Chill Maadi

When you think of investing, you probably think of stocks and bonds. These are both popular investment venues, but there are several others such as real estate. Real estate is land and everything attached to it. If you own a home on a quarter acre of land, you own real estate. This means you have an investment in real estate.

How do you invest in real estate?

Investing in real estate is much different and much more complicated than investing in stocks or bonds. You can’t just open up a brokerage account and purchase through them, unless you are buying some type of fund that invests in real estate.

Owning your own home should be your first investment in real estate. If you want to go further, there are many different ways, more than I can describe in one article. You could buy a home or apartment building and rent out. You could even own an office building and rent out. You could buy foreclosed homes and flip them (sell them for a higher price). You can buy a large chunk of land and sell it in broken up pieces. There are countless more ways to go about it.

Should you invest in real estate?

Real estate investing is complicated and takes a bit of a commitment. Usually, you need to have a substantial amount of money to invest, and you need to be able and willing to put in a good amount of time.

Some people make a lot of money investing in real estate. You’ve probably seen infomercials on television that go on and on about how easy it is to become a multimillionaire fast with real estate investing. Don’t let them sucker you in. It isn’t as easy as they say.

First, you need to be willing to put in the time. You need to put in the time to learn what you are doing and then to execute. If you are looking for a way to invest some extra cash easily, or are looking to start investing for retirement, real estate investing is not the way to go.

You will also need quite a bit of time and money to start out. It will be very hard to get anything substantial with a small amount of seed money. Also, you need to have the extra time. Investing in real estate will turn into a part time job. If you don’t have this kind of time, look elsewhere.

Finally, if you have the time, are willing to do your research and learn, have some money to get started, and really want to succeed in real estate investing, look into it and give it a try. It just might be what’s right for you!

What is a commodity?

A commodity is a good that is produced or sold.It is uniform between different producers.This means you can’t tell the difference from one producer to the other.Some examples are grain, corn, oil, gold, etc.

How are commodities investments?

Commodities are bought and sold similar to other investments, but they are initially acquired differently. We’ll use a corn farmer and his corn as an example.

A farmer starts to grow his corn and notices that the price of corn is fair. He wants to get a good price for his corn, so he sells it now to lock it in, even before it has finished growing. A commodity investor buys it. Then other investors can continue to buy and sell the commodity and then sell it to manufacturers and whoever needs it when it is harvested.

This goes basically the same for any type of commodity.

Should I invest in commodities?

Commodities are a fairly good investment if you are weary about getting into the stock market. It isn’t as complex and time consuming as real estate can be, but you can still make a good return with it if you buy and sell accordingly.

It is just like trading stocks and bonds but with physical products.You don’t actually buy the products and store it in your home, you have title to it.

Investing in commodities is good if you think a particular commodity will do well. For example, if you see gold start edging up in price, you can buy as much as you can and wait for the price to increase.

Commodities might not be great for your retirement portfolio, but if you give them a try, you may see some success. If you just want to own them without having to worry about them, buy into a mutual fund that is invested in commodities.

You probably have several different reasons why you want to invest your money. Overall, you want to increase the money you have as much as possible with as little risk of losing it as possible. It is what you plan to spend it on that varies. You could be investing because you have some extra cash lying around that you want to invest in, but more than likely, you are also investing for retirement.

Why invest for retirement?

Most people don’t plan on working for the rest of your life. Even if you love your job, you may be forced to stop working for health reasons, or you just grow tired of it. Either way, most people would like to retire at least some time in their sixties.

When you are retired, you stop earning money from your job, but you still need money to survive. This is why you need to stash money away. You can’t survive without money. You can’t rely on Social Security either. The people who do that now live on extremely tight budgets. You could never afford to live a comfortable retirement on Social Security, and that assumes you’ll be getting as much as they’re getting now. Who knows what will happen down the road.

Saving for retirement is not the same as investing for retirement. You can save $10 a day for 40 years and you’ll end up with $146,000. That sounds like a lot, but if you invested that same amount and earned a very modest 7% a year, you would have about $776,000 after 40 years. See the difference? You won’t have to save nearly as much if you invest it.

How does retirement investing differ from other types of investing?

Retirement investing is different from investing just “extra cash” or “to play the market” because it is being invested for the purpose of your retirement income. It is even different from investing to save for college, a house, or anything else because you have much longer time to invest, and there are investment advantages.

