FILAM FINANCE

You’ve always followed the rules of the road and have driven safely. You have no accidents and no moving violation tickets. You’ve just renewed your car insurance and found out that you’re premium just went up!! “Gotcha,” says your insurance company.

If your credit report is blemished, you might not be eligible for the lowest insurance premiums, despite your spotless driving record. The saddest part is that your insurance company doesn’t have to tell you that you’re not getting the best rates as a result of the Supreme Court decision.

I have good credit myself so I don’t have to worry about this, but I feel sorry for those who have just kept their driving record clean only to find out that they won’t be eligible for

The insurance companies are just looking for reasons to increase rates.

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, the unemployment rate is still really high and more and more people are losing their jobs. This happens also at the beginning of the twenty first century during the dot com crash where a lot of people with tech jobs lost their jobs and are scrambling big time for the supply of the jobs. Most tech people ended up driving a cab or doing something else. It should be noted that at this time, a lot of people are going back to school to acquire new skills to improve their marketability. Some would take a master’s degree.

For working visa employees, most of them are sent back to their home countries if they still cannot sustain any employment. Remember that their visa is sponsored by the company who hired them. If the employee could not find a new employer willing to sponsor them, then their working visa status is in big joepardy.
Health care careers are probably one industry that are very steady in hiring. Nurses are still in demand but companies are somewhat slowing down on the hiring as well. Pharmacist are still very in demand and lucrative even at this economy. The doctors and physician assistants are also growing in demand because of shortages. Did I mention college professors? As much as you can see lay offs on the teachers in the elementary school, college professors demand would probably increase because unemployed usually return to college to improve their skill set or acquire new ones to change careers.

The President of the United States and almost all financial planners will tell you that you should not rely on Social Security retirement anymore. Why? Because of the fact that in the next decade or so, the funding for this plan is already depleting.

That is why alternative retirement plans such as 401K, IRA, 457, SEP, etc are created. With, these plans, you have to contribute to those yourself. The advantage is that your contribution are tax deductible (with the exception of Roth IRA)and tax deferred.

If you don’t have knowledge of stocks, most financial planners will advise you to put your money in a mutual fund. Their investor relations departments should be able to help you if you have any questions.

With an IRA, you can also invest in real estate, businesses, or even cattle (such as horses) . However, you should consult your financial planner and tax professionals if you want to invest in these kind of plans!

I recently attended a baby shower of one of my friends. He and his wife is having their third child. They used to live in the city of Baldwin Park and now they live in the city of Whittier. At first, I though that they already own the house but he says that he is still renting the four bedroom and two bath house. The rent is still pretty cheap at $1,500 per month especially if the rent for a two bedroom apartment starting at $1,300 and a three bedroom for $1,500.

The house prices are still relatively high eventhough they have fallen for the past twelve months. However, the rental prices are still going up because now the homeowners are now turning into a renter. So the question is, which one would you prefer: a house or an apartment?

Well, most people actually go for the price. If the price is relatively cheaper in renting a house, then it is a better choice than an apartment. In the case of my friend, he really lucked out on that. However, please keep in mind that with the house, you are pretty much responsible for all the utilities. The advantage of renting in an apartment is that most of the apartments cover water and refuse that could amount to at least $50 per month. Some apartments also cover for gas utilities, which could yield additional savings.

In terms of space, some houses are roomier and offers a backyard. It also offers the peace of mind knowing that their is no noisy nextdoor apartment neighboors. If you are in the second floor apartment, the people downstairs are probably complaning about your footsteps and it goes vice versa when you are the one living downstairs.

My birthday is not until next week but since my wife and I are going on a cruise, we have to celebrate it early for my family. This past Sunday, we got a chance to see our cute little niece and nephews. The oldest nephew is physically challenged and needs to sit on a wheelchair. In fact he already had a surgery on one leg but the doctor could not perform the surgery on the other leg yet until the surgeried leg has healed. The doctor said that my nephew would need to build muscle first. My niece is at least two years old and the baby nephew six months old already.

Going back on my birthday, my wife did all the cooking and most of the dessert, we bought them at the fameous Cuban bakery/restaurant called Porto’s. What I like about this bakery is that you don’t see a lot of advertisement or commercials and yet everytime we go their, it is always jampacked! The lines are always long and they do serve a lot of cakes, pastries, meat products, etc. They have a Starbucks-like coffee shop, catering, etc. If you ever be in the Glendale area, this is the restauran/bakery that you don’t want to miss.

My wife cooked a mixture of Filipino and American foods. Foods like Kare-kare, Korean BBQ, spaghetti, “lumpia” fresh, eggrolls, chicken wings, fried shrimp marinated in garlic, etc. It’s a lot of work but the food taste really good. I think my wife can actually start a catering business if she wanted to but it is just too tiring.

It is April 15 again and here in the United States, it means the deadline for taxes for those individuals and businesses who are on a calendar tax year. It is actually 45 days from the end of your tax year. So if you are on a fiscal year and your tax year end is June 30, then you have until October 15 to file your taxes.

