Community Magazine April 2012

Mortgage Matters Larry Aboudi, Senior Mortgage Consultant Check Your Credit Regularly. With today’s tightening credit standards, it is important to periodically check your credit report and score for accuracy. US residents can obtain one free credit report from each of the three credit bureaus TransUnion, Equifax and Experian each year. (The scores are usually an additional fee, but a mortgage consultant can often provide it free and you can logon to CreditKarma.com for your TransUnion score.) By staggering your requests to one in every four months, you can monitor your credit throughout the year. Finally, to avoid tricky fees and paid subscriptions from the bureaus, you can order your free report from www.AnnualCreditReport.com . Picture It Morris Antebi, Photographer Photographing Little Kids. If you’ve ever been photographed with toddlers and preschoolers, you know that they don’t always cooperate. But with proper planning the process can be much easier. For planned occasions (weddings, bar missvas, etc.), start to psych the kids up a week or a few days before. Buy them a toy camera (or let them use an old camera you already have) and let them practice smiling and posing so they become comfortable in front of the camera. It can also help to ask a neighbor or someone who the children are not so familiar with, to come and take pictures of them so they get used to the idea. For children who weren’t prepared in advance, then the next best thing is to bribe them. No need to bring a toy or doll to distract them, as it will end up in the picture. Jingling keys work just fine to get their attention. What doesn’t work is a bunch of people standing behind the photographer calling the baby all at once. It usually just scares them and makes them cry. And if after all your efforts, you still couldn’t get your baby to smile, don’t think the opportunity was wasted. Parents tell me that some of the best shots were natural expressions that captured the child’s personality in precious way. Garage Gab Ralph Czeisler, Emil’s All Tire Sell or Trade? Trading-in your used car with a dealer may be simple and hassle free, but you will get more money by selling privately. To help decide, use kbb.com or Edmunds.com to estimate the trade-in and private resale values. Also, consider the savings on sales tax that you will receive by trading in your used car. The value of your used car will reduce the taxable amount of your new car purchase. If you decide to sell privately, consider listing the car online with any combination of ebay.com, AutoTrader.com and CraigsList.com. – edited by Rachel Dayan They are the trained professionals, experts in their fields and masters of their domains. Community magazine’s savants share their best tips on how you can make your life a bit simpler, more economical, and more efficient. Are you a savant in your field? Email your hints and advice to editor@communitym.com. Tech Know Morris Massry, Technology Partners Assoc. What’s New in Apple’s New iPad: High Definition. The term is usually associated with super clear televisions and professional displays, yet the latest tablet out of Cupertino, CA has a Retina display that contains one million more pixels than an HDTV. Apple’s new iPad ($499-$829) now also sports ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless connectivity, a sharp 5-megapixel iSight camera, and a powerful new A5X processor for zippy performance. On the software side Apple added voice dictation for writing email, text messages, and notes; all this in a package weighing 1.46 lb. Stay Organized on the Go. Astrid is an elegant, free to-do list application for Android and iOS that is simple to use can help you be more effective at getting things done. It features tagging, timers, reminders, smart task sorting, hiding tasks and partial progress. And, with a free online account, you can cross double data entry off your list as all your data is automatically synched over the web. Savant 44 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE