It might seem that a debt settlement program is the solution that can save your financial future. Technically this is true, but it is essential to choose the right program if any real benefits are to be enjoyed. The problem is that pressures from creditors can rush us into choosing the wrong program from unscrupulous lenders.
The setup of the financial services sector is anything but clear-cut, and the largest firms and institutions actually own many of the smaller services. This means the debt to a single bank (like Citibank, for example) can be much greater than thought.
And while choosing debt relief is the wise decision, it is important to keep in mind the difficulties in securing good terms when the debt to a creditor is very high. Still, there are many debt settlement options available online.
The Debt Network
It is important to realize just how interconnected so many of your branded credit and debit cards, and utilities are. Many are simply branches of the same bank or financial institution. This means that debt owed to a bank may be vastly larger than first thought, making it difficult to get good terms on your debt settlement program.
Not everyone knows that three of the biggest banks in the US are also involved in many of the largest utilities companies. For example, Citibank owns AT&T Universal, Sears and most of the gas cards on offer (Chevron, Exxon etc). Discovery, meanwhile, owns Lowes & Sams cards, and the FIA cards are owned by Bank of America.
What this all means is that when it comes to choosing debt relief options, it is important to realize that more than a single credit card debt is part of the packet. The card provider will add on everything, making it possible for the debt settlement deal to be rejected by the lender.
Avoiding the Online Trap
Financial services provided over the Internet need to be carefully considered before committing to anything. There are, unfortunately, many unscrupulous lenders and financial service providers who are willing to take advantage of consumers, and excellent debt settlement programs can turn out to be traps.
But there are steps that can be taken to ensure such traps are avoided. They are:.
1. Only Trust Lenders Who Ask For Statements
There is a tendency for unscrupulous lenders to talk up their fantastic offers in an effort to get what they need as quickly as possible. Often, they do not even look for bank statements or confirmation of financial status. But the right debt settlement plan depends on your specific situation. So, avoid those that do not seek relevant documentation.
2. Experience Is Essential
It is generally not a good idea to choose a debt settlement program from a lending firm that has been in businesses of less than 5 years. Experience is essential in this sector, so the last firm needed to manage your finances is a start-up company. Settle for a firm that is at least 5 years old.
3. Always Check Lenders Out
It is completely foolish to trust any online lender on face value. Always take the time to check on their credentials, and feel completely comfortable before choosing a debt relief program. So, check out their BBB Reliability Report and know whether consumers have been complaining about a prospective lender.
4. Seek Out A Licensed Attorney Based Firm
Attornies are governed by the BAR Association, not the FTC. The advantage is the consistency of the BAR Association, whereas the FTC regulation changes can play havoc with schedules and plans. Also, the BAR Association insists on extremely high standards so debt settlement companies can be relied upon.
Lesson #1: sunscreen makes a lousy white paint
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| Three houses, a bad photo of a decent painting by little ol' me. |
It’s a little hard to get an hourly forecast for a specific spot on the Maine coast. It can be pouring in one place and clear in the next town over. However, not only was the National Weather Service calling for rain, my New York buddies were all talking about the whopping deluge they’d just gotten.
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| Lyn painting the Fort Point lighthouse. |
No painting trip to Maine is complete without a lighthouse, and my intention had been for us to paint the Grindle Point Lighthouse on Islesboro. Without knowing exactly when it would start raining, relying on ferry transportation seemed unwise. Instead we drove north to the Fort Point light, where my charges promptly spread themselves across a quarter mile of terrain to paint. That is why I take my bicycle while teaching, although since the grounds include the ruins of a Revolutionary War fort, a mountain bike might have worked better.
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| Loren learned that the cover on his truck leaks. |
The rain held off until we could regroup at the hotel for a demo, which I did using Sandy’s kit.
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| Elizabeth and Sandy did some foraging for the painters. |
It’s always hard to use someone else’s paint, and I was complaining that hers mixed poorly. That was partially because it’s not good paint, but it turns out that dab of white at the left of her palette was sunscreen, not paint. I’m not asking why it was there.
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| Dedicated students watching a demo in the rain. "I learned that you oil painters have it easy," said Virginia. |
A demo is a great opportunity to reach painters of all levels. Earlier in the day, I’d talked to Cecilia and Nancy about a new way of setting up their paintings than straight-up drawing. Both are naturally good compositors, but this technique gives more consistent control over the outcome. I was able to demonstrate that.
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| Nancy's first attempt at the view. |
After a while, Nancy left and went back to her own balcony to finish a painting she’d started earlier. When she was done with that, she painted the same scene again. I loved seeing how she integrated what I’d told her, and how it made the second painting stronger.
