Prevention Of Blindness Egypt

Have any of you guys used any type of payment protection insurance plan before?

I was recently offered a plan like this on one of my credit cards and didn’t know if I should take it or not. It seemed like a great idea in writing, but I didn’t know if anyone had actually used it and liked it. Many times things seem great until you actually use it or need it and find out it is just plain junk and not worth the money you spent on it.

For those of you that need to know a little bit more about what it is, here is a sample from Wikipedia:

Payment protection insurance (PPI, also known as credit insurance, credit protection insurance, loan repayment insurance, etc.) is an insurance product that enables consumers to insure repayment of loans if the borrower dies, becomes ill or disabled, loses a job, or faces other circumstances that may prevent them from earning income to service the debt. It is not to be confused with income protection insurance, which is not specific to a debt but covers any income. PPI is widely sold by banks and other credit providers as an add-on to the loan or overdraft product.

And a little bit from ppi.com about PPI:

PPI (Payment Protection Insurance) is insurance that covers your repayments if you cannot meet them for any reason, for instance accident, injury or being made redundant from your job. Payment Protection Insurance may have been sold to you on any credit product including loans, credit cards, store cards, mortgages, car finance etc. It was mis-sold in many cases and you may be able to make a PPI claim to get your payments back!

PPI can add up to 40% onto your loan repayments and this is nearly all profit for the banks which is why they often wrongly pushed people into adding PPI to a credit agreement. In April 2011 the banks had a decision regarding the selling of payment protection insurance go against them and they have now set-aside billions of pounds for compensation payments. Lloyds TSB have set aside £3.2bn and RBS a massive £1.05bn to deal with PPI refunds. These are two examples which show the magnitude at which PPI was mis-sold to consumers across the industry.

So even though it sounds good on paper, it looks like some of the banks for years have been really taking advantage of people and mis-selling the protection for some time. Thank goodness for websites like PPI.com that actually inform you and help you get your money back and do PPI claims easily with a simply form and quick response times.

If any of my readers have had problems with PPI issues with their bank or lenders, you should really check into the issue and use the services I mentioned above to get your money back and file a claim so that you can get back what is rightfully yours and stop letting banks and lenders take advantage of you and your family.

I had an idea today that I think could make me some big bucks in the near future.

Since I have been in affiliate marketing, I have come up with some crazy ideas that I think could work both online and offline. A lot of these I fail at, but you only get success once you find out what fails.

So my idea was to basically create my own payday loan shop in my local area near the Fort Knox military base. You see tons of them all over and they all offer the same old $450 max limit and such.

Well, my idea was to open a store just like this and instead of capping at $450 on the loan, I would make mine $1500 and beat out all the other payday loan lenders in the area. the only problem was, the more money I lend.. the more risk I took. I also found out the reason the payday loan lenders only did $450 was because there happens to be a max limit of what you can let someone borrow in my state as well.

So I decided, what if I made it all online? I wouldn’t be regulated by the state then and I could simply just have a small building where you came and did your payday loan and all you did was walk in and did it all on a kiosk where you input your name, address, SSN, and loan information and then BAM, money right into your bank account as needed with no need for me to handle or hold any money in the store myself.

If I just wanted to test it, I could simply make road signs and yard signs and have them planted all around the area and put on them the URL to my website and then collect all those leads and sell them to payday loan lenders in real time and make even more money.

I really need to test the idea out and see how it goes. Maybe I could put an ad in the paper and see how it does or just do some small local testing in my area and see what comes of it. My city is not big, so I do not know if it is even the best test bed for this type of idea to begin with.

However, just think if this worked out? Think of the money I could make just doing yard signs in areas where people need money and need lots of it and all they had to do was go to website in their spare time in the security of their home and get the money they need and I didn’t even need to give them the money, I just sold the leads to other people that did have the money and let them take all the risk while I just get a cut of it! Wouldn’t that be awesome? So little is needed from me, but the potential could be huge in the amount of money I could make.

I will have to try this out soon.