It is always a misconception that if you don’t file on time, you will get penalized. Actually, you will only get penalized if you owe taxes and you don’t mail your payment by midnight of April 16. So the best way not to incur any penalties, if you think you won’t be able to make the deadline, is to estimate your taxes and issue a check to the IRS. Again, the mail should be postmarked by April 15.

Tomorrow is also the last day to file an amendment return for those who have filed their taxes for the tax year 2004. This means that if you made a mistake on your 2004 tax return that causes your refund to decrease, then you have to refile it so you can get the additional refund caused by the mistake. So if you made a mistake on your tax return, you have three years to fix your return.

Also, if you have not filed your taxes for tax year 2004 and you are expecting a refund, then you are out of luck! Believe it or not, a lot of people do not file their return because they don’t make enough money and there were no taxes withheld on their paycheck. Most of these taxpayers do not know that they might be able to qualify for an earned income credit which would give them additional money. Billions of dollars sometimes are not claimed because a lot of people who qualify for these kind of refunds do not file their returns.

Lastly, for those people who made at least $3,000, it is best to file a return even though they are not getting any refund. The reason being is that it would let them qualify for the economic stimulus that will be given out around May.

So good luck to those procrastinators!!

My wife and I are going on a cruise come April 2008. One of the restaurant’s dinner requires a formal wear, so that means suit, ties, or tux. Anyways, I have an old suit that probably does not fit me anymore. So it is time to go look for a new suit. There are a lot of stores that specialized in men’s fashion , but I want to go to a store that specializes in suits. There are quite a few stores in our area that I can go to such as the Los Angeles Fashion District located downtown, there’s the Men’s Wearhouse, the Three Day Suit Broker, and so on. Normally, suits sold in these places are a lot cheaper than the ones that are sold at Macy’s, Nordstrom, Sears, or any other mall department stores.

There is also another suit store located in Santa Monica that sells the suit wholesale but I forgot where it is located. So in the next few weeks, I would go on window shopping with my wife!!

As you know, life insurance are use to protect the love ones from a financial devatation when the breadwinner dies. Most financial experts recommend a coverage of around ten times your annual salary. So if you are making $100,000 per year, you should try to get a coverage of around $1,000,000.
In essence, there are only two types of life insurance policies: whole life and term.
Whole life policies - which has life insurance coverage and a savings component. This is also called a permanent life insurance. It builds up cash value so that if you wanted to cancel your policy, there would be cash value that you can withdraw. Other benefits of the savings component is that you can borrow money against it. In addition, the interest on the savings is tax free.
Whole life policies comes in different form, be it universal life, variable life and any other derivatives from it.

Term Life Insurance -is an insurance where it is limited to a number of years. This is also called temporary insurance and the coverage can range from 1-yr to 30-yr. This is just like your car insurance where it does not build cash value, it only covers you for the financial loss. The monthly premium is way cheaper than the whole life because it does not have the savings component. Most recently, there is one form of term insurance that are being sold in the market. This is called the Return of Premium (ROP), wherein if you have a policy with a 30-year term worth $500,000 in coverage and you pay a monthly premium of $100 per month, you can receive a refund of your monthly premiums if at the end of the 30 year term, you are still alive. If you die before the end of the term, then you get the $500,000 coverage. In essence, the ROP is a hybrid of term and whole life because it is a temporary insurance that carries a cash value.

Consumer buys insurance to protect themselves from financial devastation in case of an unexpected or unforeseen loss. Be it life, title, property, home, mortgage, health, car, renter’s insurance, etc.
Since most families do not have enough savings, they do rely on the insurance. For example, people buy car insurance so that in case of an accident, the insurance is the one who’s going to pay for the property damages and medical expenses to you or to the other party. For life insurances, it is used to pay for the loss earnings of the breadwinner in case he/she dies.
However, which life insurance would you buy?
There are two kinds of life insurance, whole life and term life insurance.
People should purchase term insurance because it is cheap and gives you more covergage for your buck. The whole life insurance has a savings component that you really don’t need. You can save the money on your own for a better return. In fact, most financial planners would advise an individual to buy term and invest the difference of the premium from a whole life policy with the same coverage.

Believe it or not, we still just have regular TV programming. Yap no cable or satellite, yet. For a moment, my wife and I are thinking if we would need to have either cable or satellite programming. As for me, it was kind of tough when it’s basketball and football season and I can’t watch my favorite teams. There are also some good movies that are available with cable/satellite that we can avail of.

But sometimes, we are thinking if we really do need those premium programming. We spent most of the time with a computer and it seems that the good TV shows can be seen with regular programming. Another thing to consider is sometimes we don’t spent that much time with TV so the extra perk would just be an expense.

But if we decided to do the premium programming, which one would be a better fit: cable or satellite. Actually, even if satellite offers a good deal, we won’t be able to hook up a satellite in our apartment as it is not allowed. We can only hook up Cat 5 cable so pretty much we don’t have a choice.

So maybe in the future when we buy our house, we can actually switch to a satellite programming if we wanted to.