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By Chris Edison

Getting a refinance on your mortgage is common practice nowadays due to the drop in interest rates and the receptiveness of borrowers toward the idea of refinancing. Although many have vouched for its benefits, house owners should evaluate their personal preferences, financial standing, and current mortgage status and compare these with the various options available before planning their next move.

There are many facts surrounding the concept of refinancing and this article will provide you with an insight of important aspects which you need to know in order to make an informed decision. Refinancing your mortgage is for the long-term and thus needs to be a choice that is thoroughly considered.

1. Penalty Costs
The process of refinancing basically means paying off your current mortgage and obtaining another mortgage at a different interest rate (usually at an adjustable rate) and loan term. This causes penalty costs to be imposed on your current mortgage by your current lender, as you have opted to pay off your loan earlier than agreed upon. Occasionally, depending on the status of your current loan, penalties incurred may be higher than the cost savings obtained from refinancing your mortgage, therefore making the idea of refinancing no longer attractive.

2. Savings on monthly repayments
When you refinance your mortgage, you may most likely switch to a new mortgage structure that will benefit you in the long run, especially with lower monthly repayments. With the availability of Adjustable Rate Mortgages, interests incurred are relatively lower than the traditional Fixed Rate Mortgages, which has been incentive enough for home owners to switch their mortgage loan plans. However, although interest rates may seem to be lower at first glance, home buyers should practice due diligence in tabulating the actual amounts paid over the long term in comparison with their current mortgage repayments.

3. Transactions costs
As with any mortgage transactions, a refinancing exercise will involve transaction costs such as attorney fees, points, appraisal fees, inspection fees and prepayment penalties. All these hike up the cost of refinancing, which need to be balanced out with the cost savings obtained from switching loans in the first place. As a rule of thumb, if you plan to stay in your current property for the long-term, transaction costs will be offset with savings in repayment amounts over the long-run. Therefore, refinancing will then be a good option for you.

4. Tax deduction possible
Refinancing may help you regain tax deductions on interest if you have already used up your allocated amount for tax deductions. Therefore, with a new mortgage, you will be able to deduct interests paid from your taxable income, thus helping to reduce your taxes payable.

5. Get cash out of your equity
Read this full story: 7 Facts on Mortgage Refinancing

Vodafone has joined forces with Western Union on an international mobile money transfer pilot; residents in the U.K. town of Reading will be able to send money to the mobile phones of relatives and friends in Kenya.

Money transfers has already become a success in Kenya via the M-PESA (”M” for “mobile” and “Pesa,” the Swahili word for “money”) system, which, for example, can be used by someone in an urban area to forward money to relatives in rural areas, and people in rural areas can pay off a loan in an urban area.

The service is marketed by Safaricom, in which Vodafone holds a stake, and there are currently around 4 million M-PESA customers, and that number is growing by approximately 200,000 users a month, according to Caroline Dewing, a spokeswoman at Vodafone.

“What we are doing is extending M-PESA internationally, and we are partnering with Western Union to do this, because they have such a huge foot print in terms of stores and knowledge in the space of international remittances,” Dewing said.

A person who wants to transfer money will be able to go into a Western Union store in Reading and say that they want to transfer some money to a Safaricom cell phone in Kenya. For the receiver in Kenya it will work just like any M-PESA transfer.

“They’ll get a text message saying you have been given X amount of money, and they can then choose how to store that: money on the phone, send it on to someone else or go to an M-PESA agent and cash it,” Dewing said.

Convenience and the ability to send smaller amounts for a low fee are the two major benefits compared to traditional money transfers. Sending up to £100 costs £4.90 (US$7.35), and £100 to £200 is £6.90, according to Dewing.

The trial will be conducted for three to four months. During those Vodafone will test all elements of the service and also see if the fee structure works, according to Dewing.

The goal is to roll it out between the U.K and Kenya, and then on to other markets within the near future, said Dewing, who declined to be more specific.

Using the mobile for either money transfers or as an electronic wallet is getting a lot of attention from the financial and telecom sectors.

Western Union is, for example, already working with Orascom Telecom, Globe Telecom and SMART Communications.

Read this article: Vodafone and Western Union to Partner on Money Transfers

In storefronts and homes, tradition rules in this year’s Christmas decorations

This year inexpensive, natural decorations are popular, as people turn to more traditional baubles to decorate their homes for Christmas.

