Hasta La Gadget!

Is having a 30-year mortgage a way of the past?

When people think about buying a house, they also traditionally think about obtaining a mortgage for the next three decades of their life. Many times they refinance at some point during the term, only to start a new 30-year cycle over. It’s inefficient and it’s definitely not the most cost-effective way to ultimately own your home. In fact, it’s rather depressing!

It used to be that folks would enter retirement with their houses paid off. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the current norm. You don’t have to let what’s normal be how you make your decisions though!

It is true that you can pay off a mortgage in 12 years or less. The best part? There are no gimmicks necessary!

It’s really about being an informed consumer and making wise decisions. Are you curious how others are doing it? Read on for a simple solution to actually own your home in less than half the time as your peers.

Mortgage Terms

A lot of people don’t know that they have options when it comes to choosing a term for their mortgage. The most common are 30, 15, 10 and lately even a 40-year term. The longer the term, the longer the period of time that the interest is stretched out over. This does lower your payment, but it also gives you a negative compounding effect towards the interest that you end up paying on the loan.

Having the lowest payment option by choosing a 40-year term may sound good today, but don’t do it! You’ll waste way too much money in interest charges during that period of time — not to mention you’ll have a mortgage payment for 40 years!

Instead, try and choose the lowest term you can afford. Typically the lower the term, the lower the rate of interest that is charged as well — win/win! For example, if you choose a 30-year term, the rate might be 4.125 percent. A 15-year term will be more like 3.250 percent (based on mid-September rates).

Biweekly Payments

If you make mortgage payments biweekly, you can shave six years off of a new 30-year mortgage. For a 15-year mortgage it’s more like three. This is due to you basically making one extra mortgage payment per year. This post outlines how to budget when you get paid biweekly.

For example, if your mortgage payment is $2,000 per month and you currently pay monthly, that’s $24,000 per year ($2,000 x 12 payments). If instead you divide your payment in half and make a payment every two weeks, you’d be paying $1,000 biweekly. There are 26 biweekly periods per year (or pay periods in many people’s cases), which would be $26,000 (or $1,000 x 26). The difference is $2,000 or one extra payment.

One Extra Payment

Of course, an alternative is to just make one extra payment at some point during the year. You can continue to make your mortgage payment monthly, but just write out a check for an extra one when you have the funds.

The downside to this, is that you might not ever feel like you have the extra money. Hence why the biweekly method makes sense for most people (plus the timing corresponds with when you get an extra check). Don’t forget to make sure that your extra payment is applied towards the principal to further reduce your loan.

Take Action

If you’re thinking about buying a home, consider a slightly higher payment by choosing a 15-year mortgage (if you can afford it). Then make your payments biweekly or make an extra payment once every year, so you can truly own your home in 12 years or less.

If you’re eligible, you could also consider refinancing your current mortgage. I think this only makes sense if you’re lessening the term, the interest rate or both. It’s usually a no brainer when you can do both!

Try not to increase your loan size by doing a cash-out refinance or by wrapping any applicable closing costs into the new balance. This provides the opposite effect! You also may need to have a certain amount of equity in your home to avoid PMI (private mortgage insurance) depending on the lending method (conventional, etc).

Purchasing a home is one of the biggest financial decisions you’ll make. Make sure you do your due diligence and enter into this decision educated about the process and your options, with a plan and with clear expectations.

Are you on track to pay off your mortgage early?

Not everyone is equipped with the ability to remember someone’s name; however, remembering another person’s name, when being introduced or reconnecting, can make a tremendous impact. Name recall is especially important in business for making and reinforcing a positive impression. Implementing the following exercises will help you commit a name (and face) to memory.

