the check type “lack of signature guaranteed”. Add your company’s name, and your name and title. Then you sign it on the back.

This guarantees your bank that you will take back the check as a charge against your account if is isn’t honored. Many banks will then process the check and remit the funds. This saves you the trouble of returning the check to your renter for a signature.

Spot those bad checks with this tips. 90% of bad checks are numbered 101 to 150, indicating a new account.

Legitimate checks have at least one perforated edge. Most forgeries are cutouts of copy machine created fakes.

Checks dated more than six months ago are usually not cashable, no matter how much money the issuer has in his/her account.

If the amounts written on a check in words is different from he amount written in numbers, the bank will pay the sum shown in words.

If you receive a check with the date missing, it’s legal to fill in a date reasonably close to the date you receive it. To predate or postdate the check by several weeks is a criminal act… don’t do it.

Remember, landlording is not for sissies. I hope these tips will save you a few dollars and a barrel full of aggravation.

About the Author – Mark Walters is an investor and author. His published works can be found at http://www.CashFlowInstitute.com

Know what costs to reduce -Reducing costs is sometimes just a percentage game with a focus on the areas of main expenditure. A 25% saving on an £60,000 telecoms bill is more important than working towards a 50% reduction on a £4,500 spend on vending machines.
Length of Contracts – Signing a contract for 1-3 years is good for the telecoms company as reductions don’t have to be passed on and customers cannot benefit from moving to a lower cost provider. Also, if there is a 3-month notice period, who at your organisation will send out the letter to the telecoms company?

Know what you can achieve – People are busy. Who will be responsible for reducing costs? It may be more efficient to hire an expert who works to a tight deadline and is motivated to deliver real results.
On-going monitoring – Measure the future savings as initially, any new supplier knows that they must perform. The key is to check that after the ‘honeymoon period’ prices do not creep up whilst service levels fall
Did you know that telephone costs can often be cut by as much as 40% – this is even where another telecoms company is being used.
Calls to Mobile – Another major area with approx 62 million mobiles currently in use in the UK. These cannot be avoided and often account for over 50% of the monthly call spend. However, rates are falling – in October 2004 there was an OFCOM imposed tariff reduction and there will be more in the future. Competition is also causing telecoms providers to cut their margins.

Minimum Call Charges and Rounding – Take an example where the headline rate for a local call is 1.5p per minute. Now with a 1p minimum call charge a 20 second call will cost 1p or double the advertised rate. If calls are rounded up to the nearest minute the cost will be 300% more than expected. In addition, 30% of business calls are below 30 seconds and nearly all business calls are under 2 minutes. What impact are these two areas going to have on your telephone bill?

Capped Calls – Another minefield. With most business calls of less than 2 minutes duration, these calls would be considerably more expensive on a capped call tariff. Some major providers have a 7p call set-up charge for calls to mobiles plus a per minute rate of 10p. So therefore a 1 minute call on this capped call tariff would cost 17p or a 30 second call would cost 12p, considerably more than they would cost on a standard per minute tariff. 90% of businesses on capped calls tariffs are paying much more than they should be paying.

Line Rental – This can now be easily reduced by between 10% – 25%
Calls to expensive 0870 numbers – Sometimes inevitable but there are numerous ways with which you can reduce this unnecessary expense.
1. Ask the company for their ordinary local number in case you need to call them from abroad.
2. Look at your phone when they call you. If you have caller display, their real number might show up.
3. Look up their number in BT’s online directory enquiries or on their web site or on 192.com. Their real number might just be listed.
4. Go to saynoto0870.com An excellent site listing many company’s alternative numbers.

Steve Hill helps to promote a number of websites including:

http://www.talkforless.co.uk

Were you aware of the fact that almost 1 in 4 people over the age of 50 have a living trust? When used as a part of an estate conversation plan, tursts can help preserve more of your assets for your heirs while minimizing the delays and costs of probate court.

A trust is a legal arrangement where one person or institution controls property given by another person for the benefit of a third party. If you don’t have a trust or don’t know if you might need one, keep reading to learn more about A-B (bypass) trusts, irrevocable trusts, and life insurance trusts. When used as a part of your planning, these trusts can help safeguard your legacy.

