Campus Nonsense

Your credit score is more than just a way for lenders to determine your credit worthiness – it’s now becoming the number to decide whether you can be hired for certain jobs, and in the calculation of your car insurance rates.

There are a number of things that go into the calculation of your credit score, and luckily there are methods of improving your score.

• The most obvious way to improve your credit is to ensure you are making all of your payments on time.  A creditor may report to the credit bureaus (such as Experian) the moment you are 30 days late making a payment, so it’s in your best interest to keep your payments up to date.  Often, if you have a low score due to late payments, making all payments on time for at least three months can result in a credit score that has increased by as much as 20 points.
• Stop generating inquiries for new credit.  Each time you apply for credit, that’s considered an inquiry.  Having too many inquiries will lower your score, particularly if your score is already in the average or low range to begin with!  The shorter your credit history, too, the more an inquiry will effect your score.
• Use less of your available credit.  If you have £10,000 in available credit (the total maximum amount you could borrow on your existing accounts) and you’ve used £9,000 of it, your credit score is going to be lower than someone who only used £4,000 of his or her available limit.  You should aim for using 25% or less of your available credit for the optimum debt to credit available ratio.
• If you don’t have any credit at all, you should consider a credit card or loan.  Building your credit is easy if you don’t have a history of making late payments to overcome.  Simply charge some purchases on a credit card and pay it off in full each month.  As the creditor reports your payments to the credit bureaus, you’ll begin establishing a credit score (and a good one at that). Take a look at Alliance and Leicester for low rates on loans online, while Beatthatquote.com has comparison tables for the cheapest loans in the UK.

 

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A few words on my latest distraction of choice - Bingo!

Bingo is a lot more than just a game – it’s an entire culture, with its own language (“Kelly’s eye: number one!” – What??), aesthetic, and devotees. The environment of the bingo hall is a unique one, honed over half a century to fit the tastes of a familiar audience – carefully expanding so as not to destroy that secret ingredient that makes it so popular. You can understand, then, that making the transition to online game – and so joining the ranks of many other games that have made the jump – was going to be a particularly faithful one.

Of course, you could never truly emulate the communal aspect of the game – shooting furtive glances about the room; basking in the applause when you’ve won – but you can certainly fake it. Similarly to other gambling experiences, online bingo sites have tried very hard to recreate some of the ambient tension specific to the real thing. For instance, there are rather convincing audio and visual effects that ramp up the anticipation; a virtual ‘caller’ not too unlike the local vicar in the church fete, and flashes of colour and special effects that celebrate your victory. The cards and the balls are all standard issue – branded according to your chosen site – and they appear and disappear with suitable fanfare.

Depending on what you’re used to, you’ll want to choose your online version carefully; still, to begin with and for general familiarity’s sake, I’d recommend Mecca for UK online bingo – it’s immediately comfortable and simply designed. From there, you can get a real feel for just how easy and legitimate the whole experience can be. And of course, to make the whole computer experience that little bit more authentic, you can always surround your computer with suitable paraphernalia: elderly women and a few gin and tonics, perhaps?

Tags: bingo

In England they might have David Beckham Studies, and in the States they have the ‘McDiploma,’ but who knew that for gambling enthusiasts there is such a thing as a ‘Sports Betting Degree’? Aiming to educate, advise and teach eager betting students how to better enjoy the art of sports gambling, these degrees offer various levels of betting qualification from complete beginner to highly advanced. With the era of online betting well and truly upon us, interest in gambling has never been so intense. It is only natural that legions of inexperienced bettors should seek some guidance in an unpredictable and often unscrupulous scene.

Indeed, the betting ‘degree’ is just one of an exploding market of gambling reference web sites. Glossaries of sports gambling terms are easily accessible to the novice who may not know his ‘bad beat’ from his ‘beard’, while information tailored specifically for the advanced bettor runs along side. Advice pages abound, explaining in detail the technical and statistical side to gambling, as well as sound advice on how professional gamblers manage their money. There are guides to buying sports betting systems, as well as how to best to deal with the local bookmakers.
Reviews of online sports books also abound, recommending the most reliable while denouncing those that the inexperienced bettor should best avoid. Alongside such there are guides to coming up trumps in the average office pool, using online forums and coping with losing streaks.

Never before has there been so much free and accessible information surrounding the betting world. With more advice and less doubt, the gambler can avoid sticky situations with the click of a mouse, and learn to navigate a rapidly developing online gambling market before the others get a whiff of what’s going on.

