One of the reasons why your enemies are successful is because you let them. One of our African proverbs says "troubles have the right to come to you, but you must not give them a chair to sit on" We have wailed and complained and even took to the streets. We constructed high-sounding grammar and good English on Facebook and other social media just to express how unhappy we are at where we are.

I want to assure you that until we, the YOUTHS of Nigeria act and act fast, the game played by these enemies of Nigeria, continues. They will continue to perpetuate themselves in government as they have been doing. It has become their birthright.

We saw block headed thugs seize power and circulate it within themselves for years and power supply is still as bad as it was in 1960. Trillions of Naira have gone down the drain in the name of fixing NEPA, PHCN, and now TCN. We've always had ministries for each sector of the economy but dilapidation and rust is the order of the day. All indices of nationhood are replaced with greed, nepotism, sectionalism, tribalism, religious and ethnic biases and now, a divided identity. Other nations are identified by sky scrapers, vibrant economies, innovations, industrialization, and progress, no, these old men are slowly killing ours, with witchcraft, selfishness, diverting every project fund into their accountants and creating dramas and press soap opera from one issue to another. no good news. They have constituted themselves into a ball of negative energy in the firm of a mountain sitting on top of Nigeria's progress and as if it is a spell, their banner is BACKWARDNESS BY FORCE. I am tired of just hoping. We have been praying in churches and mosques. I believe we, the Youths, must makeup our minds. Make up your mind to see real tangible reasonable results. We must makeup our minds that we are tired of the lies. These days the kids have even taken highly irrational proportions. That rats chased our president from the villa is a lie that should land one in prison.

We must make up our minds to change our country for good. It is out of a painful heart and a sustained shock that I write this and it is not about me, but for the future of my country NIGERIA. THE NIGERIAN YOUTH BLOCK MUST WAKE UP. We are a highly skillful, intelligent, powerful, cosmopolitan, and solution-driven group. Many of our doctors are doing wonders all over the world. Our Engineers are paving new ways.

Even if you have bad credit, there are ways to borrow money from financial institutions that do not have stringent rules and regulations as far as credit scores are concerned. Though your credit scores will still be checked, some financial institutions actually target people with low credit scores and will show more empathy to your financial situation.

The only caveat here is that sometimes, the interest rates will be higher than the typical bank loan. This is fine, most especially so if you are now in a good financial standing. You may have a bad credit history but if your current financial status shows that you have the capacity to pay, lenders will still take the risk to loan you money for your dream home.

Apply for Home Loans from Credit Unions

Credit unions are just like banks. They lend money on interest but they have lesser interests because they do not have as much overhead as the big banks. In addition, credit unions do not have comprehensive details about your credit history as those with big banks. Credit unions will usually use credit reports from third party vendors. Credit unions are non-profit organizations. This means that members who are in the same industry get together and loan money to other members. This is why the interests are low.

Apply for Home Loans from Peer to Peer Organizations

Peer to Peer or P2P is the fastest growing credit industry today and most of these are online. This means that you do not have to go to the organization in person. A P2P organization has an unlimited number of members, or lenders and borrowers. People from around the world will sign up and lend money to those who are in need. Most of the time, not one single person has to lend the entire amount that a borrower needs.

The peers, as they are called, pool their money together until a target amount is achieved. This money is loaned to you, the borrower, at interest rates that is competitive enough against banks. On average, P2P charges a 6.5% interest rate per year.

As a borrower, you need to sign up and provide details such as your name and income. You have to provide a reason for your loan and wait until several peers, or investors, to check your credit history. Even if you have a bad one, you will still qualify because the lenders make their personal decisions and will lend you money at their own risk, unlike banks that have high standards.

Apply for Home Loans from Sub-Prime Mortgage

People who have bad credit scores can apply for sub-prime home loan instead of the typical Prime Loans. The low credit score of the buyer will be the determining factor on how much interest should be paid. Typically, sub-prime mortgages have higher interest rates because there is a higher risk of you not paying your debt. The high interest rate will compensate for this risk.

