Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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FAFSA Online Guide

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I don’t have kids, let alone kids that might be old enough to be applying for Federal Free Financial aid, but I know that a lot of my readers are parents so I thought I’d pass on some information about FAFSA online.

The site is a complete FAFSA guide, with everything you child will need to know about applying for federal financial aid. Who knows your college aged child might qualify for scholarships, grants, and other aid opportunities.

>FAFSA online provides a complete walk through of the FASFA form. They even provide an audio walk through if you prefer to listen to the guide as you fill in the paper work. It looks like it makes the whole process much easier and much more understandable. They even include 9 FAFSA secrets that will help you fill out the forms to your child’s best advantage – such as using bad investments that you’ve made in the past to offset other investments in order to bring down your total net worth.

It’s recommended that all College aged children apply for FAFSA, so why not get a little help while you are filling out the forms?





Wish my husband luck!

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My husband Chris hasn’t been getting very many shifts lately. He works as a porter at the same hospital that I work at, but his job is only part time. He used to get a lot of shifts at least four a week, sometimes six or seven. Lately he’s only been averaging two shifts a week.

We could handle his fluctuating shifts when I was working, but now that I’ve been off sick for so long and have no income of my own coming in, we are really feeling his lack of shifts. So he’s been applying to a lot of hospitals in the area for portering or other similar positions, and he’s also been keeping an eye on the job boards at work.

He recently found two jobs worth applying for at work – one is an OR attendant and the other is an Ultrasound Attendant. Both jobs will have a lot of shifts and a better possibility of the positions becoming full time. Did I tell you that it can be very hard to get a full time position in the hospital? (unless you are a nurse like me of course).

He has an interview for the OR attendant position next Wednesday and hopefully he’ll be called for an interview for the Ultrasound position too. So wish him luck!

If he has to change jobs I hope that he can get a better one at the hospital that we both currently work in. It’s so convenient. We only live a few blocks from the hospital so we can walk to work. It’s wonderful.

Peer to peer loan system

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I just came across an interesting idea. A company called Zopa has come up with an innovative investment and lending idea.

rel=”nofollow”Zopa stands for Zone of Possible Agreement. What is that? Well, it’s a peer to peer investment or loan system. It’s network of people who borrow or lend money to each other. Sounds interesting doesn’t it? If it works that would mean that you’d be cutting out the bank and all it’s charges for paperwork, and administration.

Members can borrow from one and other or make online investments. I was looking at their rates for borrowing money and at this time a personal loan’s interest rate is only 5.2%. That sounds pretty good to me.

Zopa is operating in the UK at this time but it will launch in the US shortly. I think it’s worth taking a better look at this company and what it offers.

Spot and Avoid Mortgage Fraud

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I remember when we first started looking at houses back in 2001. The whole experience of dealing with a real estate broker, real estate lawyer, mortgage broker and securing a mortgage with the bank were all new, and frankly intimidating experiences for my husband and I. Worse still we’d been hearing more and more stories about Mortgage Fraud in the news.

There were stories in the news about Mortgage scams where you’d be approved for a loan at very reasonable rates but before it was finalized the mortgage company would ask for fees for this or that, and then perhaps ask for more money stating that your approved mortgage wouldn’t be finalized until you paid the rest of the fees they were asking for at that time. There were other stories about hidden fees, people being told their month payments would be lower than what they ended up paying in the end.

I did my research and I used a Real Estate broker and Lawyer that had been recommended by a friend, but it was still an un-nerving process. I wished I’d come across personalhomeloanmortgages.com when we were buying our house. It would have made things a bit easier. There is so much information there, that I as a novice would have appreciated. There’s articles explaining mortgage brokers, Understanding home equity loans, Mortgage basics – called appropriately Mortgage 101. You can do local searches by city to search housing market trends, local mortgage and real estate related service provider listings.

You can visit their Financial Forum and talk with others about things like how to spot hidden fees, and which types of loans work best plus hundreds of other topics. You’ll feel secure when you use this site because all customer data is protected through SecureTrust.

If you’re in the market for a new home or looking to renew the mortgage on your home I suggest you have a look at this site and get some very useful and timely information that will help you make the decisions that are right for you.

Notice some changes?

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You’ve probably noticed a few changes on my blog in the past couple of days. I’ve increased the number of posts that I’ve been doing and that will probably continue for some time, well unless I burn out!

You see, I’ve been writing opinion posts for Pay/PerP0st so that I can make a little bit of extra cash. As my regular readers probably know, I’ve been stuck at home for 10+ months due to illness. I’m an emergency room nurse but I’ve been too sick to work thanks to my having Crohn’s disease.

My sick pay ran out last March or April, so then I applied for medical leave pay through our government unemployment office. No I’m not unemployed, not yet anyway. The medical leave pay only lasted for 15 weeks and that ran out in early July. Since then we’ve been living on my husbands Part-Time job’s pay and our savings. In July I had contacted our medical insurance company (we have medical insurance coverage through our employer) and they started the process of deciding whether I’m eligible for short term disability pay. I’m still waiting for their decision and our funds are running out.

I hope to go back to work soon but I’m still not well so I have no idea when I may return. Soon I hope because I fear that if I don’t get back soon they may decide not to hold my job any longer.

So, I’m busy trying to find some ways to make money while I’m at home. And no, I’m not going to do anything kinky! LOL

Right now I’m trying out the P Post postings on my site. I hope that my regular readers will put up with this for a while. I’m trying to find interesting ads to write about that might be of interest to some of my readers, and I’m trying to find items that fit in with this site. The posts will probably blend in a bit better once I get used to writing them.

If anyone has any other ideas on how I can make some extra money from home let me know. I need some ideas to help keep us afloat.

Thanks!

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