The LuxMob Info Tags

Do you have an endowment policy that you hope will eventually pay off your mortgage? If you do there is a very good chance that it might not be sufficient to repay your mortgage at the end of its natural term. If you have been reading the financial press you may already know this.

And if you have recently received a Red Letter from your endowment mortgage lender then you will already certainly know! So what do you do now? You must act promptly to ensure you can meet the potential shortfall when your endowment matures.

That’s the really bad news, but the good news is that it is not too late to do something major about it, but you need to act quickly.

You may be unhappy with the way your policy was sold to you in the first place, and you would be in good company if you were, as hundreds of thousands of people have been and are taking steps against their endowment company. If this applies to you too, you do have a right to make a complaint, providing that you do something about it and complain within three years of receiving your first Red Letter. If you don’t complain within that time, then your complaint may be rejected out of hand, no matter how justified your case may be, hence the urgency.

So who should you complain to? In Great Britain you need to complain to the company or person (perhaps a financial advisor) who sold you the policy in the first place and this may well be different from the company that actually issued the endowment policy. Explain your situation and tell them that you wish to make a formal complaint. They should then give you an official complaints procedure that you should follow.

In Britain you can also discuss the matter with the Citizen’s Advice Bureau and you can visit their website at www.citizensadvice.org.uk or you can try the Financial Services Authority, their web site is www.fas.gov.uk/consumer.

Unlike the Citizen’s Advice Bureau the FSA cannot give you one-to-one personal advice, but as the official regulator of all financial services companies within the United Kingdom, they will provide you with detailed fact sheets explaining how to tackle the problem, and a great deal of other information too.

If you reside outside the United Kingdom and suspect you have the same problem, the first thing you must do is to check if the endowment policy you have will be sufficient to cover your mortgage when it matures. If you find that it isn’t, then make sure that you do something about it now before it is too late, and thus ensure that you don’t have a serious problem somewhere further down the line.

David Carter’s latest published work is SPLAM! Successful Property Letting And Management. Splam! Contains over 240 pages of hints and tips on how to start your own property business on a limited budget, and how to successfully let residential property. You can view actual extracts of the book at http://www.splam.co.uk and order a download or hard copy at this site. He also runs a holiday cottage website where you can access over 7,000 cottages, apartments and villas worldwide at http://www.pebblebeachmedia.co.uk You can contact David on any matter at supalife@aol.com

To save space on your computer, make a few files and name them
Recipes, Cooking Tips, Cleaning Tips, Bar mixes. You can then
copy and paste only articles you would like to save.

GANDMA’S WRAPPED TURKEY TURKEY ROASTING TIME AUNT PAT’S BUTTER
TARTS MOM’S MINCEMEAT COOKIES LIGHT SIDE TIPS FOR CLEANING,
WARNING BAR MIXES NON-ALOHLIC DRINK RESPONSIBLE DRINKING SAVE,
EARN TOP MALLS MYFRIENDLY HOST MERRY CHRISTMAS

GANDMA’S WRAPPED TURKEY

Place dressed turnkey, breast up in centre of greased, wide,
heavy foil. Bring ends of foil up over breast. Overlap fold and
press up against ends of turkey. Place bird in shallow pan. Open
foil last 20 minutes to brown. Bake at 450 F, (230 C) according
to time table.

Weights Roasting Times

Ready To Cook Weight Roasting Time 8 - 10 lbs 2 - 2 hours 10
- 12 lbs 2 - 3 hours 14 - 16 lbs 3 - 3 hours 18 - 20 lbs 3
- 3 hours 22 - 24 lbs 3 - 3 hours

AUNT PAT’S FAVOURITE BUTTER TARTS

1/3 cup …….(80 ml) ………..butter 1 cup……….(250
ml)………..brown suga 2 tablespoons..(30 ml)…………milk
or cream 1/3 cup……..(80 ml)…………currants 1 egg beaten
well 1 teaspoon…..(5 ml)………….vanilla

Mix all ingredients together. Put in unbaked tart shells. Bake
at 450 F, (230 C),for 8 minutes. Turn down to 350 F, (175 C),
and cook until brown.