Once you apply for a loan, the lenders will take a look at what is called risk-based pricing. As mentioned earlier, your bad credit score will significantly affect the interest rate. If your credits score is really bad, you should expect higher interest rates. Your payment delinquencies will be checked, along with debts that you defaulted.

The main problem with sub-prime loan is that you may pay high amounts if you are penalized for being late or if you decide to pay your entire loan earlier than the agreed end date, which is also called pre-payment penalty. You need to carefully ask your lender about these so you do not get surprised if you are charged penalties.

In mid-April, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko submitted a bill to the legislature, aiming to take away the citizenship of Ukrainians who vote in foreign elections, or who otherwise ‘fulfill the duties that foreign citizenship puts on [them]’. The bill has been widely criticised for the fact that it only serves to alienate the millions of Ukrainians with foreign citizenship – many of whom are the nation’s chief supporters overseas – while it fails to achieve its stated purpose of affecting Ukrainians voting in Russian-run elections in Crimea.

It is firstly important to note that it is not strange for Poroshenko’s bill to insist that Ukrainians living in the occupied regions of Crimea and the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics should remain Ukrainian citizens (even if it has been justified on this basis). Even where Ukrainians have adopted alternate citizenship enthusiastically and voluntarily, it would only legitimise the Russian invasion to say it has created new states with real citizens, or that it has successfully made some Ukrainian citizens (and territories) Russian. In reality, the citizenship issue in eastern Ukraine is a driving historical force behind nationality law and, indeed, the war in the country today.

Ukraine’s approach to dual citizenship is already one of the strictest in the world, with dual citizenship being outright ‘not recognised’, and in 2014, the legislature even considered a bill to criminalise it. The direct causes of this are derived from the end of the Soviet Union, but more broadly they are founded in Ukraine’s historical struggle to ensure its territorial integrity, and even to be recognised as a separate nation.

Along with Belarus and Russia, Ukraine was historically a part of the medieval kingdom of Kyivan Rus’, a fact which Russia has used to justify control over Ukraine for centuries. This problem magnified when, after the fall of the Soviet Union, millions of Russian-speaking people found themselves living outside the new Russian Federation, predominantly in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics. The historian, Serhii Plokhy, discusses in his book Lost Kingdom how the new Russian Federation struggled to develop a clear definition of Russian nationality, in light of the fact that many ethnic Russians lived beyond the borders of the state. Attempts to expand Russian nationality to ethnic Russians in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine was prevented by Ukraine’s prohibition on dual citizenship. By refusing to allow Ukrainians to be both Ukrainian and Russian, the Ukrainian government hoped to defeat Russia’s claims to Ukrainian territory.

Many Russian writers and politicians considered this to be a sign of Ukrainian chauvinism. Even Russian nationalists like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, opposed to the Soviet Union, were outraged by how the territories were redrawn. In 1994 he described Ukraine’s ownership of Crimea as an acceptance ‘of false Leninist borders’, alluding to the fact that Ukraine was gifted Crimea by Khrushchev in 1954. He accuses Ukraine of having ‘set upon a false imperial path’, and in the same book, The Russian Question, suggests that the best solution for the titular question is a ‘single union of Eastern Slavs’. That is to say, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia ought to be united into a single nation. This fails to recognise the distinctness of Ukrainian culture from Russian culture, and one notes that the prior examples of such unity, the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, had always put Russia in a dominant position. Solzhenitsyn, like many others, was a Russian nationalist, but he believed that the Russian nation extended far beyond the borders of the Russian state.

Today we have seen that the Russian annexation of Crimea was justified exactly on the basis of the nationality question that Ukraine foresaw at the end of the Soviet Union. But the fact that Russian speakers in Crimea were not formally Russian citizens was not enough to stop Vladimir Putin from asserting Russia’s claim over the territory on the basis that the people who live there are ‘Russians’. Hence Putin’s application of Article 1 of the UN Charter to Crimea, an argument that the annexation is in service to peoples’ right to self-determination. According to Putin, the people in Crimea and most of eastern Ukraine are Russians, no matter where the present borders lie, and no matter what country they are citizens of.

