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If you’re thinking about seeking a debt consolidation loan, it’s important to stop and think about what types of debt you should include in the loan program and what should be excluded. If you have a significant quantity of high interest debt, you may be able to benefit from a consolidation plan.
No matter what type of debt consolidation loan you seek, it’s likely that you’ll be encouraged to take all of your existing debt and place it in one loan. In some cases, this is the best possible choice. Under other circumstances, however, some debt items should be handled in a different way.

Leave Student Loans Out

For example, if you have student loans, it’s not really advisable to include them in your debt consolidation loan. No matter what type of consolidation loan you get, it’s not likely that you’ll beat the interest rate or repayment terms associated with your student loans. However, if you have an alternative student loan, it’s likely that the interest rate is quite high. In this case, you may want to include it in your consolidation program.

Don’t Consolidate Interest Free Debt

It’s also possible that some of your outstanding debt doesn’t carry any interest at all. For example, some 0% credit cards – such as those offered by ASDA Finance – do not charge you for purchases for a limited period. In this case, it will be better to continue making monthly payments to your creditor rather than taking non-interest bearing debt and rolling it into a loan.

Consider Remaining Time to Payoff

It’s also a good idea to carefully examine even your high interest debt to determine if consolidating it is a good idea. Look at how much time you have remaining on the debt to determine if you should just keep paying it the way it is. For example, if you have a car loan that will be paid in full in less than a year, you’re likely to be better off leaving it out of the consolidation.

What to Consolidate

Credit card debt is almost always best handled by a debt consolidation loan. If you’re carrying credit card balances, it can become very difficult to see your way clear of growing debt very quickly. It’s so hard to stay ahead of credit card interest that it is almost always a great idea to place them in a consolidation program.
The entire reason for getting a debt consolidation loan is to help you get out of debt faster. If you’re planning to pursue debt consolidation, you should be sure to include all of your high interest, long-term debt so you’ll have a solid long term debt reduction plan. You’ll be on your way to a debt free life if you choose the right items to consolidate, select an effective plan, and make your payments on time. To find out what you can offered take a look at Co Operative’s website for further information on loans and credit cards.

Before you can properly shop for something, you have to decide what you need. The first step in finding the right car insurance is to consider the coverage you need. There are essentially three standard types of insurance cover ranging from third party cover (protecting individuals against liability should they injure a third party or cause damage to a third party’s property) through third party fire and theft to comprehensive cover, which can offer additional protection for accidental damage, theft, fire damage as well as liability towards third parties.

Comprehensive car insurance providers such as ASDA Finance will offer a range of additional insurance coverage, while CIS are also a recommended provider of car insurance online. Before you take out your policy, however, it’s important to consider what you will need to include in your policy.
Essentially, the more bolt-on “goodies” you have, the higher the cost of your motor insurance as it’s likely they won’t be included as standard. So decide which of these bells and whistles you want and whether in fact you need any of them at all - you may be over insured.

Wherever you start looking, it pays to be armed with a few questions to make the best assessment of the policy that’s right for you. Here are a few key pointers:

• Is a courtesy car provided as standard if your car is stolen or written-off? Do you have to pay extra to insure the courtesy car?

• Is legal protection included? This type of protection applies in cases where, for example, you have a traffic accident that is not your fault. The policy offers the chance to be able to claim back your uninsured losses from the driver responsible. Generally, you will be offered cover up to £50,000 or £100,000 of legal fees. But bear in mind that the final decision as to whether the legal support is granted depends on the “win-ability” of any court action being considered.

• Does the policy offer roadside breakdown assistance? Is Europe covered? If so, this can cost a lot more.

• Do you pay extra for overseas cover or is it included as standard?

• What is the policy excess? What are the conditions? Many companies issue policies with a compulsory excess – although sometimes they may offer a voluntary excess. This refers to the amount of money you are willing to pay in the event of an accident. The more money you are willing to pay in excess, the lower your motor insurance premium.

• Does cover include personal injury, personal belongings or replacement locks?

• Does the policy include legal advice and medical counselling telephone lines?