MOM’S MINCEMEAT COOKIES

cup……….(185 ml)……….shortening 1 cups…….(375
ml)……….sugar 3 eggs beaten 3 cups………(750
ml)……….flour teaspoon…..(3.75 ml)………salt 1
teaspoon…..(4 ml)…………soda 1 cup……….(250
ml)……….canned mincemeat 3 tablespoons..(45
ml)………..water 1 cup……….(250 ml)……….walnuts

Cream, sugar and shortening. Then add eggs. Sift flour, salt,
and soda together. Add to creamed mixture. Add mincemeat and
water. Stir until thoroughly mixed. Add nuts and stir. Drop from
teaspoon onto well greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350F, (175 C),
for 10-15 minutes.

YIELD: 4-5 dozen cookies TIME: 1 hour

GRANDMA’S WHIPPED SHORT BREAD COOKIES

1 pound…….(500 g)………butter or margarine 3
cups……..(750 ml)……..flour 1 cup………(250
ml)……..icing sugar

Beat with mixer until creamy. Drop on cookie sheet and bake at
350 F, (175 C), until slightly brown. YIELD: makes approximately
5 dozen cookies CALORIES: approximately 80 calories per cookie
TIME: 1 hour (includes cooking and cleaning time)

LIGHT SIDE

A fellow finds himself in front of st. Peter at the golden gate.
St. Peter explains it is not easy to get to heaven. There are
some criteria before entry.

He asks the guy are you religious? Gave money to the church?
Gave money to the poor? Help his neighbour?

The fellow answers “no”.

Peter says, “look, work with me, I am trying to help you, think”.

The fellow says, “Well, I came out of a store and found this old
lady surrounded by a dozen bikers. They were shoving her around,
and abusing her. I got so mad I threw my grocery bags down,
fought through the crowd, and got her purse back. After helping
her to her feet, I went to the biggest, baddest biker and told
him how despicable, cowardly, and mean he was. Then I spat in
his face.”

“Wow”, said peter, ” That’s very impressive. When did this
happen”?

“oh, about five minutes ago”, replied the fellow.

Guide to Introduction of Solids For Infants.

4 to 6 months Iron-enriched infant cereal (Provides a dietary
source of iron to avoid depletion of infant’s iron stores)

6 to 9 months Pureed vegetables. Pureed and juices.

(provides dietary source of vitamins, minerals and energy.
Introduces new food flavours and starts setting basis for Good
eating habits).

Pureed meat,fish and poultry. Egg yolk. Yoghurt, cottage cheese
Pureed well-cooked legumes (i.e. beans, peas, lentils) (Provides
additional protein, vitamins, and iron for rapid growth).

Dried bread products e.g.rusks.

(Encourages chewing when teeth erupt)

TIPS FOR CLEANING WITHOUT TOXIC CHEMICALS

WARNING: Never, MIX BLEACH AND AMMONIA TOGETHER, THE FUMES CAN
BE DEADLY.

Commercial cleaning supplies can aggravate your allergies and
have long terms effects on your health. You can save on your
house-cleaning bill with very good results using less toxic
substances.

Ammonia - cuts grease, cleans windows, Strip wax off floors.
Baking soda - cleans, deodorizes, polishes, and removes stains.
Bleach - whitens practically anything, removes mould and
mildew. Cornstarch - cleans and deodorizes carpets and rugs.
Lemon juice - cuts grease and stains on aluminium and porcelain.
Ketchup - cleans copper. Vegetable oil - good furniture
polish. Washing soda - cuts grease and disinfects.

White vinegar - cleans windows, shines metal surfaces. Grout:
ammonia, vinegar, water softener and water. Clean Runners:
ammonia. Furniture Polish: turpentine, vinegar, boiled linseed
oil. Remove Lime Scale from Kettles etc: vinegar and water.
Clean Plastic Wrap From Toasters, Kettles: nail polish and
acetone.

BAR MIXES

After Dinner Special

1 oz. apricot brandy 1 oz. Curacao 2 oz. limejuice Combine
with ice; shake. Strain. Add a twist of lime and ice. Drop in
the peel.

Can-Am Flyer

1 oz, Barcardi 1 tsp. Limejuice 1 pinch sugar Champagne
Combine the rum, juice and sugar with ice. Shake. Strain; fill
the glass with champagne.

Non-alcoholic Drink

Christmas Juice Punch

2 quarts apple juice 2 quarts cranberry juice 8 oz. lemon juice
8 oz. sugar 2 bottles ginger ale Combine everything except the
ginger ale. Stir well. Add ginger ale plus chunks of ice before
serving.