1. Say the other person’s name out loud. As soon as you are introduced to a client, repeat her name. You might simply say, “It’s very nice to meet you, Amy,” or, “Maria, it’s a pleasure to see you again.” Using a person’s name reinforces it in your mind.
2. Utilize a nametag. If you are a visual learner, picture your new client’s nametag and make an effort to commit the handwritten name to memory. Continue to focus on the client’s face, making note of the nametag. Repeating the name during your conversation offers you a better chance of remembering should you meet again, or need to introduce the contact to another person.
3. Employ word association. Connect a person’s name with a familiar picture. For example, you meet someone named Jack, and think of Jack Sparrow, picturing the person wearing a pirate hat. You meet someone named Eleanor, and you find a connection with Eleanor Roosevelt — perhaps her smile or her pearl necklace. If you are having trouble relating the name to a well-known public figure, you may want to compare the name to a familiar object. Use associations relevant to your own learning style and personality.
4. Ask for a reminder. If you find yourself at a loss, don’t be afraid to own it. It’s better to be honest than to appear distracted and feel uncomfortable. Say, “Please remind me of your name — I’ve gone blank.” The other person generally is not offended, and you will come across as interested and genuine.
5. Repeat the name often. Find ways to re-introduce the other person’s name into the conversation. Every time the name is repeated, you are more likely to remember. After discovering a new fact about the person, continue to use her name in your responses, such as, “Olivia, your trip to Spain sounds fascinating. How long was your visit?”
6. Take an interest in particulars. Ask for specifics such as, “Scarlet, are you originally from this area,” or “Daniel, what has been the greatest challenge taking over as CEO of the company?” Encouraging the person to share background information will offer further assistance with name recall as you make a more personal connection.
7. Create a spreadsheet. If you enjoy making lists, consider creating a spreadsheet for new contacts. After you get back to your office, add the person’s name to your database and include distinctive characteristics and facts about the individual. The spreadsheet is for your eyes only and is an additional memory tool.

For more etiquette tips visit Diane’s popular blog, connect with her here on The Huffington Post, follow her on Pinterest, and “like” The Protocol School of Texas on Facebook.

This forest feels like an eternity as our four-wheel drive vehicle plods down yet another washed-out dirt road. This is the Central Region of Ghana and the lack of infrastructure only adds the ambiance as groups of women pass by with their loads of firewood balanced effortlessly on their head, their babies dozing comfortably in tow. Abruptly, the trees stop and a barren dirt-scape throws the equatorial sun back into our faces. Compared to the shade of the canopy, this feels like the surface of the sun. And yet, despite the devastating heat, I can easily make out the distant silhouettes of people shoveling and sifting and working through this terrible hole in the earth

As we get closer, the figures assume the faces and nuances of the tired men and women that they are. Holes in boots; tattered, stained clothing; knee deep in stagnant water with shovels or pick-axes or buckets of mud in hand. All for a paltry daily bounty of gold and the eternal promise to strike it rich someday. It’s enough to keep them busy and fed for now, but at a terrible cost to their bodies and the land. This is the face of unregistered small-scale mining in Ghana, called “galamsey” by the locals.

Ghana, the proverbial “Gold Coast”, has furnished the world with the gold for hundreds of years and although the mechanisms have changed — a colonial administration has been replaced by economic structures that are equally exploitative — the fundamental ethos remains the same: the wealth contained within this land does not belong to those that live and work it, but to those with the might to control it.

Mining concessions are acquired by multinational companies in a variety of ways. But whether legal and legitimate or illegal and fraudulent, the siphoning of mineral wealth from Africa is a faucet that continues to flow to the detriment of local peoples, often even despite truly noteworthy progress in terms of corporate social responsibility and promising partnerships between research and extractive industries. Governments with poor economies that lack the ability to commercialize their own resources rely on foreign corporations for the dominant influx of financial capital, technological know-how, and assets to glean any profits from their land. This service does not come for free, of course, as these companies take more than their fair share. Whatever profits the governments keep, such as royalties, risk being eaten up by inefficient and corrupt bureaucracies. Little, if anything but poverty wages and environmental degradation seems to filter down to those local people upon whose livelihoods the mining companies and often complicit local chiefs thrive.

