Archive for February, 2009

Taking the First Step on Home Buying

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

homebuyingBe Brave And Take That Step

By: Harwood E
all through the years stepping on to the first step of the housing ladder has always been a big step to take, taking the determination to buy your first home for many people usually means parting the relative comfort of their parents home for the first time as well as taking on a responsibility way larger than anything they have come across before, that of paying their own bills and a mortgage. Add to these points the reality that in many cases the person in question will be setting up the home with a companion which can be fraught with all sorts of teething troubles. All in all it can be a very stressful time, not just the decision making process but also the move itself as well as the first few months of getting settled into a new way of life. So what can you do to make the transition as smooth as possible from parental home life to independent own home life?

Through the whole process and anxiety involved with moving into your own home the important thing to remember is that it will never get any easier or cheaper to buy your own home as well as remembering that you will be totally independent and the master of your own destiny when you finally own your own home. The first important step to take is to decide how much you can afford to spend on a house, the way the money markets are at the moment it would be a wise move to err on the side of caution and bear in mind that interest rates could well go up again making any mortgage payments more expensive. You should always budget comfortably and never set yourself a budget that you can just scrape inside every month. One thing that owning your own home does teach you is to always budget for the unexpected.

it is imperative to remember that living in your own home will allow you more freedom than before but it is also remembering that independence does come at a price. You a period of time you may well find yourself not being able to lead the same life that you lived previously with nights out being curtailed until you find a happy medium between expenditure and income. Buying the house is just the start of a very expensive journey, remember that you have to furnish your home, heat your home as well as be able to afford to eat. I would advise making a budget for how much you can spend on furnishing your home and then making a monthly budget to include heating and living expenses, anything left over from that needs to proportion into some for savings and some for relaxation and personal enjoyment. It is important to allow yourself a little free money each month so you can treat yourself, as the old saying goes “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.

Before we buy our home we all have an idea what we want it to look like inside, how it is decorated and how it is furnished. The decoration part is not so difficult to achieve as we can generally get a color scheme to match our ideas but when it comes to furnishing it can be a different story. You may get lucky and get the offer of some old furniture from friends and family, my advise to you would be to take as much furniture as is offered to you as this will save you a lot of money in the long run as well as giving you some breathing space before you need to go out and buy the furniture you really would have chosen. The benefit of taking second hand furniture from friends and family is that it also frees up a little more cash for the furniture that you may have set your heart on, a new bed for instance. It is always nice in your first home to have one room that you have completely furnished yourself so you have a goal to aim for the rest of the house as well as an idea of what you would like your house to look like.

Depending on what your finances are you can generally find some really good discount furniture if you spend a little time surfing the inter web for ideas as well as spending an afternoon one weekend visiting a few discount furniture stores. Many of the discount furniture stores will even offer a discount if you explain to them that you are a first time buyer and looking to buy all your furniture from them, remember the old adage “if you do not ask you do not get”. Be cheeky enough to ask and you may well get your furniture at a super discount furniture price, allowing you a little extra money to treat yourself.

If you are brave sufficient to make that first step and get on the housing ladder the rewards can be great, as long as you take it all step by step and do not over stretch yourself. Before you make the move just remind yourself how stressful it will all be but also remind yourself that it will all be worthwhile in the end.

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Harwood E Woodpecker

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Tags: Home Buying

GOP Pressures legal battle over Census oversight

Friday, February 13th, 2009

gopHouse Republicans on Thursday threatened legal action against the White House for its decision to extend its jurisdiction to the Census Bureau and demanded that President Obama respond positively to a letter they sent on Wednesday urging him to reverse the action.

“If the president doesn’t acquiesce to our letter, and we suspect Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will not insist on that, then we would seek the courts,” said House Oversight and Government Affairs ranking member Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

At a news conference headlined by Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, Issa added that he believes the federal courts will agree that the White House’s efforts to assert greater oversight of Census Bureau operations violate the law.

In their letter, Boehner and 14 other Republicans warned that White House involvement or oversight of the census process would “result in the politicization of the census and open the door to massive waste and abuse in the expenditure of taxpayer funds, billions of which are distributed on the basis of census data.”

Full Article GOP threatens legal action over Census oversight

Tags: census data, GOP, republicans

VA Health Care Spending

Friday, February 13th, 2009

us-deptofveteransaffairs-sealBill would expedite VA health care spending

Legislation introduced on Thursday would fund veterans health care for two years at a time so the Veterans Affairs Department would not have to rely on the sluggish annual budget process for those appropriations.

“There’s only one thing more important than having the right resources in the Veterans Affairs Department, and that’s having them in a timely, predictable fashion,” said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, who introduced the legislation in the House. His committee counterpart in the Senate, Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, introduced a similar bill. “Without that, you can’t hire, you can’t fill vacancies, you can’t purchase equipment. You essentially ration health care.”

Beginning in fiscal 2011, the bill would provide funds to VA health care programs for the current and subsequent fiscal years. Akaka said the budget process now is so slow that VA has received its appropriations in 19 of the last 22 years after the start of the annual fiscal year, which is Oct. 1.

“The largest health care system in the country — to which millions of wounded and indigent veterans turn to for care — does not know what funds it will receive, when it will be funded, or in reality, whether vital programs will receive funding at all,” Akaka said during a Thursday press conference.