If you start young when you are investing for retirement, you begin by investing more aggressively. As you reach retirement, you gradually invest more conservatively. This will allow you to save and grow your investment the most while still protecting yourself until you need to retire and use this money.

There are still other advantages to saving for retirement. There are several different types of retirement accounts with tax and other advantages.If you invest in a 401K through your employer, the money you invest will not be taxed until you withdraw it.This makes it a deduction for your taxes this year.

Also, some employers will match a percentage or all of what you contribute. For example, you might be able to get a 50% match for up to a 10% contribution. This means if you make $50,000 a year and you contribute 10%, you will be contributing $5,000. Your employer will also contribute 50% of that, $2,500. You get an extra $2,500 added towards your retirement, and none of this money is taxed this year. You will pay taxes when you withdraw it after retirement.

There are also other retirement investment accounts such as an IRA or Roth IRA. An IRA is an Individual Retirement Account. It works the same as a 401K except that you can’t get an employer match, you can only contribute so much each year, and you can set it up and invest it however you want.

A Roth IRA is an IRA that you pay taxes on now. Later on, you don’t have to pay any taxes on it, even on the amount you’ve earned. That is also a great benefit if tax rates increase by the time you retire.

There are also several different types of accounts for those that are self-employed.

How should you invest for retirement?

Before you begin contributing to a retirement account, you need to set up a plan. Figure out how much money you will need for retirement. To do this, decide how much you will need to spend each year when you retire. It will be different from what you are spending now because you won’t need to spend as much, but you’ll also have to adjust for inflation of at least 3% each year.

Next, estimate how many years you will spend in retirement. This is impossible to know for sure, just overshoot a bit to ensure you’ll have enough. Multiply the number of years by the desired yearly income. This is what you’ll need. You will be keeping this money at least in bonds earning a certain percentage which should help combat inflation while you’re in retirement.

Once you know how much you’ll need, figure out how much you’ll need to save each year. Then, set up an account with your employer and start contributing.

How soon should you invest for retirement?

You can begin saving and investing for retirement whenever you want, but remember, the sooner you start, the less you’ll have to save. If you start saving at 45 years of age, you’ll only have about 20 years until 65. This gives you less time to save and less time for your money to compound and earn.

If you start saving and investing at 25 years of age, you’ll have much more time and could save much less each year. Or, you could decide to save just as much and retire early. It is up to you. You decide when you want to retire, how you want to live, and how much you want to be saving now, and you’ll probably agree that there’s no greater time than the present!

College students are notorious for being broke.  It’s not that they are too lazy to earn money with a job or that they waste all their money all the time, although for some this could be the reason.  It’s usually because of the high cost of education and the decreased amount of time to work.

Have you ever seen one of those calculators and figured out that if you invested X amount of dollars for 45 years you would have however millions of dollars?  It sounds too good to be true, but often with a reasonable rate of return, it’s very possible.  The two problems with this calculation are the assumptions that you have that much money and that you have that much time.

Start investing during your college years and you will have that much time.

If you are 20 years old and you plan on retiring at 65, you have 45 years to earn money.  Even with a small investment of $50 a month with an average rate of return of 9%, by the time you are 65 you will have over $350,000.  With an average return of 12%, that would be over $1 million.  Basically what this means is that every minute counts when it comes to investing.  Also, the earlier you start, the more risks you can take.  More risks mean the potential for more money.  You can take more risks because even if you lose money, you still have time to get it back.

But I don’t have any money?

Unfortunately, I am not going to tell you that you don’t need money to start investing.  You do, and the more the better.  What you will like to hear is that you don’t need a lot, and even college kids can get enough to get started.  If you can invest $1,000 a month, that’s incredible, but as a college student who probably don’t even make half that in a month, try shooting for $25 to $50 a month.  You would be surprised how easy it is to find this money.  Here are some quick ideas for getting your $25 minimum each month to invest.

• Save Money from your check. This can be done by foregoing your expensive latte, skipping out on the movies a couple times, or dropping any other unnecessary expense.
• Get a job. If you don’t already have one, get a job.  If you don’t need the money, than getting a job working a few hours a week will be plenty to get your $25 minimum or maybe even $50.
• Earn some cash online.  There are several ways to earn money on your own on the internet if you just want to spend a small amount of time working.  Look around and you should find something to do to make $25 a month.
• Work on campus. You can get a job on campus, but you can also do studies that give you cash as well as surveys, or go to your local plasma center and get paid for your plasma donation.
• Be creative and start your own business. Make something and sell it on eBay or sell stuff to your friends.  Use your creativity.