For Ghanaians who seek the promises of gold without the corporate structure, or those who lack the education to be hired by mining companies, there is always the option to go at it alone. It has become quite common across Ghana for groups of men and also women to begin their own small-scale mining operations, increasingly through partnerships with Chinese operators. With minimal investment, a group of galamsey miners can earn as much in a day as even the best cocoa farmers (Ghana’s leading agricultural export). The problem, of course, is that once the gold has been extracted from the land through dangerous and damaging practices, nothing — not gold, nor farm land, nor forest — can take its place. Once an area is cleared and mined and no rehabilitation occurs, that land has lost virtually all value. It is a vicious and unsustainable cycle, but one with enticing short-term economic prospects, especially for poor young people with limited options.

From the ground and from satellite images, the communal dislocation and general destruction that these mining practices bring to the land and the communities that live there is abundantly obvious. What is not as evident is the extent of the environmental contamination that results from entirely upending the soil column and exposing all manner of sub-soil elements to everyday erosive forces. One such fallout that is now being tied to mining practices is Buruli ulcer, a flesh-eating bacterial infection that seems to be largely associated with contaminated and stagnant or slow-flowing water.

One of the world’s most neglected tropical diseases, Buruli ulcer (BU) is a equally as horrific as it is challenging to understand. Beginning harmlessly enough as a painless nodule under the skin, the course of the disease quickly proceeds to massive, open lesions across large tracts of the body. The health consequences of BU can range from massive deformations and scarring, to atrophied or amputated limbs, to secondary opportunistic infections and even death. And while the disease is treatable with antibiotics if caught soon, in the impoverished backwoods of rural Ghana where both health-care facilities and knowledge are quite limited, it is no surprise that this disease continues to claim lives each year.

The reality is that even in our era of modern medicine, thousands of people around the world suffer from a completely treatable disease whose prevalence may largely be driven by devastating and unchecked economic profiteering from the environment.

What makes BU so difficult to manage and to causally link to mining practices specifically is not only the unknown path of transmission but the considerable lag time between contact with the bacterium and the emergence of preliminary symptoms. It is virtually impossible to identify an exact point of infection in communities where water sources are communal and where a great number of other variables, such as hygiene and environmental exposure, are involved. BU functions as one of many potential consequence in an extremely complex system of environmental, social, and economic factors.

This problem is only confounded further as increasingly heavier and more unpredictable rainfall patterns — a result of global climate change — impact the region each year. These rains not only affect the already degraded landscapes even more, but they increase the presence of stagnant water bodies that may play temporary host to the bacterium responsible for BU.

It seems that the very neoliberal economic paradigm that is leading to catastrophic global climate change has already visited itself twofold upon Ghana: first, by creating economic conditions that promote destructive mining practices at multiple levels and, second, by exacerbating existing environmental problems through climatic disruption.

Since 2009, the reBUild project has been studying and working throughout Ghana in order to get a better grasp on the complex interactions between mining, climate change, and emergent tropical diseases such as BU. Funded by the National Science Foundation, this collaboration between the Pennsylvania State University, as well as several other US and Ghanaian institutions, has been lending a geographic perspective to this multivariate problem.

Through an interdisciplinary coupled systems approach, combining satellite imagery, national health information, livelihood mapping, community surveys and interviews, researchers are hoping to build a more practical understanding of how this disease emerges from disturbed environments. By isolating key variables at different spatial scales, reBUild aims to unravel the mystery behind this debilitating disease that could become more even prevalent in the coming decades as climate change and global economic demand continue to manifest upon those in the our world least responsible for and least able to bear the costs.

At a small clinic in the town of Nkotumso, the reBUild team, including myself, visited with some patients being treated for their BU infections. It was a warm afternoon and I watched a small group as they sat together under a fruit tree with their limbs wrapped in fresh dressings to cover their healing ulcers. It was a sobering scene but one not entirely without its glimmer of hope. Despite the terrible prospects for this disease in the years to come, there is always the possibility that through the joint efforts of collaborative research, education, and international partnerships, we might be slowly uncovering the tools we need to solve this complex problem and many more like it.

