October 20th, 2011 -- Posted in Personal Finance |
By Larry Lane for InvestorZoo.com
Hopefully you’re not the investor who decided you’ve had enough and sold at or near the market lows this year. Do you have a long term investment horizon of 15 years or more but have cash stashed in “safe” CDs and money markets? Can you afford to invest in a Cd or bond paying 1-3%? Inflation and taxes will eat up a majority of your returns. You need to find a good financial planner to walk you through today’s complicated investment world.
Before you find a financial planner, know what you want your money to accomplish. Is this short term money that you cannot afford to lose or is it long term money you can use to invest? Knowing what you want your money to accomplish is the first step to successful retirement planning.
Interview the Candidates who get to manager your hard earned dollars
The best way to find a financial planner is to ask one of your successful friends, colleagues or co-workers for a referral. Once you have gathered a list of a few financial planners, it is time to set up a meeting. Any good financial planner will hold an introductory meeting at no cost. Remember this is your time to interview the candidate who will hold the key to your long term financial success. You should consider this a job interview. You are looking for the candidate who will make your money work the hardest and provide you with the best long term return.
Find Out How They Are Paid
Financial planners can be compensated in a number of ways. You will want to be sure they are advising you with your best interests in mind, not theirs. Financial planners are sales people which are why they have to be licensed and accountable to an oversight organization.
* Straight Commission–This has traditionally been the most common way financial professionals are compensated. When you purchase an investment, a percentage of your total purchase will be deducted from your investible assets and a portion of that will go directly to your advisor.
* Flat Fees–Another common method of compensation is through a flat fee. Some will charge an hourly rate or may charge a flat overall fee for putting together a financial plan for you. Typically, there is little concern for a conflict of interest since they are getting paid whether you purchase any investments or not.
* Fee based on total assets–Some financial planners charge an annual fee that is based on a percentage of the assets you have invested with them.
During the interview
You want to spend at least an hour or perhaps two interviewing your advisor. A good advisor will ask you to do some homework before you sit down and speak with them.
1) Cash flow breakdown: Where exactly is your money going? You’ll have to have a semblance of running budget in order to develop reasonable savings goals.
2) Net worth statement: This is a list of everything you own; your assets minus your liabilities. This is obviously essential for determining you investment and estate-planning needs. For example, you may not have enough in your emergency fund. In this case, a good provider will instruct you to save more before investing one dollar with them.
3) Asset allocation breakdown: A map of where your money is now invested and how it should be invested. The portfolio should include retirement and nonretirement accounts and should be diversified among many asset classes—US,foreign,small, large and medium cap, emerging market stocks, bonds, cash, and real estate.
4) Retirement Strategy: A plan for reaching your retirement goals, including an estimate of how much money you will need to retire comfortably. You need to know when you’ve reached your goals.
5) Education Strategy: A plan for helping to pay for your children’s education if applicable. This might include separate accounts for state college-savings plan accounts.
6) Tax Analysis: Suggestions on reducing your taxes. For instance, converting to a Roth IRA or taking measures to make sure you are being tax efficient. This could have a hug effect on your retirement.
7) Insurance Recommendation: A recommendation for the amount and type of insurance you need to reasonably cover you and your family in case of emergencies.
You’ve interviewed and found the right financial planner. You are confident about the plan they’ve developed for you. Time to send them a check and start paperwork? Not quite yet. Before handing over your hard earned money and investments to your financial planner, you need to do some additional homework. Do they have a license to sell financial products? Are they registered with FINRA.org? You also want to a check to see if there have been any complaints or disciplinary actions against him/her by going to the Web site of The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. You want to do all you due diligence before trusting anyone with your hard earned money.
Lastly, don’t forget about things like personality and reliability. Ask the person who referred you how reliable their financial planner diligently returns calls and hand holding. Just as doctors can have different bedside manners, so can financial planners. Having a great relationship with your financial planner will allow you to sleep better at night and thus lessen the possibility of making a move you really shouldn’t make.
Larry Lane is the editor for InvestorZoo.com, a social network specializing in personal finance. Email any questions or comments
September 22nd, 2011 -- Posted in Currency Trading |
Today I’m going to be talking about an issue that many Forex traders face. Learning how to balance your life with your Fx trading career can be difficult sometimes (particularly for people that trade the foreign exchange market full time). In this article I will teach you the way i balance Foreign exchange trading with my loved ones and my life away from the monitors.
