The Importance of a Strong Support Group

Strong Support Group Is Important

When you are planning to better yourself and go through a personal development change, something you need, beyond confidence, is a strong support group. A strong support group will help you make the changes you need in your life because they will be able to tell you what you may not be doing right, what you need to change and they will keep you on the path to becoming a better person.

Your support group does exactly what the name suggests, they support you. They tell you that you can do it, they push you to better yourself and they are there for you when you need them. Support groups are found in many different things including groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, who have a strong support system for their members to lean on.

You can work on this same principle with your own support group who will guide you and keep you on the path to bettering yourself. Your support group can come in many different varieties. You can talk with people who have gone through the same thing and use their experience to help you. If you want to lose weight, talk with people who have done so because they will know all the pitfalls that you can get into and they will ensure that you do not fall off the path. However, you can also go closer to home and use your family as a support group. Your family will want you to be a better person, and they will be happy to help you achieve that. Whether it is your parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, children, or your spouse, you can use them as a support group because in the end you are bettering yourself personally for them. You can also talk with your friends because your friends often know you best and will help you better yourself as a person. They will be able to support you when you need it because that is what a friend is for. Additionally, you can talk with co-workers because you spend 40 hours a week with them and they will help you when you are not near your friends or your family. Your co-workers will often be happy to aid you in bettering yourself.

A support group is something that will give you confidence, tell you what you need to hear and keep you going towards being a better person. They will be the people who you talk to and who talk to you, when you are working to develop yourself personally. It will not always be easy when you are going through personal development, for you or your support group, but in the end everyone will be stronger for the journey. Any type of personal development journey is difficult, especially when you go alone, so why not just use the help of a support group to give you a helping hand on the journey? It is not cheating; it is using what is available to you for success.

A Global Recovery Without Growth

OECD Expects A Period Of Stunted Growth Over The Course Of 2010

First Published: ADawnJournal.com Published Date : July 1, 2009

The good news first, so no-one loses hope: Next year will see, in Canada and the rest of the industrial world, an economic recovery from the recession we currently find ourselves in. Now, the bad news: there will be little or no growth in the economy as part of this recovery. So says the global Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in a report published this week which will leave many people wondering whether to smile or frown. The general consensus has been that the recession is heading for an end later this year with a cautious but pronounced period of growth next year. The Bank of Canada for its part claims that growth may even reach 2.5%, but the OECD thinks differently.

This report seems to be more pessimistic in general than the assumptions of the World Bank, with the OECD expecting a period of stunted growth over the course of 2010 which will see the Canadian economy grow by a small margin of 0.7%, lower than the USA’s figure of 0.9% and the world in general at 2.3%. The World Bank, which does not have a breakdown for Canada, expects the US to have growth of 1.8%. Things could be worse of course as, according to the OECD, the United Kingdom will experience no growth at all. It should also be noted that the OECD forecast is just one of many, and the most pessimistic of them all so far – forecasts certainly do not always reflect the eventual truth.

What does seem universally accepted is the belief that the latter part of this year will see an end to the market contraction which has characterized 2009. Aside from that, it is difficult to know what to believe, with market figures completely failing to provide a uniform indicator of how the future will pan out. Goods and retail purchases have been rising in Canada and above, for example, but the housing market, particularly in the United States, has failed to perform as well as had been hoped. Reading the trends is likely to remain a lottery for some time to come, although news that the recession is soon to be over will hopefully become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with consumer confidence expected to grow as a result.

On the last point, the OECD and the World Bank seem at least to be of one mind. The global recession does not have long to run, whichever way you read the figures. OECD member countries have seen market contraction in the region of 4.1%, expected to be the overall figure for this year. In March, this figure was estimated at 4.3%. Given the horrors of 2008 and much of this year, the recession was inevitable, but it looks to be nearing its end. Economic strategists seem to be of a single mind on stimulus packages too, giving the concept a cautious thumbs up, urging that the governments implement the programs included under those packages, and advising against further action to pump economies up once recovery does appear – correction is good, micro-management may be detrimental.

How to Create a Bucket List to Improve Your Life

Make a Bucket List to Improve Your Life

Personal development is about creating something more than yourself. When you develop yourself personally, you will build upon yourself and improve yourself. This means going out of your element and doing things you may not have thought doing, but always hoped that you would. This is why the concept of a bucket list is so important to personal development. With a bucket list, you are creating a list that will help you improve yourself because you are going through the things that you want to do in your life before you ‘kick the bucket’.  To create a proper bucket list, one that will not disappoint you or be counter-productive, you should do the following to make your bucket list the best possible:

1. You may want to write your bucket list all at once, but you do not need to do this. Write down the first few things can be written right away but keep your bucket list with you at all times because over time you will think of new things that you want to do.

2. Don’t just pick the normal things that everyone picks, like ‘See Paris’. Think outside the box and choose things that are a bit more interesting. Riding a motorbike down the Great Wall of China is a good example of this.

3. Look at the list of others to see what interests them and what they may want to do. You may find that you also want to do those things.

4. Put things on your list that you can accomplish right now, at a low cost, like learning a language, while also making some things easier to achieve than others. If all your list items are very hard to do, you will only get discouraged. That being said, only putting easy things on your list will make it not worthwhile for you to do.

