Registered Mortgage Broker

Forty hours on your feet or at a desk can take a toll on your body. Extra calories, dehydration, eyestrain and bacteria can attack both your health and your productivity.

Fight back with these four tips to stay healthy at work:

Sneaky Snacking. Candy and leftover holiday goodies will add extra fat and processed sugars to your diet and waistline. Partner up with another health conscious colleague and bring your own healthy snacks, to make sure you're eating healthier calories so you don't feel hungry between meals.

Eyes Crossed. Eyestrain can cause focusing issues, light sensitivity, chronic headaches and long-term damage to your eyes. Make sure you set your computer screen about an arm's length away. If you still find yourself squinting, try increasing the font size before putting on glasses.

Dehydration dangers. Not drinking enough water can lead to gastritis, poor digestion and heartburn, headaches, depression, weight gain, premature aging, and, over the long term, arthritis. Keep a water carafe or bottled water by your desk to stay hydrated at regular intervals. Set reminders on your phone to drink water if you must.

Keyboard cooties. Infectious germs can survive for hours to days on the hard surfaces of every working environment. Make sure to clean your keyboard, mouse and phone with disinfectant wipes, especially if you share these devices with others.

Source: WebMD

© 2014 Vantage Production, LLC. All rights reserved.

Annual Percentage Rate (APR) is a tool that consumers can use as a starting point to compare loan programs. However, it's important to keep in mind that APR is not a perfect system, and not all lenders calculate APR in the same way. While the Federal Truth-in-Lending Act does require any mortgage broker or lender to disclose APR to the consumer, there is no rule written in stone for calculating this number that each and every lender agrees upon.

The point of calculating APR is to let the consumer know what the actual cost of their financing is in the form of a yearly rate. APR factors in certain closing costs and fees associated with the loan, and spreads this total over the life of the loan along with the actual note rate. The objective is to give the consumer a clearer picture of what their actual costs are, and this inhibits lenders from hiding fees or upfront costs behind low interest rates in their advertising.

Fees that are generally included in the APR calculation are points, pre-paid interest, loan processing fees, underwriting fees, document preparation fees, and private mortgage insurance. On occasion, lenders will include a loan application fee and/or credit life insurance. Fees that are normally not included in the APR calculation are fees from Title, Escrow, attorney, notary, document preparation, home inspection, recording, transfer taxes, credit report and appraisal.

Remember, all lenders do not perform the calculation the same way. Moreover, APR does not consider the possibility of making pre-payments, moving or refinancing. Unless the interest rate is tied to a fixed instrument, APR is even more confusing. Calculating APRs on adjustable rate and balloon mortgages is more complex because we really have no way of knowing what future rates will be.

If all lenders calculated APR the same way, we could make easy comparisons when deciding on what loan program to go with. Since they don't, the consumer should know that APR is simply a starting point for comparison. They should rely on the skills of a well-versed loan professional to assist them in obtaining the loan that meets their specific needs. The more important things to consider are how long the loan is needed. What are the long-term goals of the borrower? If the home buyer only expects to stay in the home for five years, there's not a lot of sense in looking exclusively at 30-Year Fixed rates because the APR seems more reasonable. If a young couple is buying a home, knowing they will refinance in eight years to pay for their son's college education, then once again, APR is not a realistic factor to take into consideration.

The Loan Executive should be prepared to answer questions about APR once the lender provides the Truth-in-Lending.

Disclosure Statement (Reg Z), such as why the “amount financed” listed in Box C is not the same as the actual loan amount, and why the APR is higher than the interest rate on the loan in most cases. The consumer will get a clear definition about the fees associated with their loan in the good-faith estimate, but the Truth-in-Lending Disclosure is often an area that is confusing to the borrower.

Very few individuals have the luxury of being the only professional in their marketplace offering their particular service. Competition is constantly at our heels, hoping to catapult one step ahead of us. For this reason, we must continually strive to differentiate ourselves from any competition we may have. 

Dan Sullivan, President of The Strategic Coach Inc. and co-author of The Great Crossover, provides a solution. According to Sullivan, if you wish to remain in the upper echelon of your profession you must "...disregard your own commodity and focus on deepening the power and possibility of all your relationships."*

This means that no matter how much better your business model may be, you cannot assume that the rest of the world will beat a path to your door. Your product or service needs to encompass more than that; it needs to be a positive and unforgettable experience. 

Why do children love McDonald's®? Are their palates predisposed to the flavor of one fast-food restaurant over another? The answer is probably no. Instead, they crave the McDonald's experience, which includes the colorful decor and a predictably familiar setting regardless of which worldwide location their parents take them to. They want the playground they've come to expect and the free toy they will expect to find in their Happy Meal®.* This is all a part of the experience McDonald's has built into their marketing plan. 

How can you make customers fall in love with your business? Do you have untapped opportunities to pamper or serve them? Envision what you could do to win the hearts of your clients, and focus on your real commodity. 

I strive for 100% customer satisfaction and to remain informed of new technologies and ideas that will improve the way I do business. I hope to become your ally in this respect by providing excellent service to the clients you refer to me.

Change isn't always an easy thing to deal with. But as Spencer Johnson reminds us in his bestselling book, Who Moved My Cheese?:

• If you do not change, you can become extinct.
• What would you do if you weren't afraid?
• Movement in a new direction helps you find new "cheese" (i.e. new opportunities)
• When you move beyond your fear, you feel free.
• Old beliefs do not lead to anything new.

No matter what happens in your personal and professional life, you can decide whether to label something as good or bad. You can decide to call an event a step forward or a step backward. As Thomas Edison once said, "I'm not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

Here are four things you can do to help you move forward and deal with change:

• Know specifically what you are aiming for.
• Know what steps you must take to go in that direction.
• Evaluate your actions each day to see if your steps are leading you toward your desired results.
• If they are not, find out how you can make minor modifications to the steps to help you stay on course.