• Will your insurer immediately authorise repairs from recommended agents? If you have to obtain quotes, the cost may be less.

• Will your no-claims bonus be affected if the accident wasn’t your fault or the cost cannot be recovered?

• Can you transfer a no-claims bonus built up while driving on somebody else’s insurance? They may also offer you a no-claims bonus if you are the named driver on someone else’s car insurance policy.

• Can you transfer your no-claims bonus to a second car?

• Can you protect your no-claims bonus? How many claims are you allowed under the scheme before your no-claims bonus is affected?

• Will you be charged extra for paying your car insurance by monthly direct debit?

You don’t need to get caught without car insurance. Finding insurance quotes is both cheap and easy. There’s no reason that you shouldn’t be able to find the right auto insurance for you. It is illegal in most states to not have the proper car insurance.

The buy to let phenomenon is one of those incredibly successful ideas that crops up every now and then and makes a handful of people a phenomenal amount of money. But how did this method of making enormous profits work? The theory is relatively simple, take out a mortgage in order to buy a property and then rent it out to tenants. The rent covers the mortgage repayments and as the price of the housing soars, the capital value of the property increases each year. This investment process has been so successful that in just nine years the amount of money borrowed in buy to let mortgages has gone from nothing to £108bn. One investor even saw his initial £950 investment multiply countless times over the last five years into a portfolio that is now worth almost £8m.

In the current climate, however, it’s not so easy to turn a profit. Property prices have increased 182% over the last decade, and it seems as if the market has become overvalued. This, coupled with a worsening world economy, has meant that even optimistic predictions for the next year are that prices will stay the same, with some suggesting a decrease of up to 20%. Many buy-to-let investors have found that house prices are so high that the money they recoup from rent is not enough to meet the dual cost of the mortgages and their additional duties as the landlord.

In other areas there have been a huge amount of buy-to-let properties on the market, driving down the cost of rent, and therefore further reducing the amount of profit that investors can make. Because there are so many rentable flats available, many prices have been driven down and there is less capital to be made when the time comes to sell.

One possible solution is to try and purchase the houses at a rate far below that of market value because homeowners need to sell fast, often in cases where people have defaulted on their mortgage, and the former owners are then offered the opportunity to be tenants on their home. Obviously, though, with large numbers of buy-to-let investors looking for the same opportunities, these severely reduced prices can be pushed back up by the competition.

In reaction to the credit crunch, lenders are also less willing to take risks, and many now refuse to lend on new-build properties, particularly in city centres where the property market is awash with new-build flats. Others are demanding much higher deposits of about 25% to ensure that there is some equity in the property in case of the investor defaulting.

So what is the future for the buy-to-let market? With rising mortgage rates, and a certain slowdown in the increase of housing prices, the potential for making profit has been markedly reduced. For the moment the future does not particularly bright, until the current global credit problems are resolved. Unfortunately the profitability of such a scheme requires on a steady increase in house prices, which are already at untenably high levels and out of the range of a number of first time buyers. Many people have made large profits from the buy-to-let scheme, but it looks increasingly like the bubble may have burst.

If you’re investor and you’ve just seen a great opportunity, then it’s still worth looking into the market. Take a look at Alliance and Leicester’s buy to let mortgages for some of the lowest APRs for buy to let investors on the market. It’s also worth taking a look at their mortgage calculator to see what you can afford.

For your average student going away for a weekend, or even a week, travel insurance is rarely regarded as an essential. The general perception exists that the principal purpose of travel insurance is to cover medical costs abroad in the eventuality of something going horribly awry. No one intends to be hurt or fall ill whilst travelling, and in general as the odds of anything adverse happening is low, insurance can – and often is – perceived as an extra and unnecessary expense.

Of course, the point of insurance is that it is there to provide cover if the unlikely happens, and the more times that it is unnecessary the better. This is not a reason not to have it though, because for the ten times that the insurance policy is not required, there will be one time when it suddenly becomes the most essential item you could possibly have taken with you.

