Archive for May, 2009

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I’m off to Jonathan Jay’s Marketing Seminar Weekend 30th and 31st May 2009 and I’m looking forward to learning a load of new magic money tips that you can use in your personal and business life. Not only that it will be a great opportunity to network and meet new people. If you aren’t getting out and about and meeting people to help you grow, either in a personal capacity or in your business then you are missing a trick. The size of your net worth is related to the size of your net work.

A bit about Jonathan. If you’ve never heard of him, Jonathan founded a very successful multi-million pound business, training over 16,000 people from 52 countries.  After eight years, Jonathan decided he would exit the business and in November 2007 sold the company to a private equity firm. 

I think that this weekend is going to be great (and so is the weather!). If you are out and about I hope you really enjoy yourself… but remember to come back and read my new posts on my www.magicmoneytips.com. Better still why not sign up for my newsletter and I’ll keep in touch with you that way too.

To your success.

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XSitePro website design software is one of the market leaders of website design software  available in the market today.

If you make money by building websites or by selling digital products or real goods and services online, and need an easy to use, feature packed software package which means you don’t hand control over to webdesigners that haven’t got a clue about marketing via the internet, then this is the perfect product for you.

I bought the first version of XSitePro on the back of a recommendation by a top internet guru and frankly, I’m glad I did. It is a great piece of software and very powerful too. It has been devised so that everybody involved in creating static websites can do so reasonably quickly and easily, and when they brought out the second version things just took off into space. The software has been literally packed to the brim with extra features and tools that in truth have been designed with the internet marketing crowd in mind.

So much has been put into the software that if I could say I have any negatives about it it would be the size of the manuals! You can buy hardcopies or you can print over 1,000 pages of manual which gives you in-depth explanations of the product as well as various tutorials showing you how, step by step, you can get your first great looking website up and running very quickly. If, like me, you prefer not to print the manual you will find you’re looking at the screen a  lot as you’re going through it all. On the plus side the manual is littered with hyperlinks to make the process of finding the information that you need in a hurry so much quicker.

One of the coolest features about the software is the ability to publish content in advance but on a timed basis so that you can prepare it one day for the week or month ahead, set the date it should be published and then forget it! It’s a feature the XSitePro creators call “Page Scheduling” and it will help everybody that posts regular content to their sites and would rather prepare stuff in advance rather than log on to the PC every day and post and upload content to keep their sites fresh. It’s basically your website on auto-pilot!

I invite you to go take a look and read more about it for yourself. What I’ve mentioned about the product doesn’t really touch the surface at all. To find out more about  XSitePro website design software just click here.

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What Is The Best Savings Rate Available Today you ask. Good question… and the answer is 6%. There are some regular savings accounts offering more than this but the headline rate is NOT the rate you will receive. Normally the catch is that you’re only allowed to save a maximum amount each month, not stick the whole sum of money into the account on day 1. Which means that you won’t really be getting the full 6% annual interest on your money… you’ll be getting a blended and lower rate.

This is how it works. Let’s say today is the 6th April, start of a new tax year, and you want to invest some spare cash in a cash ISA. Now the regular saver ISAs tend to insist on a monthly payment rather than a lump sum, thus the term “regular saver” in the title of the account.

So what happens is you invest £300 on 6th April, then another £300 on 6th May and so on until 6th March the following year when you finish the savings plan. What this means is that on the first deposit of £300 on the 6th April you will get paid 6% on £300 for the full 12 month term. On the second deposit of £300 on the 6th May you will get eleven twelfths (11/12) of 6%, the next month you get ten twelfths (10/12) of 6% and so on until you reach the end of the year. Over the year the AVERAGE rate of interest you receive will be lower than the amount you would’ve received had you just socked the full £3,600 straight into the ISA cash account on day one!

Conclusion: just be careful and know that the headline rate isn’t always the true rate of interest you will be receiving.

If you do want to invest some money and receive a REAL rate of return of 6% then sign up to my list (enter your name and email address in the boxes in the top right corner of this page) and I’ll send you details of a very secure and profitable way of earning 6% on your money.

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East London Credit Union now offers full banking facilities, including a current account and a debit card. Traditionally Credit Unions could offer only savings and budget accounts operated by passbook over the branch counters. Later they added the option of taking out small loans with them at reasonable rates of interest as a way of beating the loan sharks and doorstep lenders that operate in vulnerable areas of the community suffering from poverty and financial exclusion.

But now, the Tower Hamlets Credit Union (visit their website at www.thccu.co.uk) offers a basic current account service that you can use 24/7. You can get the money you want from your account from most cash machines (using the Visa Debit Card) wherever you are in the UK.

You also get a handy Visa Debit Card (also known as a cash card) which can be used to pay for goods and services over the telephone, internet, shops and restaurants. You can also have your salary paid directly into your account direct from your employer… very handy and very secure!

Also, with the basic bank account, you can begin to pay bills by direct debit on a monthly or quarterly basis. Most utility companies offer a reduction in your bills if you use this method as it saves them the administration costs involved in collecting and accounting for payments. This helps you to save money on your bills too.

The big question is whether you can get a basic bank account if you have a bad credit history. Well the answer is yes! It doesn’t matter what your credit history is like, you will be eligible for an account since you won’t be given an overdraft facility.

The account will cost you £3 per month as a service fee for running the account, but it is a small price to pay for having the convenience of an account that previously you weren’t able to get from one of the mainstream banks.

Look up your local credit union and see what services they now provide that you might find useful.

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Breaking News: Bank of England Maintains Bank Rate at 0.5%

This morning on BBC Breakfast Television (www.bbc.co.uk/breakfast) Ray Boulger from Charcol (read his blog here: http://www.charcol.co.uk/knowledge-resources/ray-boulgers-blog/) mentioned that now was probably the best time to look at getting a fixed rate mortgage for a five year term minimum if you can. Yes the fees are quite high and Yes you may be locking into a rate that’s higher than the current pay rate on the Standard Variable Rate (or SVR for short) BUT if you can afford the increased rate, then what you are doing is effectively locking in your payments so that in the event that base rates go up (as I and others believe they will) you won’t be hit in the pocket with any nasty suprises!

Go and see your financial adviser/mortgage broker now and look at whether now is the best time for you to fix your rates. If you haven’t got an adviser and you live in London, contact me and I’ll give you the name of my personal financial adviser. Happy mortgage hunting!