Author Archives: Brent

Important Tips for a Secure Retirement.

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Many people look forward to retire without being worried about who will pay their daily expenses and recurring bills. Living a financially secure retirement is the only way you can enjoy yourself as old age becomes an unravelling reality. The main objective of having a secure retirement plan is to help you maintain a preferred lifestyle even after you have left the job market. However, it can become challenging to implement such plans because it requires you to build your own pension as well as save for later years.

With the costly modern-day standards of living, many retirees find it almost impossible to live only on Social Security, while some may live comfortably through the years. The following are some of the tips to ensure you have a financially secure retirement including where to live, health cover, living wills etc.

Plan for high health care costs

As the health care sector undergoes many changes, it is important to set a plan for managing your health care costs and monitoring them accordingly. As such, you can adjust to the unforeseen changes in health care costs to help you maintain your retirement goals. Health care costs continue to skyrocket every year, which is a clear indication for future retirees to expect higher costs. When it comes to saving for long-term health care expenses, a secure retirement plan requires you to strategize for a longer life period.

If your employer requires offers a Health Savings Account (HSA), you should ensure it is always funded since it allows individuals to avoid paying for healthcare costs from their pockets. Furthermore, it is important to note that very few employers currently cover retirees for health care costs so it becomes a necessity to plan for it early enough.

Seek alternative housing options

Before deciding where to live after retirement, you should start researching on alternative housing to help you cut down on your bills. As soon as you leave the job market, you will have the freedom to choose many places to live. It is advisable to opt for a location with lower cost of living but comfortable enough to pursue your retirement goals. With a wide range of other factors to consider, such as family, price, and nearness to healthcare, choosing a residence during retirement can become overwhelming if not well thought out in advance.

You can choose to rent out your current home and convince a few like-minded retirees to join you in buying an outdoor space, which would act as a common place for group activities as well as for privacy. Generally, when you start pondering on where you desire to live after retirement, you must first choose a safe place that where you can easily access healthcare.

Consider a Living Will

However much you wouldn’t want to think about the end of your life while still young, death is an inevitable occurrence that has to be cushioned to minimize its effects on your family. Living Wills are prewritten directives that your family can use to honor your wishes when undergoing treatment before the end of life. Even though they lack meaning after death, they effectively serve as a reference to your decisions when you cannot communicate them due to illness.

Securing a retirement with a living will is one of the preferred ways of preparing ahead of time because it saves your family the agony of making difficult choices during a health crisis or emergency. You should ensure you have a living will, especially if you have acute illnesses, such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, stroke etc., since it is legally recognized when honoring your end-of-life care needs.

Avoid spending your retirement savings

Let’s face it! The urge to use your savings to fund emergencies can sometimes be irresistible. However, when it comes to retirement assets, resisting the urge to use them can go a long way to give you a tax-free growth, which will also help you accomplish some important goals in the future. Even though it has become a daunting task for many young people to sacrifice their salaries to secure their retirement, you should make long-term savings plans to avoid short-term spending. You should also try to maintain your lifestyle as you save for retirement so that you monitor the plan vis-à-vis the amount of savings.

Implementing these cue points will not only condense your retirement plans into actionable steps, but will also give you an overview of the lifestyle you want to live during retirement.

When is the Best Time to Invest in the Stockmarket?

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If you’re looking for good investment options then now is a good time to enter the stock market. Despite the political noise, the stock market is growing at a steady rate thanks to a stable economy.

There’s also the fact that entering the stock market is a lot easier than other investment options. Unlike real estate, for example, investing in stocks doesn’t require large amounts of capital, nor does it involve substantial amounts of risk.

Moreover, the stock market also offers plenty of safe investing options, such as mutual funds, exchange traded funds and other similar instruments. Later, when you become more financially literate, you can try more high-risk, high reward options, like short selling, futures and various high risk funds.

As far as stocks go, there are plenty of opportunities for ordinary investors to choose from. So if you’re interested in the stock market then here’s what you should know.

