China looks to US for charity
As China’s economy booms (the number of millionaires increased 31 percent to 1.1 million in 2010, according to Boston Consulting Group), its leaders are looking to the U.S. for guidance on both corporate and individual philanthropy.
University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice hosted a meeting of 22 Chinese government officials to help them know the best practices for charitable giving in the U.S.
“They were interested in everything,” says Eileen Heisman, CEO of National Philanthropic Trust in Philadelphia, who spoke about best practices in the nonprofit sector. “They wanted to figure out how to be supportive at the local level, at the centralized level; they were interested in how laws for charitable deductions work.”
The emergence of private wealth in China has increased the curiosity in private foundations, donor-advised assets and charitable trusts that grant income to the donor while pledging the remainder to charity.
Over the past few decades, China has been opening its economy to more capitalism, leading to explosive economic growth and the acquisition of private wealth. Heisman says that development, plus the outpouring of public giving in the wake of the 2008 earthquake in the Sichuan province that killed an estimated 68,000 public, has helped fuel China’s interest in charity.
Heisman says she hasn’t seen this level of interest in how the U.S. administers corporate and private philanthropy from other countries but points out that our charitable system is sophisticated in part because our taxes are so much lower than they are in other developed countries. “A lot of other countries have privileged tax rates, and the government takes care of the needs of individuals that private philanthropy takes care of here.”
What do you reckon of China’s interest in philanthropy?
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Insure before you say ‘I do’
Plotting a June wedding? Don’t forget to assure it!
According to the Insurance Information Institute, by the time you’ve finished paying for the flowers, rings, parties and pictures, the mean American wedding costs $16,000. That means you’ve likely bet $3,000-$6,000 in nonrefundable deposits that your huge day will come off as plotted.
If there’s a wedding in your future, look closely at wedding insurance in case your “I dos” don’t come off as plotted.
Wedding insurance is a cost-effective way to hedge your financial risk.
“It protects the nonrefundable expenses, cancelation due to serious illness, injury, extreme weather, a missing caterer, a missing officiate, a bankrupt event facility. Even postponement; weather can play a huge part in that,” says Janet Ruiz of Fireman’s Fund, which has offered wedding coverage since the 1990s.
Fireman’s Wedsure website offers cafeteria coverage for liability, special attire, cancelation-postponement, loss of deposits, gifts, jewelry, photography-video coverage and rental property, with policies starting at $95.
What could go incorrect? Wedsure’s claims department lists 10 real-life mishaps:
- A tornado rendered the venue uninhabitable: $35,000.
- The rings were stolen out of the groom’s home: $15,352.
- The seamstress lost the bridal gown: $3,412.
- The tuxedos were double rented: $2,278.
- A drunk guest got into an auto accident: $500,000.
- The photographer’s car was stolen with the camera and wedding photos: $15,000.
- The reception venue went out of business: $8,500.
- The disc jockey went out of business: $1,257.
- The wedding gifts were stolen at the reception: $12,300.
- Bridesmaid left a candle burning in the dressing room and the facility caught fire: $150,000.
Two years ago, Fireman’s added “cold feet” coverage in the event the bride or groom have second thoughts. There’s even a professional counseling rider for the party jilted party at the altar. But exchange-of-heart coverage only applies if the wedding is called off 180 days in advance, and only covers money spent by “innocuous party financiers,” i.e., the parents.
“Public reckon of the runaway bride, but what normally happens is, if public are vacant to bow out of a wedding, they usually do it a few months ahead of time,” says Ruiz. “That’s a much more normal occurrence and it does happen. I reckon parents would usually pay for that coverage.”
The III recommends you buy homeowners insurance before the wedding to protect your wedding gifts as well as your luggage while you’re away on your marriage. If you’re taking your wedding rings and other jewelry along with you, be sure to buy floater coverage, and be sure it will protect your jewels if you’re honeymooning in a foreign country.
Once you return, be sure to combine your auto insurance policies to take advantage of the multi-car money off as well as your newly-married status, which is sure to lower your rates.
A wedding is one of life’s fantastic milestones. Wedding insurance can remove some of the financial doubts so you can savor your huge day.