5. Put your bucket list up on the internet because this will make you accountable to the people who see the list. They will both help you and push you to do your bucket list and they will keep you on the path to accomplishing the things that you want. It is like an audience watching you and making sure you do what you have promised to do.

6. Probably the most important thing you can do is to make your bucket list something that is fun. If it is all serious, you won’t enjoy it and the most important thing about personal development is enjoying the person you are becoming and what you are doing. That is why you want to make your bucket list fun, so that you are always looking forward to what you are going to be doing in the future on the list.

A bucket list is something that is very important when you want to develop yourself personally and make yourself a better person. So begin today to make yourself a better person with your own personal bucket list.

Leaked – Mega Changes Are Coming to the Scotiabank Gold American Express Card

Huge Changes for Scotia Gold Amex Card

Sites like Reddit had leaked about new updates coming to the Scotiabank Gold American Credit card starting August 1, 2019. If this leaked news is true, Scotia Gold Amex will be in direct competition with the American Express Cobalt credit card.

Today, I will briefly l discuss these changes (assuming the leaked information is true) and will provide my insights on the new (after changes) Scotia Gold Amex card.

Annual Fee

Annual will go up to $120 from $99. Additional card annual fee will not change and remains at $29.

Rewards Structure

Now: 4x Gas, Grocery, Dining, Entertainment | 1X Everything Else

Aug 1 Onward: 5X Grocery, Dining, Entertainment | 3X Gas, Daily Transit, Select Streaming |1X Everything else

Foreign Transaction Fees

Now: 2.5%

Aug 1 Onward: 0%

Travel Insurance Changes

Travel Emergency Medical: 65> age will lower from 10 days to 3 days.

Trip Cancellation/Trip Interruption: Amount will lower from $2,500 each to $1,500 each

Price Protection

This insurance will no longer be offered after August 1, 2019.

Everything else not mentioned above is not changing. As you can see, with these changes Scotia is trying to capture a significant chunk of the Canadian credit card market and they are expecting to grab a lot of Amex Cobalt customers.

One difference in points compared to Amex Cobalt is that Scotia Points are not convertible to Marriott Bonvoy (and then to 44 frequent-flyer program airline miles such as Aeroplan, Avios).

However, the Amex Cobalt Card does not provide as many benefits as the Scotiabank Gold Amex does. For example, Amex Cobalt does not offer concierge service, trip cancellation insurance, zero foreign currency fee, and many more.

In the past, the Amex Cobalt card was the only card in Canada that provided 5X rewards on some categories. Now that we have Scotia Gold Amex competing, plus it’s giving a lot more than Cobalt, consumers will have to take a hard look to decide which card to keep.

I do have an Amex Cobalt Card, but I haven’t decided yet whether to keep it or cancel it after August 1 and replace with Scotia Gold Amex.

I have a video on what I discussed above and you can watch it here: Changes Are Coming to the Scotiabank Gold American Express Credit Cards Another credit card which is changing also is the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite. I will talk and video about this shortly.

Joint Mortgages – The Positives And The Pitfalls

What Is A Joint Mortgage?

First Published: July 2, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

Taking out a mortgage is an almost indispensable part of buying a house for many individuals. Those of us who have been party to a windfall via inheritance, as a prize or a bonus may be able to pay directly by cash to own the house we want. The rest of us will need, as most people do, to find a mortgage that suits our needs and our means.

Mortgage borrowing is quite unlike any other kind of borrowing. The amounts are higher than any typical loan or credit line, and consequently the term of the loan will usually be longer. As the term is longer, this means the scope for default is consequently larger. With the larger scope for defaulting on a mortgage comes the need for banks to cover themselves before lending. The outcome of this is that if you cannot meet mortgage payments, your home is at risk.

With the higher level of commitment and its knock-on effect on just about everything you could possibly think of, the amount of thinking that needs to go into taking out a mortgage naturally will increase. Although all you really want is to buy a house, you need to stop and think about what the best way of going about things will be. Can you afford to take a mortgage that will secure you the house you really want? How sure are you that the payments you can make today will be affordable five years from now, or ten years, or twenty? If borrowing to buy a house will really over-stretch you, you may need to take a different angle.

The angle that people will traditionally take – if they find that their borrowing ability is not conducive to buying a house alone – is to look at taking a joint mortgage with someone else. If the house purchase is part of a couple, married or otherwise, trying to set up home together, then there may be an obvious situation. In some couples, though, only one is gainfully employed and eligible to get a good mortgage deal. In others, it may be that one of the partners has poor credit history, which will lead any lending institution to either decline the application or at the very least put restrictive terms on it.

Some people will choose to co-sign for a mortgage with a parent or other older relative. In these cases, assuming that the elder party is “young enough”, there is a lot of scope for a good deal. However, it is important to realize that although a joint mortgage brings in two different incomes, two different histories and two different brains, it also encompasses two different personalities – and if at any point those two personalities start to clash, there will be problems in the operation of the account that could make an individual look like the most secure borrower of all. If borrowing as joint mortgage account holders it is important to take account of this, and make sure the loan is flexible.