Okay, so how to build a mortgage calculator…

The first thing we have to do is to start by setting up a few basic headings. So lets begin by starting a new workbook and clicking in the first cell A1. Enter into cell address A1 the heading - Monthly Loan Repayments. Next off, enter into cell address A2 - Amount of Loan, cell address A3 - Interest Rate, cell address A4 - Length of Loan and then in A6 - Monthly Repayment.

In example mortgage calculator, we will take the Loan Amount, Interest Rate and Length of Loan and calculate your Monthly Repayment. Okay so in the corresponding field B1 enter the value of $200,000 and make sure you format the field as a currency. In cell B2 enter a value of 9.25% and format the field as a percentage and then finally enter in a value for the Length of the Loan as 25. The value you enter into the Length of the Loan field is in years.

Now its time to create the formula that will do your calculation for the Monthly Repayment. The function we will use for this calculation is called the PMT function. The PMT function always returns a negative number so one of the things we will need to do is to convert it into a positive number, but a little on that later.

There are three arguments we will use for this formula and they are -

= PMT(Monthly Interest Rate, Number of Payments, Amount Borrowed)

So to work out the Monthly Interest Rate we simply take the value in B3 and divide it by 12 - B3/12. The PMT function works on the basic of the number of payments you are going to make, so if we are going to make monthly payments on our mortgage we simply take the number of years in cell B4 and multiply it by 12 - B4 *12.

This means that to calculate the Monthly Repayment for our mortgage we need to enter the following formula -

= PMT(B3/12, B4*12, B2)

Now as I said before, the PMT function always returns a negative value, so to turn this into a positive value we simply type the PMT function with the Absolute Function encapsulating it as shown below -

= ABS(PMT(B3/12,B4*12,B2))

Simply type the formula above into the cell B6 and press the enter key. You must now format the cell address B6 as a currency and you can do that by simply pressing the Dollar Symbol on the Formatting Toolbar. As soon as you enter the formula and press enter you should get a result of $1712.76. If you do not get this answer, simply go back and make sure that you have entered the formula correctly.

The cool part about this Mortgage Calculator is that you can go back and change any one of the values in B2, B3 and B4 which are the Loan Amount, Interest Rate and Length of Loan to work out what your monthly mortgage repayments will be.

The cool part about this simple tool is that it tells you really quickly whether borrowing massive amounts from the bank is worth it and whether you can really afford that mortgage. Why not check out what your repayments will be if your interest rate went up by 2 or 3%, it can be really interesting to see the impact on your budget.

Simple tools like this can save you thousands of dollars and can also help you see what changes interest rates will have on your own budget. It is certainly worthwhile building yourself a Budgeting Spreadsheet and the mortgage calculator to work out just what you really can afford especially in these uncertain times.

Hunt out a survey money directory website. They will provide you with a database of survey companies which is much more efficient than going company to company. A good survey directory will have taken the pains to weed out any fake survey offers and leave in only the genuine marketing companies that provide real paid surveys. Getting Real Paid Surveys is simple. There are even some sites that will only pay you in coupons, read on more about Real Paid Surveys. The reason you need an email account is because all the surveys will be emailed to you. Also see Paid Surveys Etc.. But it’s important to watch yourself and make sure that you aren’t scammed.

Surveys open the door to forming good relationships, which are vital for your business. Show sincerity in your surveys and make customers feel comfortable with you. Add a little spice of humor and fun into your surveys; customers will feel happy when reading and answering them. Read on to find out more about Real Paid Surveys. I know that there are millions of males females teens college students and seniors who do surveys to make extra income. Find out more about Real Paid Surveys and Paid Surveys Etc.. There is no point in companies requiring you to pay good money for something that should be free Free paying surveys should be exactly what they sound like - free for you to take paid to you upon completion.
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The first sign is Aries the ram. People born between March 21 and April 20 are Aries. Aries people have very strong personalities and are usually natural born leaders. They are very straightforward, which means they can be very blunt. An Aries is the kind of person you want to have as a friend as they will fight to the death to defend your honor.

