Money Saving Tips

I have been silent since last Thursday because I was out of town for my cousin’s wedding in beautiful Park City, Utah! It was absolutely wonderful. The week before we left, I was watching the news and saw this piece on saving money on airfare. We all like to take trips, don’t we? Well, I know we ALL love to save money!! Here are the hints I found out and I wish I had found them sooner!! This is some fantastic stuffJ

We all know the major sites like www.cheaptickets.com, www.orbitz.com, www.expedia.com, etc but here are some ones that you may not have heard of. Have you ever visited www.airfarewatchdog.com? This site searches for the best UNADVERTISED deals that you can’t find on most travel websites. There’s also a section that lists the best fares of the day.

Did you know that there are best times to buy? I didn’t!! You can find better deals early Saturday morning, you just have to get up and start searching in your pj’s!! Most travel experts say airlines don’t want you to know about this because they of course don’t want to sell too many seats at the cheaper price or only have a few of them available. Also, mistakes generally happen this early in the am!! Yes, that’s right, mistakes, like the price of $1.86 fares out of Hilton Head, SC that USAir honored last April!!

Some other times that prices of airfares may change and you may want to keep a look out for ar

e 9am, 11:30am and 7pm (Central Time) and during the weekend around 4pm. It’s all kind of like the gas prices, opinions vary but why not just watch them for yourself!

When talking about saving money, experts always suggest to make connections instead of flying straight through. Most of the websites allow you to make a choice of having 1 or 2 connections. This is all a personal choice. If you are under time constraints, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to go through the stress or if you have small children or have people in your party that have a difficult time getting around. But, if you enjoy the adventure, why not? You may be able to go through a city you’ve never been through

before, even if it’s only the airport!!

Another thing to watch for is that prices tend to be cheaper 7, 14, or 21 days out from your departure date. Usually, the airlines review their flights at these intervals and if their seats aren’t filling up, they will drop the rates.

I usually use the websites mentioned about, shop them all to see which ones have the best fairs and then try to purchase from the airline directly. If you do this, and you are busy like my, I don’t have time to keep checking on flights and what not, but guess what? Thanks to modern technology, there’s this fantastic website called www.yapta.com that all you have to do is enter in your info and it will watch your flight for you!! That way, if

rates drop by $100 for just an hour, Yapta will alert you. Most often you won’t get a full refund because you will have to pay to change your ticket but it will definitely be worth it. Some airlines will also only give you a travel voucher but most of them are good from a good length of time.

There’s another similar service called Faregaurd. You can find it at www.farecast.com. This is more like price insurance but it’s only good for 7 days. You pay $10 and it has 2 options. You can either track a specific fare you may be interested in purchasing later or you can get it to protect you after your purchase of the fair for 7 days.

Have you ever wanted to fly first class but haven’t wanted to pay the price? Try clicking on first class with restrictions or first class non-refundable. Many times you can find first class seats for half the price!!

Did you know? I had no idea that Northwest offers a Best Fare guarantee. What they say is that within 24 hours of booking your flight on www.nwa.com, you find airfare on the same flight, the same same itinerary and cabin is at least $5 cheaper, you can get a $50 travel voucher! If you used Yapta, you could take advantage of this more often!! Of course they require proof.

Here are some other nuances that were quite interesting:

· Cheapest days to travel are Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday

· Evenings are the cheapest times to travel except Fridays and Sundays

· Avoid Mondays, Fridays and Sundays, unless you want to pay more, these are the most expensive days to travel!!

Some other sites you may want to check into are:

• Air-fare.com tracks fares that have dropped 20 percent or more from the following day.

• farecompare.com helps you compare airfare from many different sites. They also have a lot of historical data on different flights that show when you can expect the cheapest airfare from the different airlines, again a guessing game!

• Hotelbook.com helps you find independent hotels not chains if you are interested.

• Sportsgroupie.com helps you plan a trip around your favorite sports team be it basketball, football, baseball or whatever.

• Flyertalk.com is a site where lots of frequent flyers share tips on deals and steals.

• Turnhere.com is a site that gives travelers the inside scoop on offbeat, interesting neighborhoods and topics.

• Airline cheat sheets. This site lists shows you how to find the right customer service agents to help you solve your travel troubles quickly and effeciently.

I hope you found this information as useful as I did and I hope it also saves you some cash-o-rama!! Let me know what you thought of the sites or if the suggestions saved you any money.

Have a great day!!

Beth Riegger
To find out more information on how to increase your credit score, click here.

Mortgage People are Boring!!

I'm not boring!! So in that spirit I thought for my blog today I'd share a funny video I found on YouTube but I couldn't find it here on myspace so you'll just have to click the link.

