What Steven Cousley Does

6 Reasons to Buy Whole Life Insurance or Term Life Insurance
Securing quality term or whole life insurance coverage is
important, especially if there are people in your life
whose financial stability depends on your income. Many
financial experts even consider life insurance to be the
foundation of sound financial planning. Find out six
reasons why you should purchase whole life insurance or
term life insurance to protect your family and loved ones.

1. Income for Dependents
If people in your life depend on your income for financial
support, having a whole life insurance or term life
insurance policy in place will protect them in the event of
your death. Life insurance can replace your income for your
dependents so they aren’t left bearing the financial burden
of an income lost through death. This applies most often to
parents with young children, but is also applicable to
couples if the death of one partner would leave the
survivor financially stricken. If your parents, adult
children, or siblings are your dependents, life insurance
can also provide replacement income to benefit them. And,
if your surviving spouse or domestic partner’s government
or employer-sponsored benefits will see a reduction after
your death, having life insurance to replace your income
can definitely be useful.

2. Coverage for Final Expenses
Funeral and burial costs can be expensive, but your life
insurance can cover the costs. Carefully planned life
insurance will also provide funds to cover mortgages and
other expenses. Debts and medical expenses not covered by
health insurance can also be covered by your life
insurance. Life insurance offers protection to the
dependents you leave behind, since it can sometimes be
utilized as a cash resource.

3. Create Inheritance
Life insurance can allow you to create an inheritance for
your immediate relatives or heirs. Even if you don’t have
any other significant assets to pass onto your surviving
family or loved ones, you can create an inheritance by
naming your heirs as beneficiaries in your life insurance
policy.

4. Pay Estate Taxes
Rather than leaving your surviving family to take a smaller
inheritance or do away with some assets, have a quality
life insurance policy in place so the benefits can pay
estate taxes. Some life insurance plans provide tax free
cash that can be used to pay estate taxes and death duties.

5. Create Source of Savings
Your life insurance can become a sort of savings plan since
some types of insurance can create a cash value that is
available for withdrawal upon the owner’s request. Another
benefit of this “forced” savings plan is that the interest
credited is tax deferred, and if the money is paid as a
death claim, the interest can be tax exempt (www.iii.org).

6. Make Charitable Contribution
By naming a charity as a beneficiary of your life
insurance, you can make a larger contribution than if you
donated the cash equivalent of your policy’s premiums.
Donating a term life insurance policy allows you to deduct
the cost of the premiums from your taxes. And, if you
donate a whole life policy, you can deduct the cash value
of the policy and the cost of the whole life insurance
premiums. In both cases, after you die, the charity you
select gets the insurance policy proceeds.

Plan ahead and ensure that you have a quality life
insurance plan in place to protect your family.

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Ryan Patterson is president of US Insurance Online, based
in Austin, TX. He graduated in 2000 from the University of
Texas with a combined business and computer science degree,
and started US Insurance Online in May of 2005 with fellow
entrepreneur Jim Waltrip. Visit
http://www.USInsuranceOnline.com for help shopping for
insurance and for free insurance quotes.

There’s Much You Can Learn From Competing eBay Auctions
If you haven’t already, you need to start looking at your
competitors’ auctions because you can learn a lot, as long
as you know what you’re looking for.

To begin with, don’t waste your time looking at currently
running listings because you don’t know what’s going to
happen with them. Instead, use the advanced search form and
search the completed listings for auctions that sold.

To do this, simply go to eBay’s advanced search form, type
in your best keywords, check the “Completed listings only”
checkbox and set the minimum number of bids to 1. Also, set
the sort order at the bottom of the form to “Price: highest
first”.

This will show you competing auctions that have recently
ended, with the ones that sold for the most at the top. Go
through and take a look, ignoring auctions with a red price
because they didn’t sell. Pay special attention to the
following things:

Titles. What are the other sellers putting in their titles
and what are they leaving out? If your titles are very
different then it might be a good idea to see if you can
make improvements.

Descriptions. You’ll probably notice that the successful
sellers haven’t just copied text from a company website or
from an Amazon.com review. They’ve gone through the trouble
of writing a little about the item and about themselves.
Learn from their example.

Pictures. I can almost guarantee you that the top selling
auctions will have good quality pictures which show enough
detail to let eBayers see what they’re getting. With items
of any significant cost, you will probably find multiple
picture, each from a different angle.

Style. Is it written conversationally or with a
businesslike tone? The way you should write depends on your
target audience, and these people seemed to like what the
top sellers wrote. After all, their items sold.

Time. It might seem insignificant to ignore this as a
factor, but pay attention to when the top selling auctions
began and ended and how mamy days they were listed for.
This might give you some clues about the best way to
attract buyers who will bid your item up. Then you can
schedule your items accordingly.

Price. If your competitors are selling using Buy it Now,
check to see what the maximum price is that they’ve managed
to sell for recently and consider setting your own Buy it
Now price slightly below that.

Shipping. Search the listings to find the “sweet spot” for
shipping. If you can figure out a way to get your shipping
costs lower than the highest sellers then this might be a
great opportunity to differentiate yourself in the market.
You might be surprised at how much of an impact a small
difference in shipping can make.