A-B Trusts

With a properly structured A-B provision, a living trust can allow married couples to exempt twice as much of their estate from taxes as they can otherwise. When one spouse dies, the trust is split in two. The surviving spouse s assets are then transferred to the A trust, while the assets of the deceased spouse go to the B trust. Each trust then becomes a taxable entity entitled to the current estate tax exemption ($1.5 million in 2005).

Irrevocable Trusts

An irrevocable trust is established by you relinquishing control of your assets while still alive. Depending on the way the trust is set up, you may or may not get the use of the asset during your lifetime. This is an option you do not want to enter into lightly, as once you give up the asset, you can not get it back.

Life Insurance Trusts

If relinquishing control of your assets is not your cup of tea, why not consider establishing a life insurance trust to pay the estate taxes on any assets valued above the estate tax exemption amount? A life insurance trust will hold an insurance policy in an irrevocable trust, so the policy itself is not taxable. At your death, it can then be used to help give your beneficiaries the cash they need to pay estate taxes.

Just like any other part of your estate plan, you need to reexamine your trusts on a regular basis so as to protect any newly acquired assets and to update your list of beneficiaries.

Roger Sorensen

America’s Financial Guide can be found at ==>http://www.Slave2Work.com Subscribe to Money Basics via http://www.slave2work.com/ezine.html

Slave2Work.com – Are you ready for financial freedom?

Are you tired of the same old day trading tips? Like, “cut your losses and let your profits run.” “Never let a gain turn into a loss.”, or the most repeated tip, “Buy low, sell high.”

So how about something new? Let me give you some specific day trading tips that will turn your trading around.

A good defense beats a good offense over the long haul. If you want to stay in the Trading “game”, then developing a good defense is a MUST.

Rule Number One: Cut your losses immediately when the trade doesn’t go your way. There’s nothing harder to learn and nothing better. I’ll be even more specific. The average “run of the mill” day trading advisor will tell you to enter a trade, place a stop of 2 to 4 points, place a target that’s equal to your stop, or 2 to 3 times greater, and then wait for your stop to get hit. This is a big mistake that is going to end up costing *you*.

The time to wait is before you enter the trade, not after.

I’ve been trading for over 20 years, and I don’t trade like the crowd. The crowd waits for their stops to get hit. They sit there hoping their trade comes back from negative to positive territory, but it usually doesn’t and they lose money. They believe that the edge (probability of success) isn’t good enough on their entries. This is the crowd’s approach and it just doesn’t work.
My day trading advice for you is to use radical soft stops that go against human nature.

In trading, your entries and your exits must NOT come naturally at first. Human nature is responsible for the fact that 90% of those day trading eminis lose money. If you follow the herd, you’ll lose money too.

Some of my subscribers tell me it seems impossible to get out of a trade early, just because it doesn’t move immediately into a profit. They worry about commissions. They worry that the trade will turn around and go their way in a few more seconds and they’ll lose opportunity. In fact most of the people reading this right now will try it for a few minutes (hopefully on a trading simulator) and decide it can’t be done.

Like I said, my techniques and day trading tips fly in the face of the untrained “gut feeling.” And that’s precisely why they work. Exiting my way is not the whole picture when it comes to the method I use for day trading support and resistance.
Any complex process has to be broken down into small chunks at first, a person has to learn one thing at a time, especially when you want to learn day trading.

Always demand that the trade goes profitable immediately. When it doesn’t, get out immediately.

Radical, but it works.

My day trading advise for them is don’t wait for the market to prove you wrong, instead, if the market doesn’t immediately prove you right, run for the exits.

Example: Let’s say you enter a day trade. In the first 5 seconds it goes 3 or 4 ticks against you.
What is your course of action?

a. Give it a chance, don’t waste the commission.
b. Sit and hope that it turns around before it hits your stop.
c. “Knowing” your entry was excellent, sit tight and / or move your hard stop away.
d. Add to the position (scale in) to bring your break-even point closer.
e. Get out of the position NOW!!! Don’t think about it, just get out.

Believe it or not, “e” is the right answer in my book. You have to be flexible with everything, but this is the foundation of my trading style. This is the default procedure.
Does it work?… YES it works! But it only works IF you know where and when to enter.