What Does It Take to Start Investing in the Stock Market?

There are three things that you will need in order to start investing in the stock market. These include:

– An Investment/Portfolio Strategy
– Knowledge About the Stock Market
– Emotional Control

Your portfolio strategy will dictate how much of your capital/savings you should invest in stocks and how much should be invested in other items, such as real estate, bonds, futures and mutual funds for example.

Since we’re concerned about stocks, your strategy should outline how you enter and leave each position in the stock market. Some strategies dictate that investors should only invest in stocks that grow by more than 10% per year, while other strategies require investors to look at company earnings, balance sheets and dividends.

How you choose or develop your investment strategy will dictate how much returns you can expect from each investment. So look at successful investors, and try to follow what they’re doing. For example, Warren Buffet’s more recent trading and investment strategies reportedly yield 25% to 30% returns. Other investors average higher using riskier strategies, but there are also safer options, though they offer fewer rewards. It’s your call. Just remember that no successful investor ever entered the stock market without a strategy.

Next, you will need to develop your knowledge about the stock market. This process is divided into two parts:

– The Technicals
– The Fundamentals

“Technicals” refer to general trends of a particular stock’s price. Is it going up or is it going down? Technical analysis uses stock charts to determine how high or how low a particular stock’s price will go within a particular period of time. This information allow investors to determine the best time to buy and/or sell their stocks.

As for the “Fundamentals”, this information is used to analyze the value of a particular stock. Take note that we used the term value instead of price here, and that’s because some stocks are over-valued, while others are under-valued.

Fundamentals refer to those factors that determine a stock’s value, regardless of its current price. For example, a company that has tripled its earnings in the last quarter but has stocks which are cheaper than those of its rivals could be called under-valued, since their stock’s price does not match the actual performance of the company.

Likewise, if a company’s stock price is around $100, but has lost money for the past few years, then its stocks may be over-valued, in which case, it has “bad fundamentals” since the stock’s price doesn’t match the company’s actual performance. Mastering both the technicals as well as the fundamentals will allow you to pick winning stocks that offer good returns on investment.

Finally, you will need emotional control if you want to invest in stocks. What this means is that you never deviate from your investment strategy, and you never allow greed or fear to influence your decisions. It also means focusing on the facts alone, and never allowing a sudden spike or fall in prices influence your decision, unless such events are built into the actual strategy.

If you can master these three things then you will be able to invest in the share market without any trouble.

Getting Started

When it comes to investing, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s no such thing as a winning formula. Being a good investor is as much a product of experience and discipline as information, strategy and training.

Investing in stocks starts with a broker, but they will only execute your trades. They cannot teach you how to choose the right investments, nor can they help you develop, test or perfect your investment strategy.

You will need financial experts and communities to teach you these things. The good news is that the internet is full of such options, from blogs to newsletters to videos. So before you put any of your money into the stock market, be sure to consult these sources first, so that you’ll get the best returns for all your investments.

Personal Finance Tips: How to Manage Debts and Enhance Your Income

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As far as personal finance is concerned, it is very important that you take control of your expenditure by always keeping track of your spending. Always. If you want to get rid of debt from your life and increase income, you must not only create a financial plan for your situation but also make sure that you stick to it. Regular tracking of your expenditure helps one follow up on their daily spending and always ensure that you don’t overspend. This way, you will be able to minimize your costs where necessary and be on your way towards financial freedom. Below we discuss Top Six Personal Finance Tips:

1) Build an Emergency Fund

There are so many things in life that can be unpredictable: getting ill, an unexpected firing from a job, accidents and even death. Although we can’t be fully prepared for all these things, we can at least be financially ready for some or most of their adverse effects on our lives. Build an emergency fund for your rainy day. You can either use conventional saving plans via banks or come up with your own DIY way of saving.

