Credit Card Finance Charges Aka The Gift That Keeps On Giving – Forever
Do you ever really stop and look at your entire credit card statement when it comes? Most consumers look for the minimum due payment and that is what they send. The Credit Card companies know this and count on it. The vast majority of profit made on credit card portfolios is derived from finance charges and other fees.I will be the first to agree with anyone that says that credit cards should come with a warning label attached, much like cigarettes. Credit Cards are the driving force behind most people’s financial cancer. During the heady days of 20 percent yearly equity lifts on your property, it didn’t really much matter. Everyone could just go and refinance their house, pay off all those cards and start fresh. Or so everyone thought!I am not one of those people that feel bad for all those poor mortgage people that are out of work right now because frankly they fueled the problem. When mortgage brokers were pulling in $20k or more in monthly commissions giving loans to people that they had no right doing is unconscionable. This behavior is the exact reason that I left the credit industry.Finance charges are the reason that if you had a $2000 credit card with a 19 percent interest rate will take you 17 years to pay off if you only paid the required monthly due and never use the card again. Now most banks have altered their required payments from 2 percent to 3 percent to reduce the payoff time. Don’t confuse this change with the banks and credit card companies wanting to do the right thing for the customer. They were required to in an effort to quiet the buzz that has recently been brought to light through congressional inquiries.If you keep nothing other than the Card itself when the new plastic is sent to you, SAVE THE CONTRACT. This is singularly the most important document in understanding how your finance charges are calculated. Make no mistake here every piece of that contract is there to protect the bank and to increase their profitability. Visa and Mastercard have certain requirements that are also built into the contract.Now there are so many different types of methodologies that the card issuers use to calculate your finance charges that I could write an entire book on the subject and five minutes later it would be out of date. There are groups of analysts at every since credit card company that their primary job requirement is to determine new ways to “squeeze” money out of the portfolio.Steps you should take to understand your finance charge calculation methodology:1. Call every credit card company that you do business with and request that they send you a copy of your agreement. Make sure they send you the most updated version, because they typically change them every year. a. Some banks may try to charge you for this information; however you can usually talk them into giving you a freebie. This can be dependent on how long you have been a customer of the card company.2. Create a file to keep all of these copies.3. Once you get the contract, READ IT! Yes, you will need to get out a magnifying glass because they all use tiny fonts to get all this information on one 3 fold piece of paper.4. If there are terms in your contract that you do not understand, use the web to figure out what it means or better yet call your credit card company and ask. This is a great way to find out how well the companies that you do business with actually train their people. (You may find that you will be talking to someone in India, Costa Rica or any other low cost outsourcing country.5. Always read every piece of paper that comes addressed from your credit card company. They are notorious for sticking the “Change in Terms” inside the statement that no one reads.On a final note, with the “green movement” taking over every company and becoming so en vogue, I personally do not opt in to the “online statements”. The credit card companies are using this green movement to line their pockets. Guess what, it costs them millions of dollars in paper and postage to mail all those pesky statements to their customers. I personally like the paper statements. Call me old fashioned but it makes it a whole lot easier to sit down and do your budget and pay your bills when you can actually hold them.
3 Essential Portrait Photography Tips for Absolute Beginners
Photography is an enjoyable hobby but it can also be turned into a profitable business by offering services to others around you, be it family portrait photography, outdoor portrait photography, baby portrait photography or wedding portrait photography.Portrait photography is an easy way to interact with your subjects and capturing their important events that they can reflect back upon in future. However before you proceed on your portrait photography business, here are some 3 fundamental portrait photography tips you need to know in order to succeed:Tip 1) Preparation is KeyScout for a location for your shoot, once chosen, you need to explore the area in order to familiarise yourself with the place.Choose specific sites with beautiful scenery and spot potential sites that would give you a pleasing background.During the days approaching the shoot, take note of the local weekly weather patterns in order to avoid scheduling your shoot on a rainy day. Do have a different indoor location in the event of a sudden weather change.Tip 2) Types of Portrait LensesInstead of using your standard kit lenses or zoom lenses, use fixed focal length lenses which are much suited for portraiture, such as a 50mm f/1.8 or a 85mm f/1.8.Good prime lenses for portrait photography are lenses with wider apertures of at least F/1.8, which allow the user to achieve very shallow depth of field, where the background is reduced to a smooth, dreamy blur whilst still having the subject sharp and in focus. This gives a very nice pop to the image, at the same time blurring away any distracting background.The focal length for these lenses should be 50mm or longer, as mid telephoto or telephoto would flatter the subject and separate the subject from the background. While wide angle lenses (wider than 50mm) will tend to distort and widen your subject’s face than it really is, thus creating an unflattering image.Tip 3) LightingPhotography is essentially painting with light, where light is your paint, and the camera your canvas. Therefore using different quality of lighting is important as it can sometimes give your portrait a dramatic effect.Try to photograph during the golden hours of the day, the first hour and last hour of day, usually around 8am-9am or 5pm-6pm. The type of light in the golden hours gives you warm, diffused light which flatter your subject by giving their faces a warm, healthy glow. It is more peaceful during these hours, which sets a comfortable mood for photo-taking, putting your subjects at ease.Shooting portrait in the afternoon is often not ideal, as hard lighting can create unflattering shadows, make your clients uncomfortable and give you an unsatisfactory result due to the harsh lighting.
