In general, you cannot purchase an annuity without the involvement of an annuity agent. Annuity agents make their living by selling annuity products for a commission.

Every sale that is compensated by a commission has an inherent conflict of interest. So, the natural question is, “Can you trust the advice of a salesperson to be in your best interest as a consumer?” Sadly, following my two decades in the financial services world, I would have to say your odds of getting advice in your best interest are quite slim.

The more informed you are, the better your chances are of ending up with the right investment product. I know this article will make a lot of annuity agents angry with me. I don’t mean to say that all annuity agents are evil. They are not all evil, even if some of them are. There are many extremely ethical and honest annuity agents in the industry that do an excellent job for their customers.

But my question still stands. With an inherent conflict of interest, will the advice you receive be in your best interest? That is, will the insurance agent act as a fiduciary when advising you on whether or not to purchase an annuity and if so which one? This is why your education is critical.

An annuity agent is not a fiduciary to his customers and is not held to a fiduciary standard by the insurance department of his State and, at present any way, even if he is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER practitioner, he is not held to a fiduciary standard by the CFP Board of Standards when engaging in a sales process as opposed to a financial planning process.

Insurance agents are held to a suitability standard, not a fiduciary standard. If you want to be sure the recommendation you receive is in your best interest, cough up a few bucks to a Fee-Only Financial Advisor to evaluate the situation for you before you make any purchase.

To identify a Fee-Only fiduciary advisor, go to www.napfa.org, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA). NAPFA Registered Advisors are required to annually sign a fiduciary oath. They get no compensation from product that is sold, that is, no commissions to be a conflict of interest. Be sure to ask if the NAPFA Advisor has the expertise to evaluate an annuity. Not all do since many of them have not come out of the insurance business.

Again, I know insurance agents will deeply dislike this article because even if their advice is good and proper, it will slow down their sale and their pay day. I understand, but I am not writing this to support insurance agents, I am writing to protect the general public through greater understanding and through knowledge of how to act rather than being acted upon. My intent is to put you in control of the process instead of the sales person.

The Most Important Question

Before taking any action, you should ask yourself one simple question and be sure you have a complete answer to it, “Why are you considering the purchase of an annuity?” or, in another form, “What are you trying to accomplish with this money?” If you don’t take the time to accurately answer this question, then you are leaving yourself open to “suggestion” by some annuity sales person’s presentation.

A good sales agent will introduce all sorts of bells and whistles and convince you that you can’t live without them. Truth be told, all the bells and whistles may have little, if anything, to do with the true reason you would be considering the purchase of an annuity…if you stopped and took the time to carefully think about it. This is the most important question! As a general rule, you waste money when you buy bells and whistles. When it comes to saving and investing, wasting money is the last thing you want to do.

Costs Always Modify Performance

There really is no such thing as a free lunch and there is no such thing as a financial product, annuity or otherwise, without some costs to produce and provide that product to you, the consumer. The question is, What is the impact of that cost and what is a reasonable cost to bear?

What are the costs associated with a fixed annuity? There are some who will try to tell you that you dont bear any costs with a fixed annuity, the insurance company pays the agents commissions and any costs related to bringing this wonderful annuity contract to you. While it may be true that the insurance company bears those costs, the insurance company gets the money with which to bear those costs from you. So, you really do have some costs that you should be aware of. This doesnt mean you wont buy that annuity, it just means you will know what the costs are that you are bearing in order to buy the insurance companys guarantees.

Fixed annuities do not have explicit fees, like variable annuities, but they do have implicit fees, which are referred to as “spreads” within the industry.

Consider a fellow nearing retirement earning 2.5% in a fixed annuity during a period when short term interest rates are 5%. That investor would not be getting a good deal since there is an implicit fee (i.e., the difference between the 5% interest rate and the 2.5% annuity rate) of 2.5%. I think that any economist worth his salt would call that (i.e., the spread of 2% to 2.5%) a “cost,” and so would any investor if it were disclosed to the investor in an understandable way.

As for the seeming lack of an up-front commission sales charge, do you seriously believe that a fixed annuity is sold without the insurance company paying the agent who sold it? In fact, the insurance industry recovers those “phantom” commissions via the series of surrender charges imposed by a fixed annuity. The idea that an investor “technically” doesn’t pay up-front commissions in a fixed annuity is merely a distinction without a difference.