2) Work Towards Improving Your Debt Situation

When you are in debt, rather than whining and regretting, start by accepting your situation. Once you have accepted that you are in a challenging situation that needs a solution, then you can move to the next step: finding a solution. Hating and blaming yourself for being in excessive debt doesn’t solve anything. Clouding your mind with self-denial, regrets and self-pity will only make your situation worse. You need to put your entire mind and efforts into working towards making your personal finances better.

3) Minimize Your Monthly Expenditure

Look around your household. How many ways can you find to bring your utility bills to a lower minimum? For instance, you can buy a programmable thermostat that is capable of automatically switching on whenever necessary so as to reduce energy consumption. If gasoline prices go up, do you also let your monthly gas expenditure double at a time when you are also struggling with other costs and debts? Absolutely not! You could, for example, avoid taking unnecessary car trips to minimize on gas costs. Another way to reduce your monthly spending is minimizing your trips to the local grocery. Why waste money on gas to the grocery every single day yet you can buy stuff in bulk?

4) Supplement Your Earnings

In simple language, what we are saying is: get more cash into your pocket! Create or look for opportunities to make more money and increase income. For those bills, debts and expenditures you can’t avoid or reduce, then enhance your ability to pay them! In addition to your weekday job, get a supplementary weekend job. You can also work online alongside your other roles at work. Nowadays there are so many opportunities for online work. In addition to paying off some of your most pertinent debts, the extra income can help a lot towards improving your quality of life by adding to your regular income.

5) Get Rid of Unnecessary Costs

If you evaluate your lifestyle and personal finance carefully, you will find a number of unnecessary expenditures that you can eliminate from your life. For instance, if you are a stay-at-home mother, why should you enroll your children at a daycare center when you are available to take even better care of them at your home? You can also do without some expensive adult grooming like new manicures and hairstyles every week. You can also eat out less regularly, reduce entertainment expenditure and take fewer car wash trips. When things are tough financially, take steps to pamper yourself less.

6) Consider Shared Insurance

Insurance options are as many as you can imagine. In case you have been using an expensive health insurance, for example, and you find yourself struggling to pay up because you have been retrenched from your job, why not go for a cheaper option like shared insurance? As you look for a new job posting, such a less pricey alternative could help you minimize your monthly spending and manage your personal finances better.

PARTING SHOT

Now that the economy isn’t very pocket-friendly, you don’t have to stress yourself. Take steps to minimize your expenditure as much as you can, increase income, get rid of debts and generally work towards improving your financial situation. With good planning and a number of sacrifices in your lifestyle, you can still effectively manage your personal finances, avoid unnecessary debts and costs, and enjoy your life.

Do you owe anybody any money?

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It’s a very rare individual who can honestly say no to that question.

Most of us have borrowed money from someone at some stage.

Now you probably have figured out that I’m not talking about the $20 you borrowed from your friend when you were out together.

No, most of our borrowings are for things like car, house, holidays, education etc.  And that’s not even thinking abut the general expenses we put on out credit card every day.

Borrowing money is not a problem if you are able to pay it off at the end of the month. Not counting the car or house here.

If you are in the unfotunate position of not being able to clear your debts every month then you are in a financially precarious position.

Should you lose your source of income you would really need to scramble to reduce your debt load fast.  If not you’ll be hounded by creditors and totally trash your credit rating.

OK, lets not think about losing the source of income but lets start reducing the debt load anyway.

Getting rid of risk once you have identified it is always the best way to go.

There are simple and easy steps you can take right now to take control of your spending.  You’ll clear your debts in double quick time but you will have to do something you probably haven’t done before.

You will have to write down everything you owe with the interest rate and the current payments you are making. This is not to frighten you but you can’t fix something if the don’t know exactly what needs fixing.

Also write down everything you spend money on each day, you may have to keep all your reciepts for a couple of days to find out but you need to know.

Would you believe that you are now ready to clear the credit cards and start down thr path to debt freeness (is that a word? should be).

Here are the steps, so simple you can do this. Clear up some extra money from your daily spending, you are probably spending $5 – $10 every day that you don’t need to, most of us are (or were). Put this additional money onto your most expensive credit card. Do not add any more purchases to that card. Keep making the payments on everything else.