Don't worry, there's no spam involved, no emails, no hidden anything, I'm not selling a thing!! It's just a funny video from Jay Leno to prove to you I can have fun too. He soooo cracks me up!!

Let me know if you busted a gut too over this short video!!

Beth Riegger
Keys 2 Success

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

What to do this beautiful day? I think the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is a very good idea!! Do you know the history of it?? Well, here it is:

At one time, the Mississippi flowed through the place which is now called the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. This is why things grow so abundantly here. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board acquired this land between 1903 and 1935 and was known as the “The Parade” because of the military drills and exercises practiced in front of the Armory.

The area the Garden now occupies was also called the Armory Gardens, which featured a large brick National Guard building and formal gardens. The building was torn down in 1933, but the elaborate garden remained under the management of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. In the late 1960s, I-94 severed the connection between Loring Park and the garden, and eventually the area in front of the Walker Art Center became a playing field.

In 1988 the Walker and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board collaborated to turn that playing field into the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. In 1992 it was expanded from 7.5 to 11 acres, making it the largest urban sculpture garden in the country at the time. There are more than 40 works on permanent view. Additional temporary installations keep the Garden experience continually fresh.

It is located just West of downtown at the corner of Vineland Place and Hennepin/Lyndale Avenues, across from the Walker Art Center. It offers the people that visit it the opportunity to enjoy various works of art by leading American and International artists in a garden setting of plazas, walkways and plantings.

Some of the permanent displays to look for are the colossal Spoonbridge and Cherry Fountain by Cleaes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen; the Irene Hixon Whitney Footbridge designed by Siah Armjani that connects the Sculpture Garden with Loring park and downtown Minneapolis; Frank Gehry;s Standing Glass Fish located in the Palm Room of the Cowles Conservatory (this room features permanent and seasonal horticultural displays); the Northern boundary of the Sculpture Garden features the Alene Grossman Memorial Arbor.

• Hours are everyday from 6 a.m. to midnight
• Phone: 612 370-4882
• 726 Vineland Pl.
  Minneapolis, MN 55403

Let me know if you end up visiting the Sculpture Gardens and what you thought! I haven’t been there since I was a kid. I will be going out of town this weekend for a wedding so I won’t get a chance to visit it this weekend but I’m certainly going to try soon!

Beth Riegger
To find out more information on how to increase your credit score, click here

The Mortgage Crisis In MN

I wanted to continue with my previous blog about the foreclosures here in Minnesota and Kare11’s coverage on them. The very next night, they had another story on this and I wanted to tell you about and also wanted to give you some very good insights having to do with your mortgage.

They interviewed two different people, one a single man and the other a family, both about ready to loose their homes due to foreclosures. According to Alexa Milton of the non-profit ACORN Housing organization, “The spike in foreclosures has been huge in the Twin Cities.” ACORN reports that the foreclosures on residential properties in Hennepin County more than tripled in between 2000-2006. There were fewer than 1,000 in 2000 and in 2006, there were over 3,000.

There is some truth in the thinking that foreclosures are a minority problem or a lower income problem, but foreclosures are also spreading to the more affluent areas as well.

In Ramsey County, the number of foreclosures in 2000 were 300, rising to 1400 in 2006. This quadrupling of foreclosure rates also happened in the counties of Anoka (214 to 900), Washington (100 to 429), Scott (54 to 300) and Dakota (159 to 860).

The family that was interviewed refinanced their home in 2005 to pay off some bills and reduce their debt. The husband was going to college still so they needed every penny they could. They signed up for an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) that their rate was locked in for 2 years. They had originally wanted a 30 year fixed mortgage but their broker told them they didn’t qualify for it.

Now, I’m going to take a moment here. It is so impossible to dissect their situation in the way that it was presented here. Clearly, I don’t think their mortgage broker educated their clients to the fullest extent that they could have. Or, maybe they did and the clients just only heard what they wanted to. There are only three people that know this for sure, the clients and the mortgage broker. The fact of the matter is this, if you qualify for a mortgage, it doesn’t matter which program you choose, ARM or 30 year fixed or what have you. What is most likely the case in this situation is that the payment for the 30 year fixed was much higher than the ARM product, so the mortgage broker knowing that the family wanted to reduce their payments, introduced them to the ARM product.

In the news spot, they go on to say that this mortgage is now costing them an arm and a leg and their home. How can they say this? The customers certainly had the right to refinance their home after the fixed rate period was over so that they could lock in their rate. They also said they didn’t realize that their rate would adjust after 2 years. I’m not sure if this interviewer has ever been to a mortgage closing or not but those closers at the title companies really hammer it in to the customers everything about the ARM mortgages and when things will happen. Again, I think what we have here is denial on the part of the customers.

