WEALTH BUILDING TIPS AND TRENDS

Have you ever heard of the 50 - 12 Rule for Income Investing ? Chances are, if you haven't been a frequent reader of this blog, you never have !  Read on and discover it's magic ! Income Investing Basics Investing for income means quite simply investing in securities that will provide your portfolio with a regular and increasing flow of income. Less emphasis will generally be placed on the ups and downs of the markets. The main focus is on the amount of income you will receive each month or quarter. This form of investing is designed particularly for the individual investor who wants to retire from the workforce at an early age. It will not be as advantageous for the high income individual where taxation becomes a major drawback. However, even the high income individual can see benefits if they wish to consider early retirement. The 50 Part The 50 part of The 50 - 12 Rule is basically investing in a particular security in a way to generate $50.00 per payment frequ

Have you ever heard someone say that their friend is giving them good investment advice ? Or how about "my financial adviser is a good friend of mine" ! I have heard this term so many times I can't remember ! What is a Friend A lot of people you meet use the term "friend" very loosely. Some seem to think that everyone they meet is somehow a friend. This is just not so, especially in business. A recent story in my local media illustrates this point. An elderly lady who had a substantial sum of cash to invest ( over 3 million to be exact) became "friends" with a financial adviser whom she trusted to invest it for her future. To her horror, she soon  realized that he had stolen her cash. He had never invested it as promised and the cash had just disappeared. This adviser will be spending the next ten years behind bars, but this poor woman will be ruined for life. All of her life savings are gone for good. Meanwhile in ten years, this adviser w

Have you ever wondered what would happen to your home if you just stopped paying your property taxes ? How about if you never again paid a mortgage payment ? I think you know the answers ! Ownership of Real Estate People often say "if only I owned my home" or "if only I owned several rental properties" , then I would be rich. Well, let me tell you one thing straight up. No individual can ever truly own real estate. Well, at least not in my previous experiences. Let me explain this before you go clicking somewhere else. When you purchase real estate, you purchase the obligations that go with it as well. Every piece of property that I know of has a realty tax obligation attached. If you don't meet this obligation, the government could sell your property to someone else to reclaim this unpaid tax.  Therefore, you don't truly own the real estate. Control the Key A better way to look at purchasing real estate is that you are actually purchasing co

Have you ever bought an investment with the intention of never selling it no matter what. ? Do you think it is good for you to fall in love with an investment ? The resounding correct answer to the above questions should be no ! Investing is Business Yes, you have to look at investing as a business. You are doing it to make a profit and that is the bottom line. No other investor out there cares if you make or lose money. They are in it for themselves and that is it. You must look at each investment in terms of what it can do for you right now. This means that you must continually monitor the status of each of your investments. As prices and market conditions change, so too must your strategies with each investment. This can generally mean taking profits from a good investment when the time is right and not looking back. It can also mean cutting short a loss on an investment that hasn't done as well as you had hoped. In both cases above, take your cash and look for th

Dreams are what define us as individuals. The actions that we take to work towards achieving those dreams are what make us. Define Yourself Most of us can say that we had many dreams and visions of out futures when we were young. However, as life goes on and we get caught up in out everyday lives, our dreams can often get cast aside. This is very unfortunate and even tragic in some cases. Many times people are even discouraged by those who claim to love them. In reality, these discouraging individuals are only trying to bring them down to their level. This is a very selfish act on their part and very damaging as well. What we need to do is never let go completely of our dreams no matter how outrageous they may seem. Have you ever heard the term "get real" or "yeah, right" when explaining your dreams to someone. These people are truly not on your side.Try to align yourself with people that support your dreams. Our dreams are truly what define us as indivi

Everything in life involves some degree of risk. Every day you wake up it may be your last. Who knows, accidents happen when least expected. The world of investing is no exception to this rule. Life is risky no matter what you do. Even by not investing you are taking a risk, yet most people don't even realize that. The Risk of Doing Nothing Let's say you are very good at saving but never invest the savings. Instead, because you don't trust banks, you stuff the savings in a mattress and sleep on it every night. This method of saving used to be quite common in the past. I am sure there are even still some that do this today. Now think of the risks of doing this. For starters, you have to leave your savings unattended to earn more money. This leaves it open to theft if someone finds out about it, or what happens if your house burns down. If either of these happened, you would lose everything. Not smart. Another not so obvious risk is the loss of purchasing power. A

Do you understand what yield on an investment really means ? Do you understand how to optimize your investment's yield ?  Let me show you the strategy ! What Is Yield The word yield basically means the amount of benefit you will see right now if you were to purchase an investment at it's current price. I'll use the example given in a previous post to illustrate the benefit. Suppose a stock is selling for $10.00 per share and the yield is listed at 10% . This would give you an annual income of $1.00 per year for every share you purchase at the current price. In this example, you would have to purchase 600 shares to give you a monthly income of approximately $50.00 Therefore, yield means the amount of income you will currently receive if you purchase the stock right at this instant in time. In this case if you invest $6,000.00 right now, you will receive $50.00 per month of income. The word yield on charts etc. is actually the "current yield" in econom

You should now have opened your on line brokerage account and set up your Money Market Fund to deposit your savings into. It may take some time to accumulate enough (at least $5,000.00) to make your first long term income producing investment. However, now is the  time to learn as much as you can about the investment choices that you will have. It is not my intention to provide you with specific recommendations. There are plenty of services for that if you should need help in that area. I will show you instead a plan of action on how to organize and manage your chosen investments. Where To Start Investments you choose should provide you with a monthly (preferably) or quarterly income. This income should be stable and there should be a long track record of regular payments. The companies should earn this income and not rely on capital payments to meet their monthly or quarterly amounts. Look for your choices in your on line brokerage stock screen section. Do a screen on divide

Have you ever wondered how the rich continue to get richer no matter what ? Even in bad markets they seem to prosper, that is true. Positioning One of the biggest mistakes many individual investors make is they don't know their position on each individual investment. They don't develop a plan with each investment prior to investing their funds. The experienced investor knows exactly how much of a gain and or income he/she wants before making the buy decision. They basically have a plan of what they feel each investment should do for them before deciding on the investment. Know The Range Most investments have a point where it makes them very profitable to buy. When these investments reach this point, the experienced investors buy. When their values increase over time, their buy in profit decreases and therefore makes them less desirable to most investors. When other investments become more profitable than their current one, many experienced investors will decide to