How often should I invest?

If you only investing $25 a month, I would suggest investing on a bimonthly basis.  If you invest every month, you will end up spending a lot on commission fees.  For example, if you invest $25 a month every month through your broker, they will take out a small part each month for commissions.  You will have spent a lot on commissions and only invested a significantly smaller amount in investments.  If you invest the same amount but only every other month, meaning you invest $50 every other month or six times a year, you will have spend less on commissions and have invested significantly more.

How do I get started?

Investing is easier than ever now that you can invest with online brokerage firms.  You can invest any amount you want, although as I mentioned, I suggest a minimum of $50 at a time.

If you aren’t experienced with stocks, don’t have time to research them, or just want the hard work done for you, go the mutual fund route.  T

All you have to do to get started is sign up, send in the appropriate copies of material for security purposes, transfer your money, and place a trade.  It’s that simple.  By the time you graduate, if you invest $25 a month and earn 10% interest a year for 4 years, you will have almost $1,500 in investments.  Increase that to $50 a month and you’ll have almost $3,000.

Start investing today to secure your financial future!

If anyone tells you that you must have $10,000 in order to start investing, and better yet that they can give you a 30% return, you need to stay as far away from them as you can.You’d actually be surprised how little you can invest.

For example, if you lend $2 to a friend and say you want it back by the end of the year with 10% interest, you’ve just invested $2.Sure, you’ve only made 20 cents, and that’s if they pay you back, but that’s just my point.You don’t need $10,000 to start investing.You don’t need close to that.

It depends on what you invest in and where you invest.

If you are going to invest in a mutual fund, usually they require at least a $1,000 minimum. The same goes for some brokerage firms and often bonds and CDs, but there are many exceptions.

If you don’t have enough money yet, just keep saving until you do.

If you want to start investing now, but you are only able to put aside $20 a month, put the money into a high interest savings account until you have more and are ready to invest. Or better yet, put aside more than $20 a month.

There is no requirement that you need to start with this certain amount, at this certain date, and at this frequency. If you have to wait a year until you have $1,000 to invest in a mutual fund, wait. If you can only invest every other month, do that. Just the fact that you are investing puts you ahead of a lot of people.

Don’t use this as an excuse to make stingy investments.

If you are able to invest $2,000 a month and still live comfortable, by all means, do it! Don’t make excuses just because they’re there. It’s all about balancing between a livable lifestyle and securing a stable future.

The problem with a lot of people, myself included, is that we decide we have to go overboard with everything we do or not do it at all.If you can’t invest $1,000 a month, do what you can.If you can invest $1,000 a month, do it!It’s that simple.

In the end, the most important thing is that you invest and save for your future. You don’t know that social security will be enough, that you’ll still have your pension, or that you won’t end up on disability for the rest of your life. Having money set aside at all time growing all by itself will do a world of good for you, so take advantage of it.

Here are the 6 steps to get you started learning how to invest money. Follow these steps to get started investing. Once you are started and get the hang of it, continue learning about investing and tweaking your portfolio. Investing is a proactive activity; you can’t just ’set it and forget it’. Keep up with it and your money will begin to grow exponentially!

Step 1: Get Money

In order to make money through investing and before you learn how to invest money, you need money to start. You can’t buy a stock or bond without money. While you’re at it, get a significant amount of money. If you invested $10, it probably will grow, but $1,000 will grow much faster.

Start budgeting your money so that you can put some aside every month for investing.You could set aside $100 or $1,000, just remember, the more you invest, the more you’ll make.

Step 2: Practice While you Wait

If you don’t have any savings to start, it will take some time to get some seed money to start your investments. Hopefully it won’t take you more than a couple of months to get enough money to get started, but in the mean time, you can still start practicing your investments.

Read everything you can about investing so that you know what you are getting into and you know what to expect. Stay up with financial news with the WSJ or other financial news sources. If you are going to invest in the stock market and you want to give it a try without the risk, sign up with an online simulator. These simulation games are  absolutely free, that you can use to invest imaginary money but use real companies to get experience investing without losing money.

Step 3: Choose your Investments

Are you going to invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, derivatives, or something else? Diversify your portfolio and choose investments that you feel you can manage best and will make you the most money.

Step 4: Find a Broker

In order to buy stocks, you will need a broker because you can’t go down to Wall Street and buy them yourself even if you wanted to. A brokerage firm will place the trades you tell them to and follow your orders. You used to have to call up your broker whenever you wanted to buy or sell, but now you can do it online.