Full Article Bill would expedite VA health care spending

Tags: health care spending, health care system, veterans health care

White House orders agencies to plan oversight of stimulus spending

Friday, February 13th, 2009

whitehouseThe White House has instructed agencies who will be receiving funds from the economic stimulus package being debated on Capitol Hill to develop plans immediately for allocating workforce resources to ensure the money is spent properly and in a transparent manner, according to a Feb. 9 memo obtained by Government Executive.

Meeting the stipulations of the economic recovery plan “will require sustained focus by managers throughout the federal government, particularly in planning, awarding, managing and overseeing contracts and grants,” stated the memo, which was sent governmentwide by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.

Under the directive, agencies that are on track to receive significant funds from the recovery package are expected to appoint by Feb. 13 a senior-level official responsible for coordinating their stimulus-related efforts, said the directive. When President Obama signs the legislation, OMB will issue initial guidance to agencies on how to manage and oversee the funds. The administration will issue more detailed guidance one to two months after the bill’s enactment, according to the memo.

Tags: economic stimulus package, President Obama, white house

How to fight mortgage and corporate fraud

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

how-to-fight-mortgage-and-corporate-fraudLaw enforcement and oversight agencies need more funding to tackle an escalating number of mortgage and financial fraud cases, witnesses told members of a Senate panel on Wednesday.

The number of open FBI mortgage fraud investigations jumped from 881 in fiscal 2006 to more than 1,600 in fiscal 2008, said John Pistole, the agency’s deputy director, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. In addition, the bureau has more than 530 open corporate fraud investigations, including 38 directly related to the financial crisis.

“The increasing mortgage, corporate fraud and financial institutional failure case inventory is straining the FBI’s limited white-collar crime resources,” Pistole said.

On Feb. 5, Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced a bill that would authorize $40 million to hire additional fraud prosecutors and investigators in the criminal, civil and tax divisions of the Justice Department; $50 million for U.S. attorneys offices; $65 million for the FBI; $30 million for the Housing and Urban Development Department inspector general’s office; and $30 million for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

The 2009 Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act would extend the 1863 False Claims Act to any fraudulent claim for government money or property, regardless of whether it was presented to a government official or employee, the government had physical custody of the money, or the defendant intended to defraud the government.

Full Article Officials seek more resources to fight mortgage and corporate fraud

Tags: corporate fraud investigations, mortgage fraud

Obama narrows choices for FEMA director

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) Two seasoned state emergency managers have emerged as the Obama administration’s leading candidates to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Florida’s emergency manager Craig Fugate and former Iowa emergency manager Ellen Gordon are the administration’s top two choices, according to two administration officials familiar with White House deliberations on the appointment. Both officials asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the situation.

The announcement is expected within days, one official said.

FEMA has been under public scrutiny since the Bush administration’s botched response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina turned the FEMA director into a punchline for late-night television comedians.

After Michael Brown was fired by President George W. Bush, Fugate and Gordon were among the names under consideration to replace him.

At the time, Fugate indicated he was happy in his Florida job. Gordon confirmed that she had been approached about the job and said she wasn’t interested because she was not convinced the Bush administration would make FEMA a priority.

Full Article Obama narrows choices for FEMA director

Tags: federal emergency management agency, FEMA director, Obama

Report calls for better management at SEO

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

seoThe U.S. Chamber of Commerce Wednesday released recommendations aimed at improving the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory effectiveness primarily by improving how the agency manages itself.

The agency has come under intense criticism given the problems in the financial markets and the agency’s failure to act more quickly against investment adviser Bernard Madoff, who is accused of creating the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

While there has been much discussion of whether the agency has adequate resources to do its job, former SEC Secretary Jonathan Katz, the report’s author, said there has not been enough focus on the “allocation and management” of SEC resources.

Given this, many of the recommendations are focused on strengthening the management, structure and oversight of the agency. For example, the report calls for the hiring of a chief operating officer with “sufficient” authority to oversee daily operations throughout the SEC.

It called for the five-member commission to play a greater role in the application and interpretation of regulator policy. This may require congressional action to amend the Sunshine Act, which requires that all meetings of the commission be open to the public, to allow for greater communication between the commissioners and staff.

Full Article Report calls for better management at SEC

Tags: better management, SEC

HUD is Obama’s home base for mortgage rescue

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

department-of-housing-and-urban-developmentFor decades, the Housing and Urban Development Department has been, at best, a second-string player in the Cabinet. But widespread economic chaos, fueled by an unprecedented number of mortgage foreclosures in 2008, has catapulted housing to the top of the national policy agenda and thrust HUD into the spotlight in the incoming administration.

“HUD’s role has never been more important,” President Obama said during a Dec. 13 radio address in which he announced he would nominate Shaun Donovan, the New York City housing commissioner, as HUD secretary.

A higher profile, however, also brings higher expectations. HUD must translate its core mission  providing safe, fair, and affordable housing — into a national policy that underpins the Obama administration’s economic recovery plan, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Great Depression.

Full Article HUD is Obama’s home base for mortgage rescue

Tags: HUD, Mortgage, Obama