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You can think of credit as a necessary evil. Credit cards are essential for establishing the credit ratings needed to apply for significant loans. However, a person might get used to buying everything, including groceries, with plastic. Overdependence on credit cards may harm someone’s financial wellness.

 

There Is Danger in the Balance

 

It’s no secret that banks and lending institutions make money from credit cards. Double-digit interest rates and penalties for late payments will provide sizable profits. Retail stores encourage using credit cards since people purchase more when they use plastic. It is easy to accumulate a credit card balance that gets out of control.

 

Young Employees Don’t Understand Financial Wellness

 

The real world is a classroom without textbooks. People learn from good and bad experiences. Millennials and Generation Z college graduates are not familiar with finances. They’re always in a rush and those cards are convenient ways to pay for a purchase. Credit soon becomes the way everything is purchased. Continue reading

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People will stress out over medical bills. The figures can be in the thousands and not everyone knows what to do. Deductibles are high and a person can be liable for significant expenses. Dark clouds seem to form over financial wellness because of the anxiety.

 

There actually is little reason for panic. Medical bills can be managed without panicking. Here are a few points to remember as you decide how to pay the medical expenses.

 

1. Don’t Pay the EOB

That statement is an Explanation of Benefits. It is not the final bill. There is no need to pay anything until your health insurance company determines its part of the payment. Continue reading

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Legal issues can create anxiety and some cases produce real fear. An ordinary person does not deal with the law as an everyday occasion. When a problem surfaces, that same person may not understand what to do and needs help. Group legal plans offer a lot of services, but the quality of those benefits depends on the communication the plan allows.

An individual needs help with his or her unique problem. Q&A pages on a website will offer advice on everyday issues but that is not enough. Some vendors will have private chat rooms where a person can explain the difficulties. That sounds nice, but once again, it doesn’t provide high quality. People want to be able to speak directly with an attorney with the assurance that all conversation is confidential.

Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services knows about the importance of a conversation and we give priority to communication between a Group Legal Plan member and a Countrywide attorney. Continue reading

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Buying a house for the first time is exciting and frightening. Everyone wants a home to call their own, and owning a house is a sign of success. However, that house can come with a severe price attached to it, and it is not just the mortgage. People make some rather serious mistakes, and they can spend years paying for them.

Home buying is a significant financial undertaking, and it does affect the buyer’s financial wellness. There are some common mistakes that many first-time buyers must be careful about. Continue reading

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Courtroom dramas are fun to watch but they don’t paint the full picture of legal services. Most cases are settled out of court. Instead of emotional courtroom encounters, the practice of law primarily involves paper processing and giving advice. Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services offers better assistance than many group legal plans.

Our Attorneys Make the Difference

Our nationwide network of attorneys is the cornerstone of our reputation. The Countrywide legal professionals practice law in the communities where our clients are located. We encourage face-to-face meetings to allow a Group Legal Plan member to develop a rapport with the Countrywide attorney. If a person has additional questions after a meeting, we permit an unlimited number of telephone calls to the lawyer on a given subject. Continue reading

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You face a risk every time you turn on your computer. Hackers are waiting for their next victim, and it could be you. It is unfortunate to learn that you may not be as safe as you think.

The Weapons Hackers Use

It takes time to break into a person’s private information. The most common shares are:

  • Malware
  • Spyware
  • Phishing

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Bankruptcy can threaten anyone. It doesn’t matter if the person is a secretary or an executive; this disaster can strike and harm a person’s financial wellness. There is no question, but that declaring bankruptcy is a very personal and highly embarrassing situation.

Debt does not always come from using a credit card during the holidays. Many new employees are saddled with substantial college loan debt, and this must be repaid on a strict schedule. Medical emergencies can cost thousands of dollars and place significant stress on anyone’s budget. These are in addition to late penalties and charges that the credit card company will assess. Continue reading

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A personal budget is a sign of adult responsibility. It indicates that an individual recognizes the value of financial wellness and wants to structure his or her income and expenses to meet personal goals and pay bills. It can be a challenge for a young employee because that person has no experience with setting up a fiscal framework. A lack of understanding can result in several problems.

  1. There Is No Planning for Emergencies

Emergencies are unexpected and need to be handled quickly. There must be allocation of money in a budget for unanticipated expenses such as a medical bill.

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It’s ridiculous, but there are group legal plans that try to cut corners with communications. They will use slideshows, emails, or webpages to tell plan members what to do or to convey messages to other parties. What is forgotten in these attempts is the importance of good communications when it comes to pre-paid legal services. The way information is transferred can be critical to the overall quality of any group legal plan.

Contact with the Outside

A group legal plan does not represent a member in the ordinary sense, but there are situations where a lawyer must contact an outside party to resolve a problem. It is not enough to rely on emails alone. The meaning of the message can become lost, or the real intent of the contact is not fully appreciated. It means that letters on official stationery, often several paragraphs long, or telephone calls will be necessary. Continue reading

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No one should think that buying a house is out of the question. Real estate prices can fluctuate, and mortgages are not always hard to get. A problem that many people face is a lack of information.

What a person needs to know before purchasing a house includes financial data and an understanding of how the world of real estate functions. A first-time homebuyer is not familiar with mortgages or the roles of various people play in a real estate transaction. Additionally, ignorance about the process of financing the purchase is going to cause a person to pause and reconsider buying property.

It can help a person if he or she has access to a certified counselor in the financial world. That professional can give the kind of advice a homebuyer can use. Being able to learn about real estate makes it easier to arrive at fundamentally sound decisions about acquiring a house. Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services has a Financial Wellness program that can fill in the blanks in a person’s knowledge about housing.

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