With boughs of holly, fresh fruit, fresh greens, pine cones, wired ribbon and brown paper bags, a family can decorate their entire home for little or no expense, said Patti Pearce, owner of Flowers by Design, a floral shop on Main Street in Bel Air.

For years, Pearce has decorated homes and storefront windows in the county.

Although total sales have decreased, she said she has seen more customers this year. Last year she had a handful of business customers who spent $150 to $200, and this year she had about 20 customers, who spent about $75, she said.

“We really wanted to make Main Street look beautiful this year, so I gave businesses decorations at wholesale,” she said. “I got a lot of customers, but they aren’t spending a lot of money.”

When she decorates homes, she gives people hints on how to save money, she said.

She has about a half-dozen homes that she decorates inside and out. Although the customers might spend between $500 and $1,500 for decorations, many of them choose to use the decorations in their home for multiple years after she decorates the first time, she said.

The first suggestion is to plan ahead.

When Pearce purchased her home, she planted a winterberry bush and a Magnolia tree in her yard, she said.

“Winterberry is very expensive to buy, even for a florist,” she said. “But since I have it in my yard, I can go out and clip some off and use it for holiday decorations. I don’t suggest that people go steal greens from their neighbors’ yards, but that they use what they have available.”

Pearce uses the greens in window boxes and on wreaths, centerpieces, swags and trees, she said.

“Many people put their window boxes away in the fall,” she said. “Leave them up and clip fresh greens and put them over the dirt. Then put a bow on the box, and it looks beautiful.”

Or gather fresh pine cones and spray paint them gold and put them in a bucket on the front porch, she said.

Read this article - Dressed for holidays

Legend has it that the poinsettia made its first appearance in the hands of a poor Mexican girl named Pepita who had no gift to present the baby Jesus on Christmas Eve, according to Paul Ecke Ranch, an Encinitas grower that supplies most of the flowering poinsettias in the United States.

Pepita’s cousin, Pedro, told her that any gift given with love would suffice. Hearing this, Pepita created a bouquet of weeds gathered from the side of the road.

But realizing they were a sad excuse for a gift, she fought back tears as she approached the altar where there was a statue of Jesus. As she handed them over, she happened to glance down and see that her weeds miraculously transformed into a red bouquet of flowers — poinsettias.

The legend was recently retold a slightly different way in the London Free Press, which had the young girl grabbing branches from a poinsettia shrub, not weeds. Either way, the poinsettia remains the traditional Christmas flower.

With Christmas less than three weeks away, it’s again showtime for poinsettias — and they are keeping local growers, retailers and decorators busy.

Poinsettias are the top-selling potted flowering plant in the United States, with $181 million in sales last year, up 6 percent from 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

California accounts for 31 percent of the domestic sales for all potted plants.

At Green Thumb International in Ventura, nurseryman Jack Doughty said the most common question he gets from customers is how do you care for them.

“You want to keep them away from too much direct sunlight,” he said. And water them just like a Christmas tree, keeping them “moist but not soggy wet.”

Green Thumb is getting several shipments weekly.

“We go through them like mad here this time of year,” Doughty said.

One of the store’s suppliers is Santa Paula-based Do Right’s Plant Growers.

Owner Dudley Davis recently provided a tour of his greenhouses where about 80,000 poinsettias were growing. He pulled back plastic curtains to reveal what looked like a sea of red velvet.

“We do 85 percent of our production in the traditional red,” he said. The remaining 15 percent consists of five colors — merlot, apricot, marble, polar (white) and miro (a marbling of pink and white).

The season typically begins around Nov. 15. Davis said 10 percent to 15 percent of his crop is sold by Dec. 5.

Read full source article here - Traditional Christmas flower in high demand

We get some odd-ball press releases and story pitches here at TechFlash HQ. And this one, from a Fremont, Calif.-based company that has developed a $99.99 anti-snoring device called SnorePro certainly would qualify.

“HBI-USA, a biomedical device company, announced today its new SnorePro which uses its proprietary Dynamic Snore Detection (DSD) technology to precisely detect snores and to gently issue a programmable digital pulse to prevent snoring. The digital pulse functions like a spouse by nudging their snoring bedmate, which in turn trains the body to change sleep positions to eliminate the snoring. Bedmates of snorers lose an average of one hour of sleep per night due to snoring. The stimulation may disturb the snorer; however, it helps their bedmates to enjoy and regain sleep as they won’t have to nudge the snorer any more.”

Described as a wrist-watch style device with a built-in LCD screen, the press release goes on to say that the SnorePro can track the improvements of the snorer over time.

Read full article here

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