Know when you should stop working: I need to admit that I are actually guilty of this one. If you find yourself working towards your goals and working on your career is very hard to find a justification to stop working. However, you need to find a reason to stop working and spend time away from your work or trading (as in my case). This reason can be your wife/husband, children, yourself, or maybe a favorite hobby. Something I have learned (the hard way) is that you can always bring in more money but the truth is will never win back the time you spent away from your family, the ones you love, or the things you love.
Prioritize what is important: Prioritizing is one of the most essential skills any business man or woman (or Trader) would need to learn. You possibly can achieve more with 20 minutes of working on things that really matter than from 5 hours of working on things that could wait. Every trading day I write down a list of the things that I have to get accomplished that day and I always put my most critical priorities first. To illustrate, checking my open positions is way more important than looking for new trading opportunities. By prioritizing you can make certain that you never waste your time and effort. This way you can save time and be capable to go away from the computer.
Become more effective to boost your free time: One of my highest priorities in this life is to become more efficient and efficient at anything I do. I’ve found that each and every time I learn a new skill I am able to utilize my time better. Thus, I am able to have more spare time and do the things that I like to do (like playing basketball or going on trips to the beaches within Florida).
Consider to use a VPS to cut back your workload: Certainly one of my tips for free myself from the computer is that I try to use automation as much as possible. While I don’t feel that you should rely 100% on software, In my opinion that software can actually make your life easier and lower your work load substantially. A good example of effective and very useful software I use for my daily trading is VPs. A VPs or a Virtual Private Server is a virtual computer. A VPS allows you to trade the Forex and have your account open and your transactions open even if your computer is off.
In spite of how successful you are as a trader and a businessman nothing should be more valuable than being and spending time with your loved ones or doing those things you like. Don’t forget that money cannot buy you happiness.
To your trading success,
Jay Molina
September 12th, 2011 -- Posted in Currency Trading |
Forex Currency Trading Software: How to Find the Best Trading System For You
The Forex industry is full of gimmicks and so called Forex “gurus” who don’t even trade themselves! Therefore A lot of forex traders are misinformed and have a extremely hard time finding the best Forex currency trading software.
In this article I would like to discuss with you a list of practical tricks on how to find the best Forex currency trading software for you.
Always back test a new trading strategy: Manual backtesting is far more competent than automated backtesting. The reason why I say this is because when you manually back test a strategy you understand the strategy more profoundly and you become one with the strategy.
What’s more, you will also be able to spot mistakes and weak points within the system that automated testing software cannot discover.
Do your homework before you put that credit card out! : This is an essential step. Before you purchase any trading system you need to make sure you do your homework and shop around for other trading systems.
Be very careful with the very low-priced trading system because as they say “You get what you pay for”, typically the $97 trading robot will not do anything but lose you money.
When you choose to buy a trading system make certain to get in touch with the seller as soon as you acquire it. This way they will notice that a new customers just joined. This will make their customer assistance make up and stand by in case you have any problems.
Get to know the person behind the Forex currency trading software you decided to buy: Whenever I buy a product I always want to know more about the company or the creator of the product. Simply because I want to know the level of expertise of the creator or creators.
August 16th, 2011 -- Posted in PayDay Loans |
Are you worried about money, paycheck has not yet come? Don,t worry payday loans can help you to find the solution of like this. Payday loans are very short term loan. You can’t think of about long term use of those loans. One can use these loans in any purposes. Under any emergency circumstances, you can take these loans. You can use your loan amount in any purposes. You can pay the electricity bills, child’s school fees or what ever you want.
Instant payday loans are always been an attractive loan options among the UK people. There are lenders who are providing instant payday loans. You can also take these loans to keep continue with all the amenities of your’s life. You need not to extend your hand before your relatives or friends in emergency. As UK people are very dependent on debt, most of the people bears two three loans. So under such a situation banks are trying to exploit the potential of this group. In UK these loans are very popular because it doesn’t consider bad credit as a disqualification. Though the indebted people but have regular income can easily avail these loans. These loans are last resort of the loan for some people.
Almost all the loan offerings are available on the Internet. You can find the details of the loans offering on the websites of the bank. Compare the offerings of different banks. Analyze all the payday loans in the market. If you have better understanding of the matter you can take the better decision. The drawback these loans is that charge very high rate of interest. So while settling the loan bargain and see weather the loan match with your requirements or not. Don’t take the loan mindlessly. If you do so you will farther dip into the debt. There so many instances of that. So always take informed decision while taking the loan.