That said, this background offers some explanation as to why the Ukrainian government is so unusually concerned about dual citizenship. Whether Poroshenko’s latest bill is good or bad is beyond the scope of this article, but it is better understood when placed within the context of Ukraine’s historical struggle for sovereignty.

Do you owe tax money and are considering refinancing your mortgage to pay it off? The truth is nobody enjoys paying taxes, self-employed people or those who work on a contract basis are responsible for sending in their own taxes to the government each year and If you are one of those people, you know how much discipline it takes to set aside money over the course of the year to payoff your income tax dues.

If you’ve fallen behind in your tax payments, and you own a home, your home is at risk. If the tax man has already started to move against your home, then you do have a few options, you can file for bankruptcy, but this will destroy your credit rating.

The Government’s tax department can also garnish your wages, freeze your accounts and seize the funds, and take away your assets. An excellent solution to solving your tax debt problems is refinancing your mortgage and getting a home equity loan to payoff the debt.

The banks may not be willing to provide a loan against the equity, even though the equity is there. However, there are private mortgage lenders who are willing to provide financing in this sort of situation. Instead of looking at your credit score, private lenders look at the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of the property. If you have $250,000 in equity, taking out a $100,000 loan would still leave $150,000 in equity. If the house’s value is $500,000, that leaves you with 30% equity, creating an LTV ratio of 70 percent, which is well within the criteria of most private lenders.

The home equity loan from the private lender will have a higher interest rate than you would with a home equity loan from a bank, this is because you represent a higher credit risk than someone with a good credit score. However, paying that higher rate is preferable to having the tax man take your home. That’s a consequence that no one wants to have to deal with. The tax man has all the power in this situation. Ignoring him will not make your tax problems go away. Once your credit is back on track you can refinance your first mortgage and the home equity loan from the private lender into one new first mortgage.

If you are in tax debt, and you don’t have any other resources other than your home equity, speak with a mortgage broker. He or she can connect you with their network of private lenders to help you find the loan that best suits your needs.

More than 7 million graduates default on student loans – that’s a massive number. Some of the time these people simply can’t afford to pay the monthly loan rate (and often do not know about the various options that exist), so defaulting simply happens. Other times, though, defaulting on a loan happens due to miscommunication.

Think Big

It helps to think of student loan companies as massive businesses. As with any other business, there are people that handle customer service and do things like make phones calls in order to collect on a debt. These people punch in and out of their jobs every day and follow protocol. However, just like any other person, mistakes often happen, and when these mistakes happen it could mean that you’ll wind up defaulting on your loan.

Here’s a good example: you have fallen behind on your loan, so you call the student loan company to make arrangements. The person you speak with on the phone assures you that because you have called to make these arrangements, you will not default on your loan. You hang up the phone and go about your business. A month later, you start getting phone calls from debt collection companies claiming that you have defaulted on your loan. What happened and what can you do about it?

The Problem

It’s not enough to make an arrangement with someone on the phone. Why? Because that person might not do their job. When this happens, anything that you have discussed goes out the window, and now it’s up to you to prove that this is really what happened. Sure, student loan companies claim that conversations are recorded, but getting those recordings is very difficult and requires the help of a legal team.

There’s a better way to handle student loan payment arrangements. Put it in writing. That’s right, grab a piece of paper and a pen, write down the arrangement that you made, the person’s name or ID number that made the arrangement, the date and time, and mail that letter (registered) to the student loan company (make a copy), so that you have proof. This is the only way to guarantee that any arrangement you made will stick. This is exactly what I did when my student loan company made a deal with me. I put the pen to paper and made them eat their own words over 1 year later.