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| Nancy's post-demo painting of the same view. |
Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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| Rain affects people differently. This is the artist formerly known as Brad. |
Let’s start at the very beginning
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| This is Janith's second-ever painting, of tugboat reflections. |
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| Lynn managed to find a place to paint where her feet could be in the water. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill. |
My favorite places to paint are harbors. I love boats of all kinds, I love the rise and fall of the tide, I love the work that goes on in them. Set into the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River, Belfast harbor is as lovely as any harbor on the coast. It is Newark to Camden’s Manhattan: it’s more industrial and less gentrified.
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| This is Stacey's second-ever painting, of the tugboats themselves. Whew, what a lot of drawing! |
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| Marjean ran to the art store and bought herself a palette knife at lunchtime. Since it was new, she used it to cut the cheese before resuming painting. |
But boats are not easy to draw, let alone paint, and I have three absolute beginners in this workshop.
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| Brad floating on the dock. |
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I have two youngsters with us who are not properly part of the workshop but who are still painting. Here's Ilse amid the foliage. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill. |
A man and his son stopped to see Marjean and were dumbfounded when she said it was her second day painting. “She’s a ringer,” said the father. We laughed. Marjean has painted walls and windowsills and furniture, but never a painting.
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| And here's Sophia with her grandmother, Virginia. Both girls are great young artists. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill. |
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| This is Marjean's second-ever painting, of the boats in the outer harbor. |
But as I told him, painting is a learned process, not some kind of magic trick. If you can break down the process into manageable steps, your students do a lot less fumbling. The process differs in different media, but is remarkably similar in different styles. The same rules apply whether the end result is abstraction or fine detail: if you want the paint to stick and the composition to work, you approach painting in a methodical way.
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| Cecilia dealt with the comings and goings of boats by working on two paintings. When one boat disappeared, she picked up the other canvas.. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill. |
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| Bernard attempted to recreate his missing boat from memory. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Coghill. |
Where we meet the tide, and win (at least for yesterday).
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| Janith expresses my feelings exactly. |
We started our painting week at the mouth of the Duck Trap River, which gave us several iconic Maine vistas—a rocky promontory, a shingle beach, small boats swinging on their lines, and a lovely old concrete bridge. The weather was superlative.
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| Nancy's painting of Howe Point. |
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| Marjean's beautiful hat. |
The first day of any workshop is dominated by questions of set-up, where new ideas meet old kits, or new painters learn to use their tools for the first time. This was exacerbated by having so many new painters in the group, but Sandy Quang is my monitor, and she helped get them all set up and working. I consider a first painting to be a success if the paint gets stuck to the canvas in a sensible order; everyone did that and much more.
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| Brad's painting of the bridge and the Duck Trap River. |
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| It's very rare that I demo at the beginning of a workshop, but with so many new painters in the group, it made sense. |
The tide presents questions of painting (as objects appear and disappear, and angles change) but the supermoon meant a supertide, and it was a thief. First it stole Hal’s belongings. Lyn went in after them, and rescued everything but his shoes. A team of friendly canoers kindly raced around the bar and saved his shoes. Then my umbrella went aloft and ended up in the drink. Hal returned the favor by diving in after it. My fault: I’ve already lost that umbrella once; in the Rio Grande, and I should have known to check that it was tethered. And the tide lifted two stuff sacks from Janith's kit, too.
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| Dinghy, 8X6, oil on canvasboard, by me. |
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| Critique session. |
It’s a beautiful foggy morning today; my favorite for painting in harbors. And today we’ll be at Belfast’s public landing, so it is all working out perfectly.
Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
Professional Liability Insurance - Protect Yourself
Even the most dedicated professional can become the target of an unsatisfied client or patient. Professional liability insurance is necessary to protect your business or practice from the litigious pitfalls that you may encounter in your business.
Medical malpractice insurance is professional liability insurance for medical professionals. In past decades the need - and cost - of medical malpractice insurance has made it an integral part of costing out a successful practice. Med mal awards have made even practicing medicine difficult for small practitioners. It is imperative to have a carrier who will rigorously defend your business in all claims, in an effort to ensure that your practice may continue to thrive.
Most other professionals, such as contractors, internet freelance designers, brokers and the like, carry insurance known as Errors & Omissions insurance. E&O operates the same as medical malpractice, insuring your business against claims that may arise from the day-to-day performance of the job. Since many of the industries covered by E&O insurance may incur claims without triggering coverage by general liability insurance for bodily harm or physical damages, it is necessary to carry adequate professional liability insurance to help protect your business. Claims of negligence, breach of contract or violation of good-faith practices could result in substantial losses for clients, who often try to recoup those losses through claims against contracted service providers. This is where the professional liability insurance carrier becomes involved to help defend against such claims, and to bear the brunt of the expense for damages.