So, how to get around this problem of people travelling without any insurance? Well firstly the above-mentioned misconception needs to be addressed. Yes, medical costs are a large component of the cost of a policy, but it also covers emergency evacuation to excess rental car damage and just about every possible disaster (big or small) in between.

Broadly speaking, when you choose to take the step from hotel to hostel you expect a certain drop in standard to go along with the drop in price. Sometimes, unfortunately, that drop in standard comes in the form of the security of the rooms. Nearly everyone knows someone who has had something stolen whilst travelling - although, it is curious how often something that is ‘lost’ eventually gets represented as something that was ‘stolen’ when hostels are involved. At any rate, the fact remains that things do go missing when travelling, and the smaller the budget that you’re travelling on, the greater the risk of things going missing. For this reason, it is always worth budgeting for travel insurance; it is a small investment that will provide protection against accidental damage and loss, or theft. AA Travel offers a single trip insurance that pays out upon the occurrence of any holiday mishaps.

At which point, the fact that your travel insurance policy covers loss of personal possessions can be incredibly useful. The attitude that insurance is an unnecessary expense is one that swiftly reverses when the £7 saved on not having insurance is wiped out by having to spend £200 to replace items that have gone missing.

Ultimately, though, whether people take out travel insurance or not is something that is up to them – and there’s no way of enforcing that people do. For the benefits that travel insurance offers, surely the few minutes and the few pounds that are spent to get a policy is an investment worth making. For budget travellers, the appeal of a low-cost flight is highly appealing. Travelzoo pool together cheap flights from across the internet, so thrifty travellers can book with the knowledge they are getting the best deal.

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Don’t be intimidated by the jargon. The financial world is awash with acronyms and money-speak but a little explanation can go a long way in breaking down the tasks and terminology associated with the purchase of a new home. What at first might appear complicated and confusing can be made relatively straightforward.

Here are a few explanations of expressions commonly encountered.

1. SVR - standard variable rate, is an interest rate determined by lenders above the Bank of England base rate. The difference between the base rate and SVRs has widened to a typical gap today of about 2%.

An estimated 40% of mortgage holders are currently on their lender’s standard variable rate (SVR) and will be most impacted by any rate cuts or rises. It’s worth remembering that lenders are under no obligation to pass on any rate cut.

A small handful of mortgages will track a different index to the base rate, often the Libor (London InterBank Offered Rate which is the rate that banks and lenders borrow on). It can be difficult to keep track of the rates on these loans, so they tend to be less popular with borrowers.

Many short-term mortgage deals revert to the SVR after the initial offer period, which usually means increased repayments.

2. Discount mortgage - this offers a certain percentage off the lender’s SVR for a set period, usually between one and five years. As the SVR moves up or down so do repayments on a discount mortgage.

3. Capped Rate Mortgages - lender will offer a ceiling or cap, above which repayments of interest cannot rise. Should the standard variable rate of the mortgage fall below the capped rate interest rate repayments will fall accordingly.

4. Collar - Most capped rate mortgages have a clearly set minimum rate (known as the collar) to which they can fall. It is imperative that borrowers are aware of what the collar on their loan is.

5. Tracker mortgage - also work on a variable rate, this time linked to the Bank of England base rate. Sometimes they last for the length of the mortgage, sometimes for only for a short period at the beginning of the loan. Some lenders offer discounted trackers, which have a rate that is a set percentage below the base rate, while others add a percentage to the base rate. Both deals move up and down in line with any changes announced by the Bank of England. This is great when rates are going down, but when rates are rising, so will your mortgage repayments.

6. Fixed-rate mortgage - this allows you to fix the rate of interest you pay on your loan for a set period of time, usually between one and five years, although longer term fixes are available. This is useful if you are stretching yourself to afford a property, as your repayments cannot increase during the fixed-rate period. Fixed-rate mortgages can save you money if interest rates are rising, but if the base rate falls you can end up paying more than borrowers on variable rate deals.

For some of the most competitive mortgage rates available in the UK, take a look at Alliance and Leicester. NatWest also come as a recommended supplier of mortgages.