RESPONSIBLE DRINKING

If you have teenagers, or in fact any adult, impress on them the
risks of driving while intoxicated. Statistics demonstrate many
fatal road accidents are caused by drunk drivers.

If you’re having a Christmas party, provide food with drinks.
Offer non-alcoholic substitutes such as fruit, soft drinks.

2 drinks taken within an hour by a person 100 pounds produces a
.075 reading. One drink is equal to about 1.5 oz. of whisky or 2
bottles of beer. The rate of elimination for each hour after
drinking has stopped is 015. A 200 pound person, after 1 drink
produces a reading of .019, so you can see there is a big
difference due to weight.

As a host it is your duty to make sure no one leaves your party
impaired. Have some one drive them home.

EARN/SAVE With Internet Top Malls

Here is your chance to save on your shopping by getting a Fr*e
Membership card. If you have a few hours a week you can also
earn some good cash.

Now you can shop hundreds of the top Online Merchants at one
place: your own mall! We’re talking names like Wal-Mart,
Buy.com, Overstock, uBID, Apple Computers, iTunes, Montgomery
Ward, Books-A-Million, Office Depot, Office Max, Hotwire,
Target, Lerner, Chadwick, Sunglass Hut, Fossil, Lane Bryant,
Drugstore.com, HealthPlans.com, Sirius Satellite Radio,
Blockbuster Online, Dish Network & many, many more.

http://www.telebay.com/activity/mall.html

MY FRIENDLY HOST

Remember, if you need a host for your safe list or web site
check out:

http://www.myfriendlyhost.com

Robyn also has web templates, or will build your web site. Robyn
has reasonably rates, is very helpful and really is a friendly
helpful Person.

Thank you for being with me 2005. A very sincere Merry
Christmas,and hope 2006 will be one of your best . Bruce

I’d like to shed some light on something that women have been puzzled about for centuries, and that is the type of women men fall in love with. There have been so many books written on this subject, yet most have not delivered the common sense answers I am going to share with you in this article.

Without wasting much time, I will get right to the point. I am going to give you 10 personality attributes that men love to see in the women they fall head over heels in love with. Men are attracted to women that have:

1.Intelligent - This attribute ranks very high, after men have gotten past your looks. Men love women that are smart, opinionated, and articulate. Most enjoy speaking to women who have their own point of view on subjects and are passionate in discussing affairs of the day. Men love to debate, and if you can make them believe, or at least respect, your point of view, then you have a man that will see you as an equal, and not as an ornament to be displayed to the rest of the world until the next best ornament comes his way.

2.Good Humored - If you can laugh at your man’s crude jokes or take his wisecracks, you become someone he wants to get to know better. But if you’re the type that easily gets upset when he jokes about your raggedy hair or sloppy dressing, men will not find your personality as attractive as one who possesses this quality.

3.Confident - When you have your own opinion and can defend it, are comfortable in your own skin, regardless of your body size or whatever else Mother Nature has thrown your way, then you have what it takes to attract men that will fall head over heels in love with you.

4.Supportive - Men find it easy to fall in love with women that encourage and support positive undertakings they embark on. Men love women that have the ability to see what they see in the goals they pursue. Men believe that when you support their dreams and goals, you believe in their ability to accomplish those things that are dear to their hearts. And when you support that which is dear to a man’s heart, you essentially have the key to unlock his passionate love for you.

5.Accommodating - When you understand that men are not perfect, and you are able to easily forgive them for their imperfections, then you possess one of the most admirable qualities men seek in their love interest. However, if you are the type that will nitpick every single thing they do or nag them at the drop of a hat, then you will not have a man hanging around you for very long.

6.Patient - This attribute is quite similar to that in #5. When I speak of patience here, I am referring to a woman’s ability to be in a relationship with a man without pressuring him into making a serious commitment he may not be ready to make. Now understand that there is a way to let a man know that you are interested in settling down, without coming across as desperate or overbearing. Women that show men that they are willing to wait for them to propose a committed relationship are apt to be more attractive to men than those that come across as impatient.

7.Sensual - A woman that is not sensual is not attractive to any man. To be attractive to a man you must be perceived as someone who is very comfortable with her sexuality and knows how to initiate sex spontaneously. If you believe that men should always be the first to make the move when it comes to bedroom and lovemaking matters, you may be doing yourself more harm than good when it comes to your ability to attract men. Improve your ability to initiate intimacy, and you will see how much more attractive you will appear to your guy. You can improve in this area tremendously if you are open to what Michael Webb, a bestselling author, reveals in his exciting e-book,
“500 Lovemaking Tips & Secrets”.