So, what can you accomplish with this information? If you are considering purchasing a fixed annuity, compare the current interest rate paid by the annuity company to the interest rate of the short term bonds. Are you really going to get a good after-tax return (only the returns after taxes count) or are the costs of the annuity eating up your returns?

Variable Annuity Costs

Explicit Costs

Explicit costs include: 1. Mortality and expense charges (M&E) of 1.25%-1.45% of the value of the annuity annually (this is the industry average)… M&E is supposed to cover just mortality and expense, but it mostly covers profit. This becomes apparent once you realize that the insurance company actuaries all use the same numbers for mortality. The high cost annuity providers charge 1.25%-1.45% for M&E while the low costs providers charge about .25%-.30%.

Explicit costs also include 2. A mutual fund (in an annuity it is technically a “variable account”) annual expense ratio of about 1.50% (this is the cost of the average mutual fund; it includes, for example, investment management fees and 12-b(1) fees). The explicit costs associated with a variable annuity on the low side are, therefore, 2.50% (the M&E fee of 1.00% plus the fund annual expense ratio of 1.50%). The high side is 3.35% (the M&E fee of 1.85% plus the fund annual expense ratio of 1.50%). Both the low side and high side of explicit costs can increase if riders for living benefits are elected–which is being done more and more now. And that is a good subject for another article - more than I can include here.

Implicit Costs

Implicit costs include:

1. Internal brokerage commissions paid on transactions of .45%. This cost is not included in a fund’s annual expense ratio but instead in a separate, obscure document called a “Statement of Additional Information.” Implicit costs also include,

2. Bid-ask spread costs (these costs provide a “market maker” with a profit for providing liquidity in a market) of .40% (for the most liquid stocks) to 10.00% (for the least liquid stocks), and

3. Market impact costs of .40% (these costs arise from the impact on the market price of a stock when it is bought or sold). The implicit costs associated with a variable annuity on the low side are therefore 1.25% but can all the way up to more than 10.00%. Let’s not forget that many of the mutual funds used in annuities are actively-managed and, therefore, have much higher costs than passively managed mutual funds (i.e., index funds and asset class funds).

The Bottom Line

The total is: Explicit costs of 2.50%-3.35% plus implicit costs of 1.25% (I’ll ignore the 10.00%, since that’s just too scary) for a grand total of 3.75%-4.60%. Oh by the way, did I mention the

1. Cost of surrender charges,

2. The cost of additional investment management services that might, just might, sneak in somewhere,

3. Commissions received for selling annuities to retail buyers (which being explicit costs are different than the implicit brokerage commissions earned on transactions internal to a mutual fund), or

4. The cost of the increasingly negative compounding effect caused by lost money?

Since some people will think these costs are exaggerated, let me quote from a randomly selected company, directly from the prospectus of Ohio National Variable Account A of the Ohio National Life Insurance Company ONcore Series of Variable Annuities Supplement to the Prospectuses dated May 1, 2009 in which, on page 8, Summary of Maximum Contract Expenses the Maximum Possible Total Separate Account Expense is listed as 5.45%. This does not include any of the implicit costs referred to above. Nor does it include the fund operating expenses listed on page 9 with a range without waivers of .35% to 26.26%!

When you consider that the long term stock market returns are approximately 10.5%, how can you really do well in a variable annuity with these high costs dragging down any possible market returns? Income tax deferral won’t make up the difference in lost earnings for many many years and maybe never.

When I initially studied the Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D Wattles, I was instantly struck by the fact that there was positively no reason that I should not become rich myself. Before that point, somehow, I had not really understood what caused people to become rich and so I guess I had never seriously considered the reality that it would be doable for me too.

It was difficult to disagree with the powerful argument of the author to the effect that the causes of wealth are not those that people normally associate with getting rich. For example, your level of education, access to opportunities or even the social circles you move within. In fact, the book begins with a comprehensive demolition of such erroneous thinking.

After dealing with the matter of what things are not the causes of wealth, he goes on to make a strong case for his main proposition that the real cause of wealth is the way things are done; and not what is being done. Doing things in the right way, he says, is what is responsible for the generation of riches.

Wattles’ proposition is that anyone who can learn how to do things in a particular way - what he called the ‘certain way’ - can become wealthy. It is an amazing statement, but it is also the natural conclusion to be reached if his analysis of the causes of wealth is correct. However, he also suggests that you need to be operating a business of some kind.

You should give everyone more in use-value than you take from them in cash-value, he says; and, from that statement, we can immediately see that he is implying you should be in business. The principle is essentially that of continually exceeding your customer’s expectations.