Mike Reed is author of TradeStalker’s RBI Trader’s Updates. He has been trading the Market for 23 years. His support and resistance numbers have been published on the internet since 1996. Mike’s nightly support and resistance zones are specific and incredibly accurate. He offers an unlimited free trial of his nightly TradeStalker RBI Trader’s Updates. http://www.tradestalker.com

Copyright 2005 TradeStalker.com and Mike Reed

Whether your interest is in trading Stocks, Commodities,
Indices or Foreign Exchange there are literally hundreds of
web sites that will offer you ways to do this, on the
premise of making you money. Not one of them, to my
knowledge, will actually sit down with you and explain just
how the markets really work.

There are probably two reasons for this. Firstly, there
might be a few who actually know, but in the interest of
empowerment, will not readily divulge their knowledge but
meter it out peace-meal in a very cloaked way for financial
gain.

The second reason, and more probable, is that they don’t
actually know themselves how the markets work, but will have
you believe they do, again for empowerment over you and
financial gain. All of this gets you nowhere in your own
quest to find out how the markets work, and until you do
your level of success will be limited.

In fact some people who have years of experience trading the
markets, have little knowledge of how the mechanics of the
markets actually work. With this fundamental knowledge at
their finger tips, future profits could be increased by a
staggering proportion.

There is an old saying which you may have heard. ‘Prices are
spiraling upwards’ or ‘Prices are spiraling out of control’
etc. The keyword here is ’spiraling’. This is precisely
what
occurs in every market year in, year out, prices spiral up
and down.

The spiral is the basic mechanism by which all the markets
actually work. To have a detailed understanding of how this
mechanism works can literally transform your trading
performance whatever your present level of skill or type of
market in which you trade. Therefore, our quest to find
understanding shall begin here.

Imagine each individual market is a giant cone which is
inverted so it stands upright on its point.

Element One – Angles:

Look in from above the cone down into the large diameter.
Divide this circle into 12 equal parts. This created 12
angles which start at the point of the cone and move
outwards to the circumference.

Element Two – Spiral:

From the same point we start a spiral which moves up and
around the cone (just like a spiral staircase).

Element Three – Price:

This spiral is the path the market price will follow, digit
by digit, as it snakes its way up and down and around the
cone.

Element Four – Time:

Go back to the 12 angles which divide the cone. We shall
attach a specific date to each angle.

The Mechanism:

When the price starts its upward journey around the spiral
it will make contact with certain angles on specific dates.
This will halt the price advance and cause it to fall back
down and around the spiral. The price will eventually strike
an angle further down the spiral which will send it back on
its upward journey.

This occurs in every market from one degree or another,
every hour and every day that the particular market works.
If the market price was falling from high levels, the
mechanism would work inversely to the above.

If we knew the date which the price would strike a
particular angle and change the market trend or direction we
would have a great trading tool. In addition, if we also
knew the price level at which this would occur we would have
a formidable trading tool.

Don’t worry I am not about to disappoint. This formidable
trading tool is called a Master Spiral Chart, of which there
are several types.

To master the use of these charts in your chosen market will
explode your profit potential.

Why are some people getting rich trading stock, futures and
foreign exchange?
Jack Swift has created the *ultimate* guide to global
market trading with: Work-The-Markets the Natural Science
of Market Analysis.
Check out => http://www.workthemarkets.com

The life estate is something every first year law student learns about when they study the arcane and often bizarre history of property law that harkens back to the days of English knights, lords and serfs, and the transfer of property through the ceremonial throwing of dirt clods with oaths of duty to accompany. The life estate is about as old as they come as instruments of wealth transfer go and students love it, because it is relatively easy to understand. Apart from what students love and what is easy to remember, however, the life estate still has practical value today in your estate planning and assets management schemes.