Once that card is paid off cut it up. You really don’t need an expensive card.

Put the total amount you were paying off that card including the extra, into paying off the next most expensive card. While you are paying off one card don’t use it, it just makes it harder to clear the debt if you keep adding to it.

In todays world it is difficult, if not impossible, to exist without at least one credit card. I have one credit card and one debit card. I mostly use both of them as debit cards so I can only spend what I have in the account.

Now you are on a roll, this method snowballs your repayments into the next most expensive debt until they are all cleared up.

Once you get to the point of only having a house mortgage to clear up you can split the extra repayment so some goes onto the mortgage and some goes into an emergency fund.

An emergency fund is just that, only for emergencies.  I don’t know how much you need in this fund but I like to keep at least $10,000 available.

OK, that’s it for this post and that is really all there is to clearing up debts.

Yep it can take years but believe me it’s totally worth it.

Just the feeling that I can pay off all my credit card purchases at the end of each month is great.  No more worrying about what things cost because there is always money in my accounts.

Now it’s your turn.  Get stuck in. Leave a comment on your progress.

Safe Investing for Retirees.

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Safe Investing in the Stock Market … Really?

If you’re looking for safe investing options then now is a good time to enter the stock market. Despite the political noise, the stock market is growing at a steady rate thanks to a stable economy.

There’s also the fact that entering the stock market is a lot easier than other investment options. Unlike real estate, for example, investing in stocks doesn’t require large amounts of capital, nor does it involve substantial amounts of risk.

Moreover, the stock market also offers plenty of safe investing options, such as mutual funds, exchange traded funds and other similar instruments. Later, when you become more financially literate, you can try more high-risk, high reward options, like short selling, futures and various high risk funds.

As far as stocks go, there are plenty of opportunities for ordinary investors to choose from. So if you’re interested in the stock market then here’s what you should know.

What Does It Take to Start Investing in the Stock Market?

There are three things that you will need in order to start investing in the stock market. These include:

– An Investment/Portfolio Strategy
– Knowledge About the Stock Market
– Emotional Control

Your portfolio strategy will dictate how much of your capital/savings you should invest in stocks and how much should be invested in other items, such as real estate, bonds, futures and mutual funds for example.

Since we’re concerned about stocks, your strategy should outline how you enter and leave each position in the stock market. Some strategies dictate that investors should only invest in stocks that grow by more than 10% per year, while other strategies require investors to look at company earnings, balance sheets and dividends.

How you choose or develop your investment strategy will dictate how much returns you can expect from each investment. So look at successful investors, and try to follow what they’re doing. For example, Warren Buffet’s more recent trading and investment strategies reportedly yield 25% to 30% returns. Other investors average higher using riskier strategies, but there are also safer options, though they offer fewer rewards. It’s your call. Just remember that no successful investor ever entered the stock market without a strategy.

What Do I Need to Know?

Next, you will need to develop your knowledge about the stock market. This process is divided into two parts:

– The Technicals
– The Fundamentals

“Technicals” refer to general trends of a particular stock’s price. Is it going up or is it going down? Technical analysis uses stock charts to determine how high or how low a particular stock’s price will go within a particular period of time. This information allow investors to determine the best time to buy and/or sell their stocks.

As for the “Fundamentals,” this information is used to analyze the value of a particular stock. Take note that we used the term value instead of price here, and that’s because some stocks are over-valued, while others are under-valued.

Fundamentals refer to those factors that determine a stock’s value, regardless of its current price. For example, a company that has tripled its earnings in the last quarter but has stocks which are cheaper than those of its rivals could be called under-valued, since their stock’s price does not match the actual performance of the company.

Likewise, if a company’s stock price is around $100, but has lost money for the past few years, then its stocks may be over-valued, in which case, it has “bad fundamentals” since the stock’s price doesn’t match the company’s actual performance. Mastering both the technicals as well as the fundamentals will allow you to pick winning stocks that offer good returns on investment.