It is self-evident, when to come to think about it, that you are very unlikely to become rich whilst you are working for another person. Quite simply, you are being paid the market-rate for your job; if you are lucky, you are being paid the market rate for your skills - but that’s it. You will never be paid more than that while you have a job.

On the other hand, when you work for yourself, there is no top limit. There are plenty of challenges, of course, but theres no top limit on your income as there is at present. The time is right I believe, with the age of the internet, for ordinary people to seize the day and make their fortunes because it has never been easier to start a business than it is on the internet.

Wallace D Wattles’ ideas can easily be translated to doing business on the internet. Using his simple principles like being focussed on what you want, taking efficient action and over-delivering in every business transaction, many people are applying the Science of Getting Rich to their lives and seeing quite a transformation.

When you begin looking into personal loans you’ll quickly learn that there are different ways to borrow money for all kinds of things that you need money for. The two basic kinds of loans are often categorized as “secured” and “unsecured” loans.

Unsecured loans are good for smaller purchases which you can pay off quickly. Unsecured loans are loans which are given to you based on your credit rating and not based on any single thing you offer up for collateral. Your credit score is really a measure of your past ability to pay off what you’ve owed in the past. If you’ve always paid your debts on time then you probably have a pretty good credit rating. Most credit cards are really considered to be an unsecured type of financing.

When you finance a car or buy a house with a mortgage (which is a kind of secured loan) the bank technically owns what you bought until you’ve paid off the debt amount plus interest. Secured loans are a type of loan in which the lending institution has some sort of collateral or payment to hold until you pay off the loan. If you default on your loan then the lending institution can take your collateral and auction it in an effort to regain some of the money they lent you.

Depending on your tax situation you may even be able to reduce the income tax that you owe. There is often more paperwork associated with secured loans because they are so much bigger than most unsecured loans. Common secured loans include house mortgages, new auto loans and most current house remodeling loans. Secured financing such as home equity lines of credit generally have a lower interest rate, which makes paying them off less expensive over the life of the loan.

No matter what type of loan you consider remember that you do have to pay the money back and you will be paying interest on the amount that is owed. Plan ahead and be sure you can really afford the monthly payments before you go forward with your loan. Many costly projects are revised when people finally begin to consider how various loans work.

It is during a financial downturn in the economy when some people try their hand at making some extra money for themselves, maybe by starting a home based business of their own.

However, many of these budding entrepreneurs fail in this endeavour, simply because they do not understand how to run a business, and spend lots of money up front only to lose it when the business fails. These are the people who evidently are not familiar with affiliate marketing.

What affiliate marketing is then, is a way for anyone to promote a product that does not belong to them, but allows them to earn commission each time an item is sold. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to direct people to a website containing information about a product and cashing in each when a sale is made. But picking the right product is key here, and the beginner might be wise to tick all the boxes on the tips given below before proceeding with an affiliate marketing venture.

1) Right product. You must choose a product that is right for the market at the time and one which people can easily afford. It is of no use promoting a product that is out of fashion, outdated, past its sell by date or just too expensive, otherwise no one is going to buy it and you will end up wasting your time.

2) Repeat business. Look for products that come with back-end purchases i.e. automatic repeat purchases from your customers on a regular basis, bringing in repeat commissions for you on an ongoing basis without any further effort on your part.

3) No risk. You will not want to spend a small fortune on setting up as an affiliate marketer. Look for affiliate programs that are free to join. This will eliminate any financial risk, which is a boon when first starting out in any business, not just affiliate marketing.

4) Global demand. It goes without saying that products that no one is interested in will be difficult to sell and will not earn you much in commission. So my advice is to source a product that is already in great demand (all over the world preferably) but where you can offer it with a massive additional benefit. If you can find such a product, this is the way to go.

5) Viral marketing business. The Internet gives the affiliate marketing a power that traditional businesses just do no have, and that is access to a worldwide market place. Your chosen product therefore, should be of interest to a global audience. Plus, if your affiliate marketing program allows referral marketing, where your customers recommend the product to others and you still get paid a commission, so much the better.

6) Incentive commissions. Check to see if your affiliate marketing program offers an incentive bonus for putting in the time to make your affiliate business a success. Additional bonuses such as these are paid by some companies for moving up the commission ladder and it makes sense to join such a program, rather than one that does not offer such incentives.