What should a bride or groom do when not everybody who is most important to them is happy they’re getting married? It’s not a problem that you usually hear talked about in polite company because, let’s face it, weddings are supposed to be happy occasions and the last thing the bride and groom want to do is mar the overall experience by talking about the most difficult aspects of joining their lives. But sometimes family really throws a monkey wrench in the works.

True story: When Bill and I got married 10 years ago, my mother-in-law did not attend our wedding on Vieques Island. She attended the wedding reception at home a week after the wedding and showed her support that way, but when Bill proposed to me and we shared the good news with her, I was absolutely shocked by her response.

“I’ve already been to his wedding and I’m not going to another,” she told me. She wasn’t kidding. To this day, I still think the fact that the almost 80-year-old woman had only been on an airplane once, more than 30 years before, had more to do with it than our actual wedding. But what she said to me was mean. It hurt. It still bothers me and she died eight years ago.

Although it’s not common, I have had multiple brides and grooms who only had one side represented on their wedding weekend. Some couples are very up front about things with me from the beginning. Others wait til I ask a question like “are we doing flowers for your mom?” or “will you do a daddy/daughter dance?” to tell me her mom is in a mental institution or her father is deceased. It can be very awkward and uncomfortable for them to discuss, but it’s important for the wedding planner to know enough details so that she doesn’t put her big foot in her mouth accidentally looking for somebody who isn’t there at the wedding rehearsal.

But at least things like that, and the situation with my mother in law, are passive situations – nothing can be done about it so you just suck it up and move on. Wasting time being upset isn’t going to accomplish anything or make the wedding experience better. Regardless of the reason, that person won’t be there. Move on.

What’s much more difficult for brides and grooms to deal with is someone who has their own problems or issues and brings them to your wedding table, so to speak. One of the most common problems I’ve seen brides encounter is the single, older, bitter sister situation. Sometimes she’s divorced and has some good reasons to feel bitter about marriage; often she’s just single and mad about it. She’s not married or involved with anyone worth mentioning but she has to sit there and watch her little sister plan the whole frothy white wedding with her parents, who she’s pretty sure have already given up on her. And she’s got to wear a stupid bridesmaid dress and endure endless questions from well-meaning friends of her parents who are surprised she’s not married yet.

So yes, older unmarried siblings (especially sisters) may have a rough time watching their younger siblings get married. Especially sisters. Jealous younger sisters may be a pain in the butt too, but usually it’s because they want to be included in more aspects of the wedding, not less.

Likewise, more than one groom has encountered an older brother who tells him to run for his life and not actually do the deed. Whether he’s bitter and divorced, or just screwed because now his parents are going to be all over his ass about when he’s going to finally settle down himself, it’s a hard one for brothers too. He may realize he’s losing his permanent wing-man, with whom he’s watched every single NHL game for the last 35 years. Sure, they’re still going to hang out and watch the game together – but not as often. And a lot more of it will be over the telephone because there’s no way the new bride is going to tolerate him taking up permanent residence on the couch or her new husband moving into his brother’s house for the season. Things will change.

It’s one thing when somebody is pissy about your wedding plans while you’re making them and enjoying the engagement time (yes, it really does poop on your party because they’re going to be at everything wedding related because they’re probably in your wedding party), but it’s worse when they behave nastily during your actual wedding weekend. It’s unfortunate and thoughtless and rude, but it happens. And you cannot control it. But you can control your own reactions to it and have a plan in place ahead of time in case it happens.

If his older brother is divorced because he drank too much and partied too hard, you can expect that sort of behavior at your wedding, unless he’s started working the steps. A zebra doesn’t change its stripes just because you put it in a tuxedo. You can expect to have him embarrass you in at some point during your wedding festivities. However, you might be able to head off total disaster by planning a little ahead.

