Archive for the ‘Money’ Category

The job market has never been so competitive. With the credit crunch still looming overhead and a skilled people taking lower paid jobs just to gain employment, the best option can be to gain extra skills and improve one’s employability.

There are a range of opportunities available to enhance your skill set, and below will list a few of the options available to get started.

1.      Think about what you want to do. Think about what kind of job you want. Gaining skills can be beneficial to develop your all-round employability, but it should be a priority to focus on skills that will benefit your future career.

2.       Pay a visit to a career centre. Career centres are designed to offer advice and direction for those who are seeking to gain employability skills. Once enrolled, you can begin a course which is specific to the skill you require.

3.       Spend time searching the internet. There are a wealth of resources and advice available on the internet that can help you. Online courses are also available and many are free.

4.       Visit your local library. There are a range of books available to help improve skills and employability. Books on skill set development and employability will often have sections which engage the reader in undergoing tasks to develop their skills.

5.       Find out which skills are currently required by employers. By reading up-to-date literature on what businesses are looking for in a person’s skill set, you can stay ahead of the game.

6.       Engage in a typing course. By taking a typing course, you will improve your typing speed an accuracy. This is beneficial to modern day businesses, as most jobs require at least some typing skills. The better equipped your typing skills are, the more productive an employee you will be.

7.       Find out the most popular interview questions. There are some interview questions that will be used in most interviews. Use the internet to research common interview questions, then develop clear, structured and intellectual answers. Next, practise the answers in front of a mirror, a friend or a family member to become confident in your answers.

Most of the options available above are available for free, so there’s no reason to hesitate. Don’t just sit around, waiting for the next opportunity to be perfectly tailored to your abilities; tailor yourself to the job you want!

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably got a bit more debt on your credit card than you would like! With the Recession biting hard now would be a good time to be free of Credit Card Debt altogether.

I was looking on the internet for advice about ways to clear my Credit Card Debt, initially I was thinking about either another Balance transfer deal or a consolidation loan. During my search I started seeing companies offering to get my Credit Card Debt cleared by the credit card company - this didn’t seem right to me but (being that it could be worth a good few thousands to me) I started to look into this further and this is what I’ve found!

1. Basically these companies can only get your credit card debt cleared if your card was taken out before April 2007, (luckily for me I’ve got a couple of cards which were taken out before April 2007!) this is because the Consumer credit act 1974 was changed in 2007.

2. There are plenty of forums out there with people who have actually managed to get their credit card debts completely wiped out by either using companies like this or by challenging the credit card company themselves. The general consensus is though that due to some of the legal complexities in this process, you are more likely to succeed if you use a specialist company to do this procedure for you.

3. Most of these companies take an up front fee & then take a percentage of the total value of the debt which you manage to get cleared - but not all! There are 1 or 2 companies out there who only take a fixed fee with no further payment for success!

4. You can get tens of thousands of pounds cleared off your account - in fact I’ve seen information about a couple who got £100,000 of debt cleared (unfortunately they had to pay £100,000 in legal fees)!

5. This system relies on a loophole in the law and the fact that the required documentation to enforce the credit agreement is often not available.

6. If you keep up your minimum payments to the credit card company during your claim then this does not affect your credit rating.

7. The credit card companies don’t want to write the debt off so they will probably take a long time to write back to you!

So with all of this in mind I had a look at a few companies and read a few horror stories of companies taking thousands and not achieving what they promised!! I came across the following website www.paycreditcarddebt.co.uk who offer to clear your credit card debt. The don’t make promises which they can’t keep and aren’t making unrealistic claims on their website. They charge £495 to handle your case, they don’t take the payment until they have initially assessed your case and if they aren’t successful they will actually REFUND THEIR CHARGES! They have a really informative website which includes information about a case that has been tried using this system & there is a really easy to use conact form where you can tell them how many cards you’ve got which were taken out before April 2007.

Anyway I have contacted them and 1 of their consultants is coming to see me early next week, I asked if I needed to have all of my paperwork from my credit cards - apparently not as they will request it from the credit card company. I will let you all know how I get on hopefully my credit card balances will look at lot better in a couple of months!!

Has anyone else actually managed to get your credit card debt cleared? Has anyone used any of these companies? Maybe you could leave a comment to help others out?