8.Honest - Men find authentic and honest women quite
attractive. If you are the type that tells it like you see it, men will find this aspect of your personality very attractive. “Say what you will do and do what you say” ought to be your motto. Just as you respect and love men that tell you the truth no matter what, men feel the same way when they meet a woman that does not waste their time with fibs. In a nutshell, men are attracted to women that are honest and down to earth, women that do not pretend to be who they are not.

9.Open-minded - The willingness to explore other possibilities, new ideas, etc. is an attribute that men seek in the women they want to love. Being open-minded does not mean that one has to compromise one’s personal convictions, but rather is able to see another point of view and respect it, even if it is not one that you share.

10.Health conscious - Women that take care of themselves are generally more attractive than those that do not. After all a good physique is the first thing that attracts men, even before they get to know how wonderful and exciting you are. Men are attracted to women that exercise, eat right, take care of their hair, nails, and dress well. To attract the best you must look your best - it is that simple.

That is all for now. To find out how to make your man fall madly in love with you, please visit: http://www.smartwomansguide.com.

About the Author

Steve Ubah is the author of Passion Keys - A Woman’s Ultimate Guide To Unlocking The Love In A Man’s Heart. To find out how you can make your man fall madly in love with you, please visit http://www.smartwomansguide.com

MEMORIAL DAY 2005

In 1776 the United States of America was born
Long ago on that bright July fourth morn
The Revolutionary War was being fought
It was freedom and liberty of forefathers sought

Many lives were lost in that great fight
Liberty was won and America became a light
That drew others to freedom on her shore
They came from England, Ireland, France and more

The civil war tore asunder our bountiful land
Brother fought brother, often hand to hand
Finally this war ended and our nation began to heal
The rifles, cannon and artillery were quiet and still

In The Indian wars and the Spanish-American conflict
Many were killed some by a gun some by a stick
World War I and World War II came to pass
Millions were killed, some in mass

Korea and Vietnam saw our nation at war again
When will all the conflicts and wars end
Desert Storm put our troops to the test
Victory was won and proved our troops were the best

Today the War on Terror is still going strong
Please pray for our troops all the day long
Many of our troops lie silent in the grave
They gave all for America, the home of the brave

I would like to thank the many women and men
Who gave their lives for our freedom, can I get an amen
We can worship the Lord in the good old US of A
I salute all our fallen heroes on this Memorial day

Copyright 2005 Irvin L. Rozier

About the Author

Author of My Walk with the Lord, www.selahbooks.com, preacher, retired military

Throwing related Shoulder pain in Sports men

After the just concluded cricket Test series between India and England one saw the shoulder injury of Sachin Tendulkar surface. He has rushed off to England and has undergone arthroscopic shoulder surgery. He will be out of the game for eight weeks and only return for the West Indies tour later this summer. One can also remember that Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, & Srinath have suffered shoulder injuries in the past and returned to the game after successful treatment. Shoulder injuries can plague the career of cricketers and if not treated can cut short their lucrative careers. Cricketers are at risk as Cricket is a throwing game where one chucks the ball either as a bowler or a fielder. In this article, I will throw some light on throwing injuries.

Two problems can affect the shoulder in sportsmen who perform repeated acts of raising the arm overhead and swinging it in the course of a throw. These are called impingement and instability.

The shoulder joint is formed by the union of the round upper end of the humerus at the socket part by the scapula. It is a very mobile joint as the socket is shallow. Connective tissue restraints chiefly in the front confer additional stability. When the capsule or its attachments are injured instability results. In instability when the soft tissue restraints are loose the ball of the humerus can slide to the front, down wards or to the back in an abnormal fashion.

Impingement results from the abnormal upward gliding movement of the humerus and rubbing on the undersurface of the Acromion. This initiates or aggravates the damage to the rotator cuff. The rotator cuff is a group of tendons which act to actively stabilize the shoulder when the arm is lifted up.

Both conditions can cause pain and result in confusion to the patient and his doctor.

Slow motion analysis of the throw- Each sport has its own basic pattern, different sports have much in common. The performance of overhead sporting activities begins with a preparatory phase to position the arm. Subsequently the arm is cocked to provide a tense, highly forceful unit ready for an accelerated release. The arm accelerates through the throw and after release of the ball, muscles act to decelerate the limb, to reduce the residual force and to avoid injury. The throw in a typical baseball pitch is divided into five stages.