When it comes to starting your own business, you have a ton of choices. It can also get very confusing to what you should get into as well. What is a safe choice? What can actually make you money? Which ones should you avoid?

When I was 8 years old, I had my own lemonade stand where I would sell sugar water with lemons mixed in for $2 a glass. I later re-sold baseball cards for a .50 profit when I got into middle school, and in high school, I use to play poker and design web sites for my side money. These day I offer consulting services and buy and sell advertising like people buy and sell stocks.

These days, there are a lot of legit business that you can run from your home or from a small office. There is no shortage of thing you can do and sell when you start your own home business. Some of these are well known options such as:

1. Mary Kay
2. Avon
3. Real Estate Agent
4. ACN INC member
5. Consultant
6. Medical coder

Of course, there are a lot more options that range from owning a franchise to selling small products that you make and sell on eBay. You can also find a small business that someone else is having luck with and try to model a business that helps them grow and scale their business.

Some of these options have great side benefits. If your into cosmetics, being a Mary Key or Avon rep could enable you to try all the newest lotions and make up products before anyone else for free while still making money when you sell those products to your customers.

If your into Real Estate, being a real estate agent could put you right in front of the best bargain home and properties that you could later flip or remodel yourself for profits down the road.

Being an ACN member, you could earn money while also saving money on your TV, phone, and other communication bills like your mobile phone. The benefits can be endless and the money can be an excellent side income as well.

Many of these side jobs can be done after work hours. Many real estate agents make a specialty of only showing homes on the weekend or after work hours. Many Avon reps only show their products at these same times as well and also make appointments ahead of time when other mothers and women are free too.

Don’t over look a potential work from home small business because of the time involved or the risk of not making any money from it. There are many things people have done that no one would have ever thought they would have been successful at and then hit it big later.

If you need ideas for things you could be doing, take the time to watch the show “Shark Tank” or even “Pawn Stars” to get more ideas that are out of the box on what people are inventing and what people are buying and selling that you could be getting a piece of the action on.

While on my hunt for a good web design company in Toronto, I called around a bunch of places and had to leave messages and send emails and wait for a response. It was a painful couple of days to do all that work, but I was able to narrow down the right companies to speak to and learn a lot from the process.

Not all the companies I called where in Canada, some of them where in the States and spread out in major cities as I wanted to make sure I got as much information as possible while doing all this work. Once of the companies I called was a Los Angeles SEO Company at http://www.evergreensearch.com. I had to leave a message, but they got back to me the very next day which was a lot better then the companies that waited a whole week to call me back!

What struck me as awesome with their company was they have worked with big brands like Toyota, Symantec, Complete Tax and more. If they can handle the needs of those companies when it comes to search marketing, then surely they can handle mine when my site gets finished. I mean, if you can handle huge brands like that, they you must know what your doing.

Speaking of which, the site is well on its way now. We had some phone calls and one of the reps came down and went over our requirements and updated us on case studies they had done with sites similar to ours and what the outcomes where. My boss was pretty impressed with their team and the work they had done, so I felt like I had made the right choice for our company. It is a major relief, because anything that will and could go wrong would end up being my fault somehow.

We have already got an outline from their design team on how to flesh out the site and what components it will have that we can change or modify as needed. Its a lot of work ( a lot more then I thought ) and I am glad someone else took this whole project over. There is no way I could have gotten us this far by myself, let alone know what I was doing to get us there.

We have a couple more meetings planned when we hit certain milestones in the road map for this project, which is great because we get to be involved in the project every step as we need to be and keep tabs on it all. Once we get to putting the site on a test server, we are going to have to hand it off to an SEO company to go in and make sure its ready for Google and the other search engines and map out a marketing plan for all our online traffic and leads, which I am sure will be a but of work, but worth every single minute of effort we put into it.

I swear, I do not know where my son learned to dress himself. It for sure wasn’t something he picked up from me or his mom, maybe it is just what young boys get into these days with their music, friends, and culture that they pick up from television. Where ever he learned it from, I wish he would pick up some better taste!