Since the provider only covers to the maximum benefit of each policy, it is important to thoroughly research the history of claims and awards in your industry. Like any shrewd business decision, selecting a carrier and policy limits for you professional liability insurance carrier should not be a choice made in a vacuum. Much of the research for the decision can be made on-line at a time that is convenient for you. Once you have determined the parameters for your coverage, you can begin to evaluate which insurance carrier works best with your business model and field.
Selecting professional liability insurance is one of the most important aspects of any successful business. No matter how well you think you have prepared for the future of your business, there is no way to be certain what lies ahead. It is crucial to protect your business, your livelihood and your investment with insurance designed to fight for you in these inopportune situations. Focus on growing your business, and allow your carrier to protect your time and investment.
I must be out of my mind
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| Painting by the light of the moon in beautiful Belfast. |
Next time I schedule a full moon, it’s going to be during midweek in my workshop. We tried, we really tried, but we were too befuddled by travel and packing and unpacking to paint last night. Still, it was a lot of fun wandering down to the beach and watching the moonlight sliver the waves.
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| Bernard Zellar's watercolor. |
Our biggest problem was battery failure. Stacey was using the flashlight app on her cellphone (an app which always cracks me up) and it killed her battery. Nancy’s flashlight battery died. My two halogen flashlights—which never run down their batteries—both went for an amble.
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| Ain't it lovely? |
Still, I know the position of my paints on my palette, so how hard could painting in the pitch dark be? I blocked in a lovely soft blue-black for the night sky. Someone danced by with a light, and I realized it was actually bright violet.
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| On top of traveling all day, we'd had a few glasses of wine on the deck. What a fantastic group! |
“Sandy, why don’t you finish this for me?” So she did—also without a light. By 9:30 PM we were all ready to call it a night. Tomorrow is the official first day of painting, and we want to be fresh for it.
Things they don’t teach you in art school
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| This is as far as the Eco-Warrior can go. From here, it's on foot with a flashlight. |
I learned a new word this week: dépaysement, which is that sense of disorientation one has on arriving in a strange place. It’s the perfect description of my initial shock at living in this cabin. As I’ve developed routines and some sense of familiarity, it’s gotten easier.
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| My bathtub, which I shared with a chorus of indignant bullfrogs. |
I just finished my last night alone here. (I’m returning for one night at the end of my workshop, but I will have Sandy with me.) In the end, the things that I expected to bother me didn’t, and some things I never thought of at all proved very irritating. For example, I hate washing dishes without copious hot running water, but yesterday I succeeded at taking a sponge bath with a quart of cold water.
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| This is a stovetop oven; it's a neat little device that replaces the toaster oven or microwave in the on-the-grid kitchen. Working in the dark is a fact of off-the grid living. |
Being alone doesn’t bother me but walking alone up a dark path at night makes me very jumpy. I read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood at an impressionable age and can never quite shake my fear of two-legged predators in the silent countryside. Last week, my sleep was interrupted by a serenading coyote who was close enough that I could hear the thrum of his vocal cords. I decided to discourage him by sprinkling human urine in a large circle around my cabin. He hasn’t been back.
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| There are, of course, many consolations, including the incredible beauty of the landscape. |
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| Beans and eggs to the right, boiling drinking water to the left. It's a propane stove hooked up to a standard gas grill tank. Without it, life would have been unbearable. |
The fifteen bucks I spent on my portable toilet seat turned out to be my best investment. It is neater than using an outhouse, as long as one is diligent at burying waste, and the mosquitoes aren’t too bad if you go out to do that at first light.
My biggest difficulty has been in drinking enough water. I either need to boil it or carry it in, and I never seem to have enough time for the former or enough memory for the latter.
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| The off-the-grid coffee grinder. Really. |
The darkness here is a force that presses against one’s consciousness, particularly in the deep woods. I love the beauty of the night sky, and the darkness feels friendly to me, but for many people, that much darkness is a problem. In winter in Maine, the sun sets in mid-afternoon. Then darkness will be an ever-present friend. In fact, for all the reasons that camping is more difficult in winter, living off the grid will be more difficult then, too.
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| The off-the-grid shoe-drying rack. |
I have long been fascinated with the Tiny House movement, perhaps because I feel I’m saddled with too much house and too much stuff for this phase in our life. I find myself constantly bumping up against the lack of workspace in this 12X16 cabin. Put two people in here and it would be impossibly claustrophobic. Perhaps the people who thrive in Tiny Houses have no avocations except living in Tiny Houses, for my studio and my husband’s guitars alone would fill one up.
I think I could live like this if I had to, but having no sense of moral imperative to do so, I’ll be very happy to return to the interconnectedness of on-the-grid living.
Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME starts today! Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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