1) Stage 1- Wind up or preparation phase, which ends when the ball leaves the gloved hand. In cricket the equivalent is the transfer of the ball from the non dominant to the throwing arm.

2) Stage 2 or early cocking- when the shoulder is lifted sideways (abducted) and rotated outwards and ends with the forward foot contacting the ground.
3) Stage 3, late cocking phase - This continues until maximum external rotation at the shoulder is obtained.
4) Stage 4-The acceleration phase that starts with internal rotation of the humerus and ends with ball release from the throwing hand.
5) Stage 5- Follow through phase that starts with ball release and that ends when all movement is complete.

This slow motion analysis is necessary to pinpoint the exact phase at which the subject experiences pain. Electromyography studies have demonstrated that in each of these phases there is selective muscle action. Athletes can have selective weakness of muscles, rather than generalized muscle impairment. A rehabilitation programme should concentrate on developing the weaker muscles.

I take a detailed history to recall the exact moment when pain is felt. After a thorough clinical examination, I can conclude often which muscle or tendon is injured or weak and what needs to be done. A clear distinction has to be made between instability and impingement, although both may co exist and one may lead to the other. MRI scans may confirm the clinical finding. An examination under anesthesia plus a shoulder arthroscopy may confirm the diagnosis. Shoulder arthroscopy permits the surgeon to visualize the damage inside the shoulder joint and remedy it either arthroscopically or by open methods.

Strengthening of the selected muscles after surgery may make a difference to the faster rehabilitation.

The author is an Orthopedic shoulder surgeon in Chennai at the Knee and Shoulder clinic and can be contacted on mobile 00 91 9282165002. His website www.shoulderindia.com provides more information on other shoulder injuries in sportspersons.

Dr.A.K.Venkatachalam, MS, DNB, FRCS (UK), MCh. (Liverpool)has worked with leading Shoulder surgeons in the UK, Belgium and Dubai earlier. He performs He is affiliated to Venkataeswara, and Chettinad hospitals.

Recovery from shoulder surgery is no longer a painful ordeal as expert anesthetists provide effective anesthesia and regional blocks for pain relief to as an outpatient. Surgery can be done as an Outpatient.Well qualified physiotherapists guide and help you recover quickly from surgery.

Our track record
Shoulder surgery has been performed for mountaineers and Para gliding experts from the USA and UK. A Cricketer from West Bengal
also underwent Shoulder stabilisation last year

The simplest answer to the question “Time Management - Why Should I Care?” probable consists of the fact that your time is one of the major necessary components of your life. What does “necessary” mean? Let’s say that without chocolate you can survive but without water and air it is impossible. So consider time as air. When there is a lot of it you are spending it and you don’t notice and do not appreciate it. But when there starts to not be enough then you begin to be painfully concerned that sometime ago you wasted it.

Let’s begin to think as a businessman. How much do you estimate one hour of your time is worth? (in dollars). What percent of your time is spent, in your opinion, wisely and how much - so-so? And how much is, in general, all for nothing?

Those questions are not just simple curiosity. Try to calculate the damage in dollars in such situations. Calculate first: A busboy in a restaurant wasted one hour of his work time because of some personal problems. Let’s calculate now how much the restaurant will lose if the power will go off. Compare the amount lost in the first and second situations. I am sure you will agree that the restaurant owner will lose much more in the second situation than in first.

Now try to calculate the cost of your hour. Consider your education and experience because these are assets that you have. The more you have - the higher your hour cost. Also add the things that you can do for yourself, family, and friends. The more of these opportunities you have the sorrier you feel about each hour spent all for nothing.

Meanwhile, there are not a lot of these hours in our life and the saddest part is unlike monetary losses the loss of time cannot be renewed.

Everything that we discussed so far is mainly for those who haven’t started concerning themselves about their time. I hope that our discussion convinced them that time management is a very important part of our life. But there is another problem that we didn’t discuss yet: deficit of time.

The phone constantly rings, the dozens e-mails still unopened in your mailbox, and the deadlines that tie you. Why are there only the 24 hours in a day? This is a big problem which a lot of people think is impossible to change. I can assure them that this is a mistake. There is no such process which could not be improved! There are many ways of time management and I am sure you tried some but you probably didn’t find the right one yet that fits your character, your style of life, and your methods of working. It is important to mention that most time management techniques are oriented on a particular type of person: prepared, analytical, etc. Such a situation is far from normal and creates a very harmful bias: that there are people predisposed to the management of their own time, and those not predisposed.