If you buy and hold stocks for the long term, this is perfect.

Step 5: Set up your Investment Plan

You can invest without a plan, but you might find yourself leaving a lot of money on the table. Make up a plan. When will you invest and how often? How much will you invest? How much do you want to have in the future? Make a plan and stay on track.

Step 6: Keep Investing

A lot of people try things and give up. Investing can’t be one of them. Just because you have a bad year or even a bad decade doesn’t mean you should give up, you just need to keep at it and keep trying to improve it.  Now that you know how to invest money, you must keep on investing.

Keep saving your money and investing it and keep learning all you can about building your wealth. If you want to become rich or even just financially secure in your future, investing is key!

So they say you need to learn how to invest first. Is it really worth all the trouble of going through all that reading, studying, and learning just to invest invest, when you can just as easily pay someone else do it all for you? Actually, sometimes it is not a better choice. Maybe they could make more money for you then you could yourself, but that is always the case.

Yes, in some cases professional earn you more money. The most common cases are such as when you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing, when you have bad advice, we have no time to invest correctly, or if you’re just not knowledgeable enough to be effective investor. In most of these cases, you’d be better off hiring someone else to invest for you.

Do any of these cases match you? Whether you are in a completely different situation over you just don’t know how to invest, there is a way to make even more money than what a professional can get you some of the time at least. Have do you do this? You simply learn how to invest entirely on your own. It is not as hard as you may think it is.

You may be thinking that the professional can earn a higher return than you. If you’re talking about stocks or pretty much any investment for that matter it’s impossible for one person to know what to choose over another. A professional might know more than you, but that doesn’t mean that they will make a higher return. It’s a game of chance in the end, and with knowledge on your part you can do sometimes just as well.

Do you really want to make more money investing without having to pay professionals to do for you? All you really have to do is take the class, read some books, and/or basically study all you can until you are able to invest on your own.

Now that you know why you should invest, or better yet why you should learn to invest your money on your own, don’t waste anymore time. Start studying and start investing as soon as possible so they can make the highest return on your money.

Purchasing a home can be a complicated and confusing process, especially for first-time buyers. Throughout the process, first-time home buyers will encounter a variety of unfamiliar real state terms. There are several key terms associates with purchasing real estate that are helpful to learn.

For example, many buyers confuse the terms broker and salesperson. A broker is a properly licensed individual, or corporation, who serves as a special agent in the purchase and sale of real estate, a salesperson is an individual employed or associated by written agreement by the broker as an independent contractor. The salesperson facilitates the purchase or sale of real estate.

Once you decide to purchase, a salesperson will prepare a sales contract to present to the seller along with your earnest money deposit. The sales contract is the document through which the seller agrees to give possession and title of property to the buyer upon full payment of the purchase price and performance of agreed-upon conditions. The earnest money is a buyer’s partial payment, as a show of good faith, to make the contract binding. Often, the earnest money is held in an escrow account. Escrow is the process by which money is held by a disinterested party until the terms of the escrow instructions are fulfilled.

After the buyer and seller have signed the contract, the buyer must obtain a mortgage note by presenting the contract to a mortgage lender. The note is the buyer’s promise to pay the purchase price of the real estate in addition to a stated interest rate over a specified period of time. A mortgage lender places a lien on the property, or mortgage, and this secures the mortgage note.

The buyer pays interest money to the lender exchange for the use of money borrowed. Interest is usually referred to as APR or annual percentage rate. Interest is paid on the principle, the capital sum the buyer owes. Interest payments may be disguised in the form of points. Points are an up-front cost which may be paid by either the buyer or seller or both in conventional loans.

In general, there are two types of conventional loans that a buyer can obtain. A fixed rate loan has the same rate of interest for the life of the loan, usually 14 to 30 years. An adjustable rate loan or adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) provides a discounted initial rate, which changes after a set period of time. The rate can’t exceed the interest rate cap or ceiling allowed on such loans for any one adjustment period. Some ARMs have a lifetime cap on interest. The buyer makes the loan and interest payments to the lender through amortization, the systematic payment and retirement of debt over a set period of time.