The second sign is Taurus the bull. People born between April 20 and May 21 are Taurians. These people are very sensible, dependable and sensual. A Taurus likes security and stability. When they fall in love, they stay in love. They are also very stubborn, so don’t even think of winning an argument with one.

The third sign is Gemini the twins. People born between May 21 and June 22 are Geminis. Geminis are very fickle. Some say they have split personalities. Geminis usually have so many relationships that they can’t keep track of them all. Geminis are very charming and charismatic people.

The fourth sign is Cancer the crab. People born between June 22 and July 23 are Cancers. Cancers are very emotional people. They’ll cry at Verizon wireless commercials. They also very loving, caring and great parents. They are certainly the most maternal sign. But don’t hurt them or you better be prepared to leave the solar system.

The fifth sign is Leo the lion. People born between July 23 and August 22 are Leos. Leos are the life of the party. They’re always cracking jokes and are very entertaining. They are also very proud and brave. They are great leaders, just like an Aries. They can be downright ruthless with their enemies but because of bad memories, are quick to forgive.

The sixth sign is Virgo the virgin. People born between August 22 and September 22 are Virgos. Virgos are the most difficult people to read. They can totally fool you. They have very lively minds that are always thinking. They will change their ways to suit the situation. They are probably the most versatile sign, adaptable to most anything.

The seventh sign is Libra the scales. People born between September 22 and October 23 are Libras. Libras demand justice and balance in life. They have very high principals and are always ready to discuss them. Libras go on to make very good lawyers.

The eighth sign is Scorpio the scorpion. People born between October 23 and November 22 are Scorpios. Scorpios are said to be the sexiest people on Earth. They are also very creative and have the worst tempers. Scorpios can be making love to you one minute and tearing your head off the next. Beware of their stinger.

The ninth sign is Sagittarius the archer. People born between November 22 and December 22 are Sagittarians. People born under this sign are very independent and need their freedom. They never get tired of a change in scenery. Their lack of commitment can drive the other signs crazy.

The tenth sign is Capricorn the goat. People born between December 22 and January 21 are Capricorns. The people need structure and organization in their lives. They are very responsible and ambitious. They strive to be at the top of the food chain. They’ll step on anyone or anything that gets in their way.

The eleventh sign is Aquarius the water bearer. People born between January 21 and February 19 are Aquarians. These people are idealistic, inventive and very original. They seek to bring all people on Earth together to live in harmony. When the day comes that we have world peace, it will have been an Aquarian responsible for it happening.

The twelfth and last sign is Pisces the fish. People born between February 19 and March 21 are Pisceans. Pisces people are very compassionate and romantic. If you need a sympathetic ear to bend, Pisces are your best bests. They can, however, be very lazy and over talkative. A Pisces can quickly drive you crazy with their little quirks.

Now that you have a basic overview of each sign, next it’s time to dive into the next step. How to do an astrological chart.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Astrology

The history of the Dexterity. Great Plains Dexterity - is proprietary programming language and technology, designed back to earlier 1990th with the goal to build platform independent graphical accounting package - Great Plains Dynamics. Dexterity itself is written in C (following popular those days hope - that C will provide platform independence). You can install Dexterity from Great Plains 7.5 CD #2. Obviously it requires a lot of learning / training, but it allows your custom piece be seamlessly integrated with Great Plains interface.

• Native Dexterity Cursors. Dexterity was designed as platform independent programming language and so if you want your code to be operable on all currently supported databases - you use Dexterity ranges and loops to manipulate the records

• Great Plains Dexterity with SQL Stored Procs Nowadays, most of Great Plains installations are moved to SQL Server - so you can use Dexterity for custom forms drawing only and make the buttons run SQL stored procedures.

• COM Objects calls. Beginning with version 7.0 Dexterity supports COM objects - you register them as libraries in Dexterity. Refer the manual. This technique allows you to call such nice things as web services across the internet.

• Dexterity Forms - if you like VBA and are comfortable to do all the business logic in VBA - you can use Dexterity as new forms creator/editor. This is OK - but you have to purchase VBA/Modifier and Customization Site Enabler from MBS.