The basic idea of the life estate is that a person can be left a piece of property for life, and upon their passing, the property in question can go to whoever is designated to receive that property afterward. The individual or group who receives the property after the life-tenant passes is called the remainderman or remaindermen, which is useful only in that it helps one to remember that the person who remains gets the property. If, for example, one wants to leave a family estate that has been with the family for many generations to their spouse and then have it immediately pass on to their children or another relative who will maintain the estate for the generation to come, then a life estate might be the perfect vehicle to do so. Another example is the same family estate, left to a surviving spouse until the surviving spouse either dies or remarries. Again, the aim is to ensure that the estate stays in family, a contingency which is threatened by the remarriage because that creates a new marital joint-tenancy, absent any other provision. Often the life-estate was used to keep assets, like the family home, headed down a single line of familial ownership.

However, the life estate has other uses, for example, it can leave an asset to be owned by one person until the death of third person. If an older relative has become incapacitated, such that it is difficult for them to make decisions for themselves, then the asset can be left in the care of another for the incapacitated person’s lifetime. An example might be, that Blackacre (the fictitious name for a piece of property used in law schools everywhere) is left in the care of cousin Tilly, until great aunt Nelly’s death. Thus, Tilly is allowed to make Nelly comfortable at Blackacre (the family home) until Nelly passes on. In this instance, Nelly’s life is what is called, the measuring life of the life estate, and Tilly’s ownership ends when Nelly is gone.

On the whole, the life estate may be falling out of use for a number of reasons and being replaced by the much more fluid instrument of the trust. But, the life estate still captures, from time to time, our instincts regarding how property is to pass from one generation to another and that is why it is still relevant even for an estate planner who uses it very rarely. It helps us to ask and to get the answer to very difficult questions, which is part of the act of estate planning. Both the client and the attorney must face tough questions, and the life estate (even if it is sometimes regarded as a legal relic of the past) tells us how people used to answer questions of intra-generational wealth transfer and why. We may use different instruments to bring about our legal ends (or we may not), but even if we do, the life-estate still has relevance in helping us think about the questions that underlie the choices to be made in estate planning.

About Ronald E. Hudkins;
Ronald Hudkins is a retired U.S. Army Military Police member that was assigned as a staff researcher. He has coordinated with military and criminal investigators, set on court marshals and worked closely with the Staff Judge Advocate Generals’ Office (JAG). He has a keen sense of legal matters – their interpretation, initiatives and guidelines. For imperative financial planning needs he suggests his book “Asset Protection and Estate Planning for All Ages.” Additionally, he offers a Free Newsletter at his web site: http://www.AssetProtectNow.com

The prospect of bankruptcy is an ever increasing reality facing many individuals. Figures released recently by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) show that bankruptcies and insolvencies have hit an all-time high.

The Figures For 2005:

13,501 people declared bankrupt in UK

6960 adults entered into voluntary insolvency known as Individual Voluntary Agreement

What To Do If You Are Thinking Of Declaring Yourself Bankrupt.

It’s better to enter into an IVA than to declare yourself bankrupt. Under an IVA, borrowers agree to pay a fixed monthly amount over an agreed period, subject to approval by three-quarters of their creditors. In return, the interest on their debts is frozen, and some of their debt – in some cases, up to four-fifths (80%) is written off.

What Has Caused This?

Te lending boom which began roughly a dozen years ago led to a rise in credit problems. However, these figures are even higher than those recorded in the recession of the early Nineties. This sounds off a big alarm bell regarding how we manage our finances.

The breadth and depth of our borrowing habit have increased considerably, as relaxed lending standards have led to a rise in both the number of borrowers and the overall amount that individuals can borrow. In short, we have become credit junkies. We live today and pay tomorrow.

Naturally, this borrowing binge creates victims, as over-indebted people struggle to meet rising debt repayments and their finances begin to spiral hopelessly out of control.

What Criteria Is Required For Declaring Myself IVA?

Bankruptcy laws have become more relaxed, with some people now seeing it as an easy option or ‘get out’ to resolve their problems. It does, however, still impact upon your financial life.

You may be reading this thinking an IVA is your best option, but it only really applies if you are working full time and you owe more than £7,500 to three or more lenders. It’s also expensive to arrange ( you would be looking at costs of around £6,500 ! ).

Alternatively, you can attempt to tackle the problem yourself by increasing your income, reducing your outgoings, and throwing all your spare cash at your debts.

Article by Jason Scott of http://www.bankruptcy-information-zone.com ( The Bankruptcy Information Resource – Tackle your debts today ).