Once you’ve done your research and you find out what works,
you can start to emulate your competitors. Of course don’t
just copy them completely. Instead, structure your auctions
in a similar manner and make sure they include the same
information.

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Clint Herman is a successful eBay seller with over 6 years
experience selling on eBay. He also loves teaching others
how to sell on eBay. He is the author of “How to Get
Started Selling on eBay,” which is a beginner’s guide to
selling on eBay designed for people who are new to selling
on eBay. The guide is available at
http://www.beginnersauctionguide.com/ar.html

Tips for choosing a Savings Account in Australia

Money can be a tough thing to manage and even harder if you
don’t earn very much from your job. When it comes to
electricty bills, water bills, groceries and other expenses
if you don’t track what you spend them you’ll wonder where
it’s all going and when unexpected things come up that
needs to be paid for a savings account (especially a high
interest account) can bail you out. By putting in as much
as you can every week you will make life easier for
yourself in the long run.

Many people use the first bank account that they come
across without looking at the interest rate and fees and
this is a mistake because fees will eat away at your hard
earned savings and you may not be maximizing your income
with a low interest rate, so make sure you check your
current interest rate and look for a better deal, it’s best
to look every few months as banks are always changing their
rates some go up some go down.

As many people tend not to have a good savings habit
another way is to have your employer put part of your wage
directly into a savings account you can’t access so easily
(one without a key card perhaps) and the rest into your
normal account, this way it’s easy to make a habit of not
spending it and will benefit your greatly when you need the
money. It will become such a habit that you won’t even miss
the extra money because you will learn to live without it.

Any bank you go to should be able to advise you on what
will be the best account to maximise your money, they have
trained specialists who should be able to break it down
into details so that you can understand everthing easily,
if you can’t understand then perhaps try another bank
because that is their job to get you to understand what you
are doing rather than trying to sell you their services.

So your aim is to try to save on consistent weekly or
monthly basis, make it a habit and you will soon see that
it becomes easier over term and will benefit you greatly in
the long term.

If you want to find a high interest bank account in
Australia, then there are many comparison sites around.
Just try a search in google or yahoo.

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Andrew is a writer for many Australian websites covering
topics in the fields of Finance including
http://www.banksavingsaccounts.com.au , Insurance, Travel
and others.

Make Money Online:  Crawling Before You Walk

I guess you’re bound to have heard the old saying “You’ve got to crawl before you walk” plenty of times, there aren’t many instances in life where this doesn’t apply, and making money online is no exception.

Along with “Head down, bum up”, although not a pretty sight, these two age old adages form the very backbone of what you need to know if you are wanting to make money online. And, contrary to what you may think or read on the internet, the other lessons you need to learn have always applied to offline marketing, and been around since Adam was a boy.

You see, there are no ‘secrets’ to making money online. Internet Marketing is all about mindset. If you’ve been online for any length of time, then just like me, its likely that you get a heap of emails every day expounding the virtues of all these programs designed to make money online. Probably the only difference between you and I is that  it didn’t take me long to figure it all out. I learned to look outside the box.

Sure, there may be some programs that will make you money, but who do you think is enjoying real success? Let me answer that: it’s the program developers. For this reason, if wildly outrageous success on the internet is your aim,  you need to learn to be a leader, not a follower.

There are so many squillions of people trying to make money online, and more appearing everyday (I think the daily number is quite staggering). They all have the same hopes and dreams that you do. So, why should people listen to you? Why are you different? How do you think you can rattle their cages?

To answer those questions, you need to take a time- tested and irrefutable lesson from the world of offline marketing, and that lesson is to do what  everyone else DOESN’T do! Find a unique perspective. A way to do things differently than everyone else, so that you don’t just become another wannabe in a sea of wannabes. Stand out. Be different.

Think of the internet as a fantastic vehicle for reaching a huge number of people and turning our world into one gigantic global community. Nothing more, nothing less. Its not magic. Whether you use this vehicle socially, or to make money, there has never been a time in history where we have the ability to be in contact with so many others, in so many places, and where the power of ‘word of mouth’ advertising and recommendations can be multiplied to an unbelievable level.

The potential is incredible. Learn how to use it. Develop relationships with others and nurture your reputation, trust and reliability. It will pay you back a thousand fold.

Have fun! Enjoy what you’re doing. Aside from the obvious benefits of this, there’s a huge added bonus; your passion shines through! People can feel and sense your passion, and when you are genuinely passionate, it rubs off on them. When you’re doing something you love, it’s not work, it’s play!

You are not an island.  It isn’t necessary for you to  try to do everything yourself. The vast majority of big name, successful internet marketing gurus online will tell you the same thing; their success did not eventuate until they found someone they believed in. Someone they trusted. Someone who showed them what to do, notice I said SHOWED them, not told them, there’s a big difference.

Once you find someone that you can model, the sky truly can become the limit.  And it’s not hard, it just takes the ability of being able to sort out the genuine folks that walk the walk, and talk the talk, and both are vital.  No sense having someone who has the gift of the gab, but hasn’t got a clue as far as experience goes.  And conversely, someone with tons of experience but no idea how to explain it is equally as frustrating.

I hope this  information rings true for you, and you’re finally ready to stop procrastinating and jumping on every latest and greatest fad that hits your inbox. Once this happens for you, it will be like another huge realization – you’ll see the light!.

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