They did go on to say that there was a pre-payment penalty if the customers refinanced. Most often, in the case of pre-payment penalties, it would be a two year ARM with a two year pre-payment penalty or a 3 year ARM with a three year pre-payment penalty. More often than not, a pre-payment penalty could be absorbed into the loan as well. If this mortgage broker had any scruples at all, they would offer to help pay part of it as well for not properly informing their customers. This pre-payment penalty is also something that is covered in great detail at the closing.

The most unfortunate thing for this family is that the appraisal that was done on their home in 2005 said their home was worth $268,000 and so they mortgaged $240,000. After speaking with several realtors, they now feel their home is worth $225,000. The news spot blamed the mortgage company for over inflating the value of the home but did they forget what this article was all about? It’s about all of the foreclosures in these areas. In fact, they mentioned a home in these folk’s back yard that was just sold on foreclosure. Don’t you think that has some effect on the value of your home? I know for a fact that homes in 2005 were gaining much more value than they have been since. Some homes, and it sounds like this one might be one of them, might have even lost value.

Again, it’s hard to say if the appraisal was over inflated or not but as a mortgage broker, I have no control over how much an appraiser values a home at!! We have to justify every comparable home to the lender that we are selling the deal to as well. I think it’s pretty difficulty to over inflate a value by that much. I think I can beg and plead with my appraisers that I work with and they might have to dig really deep to find some other comparables that the lender will approve but I have never seen someone come up with an extra $38,000!! Maybe an extra $1,000 or two but again, it has to be justifiable!!

They also talked about how many loan applicants are being deliberately deceived. Is that really the case or are people really just looking for scapegoats here? Just because I’m honest, doesn’t mean that everyone is but I think the media has a big role to play here and they aren’t doing anyone any favors by this kind of reporting only half of the story.

Another part of the story was taking on the stated-income loans. These are loans where you state that you make so much per month instead of having to prove it. Most often, these types of loans are used for the self employed borrower. Mainly because when you are a W-2 employee (you work for someone else and they take your taxes out for you), you get to use your gross income (your income before taxes) to qualify for your loan. If you are self employed, you have to use your net income (your income after taxes and ALL deductions). How is this fair to the self employed person? There are a lot of expenses that a self employed person can deduct for that the W-2’d person has the same expenses (like car expenses) but because you are self-employed, you have to qualify after those deductions.

The stated income loan is also for people who have many different streams of income such as the single man that they interviewed. He’s a music teacher and he also gives private lessons. Unfortunately for him, he ran into a bad mortgage broker. His mortgage broker stated his income at $10,000/month when in all actuality, it was only $3,000/month. So, when is ARM started adjusting, he too could not afford the payments. He stated that it was like someone trying to explain the theory of relativity to him so he just sat there. Again, who’s to blame for this??? You need to take action if you don’t understand something!! I make sure to explain things to my clients in a way that they can understand things, without using all of the mortgage terms. I ask them several times if they understand thing and let them know that there’s no such thing as a stupid question!!

Both of these different sets of people got into what’s called a subprime mortgage. These are higher risk mortgages and carry higher penalties and restrictions. That being said, again, how could that appraisal been inflated by so much if there are so many restrictions on these loans? They also said that these subprime loans are believed to be largely responsible for the flood of foreclosures. It’s estimated that 80 percent of subprime borrowers can only afford the fixed year rates, when the rates start to adjust, the customers start to go under.

Every customer that I’ve ever put in one of these loans, we’ve always talked about the road to credit repair and how important keeping things on track are. We’ve also always talked about what it’s going to take to get out of that mortgage and what they need to do to help themselves. I can only do so much but they need to get involved with the process as well to have a steak in it. I’ve always been able to get my customers out of these loans before the adjustment period was over and after the pre-payment penalty period.

When a lender forecloses on a house, the average cost to them is around $58,000!! Do you think now that they WANT to foreclose??? Lenders must repurchase loans that default in the first 180 days. The staggering amount of these defaults has put a number of major lenders into bankruptcy or out of business. Since many of those lenders were publicly traded, there is a ripple into Wall Street. Since mortgage loans must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, it’s not clear yet what the exact impact is going to be on Wall Street.

One major mistake in the reporting of this article was that they interviewed a mortgage broker and said that the customer has a full three business days to review the paperwork before it funds (or is made legal). While this is true on a refinance, it is not true on a purchase. This is a major distinction that must be made. This is why you must have a knowledgeable and trustworthy mortgage broker who will work with you.

The woman mortgage broker that they interviewed also agreed with me that these ARM loans are generally for people not to stay in them. You need to continually stay in contact with your client and your mortgage broker to be sure that things are being done so that when it does come time to refinance and get out of this loan, you can.