Just to give you an example, recently we had a death in the family and me and my family got all dressed up and my son was at work, but was going to come to the visitation after work, so we all got ready and drove over to the funeral home before him. Well, it seems that instead of going home and changing into some nice dress clothes, he went home and put on the clothes he cut grass in yesterday which was a torn up old t-shirt and a some green cargo pants!

I was highly embarrassed and had him immediately go home, but the story doesn’t end there. The next day he went out on a date with a new girl and wore the exact same outfit, that makes 3 days now he has wore it without it being washed! That still didn’t stop him, he tried to go on a job interview the day after that… you guessed it, in the same exact clothes.

What has gotten into these kids today? My generation didn’t do this and I know me and his mom didn’t influence him to dress this way either. I don’t mind dressing this way for being around the house doing chores or getting things done like cutting the grass, staining the deck, or just being lazy in the house. However, there are times when you know you have to dress up, like at a funeral, or on a date, or going to a job interview.

It has to be the their culture. My son is not lazy by any means, but I think the culture for kids today is one of, ” I just don’t care and if you don’t like it, then I don’t care about that either”. Which is sad, because they find out real fast that as they get older, the outside world does care and their first impressions of you can be what decided when job you end up getting in this world.

It is good to do your own thing, but sometimes its about respect for the other person. Maybe the person you went out on a date with doesn’t want to look like she hangs around with garbage men, or maybe the interviewer only thinks your only capable of doing the lower rung jobs at the company your interviewing for. Surely you can dress up for a funeral as well, just to show some respect for the person that just passed.

I think I will try to sit down with him tonight and just let him know that it is OK for him to wear what he wants, but certain situations call for a bit of thought though.

Man, I need to lose weight. I have been feeling a bit depressed and also very very tired lately. At first, I thought it was caused from lack of sleep as I stay up a lot of nights getting things done for the next morning, and sometimes I just stay up to watch TV and catch up on the news. However, I have been getting to bed early for 2 weeks and still feel off my game so I decided to go to the doctor.

My doctor told me yesterday that if I don’t lose a few pounds that I could end up like my father, who had diabetes. Notice I said had, as he is no longer with us anymore. He started out having diabetes and then progressed as the years went by into having harden arteries and heart disease. He passed about 5 years after being diagnosed with diabetes. I know I need to do something now, I have to be around for my children as they get older.

The only thing is, I am confused to what kind of diet I should be on? There are so many choices out there today. From low carb, vegetarian, south beach diet, weight watchers, low-fat diet, and just calorie counting. Don’t even get me into that fad cookie diet or other nonsense though.

Should I exercise, should I not? If I do, should I run or should I walk? The options and things to think about when looking at a diet are just too much to think about sometimes. No wonder people quit diets, there is too much to even think about! I see all these last night infomercials all pushing the same type of stuff every day. It looks like the tired and true method is to get your diet sorted out and then do some manual labor type of exercise.

My wife is making out a meal plan for me, I decided to try a combination of “Weight Watchers meets Adkins”. This way I am dealing with a low-fat diet combined with low calories and no to low carbs as well. I figure if I take the best of Weight Watchers ( which I say my sister do successfully ) and the best of Adkins ( which my wife did and lost 50 lbs ) then I could combine them both and do well. I also plan to be more active, so I fired my landscaper and also got rid of our seasonal help which normally does things like stain our deck, wash the cars, etc.

I am thinking that if I change my diet and also get more active doing things I haven’t done before ( because I just didn’t have the time to ) then I should be able to take off 50 lbs in about 5 months hopefully. Once I get to feeling better and being more active, then I can start doing real exercises like running, biking, swimming, and more.

I miss my father, but I know I would miss my children even more and they would be lost without me. I need to make sure I am around for the little things in their life ( and big too ).

