Can I affort to purchase a Home ?

This is the first question that comes to each person's mind when he wishes to own a home or appartment.
Here is an online calculator which is very easy to use and too quick to give support to your first thoughts.
You just need to anonymously enter is this...

• your income
• approx. non-mortgage debt
• money available for down payment
• mortgage term that you want to apply for
• mortgage interest rate(the page also displays current national average :) )

Once you input this and submit the calculate button, the page will show you the maximum affordable cost of the house, what should be total montly house payment and the mortgage amount.
It also displays one very important information. Like this...

Your down payment is less than 20%. This could require you to pay mortgage
insurance. You can avoid mortgage insurance by obtaining a piggyback
mortgage
(80% 1st mortgage + small 2nd mortgage)

Click on the "show detailed results" at the bottom of that page to see other helpful information like this.
So, give this simple calculator a try to find out if you could afford your dream home here.

Microsoft Stock is a BUY

Yep, Microsoft is surely the leading Global IT company but further it has changed the gears. Microsoft is rapidly changing their business modal.
Microsoft is aggresively trying to be the leader in SaaS(Software as a Service) domain too.
Recently Microsoft has started involving third-party developers at many fronts. It has made source code of many products available to particular audiences.

Recently, at Game Developers' Conference 2008 in Saf Fransisco, Microsoft announced that independent third-party Game Developers will be able to develop games for XBox, Zune, Windows platforms and also sell them on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The developers will be able to submit their games on http://creators.xna.com web site and get it reviewed by peers. So, that's awesome!
Well, the point is Microsoft has changed gears and will be happening in IT further.

According to a recent news, Microsoft has seen increase in revenue from outside USA. A huge portion of their revenue is generated of USA and that makes it very stable economic modal in even bad times.

StockScouter - Quantitative but Intelligent Analysis : Business Intelligence applied to Stocks

StockScouter takes Data Analysis with Gradient Analytics and adds intellectual facets to pick top 10(top 50) stock picks.

These stock picks assure you a gain of around 25% by following a sure buy and sure sell strategy having duration of six months.
Means, you just need to buy the top picked stocks, hold them for 6 months period, and sell it.
That easy. and You will be getting on an average 25% return. That can triple the amount invested along the 6 years.

You can decide your budget, and divide it between the stock picks and purchase them, hold the stocks for six months and sell at the end. The only thing is that you have to have faith and courage to do it at the given time. Sometimes, you may find that stocks are rewarding you and you start loving them. But, then stick to the StockScouter picks and its strategy.

If you want to find out why StockScouter strategy should work and what are the current picks, read the complete story here.

Following Buffet Steps of Investing

When measuring a company's reliance on debt, it's usually helpful to begin by examining its debt-to-equity (D/E) ratio. D/E can be easily calculated by dividing a particular company's total debt load by its shareholder's equity. Both of these key figures are located on the balance sheet. There's no hard-and-fast rule for evaluating this metric, but as a broad average for non-financial companies, it's usually wise to look for firms with D/E ratios below 0.50 (50%).

Time is the enemy of the poor business and the friend of the great business. If you have a business that's earning 20%-25% on equity, time is your friend. But time is your enemy if your money is in a low-return business.
25% ROE is best. And go with ROE > 15%

Look at ROE for more than 5 yr
looking at the current figure in isolation only tells part of the story, so check to see whether ROE has been falling, rising, or stable over time. Also, if a company has a particularly strong year, then its net income figure can be inflated, which can cause ROE to be exceptionally strong. Such one- or two-year blips have a tendency to fade quickly once the business environment becomes less favorable. Therefore, it's always important to examine ROE performance over a five- or ten-year period.

High ROE and Low D/E
By taking on additional debt, companies can effectively lower the amount of shareholder's equity they need to stay in business. By definition, this tends to inflate ROE. Therefore, its crucial to look for companies that have a high ROE and low D/E.

Cash Flow
One way to gauge a firm's cash flow production is to examine its free cash flow yield. This is calculated by dividing free cash flow by market capitalization, or the inverse of the Price/FCF ratio. A firm with a free cash flow yield of 10%, for example, generates 10% of its total market value in cash each year. That cash, in turn, can be used to pay dividends or fund share buybacks -- items that enhance shareholder returns.

The Debt Reality

Between 1997 and 2007, 8,815 American companies worth $1,302,946,906,459 were acquired by foreign countries, sending U.S. wealth and opportunity abroad. Just today the Economic Policy Institute reported that real wages for American workers are declining: From 2003- 2007 median U.S. hourly wage dropped more than 1%.
The average American in 2005 had a -1% savings rate, the lowest since the great depression, and a product of an economy that continues to squeeze the middle class and allow the flight of its best companies overseas.



Read Complete Story

Money for life: The hidden costs

A modest proposal: Make the sellers of variable annuities tell people how much they're really paying for their investment.



NEW YORK (Money Magazine) -- If you'd like to help thousands of people who are saving for retirement (and maybe even yourself), I have a suggestion. Tell the Securities and Exchange Commission to get off its duff and pass rules improving the disclosure investors get about variable-annuity fees.


The SEC has been mulling this issue for more than two years now. But when I called the agency for a status report recently, I got no hint as to when - or, for that matter, if - new rules might see the light of day. That's a shame. Because judging from the e-mails I get, only a tiny fraction of the investors who have some $1.4 trillion sitting in variable annuities know that they're paying more than they would to invest in regular mutual funds.

Read Complete story

File Sharing Threat to Security: Mortgage Data Leaked with SSN

Three spreadsheets containing more than 5,000 Social Security numbers and other personal details about customers of ABN Amro Mortgage Group were inadvertently leaked over an online file-sharing network by a former employee.

Tiversa Inc., a Pittsburgh company that offers data-leakage protection services, traced the origins of the ABN data to a Florida computer with the BearShare software installed.

With such peer-to-peer sharing systems, files are obtained directly from another user's hard drive rather than a central hub like traditional Web sites. As a result, once a file begins to circulate, copies can sit on computers all over the world, ready to be grabbed by other users.

Boback said Tiversa had yet to perform a full analysis to see how far the data had spread worldwide, but found evidence the files already had moved beyond the former employee's computer.
"There is no question in my mind that ... identity thieves have these files, and if they haven't already, they will be acting on them very soon," Boback said Friday.

Earlier this month, a Seattle man was arrested in what federal authorities described as their first case against someone accused of using file-sharing computer programs to commit identity theft.

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