• Great Plains Alternate Forms. These are modification to existing forms - the ones found in DYNAMICS.DIC. The most popular customization are made on SOP Entry form. If you are designing your customization - we recommend you to avoid alternate forms - the problem is customization version upgrade. In the case of alternate form - customization should be redone.

Some restrictions. Great Plains is actually integration of multiple dictionaries: DYNAMICS.DIC, ADVSECUR.DIC, EXP1493.DIC, etc. In your Dexterity customization you can deal with one dictionary - DYNAMICS.DIC. If you need cross dictionaries customization - consider using SQL Stored Procs for crossing dictionary borders and pulling data/making changes in the other dictionary.

You can always have us help you with the customization. Call us: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918.

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, Florida, Canada, UK, Australia, South Africa and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

The first thing to remember about vitamins is that pills or supplements shouldn’t be your only source of vitamins. Nothing - not even a daily vitamin regimen - is a substitute for eating right. Some people tend to eat less healthy because of their lifestyles. They’re just too busy to stop for a real meal. Dieting is a common problem because those on a strict diet may not be getting nearly all the vitamins the body needs to stay healthy.

If those situations sound familiar, there are some things you can do.

Don’t do crash diets or diets that require you to only eat a specific food. The grapefruit diet was popular a few years ago, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s not a good idea from a health standpoint.

Talk to your doctor or to a dietician. Make a healthy plan and stick with it. Supplement your diet with regular exercise and be sure that you’re eating the foods that will keep you healthy long enough to enjoy that slim new body you’re working on.

If you think you’re just too busy to eat healthy, think again. There are dozens of shortcuts toward healthy foods and healthy meals that will get you the daily recommended dose of most vitamins. Instead of eating chips or a candy bar for a snack, eat an apple, a banana, a handful of grapes, cherries or strawberries. These are completely portable, just like a candy bar. Many convenience stores are recognizing that customers want these healthier snacks and they’re offering them at the counter.

Instead of stopping at a convenience store or fast food restaurant, allow yourself five extra minutes and make a quick stop at a grocer for your snack. Choose veggies - cooked are often an option if the grocery has a deli.

Make yourself a sandwich. Think sandwiches aren’t healthy? Think again. If you choose wisely, you’re getting meat, veggies (think bigger than just lettuce and tomato) and bread - and all the vitamins you’d get from most sit-down meals.

The next time you think that just popping a pill is the best way to get the vitamins your body needs, think again. It might be easier than taking time for a sandwich, but it’s certainly not healthier. Vitamin pills and supplements should do just that - supplement your daily food intake.

Jeff Lakie is the founder of Vitamins Resources a website providing information on Vitamins

Barriers to Communication

These are a few of the things that prevent people from communicating effectively:

• Not knowing how to communicate properly

• Not taking the time to think through what you want to say

• Not taking the time to anticipate what your partner might be thinking and feeling

• Fear of revealing too much of yourself

• Fear of your partner’s anger

• Not wanting to hurt your partner’s feelings
Empathy and Acceptance

People marry because they want to spend the rest of their lives with their partner. They have every hope of growing together and creating a relationship that makes them feel emotionally healthy. Two factors that are necessary for this to happen are empathy and acceptance on the part of both partners.

Empathy is the capacity to put oneself in another’s shoes and understand how they view their reality, how they feel about things.

Demonstrating empathy and acceptance is critical to maintaining a strong relationship. Let’s look next at some communication skills that enable you to create a climate of empathy, acceptance, and understanding. First we will explore a skill called Active Listening.

Active Listening

Active listening is a way of communicating that creates the important climate of empathy, acceptance, and understanding.

• It is a two-step response to a statement made by your partner.

• It includes reflecting back what emotion you detected in the statement, and the reason for the emotion.
This is what active listening sounds like:
“Sounds like you’re upset about what happened at work.”

“You’re very annoyed by my lateness, aren’t you?”

Why Active Listening Is a Valuable Skill

Active listening is a valuable skill because it demonstrates that you understand what your partner is saying and how he or she is feeling about it.

• Active listening means restating, in your own words, what the other person has said.

• It’s a check on whether your understanding is correct.