I recently decided now was the right time for me to go back to college. Its been a long 15 years since I left high school and I have done alright for myself running my own small business plus working a full job as well. I have done a great job providing for my family, but I always knew there was more I could learn and more I could accomplish if I had just went to college. I wonder how my life would be different if I had went all those years ago.

However, I am smart enough to know my limitations. Recently, I felt that if I was going to get ahead, either in my career or my own business, I needed to take some classes that would help educated me on things I have little understand on, like taxes and business management, even in things like IT. You can’t “just be born” knowing everything, and at the rate information and methods change, you almost have to stay educated just to stay “in the game” and at par with everyone else.

My wife recently took some college courses ( non credit ) to update a few of her skills and she was told that there are a few places she could get more information if she felt like she needed to still get more training. That’s when she came across The College Network and found out that both of us could take classes like Introductory Psychology ( i think it would help with sales and understanding my customers ). I barely understand my wife, let alone my customers and co-workers. This is a prime example of how getting back into college and updating my skills could really help me out in the long run with getting to the next level in my career.

I need to look into grants or scholarships for adults as I have heard there are many of them available for adults just like me. It will be a bear to make time for this new idea, as I am already thin on time and need more of it myself already. I am sure that at some point I will make time to go and fill out the paperwork, I just need to research it a bit more and make sure I can secure some funding to go.

This maybe something my children can look into as well. I have 2 daughters about to graduate from high school in a couple of years and they will need to go through the same process so I better brush up on how this whole college racket works and when you have to file papers and who you need to speak to so the ball gets rolling and they don’t get behind.

I think I will go ahead and take a day off work next week to call up the college and ask a few questions and get some thing in motion. There is no need to put off things for tomorrow what can be done today.. my future and my kids future are just too important for that.

My mother is getting older and is on a limit income. It gets harder for her day by day to live on the retirement and social security that she and my father get every month. With trying to pay their everyday bills, there are always things like birthdays, holidays, unexpected issues ( like the A/C unit going out and needing a new one ), or even medical bills that come up.

Needless to say, being retired felt more like being trapped and left with no options a lot of times for them. Everything they did was planned around “Do we have enough money this week”. What good is enjoying yourself if you have to plan around money? Isn’t retirement suppose to be about relaxing and doing what you want?

She had thought about going back to work to make ends meet. At her age, I know deep down no one is going to want to hire her because of her age. Also, any of the jobs she does get would be entry level and any money she makes would get eaten up by taxes and gas for her car to drive her to work. What are people like my parents suppose to do at this age and in this situation?

We next decided that maybe they should sell their home, or at least rent part of it. The only drawback is the housing market is horrible right now and they would lose so much money selling it and my parents really just do not want to sell their home. Renting it causes a lot of frustration with letting someone you don’t know come into your home and trusting them around your belongings. Also, the keeping up with the rent and upkeep and all the tax nightmares with keeping up with paying taxes on that “business” income is just too much for them at their age.

That’s when we looked into reverse mortgages. Both of my parents were over the age limit of 62 and they owned their home outright, free and clear so it seemed like a good match since they would be able to live in their home without any repayment as long as they lived in it.

We found a lot of information at http://reversemortgagesv.com/ and was even able to get a free personalized quote from them at the same time. In many ways this seems the perfect options for my parents to continue living in their home and have income to support their bills and medical needs while also enjoying their retirement as well.

I will keep you updated on how it goes, but overall it seems to be a very simple process and perfect for those that have equity in their homes and may need it for medical bills, long term care, clearing debt, or needed to make improvements. You could even use the money to help finance a child’s education.

It’s not for everyone, but you should due yourself a favor and at least consider it and look into it if you are eligible.

SO my boss has been pressuring me for some time to get our company a new website since our old one is about 10 years old now.

I decided I could whip one up myself with a little HTML, CSS, and PHP. However, I soon found that after digging into it, that times have changed way too much since I last even touched an FTP application.

First of all, we are now on HTML5 and CSS3. PHP is branched out into 5 and 6, and don’t even get me started on the whole Ajax/Javascript stuff. After spending a couple days online and a couple hundred dollars on books and training programs, I decided this job was way over my head now and I needed a real professional to map out and design our new website.