Once the contract has been signed and a mortgage note obtained, the buyer and seller must legally close the real estate transaction. The closing is a meeting where the buyer, seller and their attorneys review, sign and exchange the final documents. At the closing, the buyer receives the appraisal report, an estimate of the property’s value with the appraiser’s signature, certification and sporting documents. The buyer also receives the title and the deed. The title shows evidence of the buyer’s ownership of the property while the deed legally transfers the title from the seller to the buyer. The final document the buyer receives at closing is a title insurance policy, insurance against the loss of the title if it’s found to be imperfect.

Buyers should plan on a least four to twelve weeks for a typical real estate transaction. The process is difficult and at times, intimidating. A general understanding of real estate terminology and chronology of the transaction, however, will help any real estate novice to confidently buy his or her first home.

Are you thinking about getting an unsecured loan? Because if you are, you should take in some information before going ahead with this. Getting the best unsecured loan takes a little planning and it begins with this article.

Start with looking into your credit report. Lots of people have faults on their credit reports and they aren’t even aware of it. And if these mistakes lower your credit score, it will cost you a pile of money. Be sure to review your credit report cautiously.

Before you approach a lender for an unsecured loan, be sure all the errors are removed from your credit report. Don’t apply with a lender without trying your best to take off the errors in your credit report. Even though it’s a bother, go over your credit report anyway.

To get the lowest interest rates, comparing is key. By comparing loan offers through the internet, you make this job a lot more easier. Always strive to make an apples to apples comparison. Check to see if the loans are for the same amount and have about the same terms attached.

There are many lenders willing to give you an unsecured loan. You have to watch out for the wrong lenders, because there are some out there. With the Internet, you can do some inquiries on a lender to see if he’s one of the right companies. Or, if you have friends that have experience with unsecured loans, ask them who they employed and if they were positive about the process.

Insurance policies are first and foremost, contracts just like any other. However, one salient distinguishing feature of an insurance contract as against other contracts is that insurance contracts are contracts uberrimae fidei. What this means is that the parties are under a duty to exercise the utmost good faith to make a full disclosure of all material facts known to them which may concern the insurance contract. In other types of contracts, parties are not placed with any legal obligation to make voluntary disclosures of information on the contract and it is basically caveat emptor. But not so with insurance contracts.

Why are contracts of insurance or insurance policies subject to this duty of disclosure? Lord Mansfield in the celebrated case of Carter v Boehm [1766] 3 Burr. 1905 held that “Insurance is a contract upon speculation. The special facts, upon which the contingent chance is to be computed, lie most commonly in the knowledge of the insured only: the under-writer trusts to his representation, and proceeds upon confidence that he does not keep back any circumstance in his knowledge, to mislead the under-writer into a belief that the circumstance does not exist; and to induce him to estimate the risqué, as if it did not exist. The keeping back such circumstance is a fraud, and therefore the policy is void. Although the suppression should happen through mistake, without any fraudulent intention; yet still the underwriter is deceived, and the policy is void; because the risqué run is really different from the risqué understood and intended to be run, at the time of the agreement. Good faith forbids either party by concealing what he privately knows, to draw the other into a bargain, from his ignorance of that fact, and his believing the contrary.”

Therefore, the law makes an assumption that a person who enters into such a contract is possessed of facts which may influence the decision of a prudent insurance company in computing the risk to be undertaken. Without full disclosure, the insurer is unable to make a correct assessment of the risk he is about to insure and it is based on this inequality of knowledge that the Courts have developed the duty of disclosure. In many jurisdictions, the duty of disclosure has been given such importance that the legislature has passed laws to that effect.

Generally, the duty of good faith requiring a policy holder to disclose material facts is applicable at the time the insurance policy is concluded. The policy holder has a duty to disclose information having material bearing on the risk to be insured when he fills up the proposal form. It does not mean that he has to disclose all knowledge that he possesses. It requires disclosure of material facts only.

What are material facts which require disclosure to the insurer? How are material facts determined? Though there are conflicting views on this, it is widely accepted that an insured’s duty of disclosure is limited to information considered to be material by a reasonable insurance company as opposed to information considered to be material by a prudent insurance company.

What happens when the insurance company subsequently finds out that you have failed to disclose such material facts? In such an instance, the insurance policy becomes voidable at the option of the insurance company. What this means is that the insurance company is entitled to waive its rights and continue with the insurance policy as if disclosure was made or to treat the insurance policy as void from inception. The privilege lies at the hands of the insurance company to choose whether to continue with the insurance policy or to rescind the insurance policy.

It is therefore of utmost importance that a person who wished to take out an insurance policy faithfully discloses all material facts within his knowledge to the insurance company when applying for insurance coverage.