I don’t understand why chaotic, spontaneous people are worse than others. Why should they appreciate their time less than others and why they should not put efforts to learn the management of their own time. There must be time management methods for those types of people and they exist. The time management niche for such people is an extremely interesting area of research.

The Ipod Nano

Apple iPod Nano - Revolutionizing the Mp3 Player World by
Gregory Nirshberg

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the advent of
the Apple iPod revolutionized mp3 players. The look, the style,
the sound quality, the navigation, the features, the seamless
integration with iTunes and other services, all these separate
components added up to a spectacular and revolutionary mp3
player. Each new mp3 player that Apple has released has pushed
the envelope for design and all around use. First they
miniaturized the iPod with the iPod Mini. Then they miniaturized
that, and by getting rid of the LCD screen were able to offer
the Shuffle for unheard of low prices for an iPod. Now they’ve
gone to the next level. The Apple nano.

But will it really revolutionize mp3 players? Yes. And here’s
why:

Size and Storage

Take the iPod, shrink it, shrink it again, and then shrink it
one more time and you have the Nano! It’s no thicker than a
pencil and slides right into your back pocket without even
noticing, literally! The nano is smaller than most other flash
mp3 players, but has something that none of them do: 2GB and 4GB
file capacities. No flash mp3 player has the kind of file
capacity that the nano has. And what this means is that you can
store a previously unheard amount of music on an mp3 player with
no moving internal parts, i.e.- a completely skip free player.

Signature iPod Quality

Remember that this is an iPod, so you have unmatched usability
and sound quality. The player comes with the Apple signature
click wheel and navigation system. It hooks up seamlessly with
iTunes and other standard Apple software. The sound quality, as
with all iPods, is excellent.

Brand New Features

The Nano comes with a full color screen which can display
multiple image file formats in a crisp high quality format. It
also now syncs up directly with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook
Express for contacts and colander functions and to-do lists. One
of the coolest and most useful new features the nano comes with
is a stopwatch and lap timer. Because it’s small and flash
based, the nano already is great for working out, but the
stopwatch can record many lap times and then give you shortest,
longest, and average lap, as well as your overall time and
individual lap times.

The Cool Factor

What can I say? The iPod nano just oozes cool from every angle.
It’s small and sleek. The colors are hot. The navigation is
excellent. It can play music or audio books, display pictures,
or even do both at once!

Conclusion

So what’s the nano done to push the envelope and revolutionize
mp3 players? It’s made the largest file capacity flash mp3
player ever. It’s added a brilliant color screen to display
images. And it’s added tons of neat new features previously
unavailable on iPods. And it’s done all this while not giving up
what we have come to know and love about the iPod: superb sound,
navigation, and usability. There isn’t much negative to say
about the nano. At $200 and $250 respectively, the 2GB and 4GB
iPod nano sure isn’t cheap, but it is unmatched as a flash mp3
player and worth every penny if you want the coolest ipod around.

http://www.ipodreviewed.com/Ipod_Nano.html

With tuition costs rising across the country, it has become increasingly necessary for college students to take on debt in an effort to get their degree. But student loan repayments are often difficult for students to make, especially considering that early on graduates incomes are typically quite a bit lower then their ultimate earning potential. Due to these circumstances, Student Loan Consolidation is a valuable option for many recent college grads to pursue.

How Student Loan Consolidation Works
Student Loan consolidation works like most consolidation programs. A single lender takes on the various loans you have accumulated, like Stafford, Perkins, HEAL, NSL, and private loans. While the terms and repayment conditions vary among these many different lenders, a single loan consolidation company will pay off all these loans and offer you a single, typically longer term, loan. What this means practically, is that instead of having to pay off one loan in 3 years, another in 5, and another in 10, or having one loan’s interest rate be fixed and another variable, all your loans are compiled under a single system. You can then negotiate with your loan consolidation lender, about the terms of the loan. Typically, students opt for a repayment plan of 10 to 30 years. Obviously, the longer the term of the loan, the lower your monthly payment will be.