Now my new problem, who do I trust to build our new site? I hunted around locally and just didn’t find any web designers that had built sites that just “fit” me. Even their own sites looked horrible at times. How am I suppose to hire you do design my site, when yours looks like trash to begin with? The more I searched, the more it seemed like this was going to be harder then just designing the site myself!

I was browsing some web design directories when I came across a firm in Toronto at http://www.9thsphere.com. These guys had a fresh site and their services looked like they could handle anything I could throw at them. The offer a full service suite from design, copywriting, marketing, even domain purchasing! Their portfolio was what I was most interested in. So many sites I had visited only hand a handful of “clients” and samples of their work, but these guys lead the way in showing you what they had designed for their clients. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were not the top end Web Design Toronto Agency.

Now that I think of it, I wonder if these guys will even take on a project like ours. Our requirements seem small compared to what they have worked with in the past, but I sent off an email and will wait for phone call to at least find out more about them and if they have some free time to talk to my boss and work with our requirements.

I think my boss will be pleased with my choice, these guys have won multiple web awards, CIPA, and Communicator awards so I know they deliver top notch designs. My only fear is that the cost and turn around time might be slightly higher then my boss would like, but quality comes at a price and he will just need to learn that if he wants it done right, then he will have to wait it out and make sure he approves of the final project before releasing the funds.

Eh, maybe these guys can get me a discount or a kickback for sending in a “referral”? Just don’t tell my boss.

So just the other day, I told you about my brother Don and how he got into doing some Real Estate with renting and flipping homes.

I did some more digging around and after talking to Don some more, you can find homes for sale that are bank foreclosures on the cheap that you can then turn into rentals or simply flip for more cash. That got me thinking, if there is a huge market right now for buying up and selling/renting bank foreclosures, there should be an equally large market to help these people prevent or get out of foreclosure right? ( Just don’t tell my brother! ).

I got to thinking, maybe I can be on the other end of the real estate game and make my money helping people keep their homes. I am sure Don would get really pissed if he knew I was up to this, but hey.. I am just looking right now and wouldn’t do anything to compete with him directly. Maybe even he and I can join up and offer this service to those really wanting to get out of foreclosure and then only buy and sell homes already too late in the foreclosure process to help. Sounds like a win-win to me!

I did some research and one of the sites I landed on was “How to Stop Foreclosure in Florida” at http://avoidforeclosure.com/how-to-stop-foreclosure-in-florida. Some of it seems like common sense, but what people forget is there is a lot of legal issues and headache that have to be done to get out of a foreclosure, so having someone that is experienced in guiding these homeowners and helping them around the pitfalls is worth more then enough the amount money that it would cost for their help.

Some of the more common things would be, renting out your own home so that your renter pays part/all of your mortgage for you. Also, how about refinancing your mortgage so that you get a better rate? Surely if you have some equity in your home, this could be a great option to help you prevent foreclosure. Even better, why not refinance and get a better rate and then find a renter for part of your home mortgage so that your payment ends up being less money out of your own pocket each month?

If those options do not interest you, you can get into more complex solutions that require more experienced help in getting you the right solution. These would include short sales ( if you bank will accept this ), forbearance, reinstatement, or “Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure” methods.

Some of these are way over my head, so I am not so sure I would go about this alone. We are dealing with large sums of money and people’s America dream here. One thing is for sure, the longer you wait.. the deeper into the foreclosure process you get and your options become severely limited in trying to protect your home. Getting help early in the process is a priority, but if you have the right help from experienced professional like the guys at http://avoidforeclosure.com/how-to-stop-foreclosure-in-florida, then you should be in very safe hands and be able to find a solution to help you get out the foreclosure process.

As my mother has gotten older, I have noticed a change in her personality and habits. At first, I thought this was just because of her getting older and being settled in her ways. However, I have noticed that lately she has been forgetting a lot of things and acting out violently at random times. It was pretty scary not only for myself, but for my wife and our children when we would visit her or bring her to our house.

