Tag Archives: investing

Finances

16 Tips To Relieve Finance Stress

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Let’s face the fact that the thing we stress over more than anything else relates to money. It’s always about money; do we have enough, too much (okay, I don’t know anyone who stresses over having too much), bills, savings, investing, being robbed, taxes… ugh.

05/2008: 7 cents for a nickel

Frédéric Poirot via Compfight

You know what? Turns out that rich people don’t worry about money. They do think about finances and ways to grow their wealth, but overwhelmingly they think more about lifestyle than the money.
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Managing Money

20 Personal Finance Ideas

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There was a news story some years ago titled 20 Personal Finance Do’s And Dont’s. It was a pretty good story, and though I’m not going to quote it, I am going to list the 20, and add my own commentary. I recommend you go to the story to see what they had to say for each of them.

1. Don’t try to predict the future.

nvodicka via Pixabay

This one is a no-brainer, and yet it’s not how most of us live. If we didn’t, would there be a stock market? The smart thing is to plan for the future instead of predicting it; you protect yourself better that way.
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Managing Money

Can You Be A Courageous Investor?

According to financial experts, investing over the long haul is one of the safest ways for you to not only make money but to help save your money. How is this possible? Here’s the quick down and dirty of it all.

via Fotolia

First, you get into a money market type of account, where your investments are spread out among a lot of companies. What this does is protect your investment if one company starts to tank, and gives the person handling your account time to switch you to someone else more stable.
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Budgeting

Do You Want A Tax Refund?

Every year there are a lot of people who end up being very happy because they’re getting refunds from both state and federal tax returns. This allows people to plan different ways of spending all that newly found money; who wouldn’t want to do that?

Actually, there are a lot of people who purposely try to minimize their tax refund, to the point that if they can break even they feel like they’ve maximized their money all year. What are they possibly thinking?

If you get a big refund, it means you paid more tax than you needed to. In essence, you’ve allowed the government to use your money to grow their own instead of you being able to enjoy it or even invest it yourself so that you could benefit from the fruits of your labor.

Being able to spend extra money during the year might sound like a lot of fun. Investing that extra money makes a lot more sense.

Think about it like this. Say your refund is $500. If you invested that instead of allowing the government to use it or you spending it on your own, and you were able to get it into an investing that paid 5% on the year, you’d earn around $25 or so. That doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but stick with us.

Not only would you have started growing your own money but you don’t pay taxes on the money you’ve invested as long as you allow it to stay where it is. That wouldn’t be a major discount on what you’d pay in taxes, but it would bring what you owe down a little bit. And, if you continued adding that same $500 a year, your growth would be around $6,700 in 10 years, all nontaxable.

Of course the idea is that you’re actually investing more money than just that $500, but it all helps an it’s all tax free growth.

It’s something to think about, although if you’re using your refund for that Caribbean cruise you’ve dreamed about all summer it’s probably a tougher choice to make than it should be.

Finances

5 Things To Know Before You Start Investing Your Money

It’s not a bad idea to think about finding ways to grow your finances through investing. With that said, one has to know that investing can be dicey, and rushing into it without knowing the good and the bad is basically gambling with your finances. I know many people who were cruising along with their investments until the recession of 2008-2009 hit, and many people lost money needlessly, although those who were able to weather the storm made it back and more over the last couple of years.

It’s not that investing isn’t easy; it really is. All you have to do is give the right person some money and off you go. But how do you determine who the right people are? Here are 5 tips to help you:

1. Ask people who they invest with specifically, but initially only stick with people you can talk to or research online. Everyone knows at least a couple of people who are investing their money in some fashion, whether directly with a broker or through some plan at work. If you can, get names of some of these brokers and the names of their company as well. If you can find out who’s backing them even better, as many brokers are associated with a specific trade organization.

2. Research everyone, always. Ever heard of Google? There’s no excuse for not going online to check out every person whose name you might get, as well as learning something about the companies they work with. Just because someone might not be online may not mean they’re not capable, but the way I see it if they’re not visible online and you can’t get information on them be wary.

3. If they claim high rates of returns, beware and research strongly. Remember the name Bernard Madoff. There were a lot of people vouching for this guy, many famous people who thought they were making money hand over fist, and when it all came crashing down it was ugly, not only for Madoff’s family and people who were cheated but people who had cashed in, thinking they’d earned their profits legitimately and suddenly found themselves being sued by the government to return those funds. When something sounds too good, it’s smart to look at the negative reviews and see why some people might not trust them; there was a lot out on Madoff that those investing with him decided to ignore.

4. Only invest what you can stand to lose. Starting off relatively small, maybe $100 a month if you can handle it, is a lot smarter than giving someone $5,000 without knowing if you might have something major coming up such as having to replace a furnace and not having the funds to take care of it. No matter how much you invest, the returns are relatively small percentage wise, even with the most aggressive investing position. Always take care of your present as much as your future.

5. Even if you don’t understand it, make sure you talk to your broker at least once every 3 months and open your mail regularly. A big mistake many people make is not opening up their mail and seeing if their money is moving in a positive direction or not. A secondary mistake is not keeping up with their brokers, who are sometimes known to leave and suddenly you have no idea who’s managing your money, if there is anyone managing it.