Why Consolidate?
Consolidating your student loans offers you the opportunity to stretch out your payments, so as to take advantage of your future earning power. It is quite reasonable for students to believe that they will earn more as their careers progress, and by stretching out the length of their repayments, they won’t have to pay the most on their loan while their income is at its lowest point. Another benefit of student loan consolidation programs is that they take a lot of the confusion and problems out of student loan repayment. For recent graduates who have loans from a variety of public and private lenders, keeping up with the unique terms and conditions of every loan can often be a bit of a nuisance. For these reasons consolidation is a very popular option. But that does not mean that it is not without its costs.

Why Not Consolidate?
Loan consolidation of any variety, is so appealing for lenders because they can charge relatively high “consolidation” fees. While student loan consolidation is regulated better than most forms, loan consolidation companies still manage to add quite a bit to the principle of the loan (that you will ultimately have to pay back) in the form of fees. One way to avoid this is to insist that you be offered the opportunity to pay for ALL consolidation fees upfront. By doing this, you can ensure that you will at least be made aware of the quantity of charges being imposed upon you. Another problem with loan consolidation is that by extending the terms of your loans (say from 5 to 15 years) you dramatically increase the amount of interest you pay on your loans. Your interest payments on your loans accumulate over time. This means that the longer you take to pay your loan back, the more interest will accumulate. Many students fail to notice this, as they only focus on the interest rate, and not the total amount of interest that will be paid over the life of the loan.

Student loan consolidation is a valuable tool for students who want to defer their repayments until they earn more or for those who find the nuisance of maintaining many of their individual loans to be too troublesome. It is important for recent graduates to consider, however, that these benefits, despite what lenders may lead you to believe, do not come without negative tradeoffs. By being aware of both the positives and negatives of student loan consolidation, you can make more educated decisions about the whether student loan consolidation is the right solution for you.

Dan Johnson enjoys writing about student loan consolidation. Visit www.slclowdown.com/ to learn more.

You may have heard advice from Internet marketing gurus that ezine ads are one of the best forms of advertising. You may also have heard that Google AdWords and other pay per click search engines are one of the best advertising methods. But when it comes to marketing your web site, article submission trumps ezine ads and Google AdWords anytime.

The advantage of article submission is trust. Suppose you subscribe to an ezine in the form of an email newsletter. You’ve just sat down at your PC, coffee in hand, to read your email. There in your inbox is a copy of one of your favorite ezines, the one you read every time.

Clicking on the newsletter, you see that this edition starts with a sponsor ad and then has a couple of great sounding articles and a couple more ezine ads. Sipping your coffee, one of the articles catches your attention. You read the article, and you were right. It’s a great article.

At the bottom of the article, there is a link to the author’s web site and a short biography. You notice the author has a link to pick up a free report with more information about the article’s topic. Then you notice that right below that there’s a sponsor’s link in an ezine ad. The sponsor’s link is for a different web site, but it also offers a free report about the same topic.

Now you might click both links. But if you could only click one, which would you choose: the one by the author of the great article you just read or the one in the ezine ad?

If you would click on the one from the author of the article you just read, you’re not alone. Most people would, wouldn’t they?

Now suppose you’re surfing around on the web. You do a Google search on a topic you’re interested in, and you follow a link to a great article with some excellent advice on the topic. Again, there is a link to the author’s web site and a link to a free report with more information on the topic. Right beside it are five Google AdWords ads on the same topic. As luck would have it, they are also each offering a free report on the same topic.

You would still be most likely to click on the author’s link at the bottom of the article, though, wouldn’t you?

Article submission trumps ezine ads and Google AdWords because you establish a relationship and build trust with your reader. You are obviously the expert. After all, you wrote the article. And the webmaster or ezine publisher wouldn’t have published the article if they didn’t think you knew what you were talking about, right?

Years ago, I used to do direct sales in people’s homes. I learned that one of the first things you need to do is the “warm up.” You’ve just entered someone’s home, they don’t know who you are as a person, and they know you’re going to be trying to get money from them before you leave.

If you don’t establish rapport quickly, it’s difficult to overcome people’s natural sales resistance. In direct sales in the home, you do that by talking a little with people before you begin your sales presentation. They get to know you as a person, and their resistance is lowered.

Most people can’t do sales because they remain the “enemy,” the horrible sales person who wants to sell them something. Let’s face it, people hate sales people!

But imagine if you could warm up to people easily - and not just one or two people, but thousands of people. Imagine if instead of selling them something, you could educate them about something that will solve a problem and be of great benefit to them. That’s entirely different, isn’t it?