So there it is. Six tips for anyone considering a career in affiliate marketing. Stay true to these and you will keep your financial risk to a minimum whilst your earnings will remain unlimited, which is what ordinary business start-ups would love to be able to do.

Has you money ever walked away with a contractor or service person to never be seen again? If you still have their phone number, whether is a cell phone or home phone, you can track them down.

People with deception on their mind usually are not hesitant to give up their phone number. In the past is was hard to locate someone with a phone number alone. Nowadays, a phone number can lead you to their front door.

A reverse cell phone search can supply you enough information in seconds to have you knocking on their front door in minutes. This goes for unlisted, cell phone, and land line phone numbers.

The days of playing hide and seek with other people’s money has come to an end. If you have an issue with a bad business venture, a quick search can provide with enough information to turn in to the proper authorities.

It is a real simple process that will not take more than a few minutes. The only tools needed is a computer, a reverse phone directory, and a phone number. Those are the 3 qualifications to track a snake.

The results can be so detailed as to include family members as well. If for some reason they sense that you are on to them and decide to hide at a family members house, you can invite yourself to dinner as a distant cousin.

The telephone look-up service is not only good for fighting crime, it can also be used for more personal issues. You can use the service to search for an old buddy, a lost love or your distant family members.

Tracking cell phone numbers can really assist in helping people from getting ripped off. There are many other options to putting this great tool to use. Once you have used it, I am sure that the possibilities will begin to evolve in your mind.

Faxing services help users to manage both outbound as well as inbound transmission of fax documents. There are different advantages of fax services and some of them are the following ones.

Categorizing of fax documents

Take care of incoming faxes

Fax broadcasting

Receive incoming documents through a phone network

View or print faxed documents

Create fax

Manage outgoing faxes

Use the telephone network to transmit faxes

Web fax services give you the possibility to get rid of the requirement to get hold of a special fax modem or a new faxing machine. A fax service is offered by companies owning a fax server to clients. This includes sending documents, receiving them and managing queues in both ways. Distributing fax is also important and is a choice. Additionally you can create fax.

Applications allow you to send and compose for informing and rendering information to the users. For instance, a computer program may use fax services to include the info you specify to customer for delivering the receipt form and for faxing the same form back.

Incoming fax gets delivered directly to your e-mail inbox. From there every user is free to download the faxed document in the form of a file to store it conveniently.

In addition, there is no need of acquiring a fax device; this includes faxing modems - required previously for this type of technology. As a matter of fact, the only thing you’ll need is an Internet connection and a computer, since all is managed using the Internet. All the technical requirements are handled by the faxing company itself.

As you see, faxing services are nowadays the most convenient way of sending and receiving fax. They provide you from the start with a local or toll-free fax number so you can start immediately faxing. And you can do this from anywhere in the World!

In grandma’s day, there weren’t any chemical products on the market, so that people were forced to use whatever they had if a problem occurred. Still, this isn’t necessarily bad. Years later, even with these chemical products on the market, people still don’t use them because these natural products work just fine. Why should they change something that might potentially be unsafe if a natural product that is not unsafe works? Plus, these chemical products can often cost more than their natural counterparts.

They would use products and food that they had around the house to cure sores, pimples, bad breath, ingrown hairs and more. Most Nanas believe that chemicals and anything else that’s new on the market is unnecessary, just like they think that technology is out of this world. Using natural products for cures and beauty treatment is better than using anything else.

Many if not most “home remedies” can be used for other than their specific and first intended purposes. For example, mixed berries, sweet orange, cocoa butter, lemon, anise, sunflower, vanilla, avocado, Rosemary, almonds, jaffa, geranium, and tea tree oil are just a few of the things your grandma might use for various home remedies and that still work for what ails you. In fact, you probably have at least several of them in your home right now.

For example, if you’ve got digestive problems, drink a little lemon juice every morning to get your digestion working. Add a little bit to a glass of cold water to quench your thirst. It’s much better for you to do this than to drink something that has lots of sugar, preservatives, coloring, and so on. You can also use lemon for flu and cold. In the event you feel a cold coming on, mix a little warm lemon juice with some honey and take a tablespoon three times a day.

Your grandmother probably also likes tea tree oil, and perhaps you remember her putting on some tea tree oil if you hurt yourself. It’s also great for cuts, acne, ingrown hairs, rashes, smelly feet, abrasions, and a lot more. In your own home, keep a bottle of tea tree oil on hand. You’ll be surprised at how often it comes in handy. In fact, you’ll probably wonder how you ever lived without it after a short while.