Finally, you will need emotional control if you want to invest in stocks. What this means is that you never deviate from your investment strategy, and you never allow greed or fear to influence your decisions. It also means focusing on the facts alone, and never allowing a sudden spike or fall in prices influence your decision, unless such events are built into the actual strategy.

If you can master these three things then you will be able to invest in the share market without any trouble.

How Can I Get Started?

When it comes to investing, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s no such thing as a winning formula. Being a good investor is as much a product of experience and discipline as information, strategy and training.

Investing in stocks starts with a broker, but they will only execute your trades. They cannot teach you how to choose the right investments, nor can they help you develop, test or perfect your investment strategy.

You will need financial experts and communities to teach you these things. The good news is that the internet is full of such options, from blogs to newsletters to videos. So before you put any of your money into the stock market, be sure to consult these sources first, so that you’ll get the best returns for all your investments.

How to Quit your Job.

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Do you to know how to Quit your job and not finish up on the street?

In short, you must fend off the self-employment trap.  Treat it like a business, and create many passive income streams. This may not be as easy as it sounds.

Stop the Self-Employment Trap.

When I first started working for myself I loved it. I was in charge, I found the customers, did the work, sent the bills and banked the money. I did it all and I was busy, busy, busy. And then … things began to slip. I didn’t send the bills on time, so the money didn’t come in and some of my cheques bounced.

This is not a good situation to be in, it can ruin your whole day (or longer). Fortunately I was able to get the cash flow happening again and appease my creditors but it was a wake up call. I began exploring the alternatives but I discovered that I had set my business up wrong from the start and I was locked in.

Because I had set up the business incorrectly from the beginning there was nothing I could do.  At that stage I knew I had only two choices, keep going as I was and make a good living but remain exhausted permanently until I retired or close the business down and explore alternatives to exchange the job for a self-employed job.

Ultimately that is what I had built, a job without benefits. In fact it was worse than a job because I couldn’t take a holiday, my customers needed me. I only made an income while I kept working and I was working 12-14 hour days 7 days a week. Take it from me – don’t do it.

Making Money on the Internet.

My search brought me to the Internet and online marketing. Seriously, this is just one of the ways of generating passive income but it is the most accessible one for most people. The reason for that is that the entry cost can be low and the profitability can be very high.

Like many other people who explore this most fascinating medium, I found the techniques difficult to learn and I have spent a lot of money attempting to learn the “secrets”. Actually, that’s not quite correct, I spent a lot of money trying to learn the “short cut secrets”.

After all, that is what the gurus keep trying to sell you “Who else wants to learn how to write headlines that practically force people to tear out their wallets and throw their money at you” and “Who else wants to learn how to flood your inbox with cash” etc. And do you know what? Yes you do because you’ve been there as well, their products stuff their inboxes with cash, their headlines force you to tear out your wallet and throw money at them but they don’t help you. Why is that?

Well it’s mostly because they get their books ‘ghost written’.  Their sales letters are written by professional copywriters and they get all their guru buddies to send emails to the lists they built 7 years ago. So how do you (and I) get in on this gravy train?

I’m still working on it but I am prepared to share my experiences. Go look at my other blog for some beginnings.

Where to Start?

You could also start by having a look at my book The Easiest Way to Make Money Online. This book does actually have a good plan that’s are relevant to 2018 unlike so many that are offered these days.  It actually describes how I am building this site and how you can build your own.

When you get this book, which is free by the way, you also get access to the members area of this website where I go into greater depth on the subject of the book and other aspects of money management from clearing debts, creating cash flow and increasing wealth via as many aspects of financial management as I can.

Oh, yeah. There are no “short cut secrets” or any “secrets” the whole process is actually very simple, no, not easy but really is simple. Straight forward steps which MUST be followed and tracked and tweaked and adjusted and monitored. No you won’t make $100,000 your first month. You might make $100 in your first month, and you might not but if you follow the process you will probably begin making money quickly.

Hey, good luck.