I made an appointment with her doctor and drove her up to the office and went in with her. I could tell she really didn’t want to be here, but I had to make sure this was not something serious that could end up hurting her or others. The last thing I wanted was someone to get hurt or misunderstand what is going on.

No one wants to admit that there is a problem with themselves or a loved one, but I had figured this was the best thing we could do and then seek help if needed afterward. I wanted to make sure that if this was not normal, that it could be treated as well and then monitored later for any changes in her health and mental stability.

The doctor asked us both a lot of questions and after spending a great deal of time in the office, he mentioned that he thought my mother might be bi-polar and also have the onset of Schizophrenia. He mentioned we would have to make an appointment with another doctor and have her go through some tests to determine if this was the case. He scheduled the appointment there at the office and me and my mother got ready to leave.

No one wants to her a loved one might have either of these mental illness’s, but after I got home and I went online to find out more about both issues so I could be prepared for the next office visit. I had never known anyone with either of these illness’s, but I knew I needed to find out more information and I knew I could look online and find a ton of information on these 2 subjects.

A brief search online lead me to http://www.typesof-mentalillness.com/ and from there I was able to find out about all Types of Mental Illness from mood disorders, eating problems, psychotic, anxiety, and even impulse and addiction disorders. They even have whole sections on Schizophrenia and Bi-Polar as well which was very helpful for me to learn more about what might be troubling my mother.

It seems the treatment for these disorders ranges from medication to counselling, so i was relieved to find that these disorders can be handled and are not something that would end up locking her up in a ward somewhere all alone. I dread taking her to the next appointment, but I know in the end that this will help her and our family cope with the issues that have came up and will continue to come up for some time.

It is nice to know that there are valuable resources on the Internet that can help you understand and cope with complex medical problems like mental illness.

Looks like I finally blew out my speakers on my home theater. I was right in the middle of watching Avatar with the kids ( they still had not seen it, so I got it on Netflix ) and all of a sudden the power went out. How does this happen? No storm, nothing else in the house going on so I figured it must have been an outage at the power company untilI noticed the lights downstairs were still on.

I went downstairs and flipped the circuit breakers and came back upstairs thinking all was fine when I noticed that my speakers were not working now. TV was working and the receiver was working ( I tested with a small set of BOSE cube speakers I had ), but my actual speakers smelled of burning metal and seemed to be great boat anchors now, which is not cool considering I had spent over $7k for these speakers just 3 years ago and have had nothing but excellence from them and high quality sound from every movies and CD I have ever played through them.

I called up the manufacture and asked about what I could do. After taking them apart and going through some test, it was decided the speaker were no longer any good. When I inquired about my warranty, I learned it had just lapsed 2 months ago and I would not be able to get it covered under warranty and would be out $$$ to get them fixed or replaced.

What could I do? I asked the tech guy on the phone what could I do and that I didn’t what another set of these speakers since it seemed like maybe they were not up to par with my standards since they went out only after 3 years. He told me I needed to look into something called “innersound speakers” and that the best place to get a high quality set of them was at http://www.sanderssoundsystems.com/. I quickly got off the phone with him and got on my laptop to find out more about these speaker and this company.

Wow, not only did this company have used equipment ( which will help me on saving some money maybe ) but they also offer a 30 day in home trial to make sure I would even like their products. That is already a huge advantage over the big box stores like Ovation and Best Buy, and is also a huge advantage over the mail order catalogs that do not even offer a trial of their products, let alone used equipment.

After checking out their site, I called them up and talked to a rep for over 2 hours about getting a set of speakers to my house. I also orders a preamp and new speaker cables ( the old one were bad and I didn’t want to reuse them ) and should be getting them into my house any day now when they get delivered. If these turn out as great as I have heard about, then these will be even better then the old set of speakers I had, which is going to say a lot.

Sometimes, bad things turn out to be a great time to get something better then you ever imagined.