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One cannot escape the overriding influence of Manchester Utd and Chelsea FC at the moment. With both the Champions League and the Premier League titles being contended by the same teams, if you know either a Chelsea or a Man U fan then your life will have become somewhat repetitive for far longer than you will have liked.

Living in a house with one of each has become nigh on impossible. The Chelsea fan lives above me and the Man U fan across the hall. There has been an added element of violence to the Pro Evolution Playstation games that have been being played out in anticipation of the games to come.

Being as I am an innocent bystander in their protracted struggle, I have sought to maintain an objective outlook on the whole thing. Taking sides is not something that is to be done in situations like this, it could cost you a friendship. Or at the very least whatever good favour you have curried with your housemate over the past year.

If you are in such a situation then I recommend sticking to the facts and be as boringly even-handed as you can. Both Chelsea and Man U are wonderful teams, is what you should say, they both have great players and stand an equal chance of winning. However, if this is not enough, then it is best to fall back on some impartial evidence.

Go to online betting sites, Blue Square for example. Find the odds on whose favourite to win and take a deep breath and use those figures. You will not be liked, but if you are clever enough to sugar-coat your phrasing and labour the point that this is someone else’s viewpoint then hopefully they will give up and wander away, before they try and convert another to their grudge match extravaganza.

Bring on the end of the season! Then it can start all over again.

Tags: footy grudges

If you’re between the ages of 21 and 25 and have saved up enough for your first car, you’ll inevitably want to keep it safe, on and off the road.

However, you’ll probably have found that running and protecting a car can cost a fair amount of money and extract a healthy amount of your income. With congestion charges and petrol costs adding to the bill; car insurance could be a daunting idea at this stage.

The good news is that young drivers are being guided to invest in car insurance early. Like the property ladder - the sooner you climb on it, the sooner you’ll be reaping the benefits and hopefully be making some savings on your car insurance premiums. For the young driver, it may seem appealing to initially be a named driver on a parent’s insurance policy, as the idea of taking an individual one seems, a) too expensive, and b) a scary commitment. Although short term it seems logical, you’ll be missing out on many of the long term benefits.

In simple terms, it works like this: when you start driving (at the legal age of 17) your insurance will be at its most pricey, as your inexperience will suggest you could be more of a high-risk on the road. Between the ages of 21 and 25, insurance companies presume you’ve got some driving experience under your belt, and the cost of your insurance is reduced significantly. After five years of driving, up to 65 per cent of your initial insurance costs will be lessened.

An advisable step-forward is to browse for car insurance deals online. You’ll be able to compare quotes readily and find out deals that suit you and your car. For cheap car insurance deals, try the Yes Insurance website, or perhaps Beat that Quote, for further figures and facts on buying car insurance. Finding the right company will mean finding the right insurance, which will work towards the reduction in costs as your time on the road grows.

For all further details, you could check out the Association of British Insurers website for helpful links and information.

 

 

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Looking after your health is easier said than done – primarily because we all make promises to ourselves that we can’t keep. The thing is, it pays long-term to keep a check on your health and with a little thought you can actually save money by eating better. Friday beers and a burger after work? It all adds up...to the waist band and to the bank balance (plus it doesn’t exactly help pay off your student loans).

Something that could urge you on the way to improving your lifestyle habits is thinking of the money you could save and the healthier premium you could purchase. The younger, healthier and more ill-free you are; the cheaper your life insurance should be. You’re probably thinking you’re too young to think about life insurance – and you’re probably right. But think of your body as an investment for the future.

Smokers will not be pleased to hear that their indulgence is actually costing not just their health, but also their insurance. Many life insurance companies see this habit as a high-risk factor and are less willing to invest in you on the cheap, because –rather morbidly – your life expectancy lowers in their eyes and it looks like they’ll have to pay up sooner, rather than later.

Life insurance companies may also want to do an MOT on your cholesterol, weight and blood pressure before working out the cost of your premium. If all these more ‘high-risk’ factors are combined, it looks like you’ll be paying more than others.

In essence, it pays to be healthy: you live longer, you look better and you can take out a life insurance worth its salt. Obviously, there is some generosity given to medical and health issues beyond your control – but the self-inflicted ailments are pretty much a no-no for insurance companies.

Live how you like - but know it may not come cheap later on...

This doesn’t make insurance companies bad; it means they are doing their job. For a browse online for quotes and policies, check out Asda Finance for life insurance offers that are suited to you...just stub out those cigarettes first and hit the gym. For further medical information head to the Healthline website, for facts and figures you may find useful.

 

 

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