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10 cheap ways to boost home’s value
Looking for ways to spruce up your home without putting yourself in the poorhouse? Whether you’re getting ready to sell your home or want to spiff it up inexpensively for your own enjoyment, we’ve got 10 excellent strategies for you to consider. The actual cost and payback for each project can vary, depending on both your home’s condition and overall real estate market values in your region of the country. 1. Make your kitchen really cook. The kitchen is still considered the heart of the home. Potential home buyers make a beeline for this room when they first view a home for sale, so make sure your kitchen looks clean and reasonably updated. For a few hundred dollars, you can replace the kitchen faucet set, add new cabinet door handles and bring up to date ancient lighting fixtures with brighter, more energy-efficient ones. If you’ve got a slightly larger budget, you can give the cabinets themselves a makeover. “Rather than spring for a whole new cabinet system, which can be expensive, look into hiring a refacing company,” says serial remodeler Gwen Moran, co-author of “Build Your Own Home on a Shoestring.” “Many companies can remove cabinet doors and drawers, refinish the cabinet boxes, then add brand-new doors and drawers. With a fresh coat of paint over the whole set, your cabinets will look like new.” If you’re handy, you can order your own replacement cabinet doors and door fronts from retailers like Lowe’s Home Improvement or The Home Depot and install them yourself. 2. Give appliances a facelift. If your kitchen appliances don’t match, order new doors or face panels for them. When Nicole Persley, a Realtor in Boca Raton, Fla., was sprucing up her own home to sell, her mix-and-match kitchen troubled her. The room had a white dishwasher, microwave and wall oven mixed with other pieces that were stainless steel with black trim. When Persley called the dishwasher manufacturer to see about ordering a new, black face panel, the customer service representative clued her in on a huge secret: Many dishwasher panels are white on one side and black on the other. “All I had to do was unscrew two screws, slide out the panel and flip it around. Sure enough — it was black on the other side!” Persley, who has remodeled numerous homes for resale, says that a more cohesive-looking kitchen makes a huge difference in the buyer’s mind — and in the home’s resale price. 3. Buff up the bath. Next to the kitchen, bathrooms are often the most valuable rooms to bring up to date. They, too, can be improved without a lot of cash. “Even simple things like a new toilet seat and a pedestal sink are pretty simple for homeowners to install, and they make a huge difference in the look of the bath,” says Moran. Moran also suggests replacing an ancient, discolored bathroom floor with simple-to-apply vinyl tiles or a small piece of sheet vinyl. “You may not even need to take up the ancient floor. You can install the new floor right over the ancient one,” she says. If your tub and shower are looking dingy, consider re-grouting the tile and replacing any chipped tiles. A more complete cover-up is a prefabricated tub and shower surround. These one-piece units may require professional installation but can still be cheaper than paying to re-tile walls and refinish a worn tub.
Your waistline or your wallet?
Are you plotting to focus more on your waistline or your finances in the new year?
A survey by Allianz Life found that while 49 percent of Americans said they were more likely to make and keep a New Year’s resolution tied to diet and implementation, only 43 percent said they’ll keep one that leads to better money management. Eighty percent said financial resolutions are not on their list at all for the new year.
The results could be attributed to everywhere Americans feel they have hegemony over their lives. The majority of respondents (35 percent) said they don’t reckon they earn enough to worry about financial plotting. Twenty-three percent said they already have a financial plot, and 17 percent said the reason they won’t focus on financial plotting is because they lack professional advice.
The survey also open five economic roadblocks and questioned respondents to judge the ones that were the most worrisome in 2011. Nearly half (48 percent) said unemployment, followed by the U.S. budget fiasco (23 percent), home prices/sales (15 percent), volatile stock market (10 percent) and the European debt crisis (5 percent).
Since the economy started its slide in 2008, many Americans were forced to go into basic survival mode financially. But while health is valuable, finances shouldn’t be place on the back burner. The recession hurt everyone, including the wealthy, but those who went into it with a solid financial plot that focused on saving and investing have come out of it poised to take up again on the path to wealth. It’s never too late to start putting a plot in place.
Do your New Year’s resolutions include a review of your financial plot?
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Twisters uproot home insurance
When a tornado approaches, wise homeowners take cover. But lately, it’s been the homeowners insurance companies that are sheltering themselves from costly weather-correlated claims, sticking homeowners and taxpayers with the bill, according to the Consumer Federation of America, or CFA.
“Insurance companies have significantly and methodically decreased their financial responsibility for weather catastrophes like hurricanes, tornados and floods in recent years, shifting much of the risk and costs for these events to consumers and taxpayers,” says J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the CFA.
