Posts Tagged ‘personal finance’

It’s Always A Good Time To Learn More About Personal Finances

Friday, September 21st, 2012

A lot of people like to ignore their financial problems. You can learn to control your budget better by reading the useful tips in this article. Start regaining control over your personal finances today!

If you are going to make little purchases, carry cash and a debit card. Recent laws allow the merchants to set a minimum purchase amount when credit cards are used.

Setting up a savings account and putting money away in it is key to remaining financially healthy now and in the future. It may be that you are looking to make a big purchase like a nice vacation or a flat screen TV. You may want to put aside money for a comfortable retirement. Establishing a savings plan should be a part of any budgeting plan.

If you have debt, be sure to pay it with your tax refund. It is a huge mistake to use your tax refund to splurge and make extravagant purchases, instead of paying off debts. Doing this will keep a person in debt forever.

You can’t repair your credit without getting out of debt! You’ll need to pay off what you owe first. You can make changes like eating out less and limiting how much you go out on weekends. Make a serious commitment to credit repair by saving as much money as you can, and keeping food costs and discretionary spending down will help immensely.

If you want your property to stay under control, pay attention to your cash flow. Keep track of all your cash receipts and expenses to assess your investment’s performance each month. Be sure you have a firm property budget established to refer to as a guideline.

Trust is one of the most important characteristics you should look for in a broker. Never deal with a broker who is less than completely honest and forthcoming with you, and look for sterling references from other clients. Being a beginner means you’ll have to take extra care to find a broker who understands your personal needs.

Money management is key to success. This helps you to stay organized, and keep your finances in order. When you put some of your profits into capital, this builds a foundation to grow upon. However, when you utilize those profits wisely, you can watch your money grow as return on investment. Set standards for profits and what you put into capital.

If you can extract the information that pertains to your situation from the article, and implement it into your organization of your finances, you will be better prepared to deal with your situation. One step at a time you can improve the situation your finances are in, and escape the stress of too much debt.

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Better Be On My Parents Good Side Since There Is No Affordable Housing On Long Island

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

If you’ve recently graduated from college and looking to have your own apartment on Long Island, good luck! There is no doubt that the housing bubble was a national problem but we are still feeling the effects of it on Long Island. Affordable Housing Long Island is hard to come by and usually the cheaper dwellings are in unattractive neighborhoods or locations. I was already planning on living at home after college until I lined up a decent entry-level salary and eventually would be able to move out. However, I would have hoped the housing market on Long Island was better so I do not have to live at home too much longer. I have empathy for young adults living on Long Island because I am in the same situation when it comes to looking for a place other than your parents’ house. Whether you are making a salary already out of college or not it would help if prices were a little cheaper so we can have leftover money after paying the bills.

When will the housing problem begin to cause young adults to just get up and leave Long Island? There needs to be some policy changes to help out the next generation of adults. Long Island is mostly comprised of suburban communities but lately there has been an increase in congestion on the roads. It’s becoming too overcrowded and single-family houses are too expensive for young adults, give us more living options. On Long Island the most recent estimate of median household income according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is $103,600. If you would like to compare this number to the median price of a house on Long Island.

Long Island consists of two distinct regions: Nassau and Suffolk counties. It always comes down to politics when making progress for its respective communities. The boundaries that exist between the two counties create an obstacle for the discussions regarding possible innovative plans. A similar understanding must be reached before the affordable real estate begins to become easier to find on Long Island. The moment that policymakers see eye to eye on the issues affecting the condition of life for young adults on Long Island is when conditions will become better.

Begin changing policy in your neighborhood with the goal of making Long Island a more appealing place for the next generation of citizens. There is plenty of support already for improving the status of the housing market on Long Island we just need to be vocal and organized about it. Long Island the place I call home is in a great location only about forty minutes from New York City if you live in Nassau County. Although there can be traffic jams from time to time I still do not mind living on the Island. So let’s try and Build a Better Burb before the situation gets out of control.

If you enjoy living on Long Island then start expressing your concerns to friends to gain support for this cause. Since we’re all in this together it should not be difficult to organize people who would favor policies to better the community in which they live. Hopefully in a few years from now the situation has improved and we can be happy residents of beautiful Long Island.

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Investing In The Banking Sector Today

Friday, August 31st, 2012

The Libor scandal has taken over the headlines recently and is said to be the biggest fraud in history. The LIBOR is the interest rate used by banks to lend to each other. Not only is it used for inter-bank lending, it is also used as an underlying rate for derivatives and as a benchmark for just about every type of loan someone can get. It has been estimated that the Libor rate is used as an index for upwards of $350 Trillion dollars in loans.

Bankers are being investigated for fraudulently influencing interest rates in their favor to look as if their balance sheets were healthier than they in fact were, and in order to generate profits from interest rate spreads with their unique investments while leaving average consumers to flip the bill. There’s discussion of producing criminal lawsuits against the perpetrating organizations and regulators and politicians will be reviewing exactly what they should do that will call for accountability.

There is an incentive to ensure that there are safeguards in place so that this doesn’t happen again and to fine those banks that have taken part in any possible fraud, but the governments around the world are unlikely to go as far putting something in place that would destroy or drastically change the banking sector itself. Putting in regulations that might harm the banks could further deteriorate an already fragile economy. The banks implicated in the fraud are the very same banks that in the past have been labeled as “too big to fail” so it is unlikely that those institutions won’t continue to be defined as critical components of the fabric of the economy.