Talk to your fiancé’s best friend (with your fiancé in the room) and ask for his help in controlling the brother when the time comes. If he’s been your fiancé’s bff for a long time, he probably knows your future brother-in-law almost as well, whether he likes him or not. He’ll understand your concerns about what he might say during the toasts or how outrageously drunk he may become at your wedding reception. And he may be able to help. It’s also good if the groom has more than one brother and the other one isn’t a problem child. He can be in charge of the other one.

Women are more difficult. If your sister really opposes your marriage – or marriage in general – and if she’s an outspoken person who rarely holds back, you can expect to deal with a lot of bitching and moaning, as well as passive-aggressive behavior as you make your wedding plans. One moment she may be all into dress shopping with you but when the appointment actually happens, her mood may have flipped because she’s having a hard time being surrounded by all the beautiful white gowns she has no reason to try on. I’m sorry to be so hard on my own gender here, but it’s the truth. When we’re unhappy, we tend to take it out on those around us. And sisters are easy targets because they have to love you unconditionally even when you’ve been a bitch.

If your sister voices displeasure that you’re getting married or starts playing passive-aggressive as soon as you’ve gotten engaged, sit down with her and do your best to nip it in the bud. Tell her that you understand how she feels (after you ask her how she’s feeling) and explain that if you were in her shoes, you might struggle the same way. But with that said, you’re sisters and you’re getting married and you need her support. It wouldn’t be your perfect day without her there teasing you about something you wish she’d let you forget.

Do your best not to talk about the wedding plans constantly when you’re with her during your engagement – don’t make everything in life about your wedding. It’s likely your mom has already made her feel like that. Don’t feed into it. Don’t only go shopping for wedding items together – do things that are totally unrelated. She may pull out of her funk early and get into the fun of the planning and then you won’t have anything to worry about (except the possibility of her getting overly emotional if she’s over-served at your reception – but that’s a ways off so you can worry about it when and if it happens).

Many brides chatter endlessly to everybody about their wedding plans. They can’t help it. You know who you are. If that’s you, don’t do it around your sister. Talk about work, talk about vacation plans, talk about doing something with your garden, but don’t force her to look at Pinterest pages with you to choose your wedding cake design unless she suggests it. Don’t rub her nose in it. If she’s being the best sport she can, appreciate that and respect her for it.

Weddings bring out all sorts of emotions in those closest to the bride and groom. Emotions sometimes cause people to drink more than they usually would and behave in a manner they’ll later wish they hadn’t. Do whatever you can to keep the peace before your wedding, and take preventative measures where necessary. With that said, remember on your wedding day that you are the “guests of honor.” That means somebody else should do the drunk-wrangling and babysitting while you dance and have fun. If somebody is being negative on your big day, avoid them. You have lots of other guests to visit with and enjoy your night.

As long as you take the high road and treat your family with respect and consideration during the engagement period and wedding planning process, you have every right to expect the same respect for the solemnity of the occasion on your wedding day. If you really think somebody might ruin the day for you, give them this article to read. And then sit down and discuss it. Pro-active is the way to approach this particular problem. They’ll always be your family and you don’t want to accidentally cause a long-term problem over misdirected feelings.

Until next time, happy wedding planning from Weddings in Vieques and Sandy Malone Weddings & Events!

Just when we thought we had reached the nadir/apex of human existence in a post-“Anaconda” world, here’s Mastodon’s music video for “The Motherload.” The video is basically a butt avalanche; swarms of women twerk really fast from a distance (and twerk some more in slow-motion close ups). There’s also some tree people, these guys carrying a giant bell (for whatever reason someone carries a giant bell), terrifying snake women with access to a chemistry set and a giant goat demon. But never mind any of that because there are so many people shaking about in the name of a good ol’ American twerk off.

Watch the video above.