What Is A Mortgage?

Mortgage 101: Tips

First Published: June 24, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

You would be surprised indeed to know that a great many people do not really know what a mortgage is. If you are one of those people, don’t feel too bad about it. You’re in good company, and quite numerous company at that. For one reason or another, in early years we don’t learn that much about private finance. In school we’re busy learning reading, writing and arithmetic, then sciences, languages, history and so forth. Then it’s off to college where we specialize  in whatever we were really good at when we were at high school. After college we’re more concerned about finding a job than anything else, so by the time we get to actually dealing with buying a house we’re into our twenties and heading rapidly for our thirties.

It is therefore entirely possible to get to a certain stage in your life and all of a sudden realize that these “mortgages” of which so many of your contemporaries speak are actually an entirely foreign topic to you. You know they have something to do with houses and money, and you can probably assume that they are involved in making available the money to buy a house, but there is a whole lot more involved. Although you may well be fully aware that there is a lot more to mortgages than that, it may not be immediately clear to you what that “more” constitutes. Here are some of the basic, yet important, facts and details about mortgages.

· A mortgage is a loan taken out with the express purpose of buying real estate (see? The money-house thing was right.)

· The loan is usually paid back over a term of twenty five + years. Government plans and guidelines hint that they would prefer to make the maximum term somewhat shorter.

· Given the large amounts of money lent in a mortgage, and the extensive period of time over which they are paid back, the bank asks for security on the loan. This is almost always taken in the form of the property the mortgage is taken out to buy.

· As the above suggests, failure to maintain payments on a mortgage will possibly result in the bank taking ownership of the house via a “repossession” or foreclosure.

· The banks are then required to make the house ready for sale and take care of the sale themselves at a reduced price – therefore they prefer to look for a way of agreeing a reduced payment until the customer can pay the full amount.

At the end of the mortgage period, congratulations! You are the owner of the house you bought all those years ago. Prior to that it is part-owned between yourself and the bank, but as long as you choose a mortgage on which you can realistically keep up with payments there is no reason why you need worry. Common sense plays a huge part in picking the right mortgage, and as long as you apply your brain when choosing you should stand a good chance of keeping ahead of the game. Just make sure you have a fall-back if times get tough.

How to set realistic goals

Setting Realistic Goals

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they are bettering themselves is set goals that are too hard to achieve. Goals are very important because they will allow you to be all that you can be, but when you set goals that are too lofty, you can be setting yourself up for failure. This is why it is so important that when you set goals, you set goals that you can achieve not too easily, but not too difficulty either.

An example of this is to say that you want to develop yourself personally by losing 100 pounds in a month. Well, you cannot do this without getting surgery and surgery is often the easy way out and will not allow you to keep the weight off. This is an unrealistic goal. However, if you set a goal of losing 100 pounds in a year and a half, then you are creating a goal that is achievable, but not too easy. If you set a goal of losing 100 pounds in 10 years, you are not challenging yourself enough.

Goals will help as guide posts for your journey to becomi8ng a better person. You will be able to use your goals to determine how you are going to better yourself and the achieving of those goals will show you that you are making progress.

To ensure you do not set goals that are unrealistic, you should do the following:

1. Make a list of things you can do right now, without much money and with ample time available.

2. Looking at that list, determine what can be done sooner rather than later, and then sort the items on the list in terms of when they can be done.

3. At this point, ask yourself each time you read a goal whether you think it is realistic or not. Saying that 100 pounds in six months is not realistic is not cheating; it is being real with yourself.

4. Based on the answers you give for each question, adjust your goals accordingly so that you can ensure you have created goals that you will be able to achieve without having to set yourself up for failure.

One of the biggest reasons people fail in their goals is that they set themselves up for failure. Running a marathon is a great goal, but if you have never run a marathon before and plan to next weekend, you are only setting yourself up to fail at that task. As a result, you will want to ensure that you make that goal realistic because then when you achieve it, you will feel that much better at your accomplishment.

Goals are one of the most important things to have for yourself, and they will show you that you are doing well with bettering yourself. Talk with people about your goals and ask them whether they think they are realistic. They may say they are not, but that does not mean you have to listen to them. The only person you must listen to is yourself.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com. This article originally published on the above website on July 25, 2010.

MoviePix MP5A4 HD 720P Video Camcorder Review

MoviePix MP5A4 HD Camera Review

First Published: June 28, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

Ever since I wrote Flip UltraHD And MoviePix MP5A4 HD Digital Video Camera post, I have been getting lots of questions regarding my MoviePix HD video camera. Lots of readers asked whether to buy a Flip UltraHD or a MoviePix HD cam. Today, I am writing a quick comparison Review showing the main differences between these two cameras. After looking at this comparison table below, you should have a good idea of what to pick.

MoviePix MP5A4 HD

1280 x 720

up to 60 fps

4X

2.7”

8 MP

Li-ion rechargeable battery 2.5 hours

Camcorder connects to your computer via USB cable

SD memory slot allows up to 32GB of storage

USB, AV & HDTV Component output jacks allow to connect it directly to HD TV

Mov

148 gms

In Canada: $127 C$ In USA: $147 US$

Flip UltraHD

1280 x 720

up to 30 fps

2X

2.0”

Can’t take still pictures

rechargeable NiMH AA batteries 2.5 hours. Can use standard AA alkaline batteries as well.

Camcorder connects directly to the USB port on your computer.

8GB internal memory

HDMI output on the side for HDTV connections, but no bundled cable

MP4

170 gms

In Canada: $299 C$ In USA: $199 US$

Watch A View From My Balcony I Shot On MoviePix Video Camera In HD

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.