So what could all of this mean to investors? In general, we believe that it is time to keep an eye on the banking sector. There will almost certainly be lawsuits against the banks, and possibly a wave of new regulations. Anytime there are lawsuits or significant regulatory changes, investors establish a viewpoint and trade based on those beliefs. It is at that point in time that markets can become inefficient, and rather than trading on fundamentals, they trade on irrational market psychology.

There’s no going around the point that the banking field is very important to each element of the financial system. Whether it be financing to purchase an automobile, getting an education loan or perhaps home loan, or possibly a small business going to the bank in order to fund its ongoing work and pay its workers. Financial institutions are definitely an integral part of all of those things that is necessary for all of them to function properly. While acknowledging that we expect to see some volatility within the banking industry, it will in the end emerge from this particular scandal with a much stronger situation in the long term.

The positioning from a value investor standpoint would be to assess the health of banks, and note those that have a relatively strong balance sheet. It is likely that some of those banks will begin trading at discounted prices. The best investments may come from banks that were not named in the Libor scandal but are oversold for the mere fact that they are banks.

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The Gold Sovereign Prices – How much Have They Fluctuated?

Friday, August 31st, 2012

The gold sovereign is actually a gold coin that was produced in Britain several hundred years ago. What is unique about this coin as in comparison with other gold coins today is the fact that the sovereign had never been assigned a denomination plus the worth in the sovereign wasn’t placed on the coin itself. The value of each coin was and is based upon it’s carats when weighed. What’s interesting in regards to the sovereign is that in quite a few nations it’s an acceptable form of currency too. The worth of a sovereign coin at this time is based upon a number of distinct components. That is why it could be challenging to evaluate exact gold sovereign rates against gold sovereigns in general these days.

Experts, however, suggest that the gold sovereign prices have elevated by twenty folds considering that the initial gold sovereign of King Henry VII was struck in 1489. This really is a fantastic overall price appreciation of this coin and it truly is anticipated that investment returns on gold sovereigns will continue to rise in the foreseeable future.

You will find two things that impact the continue boost to the value of gold sovereign coins. The very first explanation is due to the gold content in the gold sovereign. This is definitely a direct influence on the gold sovereign price tag. For the explanation that gold is sold at around $1600 an ounce at this time, the gold sovereign, which includes actual gold has also noticed an uptick in its worth. This is not the only explanation though, that the worth of gold sovereign has elevated.

The other factor that the gold sovereign value continues to firm up is simply due to the fact many individuals, acting as hobbyists, prefer to collect these coins. Even though they are unquestionably an awesome investment for your investment portfolio, there are in fact a large number of women and men who collect coins for their rarity, purity, beauty and more. Gold sovereigns, particularly those struck in earlier centuries, are more desirable as collector’s items.

Even more so, you’ll find out that the value of gold sovereign collectible coins are a great buy at current prices than they’ve been in the last couple of years. This is due to many investors are moving onto the bullion, and thus help to drive down the gold sovereign prices. This, nevertheless, is most likely temporary. However it does make this time an excellent opportunity to invest in gold sovereign. Investors and collectors can benefit from the reduce gold sovereign prices.

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Life Insurance Can Bring More Than What Mutual Funds Return

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

Two experts who believe that the life insurance industry’s picture is far brighter than it first appears are Paul Hoffman and Anthony M. Santomero of the Wharton School’s Financial Institutions Center. Their paper, “Life Insurance Firms in the Retirement Market: Is the News All Bad?” answers their own titular question with a decided “no.” Hoffman and Santomero point to a number of facts that, while not completely reassuring to the industry, definitely show some profitable opportunities.

While mutual funds and brokerage houses have been expanding their market share, their inroads have been mostly at the expense of depository institutions, not life insurance companies. The retirement market is a growing financial feast, even if insurers do have to compete a little harder for their share of the bounty. By the end of 1996, total private retirement assets in the U.S. stood at almost $5.1 trillion, having increased as a share of total national wealth from 10.6% in 1983 to 13.6%.

The annuity market represent insurers’ best hopes to retain a significant share of the retirement market. In 1993, annuities represented almost 20% of the market, following IRAs’ 23.4%. Insurance companies’ share of this huge financial stash stood at almost 76% in 1993, equal to more than $1 trillion, of which about $734 billion was earmarked for retirement.

Life insurance carriers, then, are likely to retain significant sales and profit growth in the retirement market. Still, the industry needs to find new ways to grow. Its recent binge of mergers and acquisitions has improved cost efficiency and diminished competition among carriers, but is scarcely enough to offset inroads by brokers and mutual funds. Even banks have declared their intentions to market competitive new instruments in the annuities market.

When a 1966 article in Fortune magazine highlighted an obscure investment that outperformed every mutual fund on the market by double-digit figures over the past year and by high double-digits over the last five years, the hedge fund industry was born. By 1968, there were some 140 hedge funds in operation.

High-profile money managers deserted the traditional mutual fund industry in droves in the early 1990s, seeking fame and fortune as hedge fund managers. Unfortunately, history repeated itself in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s as a number of high-profile hedge funds, including Robertson’s, failed in spectacular fashion.

Hedge funds have evolved significantly since 1949. Modern hedge funds offer a variety of strategies, including many that do not involve traditional hedging techniques. The industry has also rapidly grown, with recent estimations pegging its size at $1 trillion – quite the leap from the $100,000 used to start the first fund half a century ago.

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