So, what can you do if you are in need of help? Well, if you live in the Twin Cities, you can call 311. It’s just like 411 or 911. I’ve not called it myself but I just might have to try it out. Also, call your lender. Put your pride aside and tell them the entire story, don’t leave anything out Call me, maybe I can do something to help as well, maybe give you a number of someone you hadn’t thought of yet. There are ways. I’ve always been fond of the saying, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you’ve got the will, I’ve got the way.” Make it happen, you can do it!!

Sorry this was such a long one today.

Wishing you much success!!

Beth Riegger
To find out more information on how to increase your credit score, click here.

Syttende Mai??

I am a proud Norwegian. On my Dad’s side, our family has only been in the US for about 120 years. Half of his father’s siblings were born in Norway, the other half here in the United States. I find it quite hysterical that here, in Minnesota, the land of the Scandinavians, that no one knows what Syttende Mai is but yet everyone knows what Cinco de Mayo is!! Just as Cinco de Mayo is the Mexican independence day and the 4^th of July is the American independence day, Syttende Mai is the Norwegian independence day. It is also known as the Constitution Day or “grunnlovsdag” in celebration of the signing of their constitution in 1814. This constitution ended the 500 year union with Denmark.

The first Syttende Mai celebrations in Norway we all about political demonstrations against Swedish control. First they had them in private clubs under the guidance of Matthias Conrad Peterson of Trondheim. Peterson was really Danish but in his heart of hearts, he was all Norwegian (don’t we all want to be? Ha!). In 1824, he proposed that Syttende Mai be celebrated publicly as Norway’s Constitution Day.

So, in 1824 against the wishes of the King of Sweden, Carl Johan, celebrations began in Oslo (then known as Christiania). In 1829, a scuttlebutt of sorts happened on Syttende Mai. A beautiful steamboat called the Constitutionen arrived in the harbor of Oslo. People had gathered in large numbers near the harbor for the celebration and in the city marketplace called Stortorget. The military at Akershus Castle was ordered to disburse the crowd because they were chanting “Long live the Constitution.” The military knew that the people were honoring both the ship and the document but were forced to attack anyway. Fortunately, no one was killed but the Norwegians were humiliated. It was called the Battle of the Marketplace.

The hero of this battle was actually a young college student!! His name was Henrik Wergeland and was the actual son of the one of the signers of the Constitution. This battle was the beginning of a lifelong commitment for human rights, equality, freedom and democracy. Wergeland’s successful promotion of the Syttende Mai celebrations are illustrated by the “Hurra for Syttende Mai,” or “Horray for the Seventeenth of May,” which is said all through the day’s celebrations both in the US and in Norway.

The first official Children’s Parade was in Oslo on May 16, 1870. Bjornstjerne Bjornson was the man who instigated this fun tradition. He was a controversial patriot, author, political agitator and inspirational speaker. He actually wrote the national anthem called “Ja, vi elsker dette landet,” or “Yes, we love this country.” His cousin, Richard Nordraak wrote the music to go with it. I guess family doing things for family goes way back!!

Since the signing of the constitution in 1814, the relationship between Norway and Sweden was strained. The Norwegians elected a King, Kirstian Frederik and a war ensued with Sweden. This war only lasted 6 months (well, let’s face, it, we Scandinavians can never be mad for too long!) and a peace treaty between the two was signed established the two separate Kingdoms under one common monarch, King Charles XIII, who consented to recognize Syttende Mai. In 1905, after much hard work and diligence by the Norwegian people, all ties between Norway and Sweden were peacefully dissolved.

Syttende Mai is celebrated today in Norway and all across the US. It is mainly known as the children’s day and communities have parades, food (hmm, lefse, krumkakke, rosettes, how many can you name?) and several other celebrations.

Another way to celebrate this day is for Norwegians to share their heritage with others. I did this today at my son’s Montessori. We brought krumkakke, lefse and red/white/blue cookies. We also brought little Norwegian flags for the kids to bring home, a map of Norway, a picture of a Viking ship and several other fun things. The kids really loved it and my son really loved being the center of attention and professing his love of his heritage.

I think it’s an awesome thing to celebrate where we come from and keep traditions alive. As I stated before, I find it quite laughable that we all know of the Mexican Independence but absolutely no one that I ever talk to (under the age of 60), knows anything of this holiday unless they have the background that I do. Last time I checked, Scandinavians settled Minnesota! My hometown has a huge celebration on May 1^st and dances around the May pole, another Scandinavian tradition. I hope these traditions don’t get lost in the big city!!

Har en stor dag!! (Have a great day!!)

Beth Riegger
To find out more information on how to increase your credit score, click here.