Do Patient CoPayments Produce Better Health Outcomes?
Rising healthcare expenses in developed nations have made it difficult for many people to seek the medical care they need. From 2011 to 2012, healthcare costs in the United States increased 3.7 percent, costing consumers $2.8 trillion, or $8,915 each person. Some analysts estimated the latest figures to be closer to $3.8 trillion with government spending at a whopping 17.9% of GDP.Australians spent $132.4 billion on healthcare, while people in the UK spent £24.85 billion. Government expenditure in both these countries sit at between 9-10% of GDP, which may seem more manageable compared to the US, however healthcare leaders in both these countries are taking a firm view of preventing any escalation of these percentages.With the high costs of health care around the world, many stakeholders wonder if introducing or adjusting copayments will produce better health outcomes.The topic is being hotly debated in Australia, where co-payments for General Practitioner visits have been proposed by the Liberal government in its most recent Federal Budget announcement. However, while healthcare stakeholders seem obsessed with costs, the question is do copayments actually improve health outcomes for these nations?Copayments and Health Outcomes: Is There a Correlation?Researchers have studied the effects copayments have on health outcomes for many years. The RAND experiment was conducted in the 1970s, but a recent report was prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation. Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D., from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examined the RAND experiment and brought to light that high copayments may reduce public health care utilisation, but may not affect their health outcomes. The study followed a broad cross section of people who were rich, poor, sick, healthy, adults, and children.In a 2010 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found the opposite was true for senior citizens. Those that had higher copayments reduced their number of doctor visits. This worsened their illnesses, which resulted in costly hospital care. This was especially true for those who had a low income, lower education, and chronic disease.Whilst intuitively we may feel that copayments in healthcare may make us value our own health more, these two studies signal that this is not necessarily the case. In fact, higher copays can lead to additional healthcare costs to the health system due to indirectly increasing hospital stays for the elderly.Those that are not senior citizens may be able to avoid hospital care because they don’t have a high medical risk and hence be less adversely affected by such copayments. In making any conclusions about introducing copayment, we could also take learnings from the relationship of health outcomes and which is another consideration when studying the effects of copayments.Copayments for Medication: Does It Affect Medication Adherence and Health Outcomes?A study funded by the Commonwealth Fund, found that when US based insurance company Pitney Bowes eliminated copayments for people with diabetes and vascular disease, medication adherence improved by 2.8%. Another study examining the effects of reducing or eliminating medication copayments found that adherence increased by 3.8% for people taking medications for diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and congestive heart failure.Considering medication adherence is important when trying to determine if copayments affect health outcomes. When people take medications as prescribed to prevent or treat illness and disease, they have better health outcomes. A literature review published in the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (MIH/NLM) explains that many patients with high cost sharing ended up with a decline in medication adherence, and in turn, poorer health outcomes.The correlation of medication adherence and health outcomes is found in other parts of the world as well. According to the Australian Prescriber, increasing copayments affects patients who have a low income and chronic medical conditions requiring multiple medications. When they can’t afford their medications, they either reduce or stop many of their medications, which can lead to serious health problems. These patients then need more doctor visits and in severe cases, hospital care.Medication copayments effects on health outcomes were also found in a Post-Myocardial Infarction Free Rx Event and Economic Evaluation (MI FREEE) trial. Nonwhite heart attack patients were more likely to take their medications following a heart attack if copayments were eliminated, which decreased their readmission rates significantly.Health Outcomes Based on Medication vs. Medical Care?Is it possible that expensive copayments may only affect health outcomes for people who are on multiple medications? The research seems to reflect that may be the case. People seem to go to the doctor less when copayments are high, but it seems that senior citizens are the ones that end up suffering the poorer health outcomes due to the lack of regular medical supervision and possibly poor medication adherence. The decreased medication adherence seems to have the biggest effect on health outcomes, especially when the prescription drugs are for the treatment of an illness or disease. It seems as though the elderly and people needing multiple medications will benefit the most from lower copayments in terms of better health outcomes.Should copayments for visiting doctors be introduced in countries like Australia?My thoughts are therefore, if copayments are going to be introduced for visiting a doctor, we should provide exemptions for those that cannot afford it, e.g. senior citizens and pensioners. We also need to look at putting a cap on copayments, so that those with chronic conditions genuinely requiring multiple medical visits are not ridiculously out-of-pocket.Human nature is such that when we receive something for free, it is often not valued appropriately. I do think that placing a nominal price on our healthcare is a good thing in Australia, as I do believe that the vast majority of people will appreciate the generally good quality of care we receive in this country.Copayments are appropriate for those that can afford it, and should not be at the expense of those who cannot. This supports the premise of egalitarian healthcare systems that Australia aspires to continue.Here is where we need to be careful about how we debate the issue, and not place the issue in one generalised basket. I am very much in favour of healthcare system that is adaptive and customised to individual needs, and this is what we should aspire to do in our discussions about copayments.What do you think?