When someone attends college they typically accumulate debt in the form of student loans. Depending on how much financial help they have through savings, their parents, scholarships, grants and government aid, the difference is usually made up with school loans.

No matter how much money is borrowed, a challenge that all students who owe money face after they graduate is how they are going to pay back the loans. Not only are they looking for or just starting a new job, they also are faced with having to pay off what is normally thousands of dollars in debt. Thankfully, there are systems in place to help.

One of the ways the government and banks make it easier on a recent graduate is through loan consolidation plans. When you take out loans during the course of your college career, it often comes from a few to many different sources. These lenders give you money at a certain interest rate, and when you finish school (graduation or not) you begin having to pay them back.

This can be cumbersome and confusing, not to mention expensive, especially if you have three, four or more lenders to pay back. When you consolidate your loans, you combine all your student loan debt into one, neat lump sum package. This means you pay one lender every month instead of many.

Not only is it easier to keep track of your payments, but when you consolidate you are able to have your interest rate lowered in the process. Over the course of a 10-15 year loan losing a couple percentage points on your interest rate can save you thousands of dollars.

School loans consolidation is a simple and convenient way to configure your student loans. In nearly all cases, consolidation is a smart financial move that will make repayment cheaper and easier.

One of the questions that mortgage brokers often get asked is, ‘How much stamp duty will I have to pay?

Stamp duty has long been the nuisance of the property purchaser. With removal, solicitors and estate agents’ fees to pay, the additional cost of duty tax can sometimes be a forgotten cost. It is in effect a tax in lump sum form that buyers of properties over a certain price all must pay regardless of their income. As the amount of stamp duty differs for commercial and residential properties, we will look at stamp duty in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on residential property purchases.

To answer the questions How much stamp duty will I have to pay? Lets look at the rates:

Current duty rates are:

Up to £125 = 0%

£125K to £250K = 2%

£250K to £925K = 5%

£925K to £1.5m = 10%

Anything over £1.5m = 12%

These rates of duty tax which came into effect during 2014 have been designed to be a bit fairer than previously as they spread the duty costs across the price band. This however does mean that calculations have become more complicated.

For simplicity, let’s look at the duty for a property priced at £300,000. The value of your new property up to £125,000 is stamp duty free – you will pay no duty tax on that amount. This means that if you buy a property that is under £125,000 (your London mortgage broker will tell you how unlikely this is) you won’t pay any stamp. The portion of your property between the values of £125,000 and £250,000 will collect a stamp tax cost of 2%. In the case of our £300,000 house that will be 2% of £125,000 which is £2,500.

The portion of your property above the value of £250,000 will collect a 5% duty cost. On your £300,000 house this will be 5% of £50,000 which is coincidentally another £2,500. When you total those costs, you can see that your duty bill for a £300,000 property will be £5,000.

However, it is important to remember that these only apply in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, in Scotland they have Land and Buildings Transaction tax which works in a similar way but would create a slightly lower cost on your £300,000 property.

… And don’t forget that if you will own more than one residential property on completion then you will be subject to an additional 3% banding on the duty.

Student loan debt has become an epidemic of sorts. These loans can be hefty and ultimately stressful. Many young people in America are scared to even make a monthly payment on their student loans. It could seem impossible to deal with due to the enormous balance that doesn't seem to go anywhere.

When you are young you are impressionable. Today's millennials are no exception. Accruing student loan debt is seen as a necessary burden essential to achieving their careers. Many find themselves employed following college. However, according to CareerBuilder.com about half of college graduates in 2014 were employed in jobs that do not require a college degree.

To make things worse the student loan lenders begin hounding their "clients" immediately after graduating. If you are one of these clients you probably know by now that nothing in this world comes easier than debt. The chances of you having money to pay your student loan debts so soon is quite slim.