Article submission allows you to do exactly this, and on a massive scale. If you submit many articles to article submission sites and article directories, many will be published on web sites and in ezines around the Internet. People will read your articles and warm up to you. Solve their problems and they’ll want more.

It’s hard to accomplish that with Google AdWords. You only have three lines and a few words to build interest and trust and to get the click. It’s also hard to achieve that with ezine ads. Even with solo ezine ads, everyone knows they are advertisements.

Article submission is the secret. Writing and submitting articles is relatively easy. Just write very helpful articles on your topic and link to your web site. Through article submission you will build your reputation. Through article submission you will gain trust. And through article submission you will get visitors to your web site that already like you, value your advice, and want to know more about what you can do to help them.

That’s already an incredible benefit, but it gets even better. Article submission is usually free, or low cost if you use an article submission service. Ezine ads and Google AdWords can be very expensive, and it is unlikely you could ever get traffic coming to your site as open to listening to you and trusting you as they will be from an article submission.

This is why article submission trumps ezine ads and Google AdWords.

To many world-wide travelers seeking adventure, the Russian
Far East is a very desirable place to visit, and of course
if you are going to visit this region, you do not want to miss seeing the famous sea port, Vladivostok.

Vladivostok, meaning the “Lord of the East” in Russian, is
located just across the Sea of Japan but a very distant
6,200 miles east of Moscow.

Interestingly, this beautiful sea port city was so far from
the center of communist rule, when Russia was better known
as the Soviet Union, that it was not until 1954 that a leader of the USSR visited this city.

I am talking about Nikita Khrushchev, a man who became famous, worldwide, for his eccentric statements and actions. He was the first one to call Vladivostok the “Russian San-Francisco” which in many ways is a fairly accurate comparison.

Like San Francisco, the city of Vladivostok is located on a
hilly region surrounded by a bay, in this case the Gold Horn Bay
Visitors who arrive to this city enjoy the spectacular view,
which is surprisingly similar to San Francisco.

Vladivostok is also the home port of the Russian Navy’s pacific fleet, and there are hundreds of military ships and submarines located in the Gold Horn Bay. As a result of this, the city of Vladivostok was a closed region for more than 70 years.

Vladivostok was city for a military installation, and even Russian citizens wanting to visit relatives, were forbidden to travel to this city without special permits and passes. It was not until the year of 1992 that Vladivostok was officially opened for foreign visitors as well as the rest of the Russian population.

Today thousands of tourists from all over the world travel to Vladivostok. Some take the wonderful 7 day journey from Moscow on the Trans Siberian Railway, while others prefer to travel to Japan or China, and finally finishing their adventure by arriving at the Russian “Lord of the East”.
Many travelers make the exciting journey by the ship, going to every worlds’ major sea port including Vladivostok.

Vladivostok attracts many tourists’ attention not only because of its’beautiful location, but also for its’ very rich history:

There are quite a few historical buildings and monuments still standing that hold the memories of many events from the 1860, when this city was founded, to present day.

These historical buildings remember the times when Vladivostok was given a free trade status with the purpose of encouraging foreign trade in 1878.

There are still building standing that, if they could speak, could tell you about the times of the Russian-Japanese war, when a squadron of Japanese warships attacked the city firing over a hundred shots.

Vladivostok’s hills saw the Japanese, British, and American cruisers entered the Golden Horn Bay in 1917, and the supporters of the Bolsheviks conducted a partisan struggle in the city.

From 1917 to 1922 Vladivostok became a cultural bastion.
During the ensuing years, beginning in 1917, Vladivostok became a haven for many Russians trying to escape from the clutches of the new Soviet regime, settling in the port city while retreating to the east together with the White Army.

Among them were many Russians, the creative intelligentsia from Moscow and St Petersburg. They established conservatories, theaters, symphony orchestras and art centers in Vladivostok before escaping to countries such as Australia, China, the USA, and other lands after the Bolsheviks, in 1922, achieved victory in the Far East.

This city can still remember the 1930s when the Stalinist repressions began and the transit camps were constructed housing political prisoners from the Western regions of Russia to Kolyma, and to the new camp in Vladivostok.

This city remembers when it was Russia’s biggest military port during the cold war and the beginningof “Perestroika.”

Now, Vladivostok is filled with businesses from all over the world coming to take advantage of the city’s position as the gate to modern Russia, Japan, China, and Korea.

Marina Smiley is the author of the popular eBook

“Cheap Ticket To Russia” - tips for budget travelers to Russia.