Your credit score is a vital number that determines how businesses and financial institutions treat you. Everything we do financially has an effect on our score, for good or bad. What surprises many people is how seemingly minor or harmless activities can have a big, negative impact. Described here are how a few can drop your score.
Firstly, the one action that people underestimate the impact of is asking around. Asking for a loan rate gets reported; too many of these will hurt your score. The thing that masks this is the fact that it is so very easy to get quotes online. A simple little form will spit out a rate for you. It is so easy to sit and compare a number of companies. What actually happens is that the program behind the many websites will use your information to make a request for your credit rating. This request tells the credit bureaus that you are looking around.
Tags: Credit
Struggling against technical resistance, and an obstinate Japanese Yen, gold prices remain stagnate. Analysts aren’t forecasting a breakthrough any time soon, but do remain bullish in the longer term. 
Gold prices traded sideways Monday as thinning volume and the Bank of Japan’s attempt to control the yen’s meteoric rise provided little direction. Gold for December delivery settled up $1.30 to $1,239.20 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The gold price Monday has traded as high as $1,240.40 and as low as $1,235. The U.S. dollar index was adding 0.25% to $83.17 while the euro fell 0.82% to $1.26 vs. the dollar. The spot gold price today was lower by 90 cents, according to Kitco’s gold index. The Bank of Japan’s decision to add another $117 billion to a loan program for banks at a 0.1% interest rate did little for the gold price. T Read more…
Tags: Yen, Yen Devaluation
The top 5 tips weekly post is always full of hints and tips for small, home & micro business owners.
1. Focus on describing the benefits of your product for purchasers, instead of just using your sales pitch to list features.
2. Take the opportunity to learn more about the wants and needs of potential customers by asking them questions and actually listening to their answers.
3. Try to perfect your sales pitch by recording it and playing it back to yourself later.
4. Don’t be afraid to pursue a sale in order to get to completion. Following up on leads is a common trait of all great salespeople.
5. Take your time when trying to convince a prospect. I
Tags: Ways, Ways Complete
China has been selling off US Treasuries, and some analysts speculate that the move is tied to ambitions by China to replace the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency. Other analysts believe that the Chinese are just being opportunistic, as treasuries have appreciated significantly since the US began buying its own debt. 
China cut its holdings of Treasury notes and bonds by the most ever in June, instead favoring the debt of Europe, Japan and Korea. The move has fueled speculation that plummeting U.S. yields are driving away the Asian giant, which has ambitions for its currency, the yuan, to replace the dollar as the world’s main reserve currency. China’s holdings of long-term Treasuries fell by $21.2 billion in June to $839.7 billion, a U.S. government report showed recently. Total Chinese investment in U.S. debt declined 2.8% to $843.7 billion, the smallest in a year, following a 3.6% slide in May. Read more…
Tags: Treasuries
It’s been a while since I’ve written about career, I think we fired off both barrels during Career Week 2009 last year. However, with the economy recovering and a new jobs bill, I wanted to discuss something that falls under the category of “obvious but clearly not obvious enough.”
You should treat the people that you work with, regardless of where they are in the “hierarchy,” with dignity and respect.
I used to work at a defense contractor that had a bit of an old fashioned corporate mentality. Besides the idea that promotion was mostly by tenure (not always, but frequently), there was a prevailing attitude that the singular goal was completion of the mission and it didn’t matter how many heads you needed to knock to get that done. While I can appreciate the approach, when used sparingly during crunch time, too many people took that approach all the time. Your ability to demand, yell, and beat up other people was seen was an asset. All too often