Before leaving high school these young, impressionable people are lead to believe a college education will lead to a guaranteed career. Turns out, it is not that simple. The Washington Post reported in 2013, according to data from Jaison Abel and Richard Dietz of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, only 27% of college graduates had jobs related to their major. If this comes as a rude awakening to you I apologize. There is no one simple way to make your dream job come true and your student loan debts disappear. However, it takes action, commitment and it is possible.

Student loans. If reading those two words infuriates you don't worry. It should. Paying off student loans may seem impossible but there are ways you can help yourself out. The first thing you need to do is understand what type of loan you have. Some loans are eligible for certain benefits which may assist your situation.

Check out the National Student Loan Data System (NSLD). This website is home to the US Department of Education's database for student aid. Only federal student loans are eligible for this aid. In my experience I've talked to more individuals with federal loans than those with private ones.

A good idea for those who are unemployed or "between jobs" is deferment or forbearance. A deferment or forbearance allows you to temporarily stop making your federal student loan payments or to temporarily reduce the amount you pay. This could be helpful if you are in danger of defaulting on your loan. A default occurs when you have not made your monthly payments for an extended period of time. In the case of a default, the lender make execute legal action in order to get their money back.

If you are eligible for deferment, the federal government may pay the interest on your loans during the deferment period. The opposite goes for a forbearance. In a forbearance you may be able to lower your payments or stop payments completely for up to 12 months.

These options can give you room to breathe and pursue the career you studied so long to achieve.

There are other options available to help get your monthly payments decreased to a manageable level. There are income-based repayment plans for people with direct loans or Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program loans. In an income-based repayment program your monthly payments can be reduced to 10% of your monthly income. In most cases the loan is forgiven after 25 years in these programs.

Depending on your situation, there may be a repayment plan out there that best suits you. Head over to the Federal Student Aid website and browse their listings of payment plans.

Student loan consolidation is a viable option for people with more than one student loan. If your student loans have varying interest rates and minimum monthly payments you should look into a Direct Consolidation Loan. Just like traditional consolidation, a direct consolidation loan combines multiple federal student loans into one loan with one payment and interest rate. These loans can stretch the amount of time you have to pay the loan, thus lowering your monthly payment. You will also get a fixed rate on your interest instead of dealing with variable rates.

Consolidation does have its down sides. You may be more comfortable with the monthly payments but, you will end up paying more in the long run due to the interest rate. If your individual loans had attached benefits you will lose those as well.

You may not have planned on dealing with student debt when you were leaving high school. With most people it seems to sneak up on them as soon as the leave college. No matter what your student debt situation is there are programs available to help you manage it. You deserve to focus on the future and work towards your career goals instead of worrying about monthly payments.

On July 10, 1973, the Islands of the Bahamas, became an independent nation, while, also, remaining, as a part of the British Commonwealth. The nation began, with limited finances, etc, and little infrastructure. However, it also, fortunately, began with a focus, vision, goals, priorities, and somewhat, visionary leadership. Sir Lynden Pindling was the George Washington, of this nation, and served as Prime Minister, for the first 25 years, of its existence. In the early 1980’s, when I was involved in managing and operating, a tourism business, focused on the Bahamas, I had the pleasure of meeting, for the first time, this amazing individual. We had several conversations over the following, nearly – two decades, and I developed a far better understanding of what our Founding Fathers, and those of most nations, must have, to some degree, underwent. There were certain decisions made from the onset, which directed the Bahamas, into the future. These included: 1) Capping the Bahamian dollar to the United States dollar; 2) Mandatory education; 3) A parliamentary, democratic government; 4) An infrastructure plan; 5) Commitment to employment; and, 6) a primary emphasis on banking, tourism, etc. This article will try to apply, some of the lessons learned, in terms of what, the rest of the world, might benefit by.

1. Mission and vision of Founder: Since there are limited natural resources, and the ability to compete, in terms of exporting products, is limited. Mr. Pindling determined, the emphasis should be on education, employment, banking, pegging currency/ money, and tourism. This meant focusing on friendliness, service, and attracting tourists, to come back, repeatedly. There were many challenges, but when one observes, the number of amazing hotels, restaurants, stores, etc, and the short – life of this nation, is inspiring!