• It demonstrates that you are listening and that you are interested and concerned.

Actively listening does not mean agreeing with the other person. The point is to demonstrate to your partner that you intend to hear and understand his or her point of view. This is good for your relationship for several reasons:

• When someone demonstrates that they want to understand what you are thinking and feeling, it feels good.

• It creates good feelings about the other person.

• Restating and checking understanding promotes better communication and fewer misunderstandings.

More Active Listening Examples

Here are some more examples of active listening:

“You sound really stumped about how to solve this problem.”

“It makes you angry when you find errors on Joey’s homework.”

“Sounds like you’re really worried about Wendy.”

“I get the feeling you’re awfully busy right now.”

More Communication Skills

Although our space is limited in this short newsletter, there are a few more communication skills that I must mention. These include asking open-ended questions, making summary statements to check understanding, and encouraging your partner to open up and elaborate by using neutral questions and phrases.

Open-ended questions begin with what, why, how do, or tell me.

• These questions get the other person to open up and elaborate on the topic.

• Asking these kinds of questions gets the other person involved by giving him or her a chance to tell what he or she thinks or knows.

• These questions are designed to encourage your partner to talk.

• They are useful when the other person is silent or reluctant to elaborate.

• They are also useful in dealing with negative emotions (such as anger or fear), since they help encourage the other person to vent feelings.

Summary Statements

Summary statements sum up what you hear your partner saying.

• A summary statement enhances your partner’s self-esteem by showing that you were listening carefully.

• It also helps you focus on facts, not emotions.

• It helps your partner clarify his or her own thinking by hearing your summary.

• Summary statements also help you deal with multiple disagreements so you can deal with them one by one.

• They help eliminate confusion by focusing on the relevant facts.

• Summary statements also help you separate the important issues from the trivial.

Neutral Questions and Phrases

Neutral questions and phrases get your partner to open up and elaborate on the topic you are discussing.

• These questions are more focused than open-ended questions.

• They help your partner understand what you are interested in hearing more about.

• They further communication because they help you gain more information.

• When you ask these kinds of questions, you demonstrate to your partner that you are interested and that you are listening.

Business Skills for Marriages

You might be surprised to hear that the same skills that help people succeed in business can also be used to build a better marriage. Like any business, a marriage is a partnership of people. Many of the skills that make businesses run successfullyplanning, organizing, and setting goalsalso can be applied to running your marriage successfully. These are some of the skills that will strengthen any marriage:

1. Create an overall vision of what you want your life to be like; consider all life areas.

2. Develop a long-range strategy.

3. Set short-term and long-term goals.

4. Plan the steps that will help you accomplish your goals.

5. Organize projects.

6. Manage projects.

7. Manage people.

8. Evaluate progress and results at regular intervals.

9. Revise goals as needed.

Garrett Coan is a professional therapist,coach and psychotherapist. His two Northern New Jersey office locations are accessible to individuals who reside in Bergen County, Essex County, Passaic County, Rockland County, and Manhattan. He offers online and telephone coaching and counseling services for those who live at a distance. He can be accessed through http://www.creativecounselors.com or 201-303-4303.

There is however, another type of thinking, which is much more focused on exploring ideas, which has the possibility of searching for and generating several great answers rather than just one. This is the creative way of thinking. Both of these ways of thinking are crucial to a successful career or working life, relationship issues and self improvement. The strange thing is that the latter tends to be ignored and neglected in the education system; the system that should prepare us for the real life.

What distinguises the Creative way of thinking from the critical way?
While the critical way of thinking…

• is analytic by nature
• aims to provide you ‘the answer’
• is convergent, fact or standard oriented
• is stricktly focused
• is validated by judgment
• belongs to the left side of the brain
• consists of a line of deductions
• has an objective nature
• empazises probability - which can be quantified
• is based upon reasoning
• is verbal

the creative way of thinking …

• is more generative; it’s purpose is to generate new answers for already known problems
• is aimed to give you one or more possible answers among a set
• is divergent, which is the opposite of the former
• is more diffused
• only functions when judgment is suspended

• belongs to the right side of the brain
• is more associative which means it can make ideas by associating other ideas
• is much more subjective
• is more focused on what is possible whether it can be quantified or not
• is based upon richness and novelty
• is visual

When we try to solve problems, both ways of thinking are required. The process of problem solving utilizes an alternation between the creative and critical way of thinking. - they operate together. Another good thing about our fantastic brains are that we don’t have to think too hard about when to use which method - the brain takes care of it automatically.