Don’t spend money on air fresheners that are harsh on your nose; instead, put some fresh rosemary into a basket or vase in each room of your home. It will keep your home fresh smelling, and is also unique. It doesn’t smell like any chemical air fresheners, and instead gives off a natural, clean smell.

Got bad breath? A lot of people suffer from this, even if they brush their teeth several times a day. Sometimes, bad breath comes from stomach problems or thyroid problems, so that the bad breath can’t be helped. However, chewing a few mint leaves should help with your bad breath if you have it, so that you won’t suffer any further problems. Parsley is another remedy for bad breath that you can simply carry with you in the event you need help with bad breath.

If you use natural products, they’ll be more effective and you’ll also feel better using them than you will chemical counterparts. In addition, most natural products don’t have the side effects chemical ones do, so you’ll have no problems and will find them beneficial.

You know exactly what it’s like. You’ve been on holidays and seen some great sights and been to some wonderful places. You’ve filled up cards with all your photos. But you’ve got home to view your photos and they are always disappointing. They just didn’t capture it and they look dull and lifeless.

They just don’t convey anything of what you wanted to convey when you took them. That sunset just isn’t there. That extra special light that you wanted to capture just seems to have disappeared. That special smile on your girlfriends face looks more like a grimace.

It’s not that you’ve done anything dumb like putting your thumb on the lens, you know better than that. You’ve invested in a good camera, you’ve spent some time learning how it works, and you really thought that you ought to be taking good photos now.

But you just seem to be disappointed every time you look at your photos. You don’t seem to be improving. You photos just don’t tell the story you want them to tell.

You can find that it’s only a small step to go from a photo dunce to a photo pro. All you need is some basic understanding of some of the simple steps that every professional photographer knows.

Some simple stuff like how to compose a good photograph. How to make best use of light. How to take good photos of people, pets and the outdoors. How to use a tripod properly. How to make best use of your flash.

Clearly modern cameras are very good, but it isn’t sufficient to rely just on that. Although they are good you still need to know how to take a good photo, the camera hasn’t been made that you can just point and shoot and expect great photos every time. You need to put in some effort.

Now of course if they could make a camera that would take great photos every time just with point and shoot they would, the market would be huge. But the person behind the lens still needs to learn some photography basics.

It’s not hard, you need to practice a little, but you enjoy photography so you’ll enjoy practicing. You need to learn some of the secrets of the pros and apply them.

Then when you go on holidays next time you won’t need to feel embarrassed about your average boring photos. You’ll love showing them to your friends, they’ll probably be asking you for tips on how to take good photos themselves.

And you might even look at your holiday photos and find your girlfriend smiling.

You can get a book on how to take good photos on my website.

There are many skin cancer treatment options that will treat your cancer depending on the stage of cancer you have. They will vary with each individual?s medical condition and ability to withstand treatment. Skin cancer treatments have a very high success rate and you will have a greater chance of survival when you catch it early and begin your treatment. Don?t wait to see if something will go away. Always check with your doctor.

Different options for the treatment for basal cell carcinoma exists. One treatment is ‘Mohs Micrographic surgery’ which helps in removing the cancer without removing the surrounding tissue which is healthy. With this procedure, successive layers of cancerous tissue is removed and examined..

As the doctor continues to remove thin layers during the procedure, he may continue to see more cancer cells. Once the doctor finds normal tissue, he will stop the removal. The doctor may also use a normal incision to remove skin cancer; however, when this method is used, there is a risk that some normal tissue will be excised along with the cancerous tissue.

Skin cancer cells can be frozen and removed using cryosurgery. A laser can be used to direct a light that kills skin cancer cells. Another way to treat skin cancer is by the use of radiation therapy. an x-ray is used to reduce the cancerous tumor and kill it. There is a topical treatment for skin cancer. Chemotherapy contained in a lotion will destroy the skin cancer cells when it is rubbed on the area that is affected.

If you are a patient dealing with skin cancer you and your doctor should discuss treatment options that are available based on your individual case. Always remember to ask questions about the side effects and success rates of each available treatment.

In order to make an informed decision, it will be necessary to have all of the information. It is important to treat skin cancer in a way that prevents it from metastasizing to other body parts. If you are fortunate and catch it in the early stages, you will have quite a few options regarding treatment than if you find it during a late stage.

Most important is that skin cancer be caught in its early stage, in order to treat it with the best chances of cure. For this reason, a monthly self-examination is advised.