2. How mistakes/ challenges are handled: Things did not always go, as smoothly, as the government hoped. In the mid – 1980’s, the Cable Beach Hotel, and then, Crystal Palace, were built, as well as several other major projects, but many of these, were adversely impacted, by the downturn in the world economy. Rather than give – up, or proceed, negatively, they faced the challenges, admitted there were issues and challenges, but continued, in a focused way, towards a better future. When the largest project, ever planned, for the Caribbean region, was planned, and started, about a decade ago, hopes were high, but the original developer faced economic issues, there were many legal battles, etc, but finally, the $4.5 billion, Baha Mar Resort opened, and after, visiting last week, exceeded anyone’s expectations! Persistence, etc, mattered!

3. Encourage foreign investment: When the Bahamas, became a nation, one of the primary objectives, was to ensure qualified Bahamian workers, received the bulk of the jobs, in any project, etc. That nation recognized, the need to encourage foreign investment and investors, but, to also, protect citizens. Major projects such as the Atlantis, the Towne, the Baha Mar, and others, followed these principles. Many nations and banks, have a significant economic presence on these Islands, including: China; the United States; Canada; United Kingdom; etc.

4. Infrastructure needs: Roads have been designed, and improved, constantly, throughout the nation’s history! There is now, an International airport (Sir Lynden Pindling International Airport), which is modern, and a quality one. Bahamian Pride is real, and has been, throughout, and its flag, as explained to me, by Pindling, included 3 colors – blue, for the color of the sky and water; yellow, for the sun; and, black, to represent the skin color, of the vast majority of its citizens. In a nation, representing various races, and nationalities/ ethnicities, there is a relevantly low degree of racial biases, etc.

5. Overcome obstacles: This country has proceeded, and overcome many obstacles, because it proceeds, with an attitude and focus, o challenges, rather than problems!

If the Bahamas, in its short history, can be, where it is, and, although, still having to face many future challenges, shouldn’t all of us learn some lessons? I’ve witnessed many changes in the nearly 40 years, I have visited, and must admit, I am inspired by the progress, to date!

Education has been very important in the lives of many people. However, it is not that easy to go to college and get a degree. What if you don’t have the financial resources to earn a college degree? Is there still a way for you to fulfill your dreams?

An Astrive student loan is a private student loan. It is the best solution for you to be able to enter college even with a low amount of financial help for schooling. You can get an Astrive student loan if you are seventeen years of age and a certified US citizen or have lived at least for two years in the US. Moreover, you must have a well established credit history of twenty one months at least. Also it is important that you must have worked for a minimum of two years at the same employer.

A co-signer is important in getting approval for particular Astrive student loans. The co-signer will be the one to help you acquire a better credit line if ever you have a bad history credit. With a co-signer you can be assured of a much lower fees as well as rates. Furthermore, with a good co-signer you can receive the loan in the fastest and quickest way possible. Your status as well as the name of the school you are attending is important to qualify for an Astrive student loan.

Annually, you can have the chance to borrow as much as $40,000 which has a $130,000 lifetime limit. However you can also borrow for a minimum amount of $1,500. As for payment, you have three choices on how you want to pay the money that you have borrowed. The first option is to pay the loan right away to avoid high interest payments. With this option, you can be assured that in the long run you will be able to save more money. The second option is to pay interests for payments only. But to be able to have this option, you must be a half time student at least. And the last option is to fully pay the loan after graduation. But, just like the second option, you must also be a half time student at least to be qualified for this type of repayment schedule.

You are allotted twenty years to repay Astrive student loans. However, along with this are the monthly minimum payment of $25.00 and an inconsistent rate of interest. Early payments are encouraged to avoid penalties.

Therefore, with Astrive student loans, financial resources are not anymore a problem to earn a good college degree. So, there is no reason for you not to go to school and achieve your dreams for your future.