Terje Brooks Ellingsen is a writer and internet publisher. He runs the website 1st-Self_Improvement.net. Terje is a Sociologist who enjoys contributing to the personal growth and happiness of others. He tries to accomplish this by writing about self improvement issues from his own experience and knowledge. For example, making a successful career and relationship issues

The first thing that many business owners will ask is, “What is a Business Coach?” and the second, “Why would I need one?”

When you ask most people, they will rightly associate coaching with sports, athletics or football. It has only really been in the last thirty years or so that coaching as a profession has really developed into a serious industry, and that the world of business has fully adopted coaching alongside many other business support functions.

Often, businesses fear approaching business coaches due to concerns over competence, (there is no formal regulation in the UK currently) and the costs involved, which can vary greatly between companies.

That said, there are some excellent training and private accreditation companies for coach’s, that come with stringent standards and ethical codes of conduct. It is well worth checking an individual coach’s qualifications and experience before appointing and obviously, checking on costs at an early stage.

A Business Coach is usually a very experienced person within business, but does not necessarily have a specific industry expertise within each clients’ sector. This is how coaching mainly differs from mentoring or consultancy.

Essentially, a coach will assist in the setting of challenging goals in certain ‘topic’ areas and ensuring that agreed actions are prioritised and taken by all members of the team to achieve these goals.

A coach will also often have many strategies that can be offered to companies, these allow for structured processes to be created, and regular reviews and measurement to be applied.

Business Coaching can be effective, when compared with traditional training and consultancy as it is real-time, it is a living partnership that allows the business owner to have full ownership of decisions, to constantly reinforce successful behaviours and practises until they become engrained habits.

One of the main complaints amongst business owners is that they simply do not have the time to work on their businesses, this can be defined as taking quality thinking time over the ‘bigger picture’ elements that can move the business forward. Far too much time is often spent on day to day tasks, meetings, travel and dealing with interruptions.

The recognition that the business is not getting this vital attention, leads to stress and personal frustration, multiply this to the directors and senior managers of an organisation
and the effect on the whole workforce can become obviously de-motivational over a period of time, reflected in a potential decline in performance.

A Business Coach will work closely with a client to identify areas of possibility and improvement, but it is the client who ultimately decides on, and takes full ownership of the solution. This can seem unusual, but the reason is, that it is much more likely that actions will be taken, if the client has, albeit with careful coaching, originated the solution for themselves. This forms the basis of most coaching relationships.

Business Coaching is now a part of many organisations’ strategy to ensure many individual business areas are progressing to a structured plan that takes into account personal motivational drivers and a holistic view of the business overall.

As the world’s second highest growth sector after IT, according to the UK Coaching Academy, it looks as if Business Coaching is a profession that is here to stay and can add a tremendous amount of value to most businesses if they partner with a reputable coaching organisation.

Phil Ashforth DipM, DipINLPTA MCIM, is a Director at North West coaching company Synergy Coaching Ltd, see their site at www.synergycoaching.co.uk/bg telephone +44 (0)1772 641234.

Phil Ashforth

Phil Ashforth has been involved in sales and marketing for over the last twenty years. Within that time he has held senior positions, assisting both large and small-scale enterprises with their sales and marketing strategy and implementation.

He holds a recognised marketing qualification (CIM) at post-graduate level and is a member of several marketing bodies and attends regular seminars for his commitment to continual professional development.

As a qualified and experienced business growth coach, Philip has been trained by and is part of the Peter Thomson International Plc (PTI) network. PTI is the uk’s largest business growth consultancy. He has also been trained by, and is a member of Europes leading coaching organisation, The Coaching Academy.

For more information see http://www.synergycoaching.co.uk