In his new report, “The Insurance Diligence’s Incredible Disappearing Weather Catastrophe Risk,” Hunter, a former centralized insurance administrator and state insurance commissioner, spoke out against proposed rate increases of 18 percent or more in 11 states.
“Insurance commissioners should block many of these pending rate increases because they place an unwarranted financial burden on homeowners, many of whom are coping with brutal financial difficulties in a terrible economy,” he says. “In the last 20 years, insurers have been so successful at shifting costs to consumers and taxpayers that they are currently overcapitalized and cannot justify privileged homeowners’ rates.”
While allowing that insurers have used traditional techniques such as reinsurance and diversification to ride out last year’s hammering storm claims, the study finds that much of the savings has come at the deprivation of taxpayers and homeowners.
The report says insurers have “hollowed out” the coverage they offer to homeowners by rising deductibles and capping the amount they will pay if the home is hurt or ruined. As a result, taxpayers face privileged disaster help payouts because homeowners have less money unfilled to help themselves.
CFA says in a summary of the report:
Additionally, insurers have significantly raised rates over the years, sometimes using questionable computer rate ‘models’ developed by other companies. Insurers have also used fine-print tricks … which allows insurers to refuse to pay for wind losses if any flood hurt occurs at about the same time, even if the wind losses occurred first. Finally, insurers have shifted coverage for homes in high-risk areas to state insurance pools.
Michael Barry, spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, says insurers are re-evaluating their risk in the face of unusually active storm seasons in recent years. Some companies even pulled out of weather-ravaged North Carolina and Alabama rather than risk another year of catastrophic loss.
“Last year was an extraordinary year for natural disasters,” Barry told Insurance Journal. “Insurers have taken a step back to assess whether or not they can absorb brutal losses.”
What can you do? Hunter recommends visiting your state’s insurance policy website to see what other owners of comparable properties are paying, as well as comparison sites that include customer reviews of insurers. He also recommends in quest of the advice of an independent agent, who, unlike a “captive” agent, sells policies from more than one company.
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Best way to pay for home improvements?
Thank you, Dear Jeanne Tom, I’m vacant to discuss the pros and cons of three options, along with some variations on these options: If you are able to increase the credit line to $235,000, you will have enough to take on the projects, you’ll hold on to the low interest rate on the debt, and you shouldn’t have to pay much, if any, in closing costs on the exchange to the loan. But the lender has to be willing to work with you. And note that you’ll be hanging onto the risk that the line’s interest rate could head privileged in the future because it’s based on the fill in rate. You can manage that risk by assertively paying down the loan weigh. A cash-out refinancing will pay off your existing first mortgage plus release money for your home improvements and repairs. The home equity line lender may have to agree to the refinancing. If it has to agree and won’t, then you can look into refinancing both the first mortgage and the line of credit. The terrible news is you will lose the low rate on your home equity line. You’ll also pay the privileged closing costs associated with a first mortgage. The excellent news is you will no longer face the interest rate risk on the line of credit, and you’ll be locking in at near-historic low rates on mortgage loans. Finally, you could look at taking out a home equity loan as a third mortgage. It’s called a third mortgage because it’s third in line to be paid in the case of foreclosure. It won’t be a third for long because you’ll pay off the first mortgage with the loan proceeds and have money to pay for your household projects. The closing costs should be minimal, but the interest rate will be privileged than they are on your existing first mortgage. You’d take this approach if you wanted to hold on to the home equity line and if that lender won’t sign off on the cash-out first mortgage refinancing. It’s hard to come up with definitive solutions when you incorporate an modifiable-rate loan into the equation. You know your needs and comfort levels more than I could ever hope to. Which approaches are the lenders willing to discuss, and how willing are you to take on the risk of privileged interest rates in the future to hold on to relatively low modifiable-rate debt over the next few years? Talk over these options with your lenders, and the best home improvement financing approach will rise to the surface like cream.
– Jeanne Tom
Even though you’ve done an brilliant job in describing your situation, a solution isn’t clear-cut. Your goal should be to lessen your total interest deprivation over a time period that allows you to pay off the loans while meeting your other financial goals. How you can do that depends in part on your lenders’ willingness to work with you and your attitude toward interest rate risk.
Debt Relief
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