Articles Index

4 Ways to Come Up with Cash

There are four ways you can come up with cash by simply changing some of your current behaviors and spending patterns, giving you more cash in your pocket for investment into stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, or your own business.

5 Ways to Make Saving and Investing Easier

Saving and investing doesn't have to be hard. These five saving and investing tips will help make building wealth easier.

Spending Money and Saving Money Is Relative To Your Income and Net Worth

When it comes to saving money and spending money, the only thing that matters is how much you are doing in proportion to your household income and net worth. It may be foolish for you to buy a $10 item, while at the same time, your brother might be able to spend $300 on something and it not matter.

How Much Money Should I Be Saving?

Have you ever asked yourself the question - How much should I be saving? If you have, we've taken a detailed look at the questions you need to ask yourself before you can tackle that important question.

Saving Money vs. Investing Money

Saving money and investing money are not the same thing. Each has an important part to play in your family's financial life but very few new investors can explain the difference between the two.

Determining Dividend Payout

In the days of falling stock prices, Board of Directors will often begin to pay dividends to help stabilize the company’s stock. This article discusses when a company should retain its earnings and when it should pay them out as dividends.

Seven Tests of Defensive Stock Selection

These seven tests of defensive stock selection from Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor are keys to putting together a conservative portfolio of common stocks.

To Guard Against Inflation, Focus on Purchasing Power Not Dollars

The best way to protect your investment portfolio against the inflation rate is to measure your money in terms of purchasing power, not dollars.

What Is Opportunity Cost?

Have you ever asked yourself, "What is opportunity cost?" If so, the answer has more to do with life than you realize, even though the word is mostly associated with economics.

There's No Such Thing As a Free Lunch

The famous adage, "there is no such thing as a free lunch", is a common way of expressing the economic concept that everything we do has a trade-off. That trade-off in economist-speak is called opportunity cost. For many new investors, the biggest opportunity cost you will face is the question of how early in life you start investing.

3 Types of Opportunity Cost That Influence Your Investment Portfolio

Here are three, practical ways you can think about opportunity cost trade-offs in your own investment portfolio. They include looking at liquidity, asset class and asset allocation, and investing your money versus spending your money.

Opportunity Cost: How I Spent $2,385,600 to $24,074,400 in Future Wealth

In economics, the term opportunity cost refers to what you give up in exchange for making a decision. It is the next, best thing you could have done. The concept of opportunity cost is very important to investors because tying up money in a stock, bond, real estate, or small business, means you can't enjoy that money today. There is an opportunity cost to your decision.

Know Your Opportunity Cost

As an investor, it is important to know your opportunity cost when building your portfolio. Opportunity cost can be defined as the expected yield of the next best investment available to you.

How Do You Know If You Are Making a Long-Term Investment?

Don't pay lip service to long-term investing, use this handy checklist to determine if you really are making a long-term investment or whether you are a frequent trader deluding himself or herself.

If You Don't Know How to Value a Business, You Shouldn't Own Individual Stocks

How can you invest in stock unless you are able to value a company by calculating intrinsic value? You can't. Er, at least, you probably shouldn't. Instead, there are better options to consider, such as investing in a low-cost index fund.

Tips for Getting Started Making Money and Building Your Net Worth

With more than $71 trillion in assets in the United States, making money shouldn't be that difficult. It requires a few key behaviors and, to some extent, a stroke of luck such as good health and being born into a stable household.

The Two Questions Benjamin Graham Taught Investors To Ask Themselves

There are two vitally important questions that legendary investment thinker Benjamin Graham taught his students to ask before they committed any of their hard-earned money to a stock, bonds, real estate, business, or other investment.

How I Would Invest If I Couldn't Buy Individual Stocks

Investing is really simple, especially if you focus on buying a collection of low-cost index funds or mutual funds from a company such as Vanguard, which operates in a mutual fashion so that the economies of scales flow through in savings to clients, rather than to stockholders of the money management firm. Here are my thoughts on asset allocation for investors who don't want to deal with choosing individual stocks or bonds.

You Don't Have to Invest in Stocks to Get Rich

There are a minority of investors who truly want to get rich and build wealth but just aren't emotionally cut out for owning stocks. Although your options are limited, there are some alternatives to investing in stock and the stock market.

3 Traits You Need To Be a Great Investor

Do you want to become a great investor? There is a lot in common with becoming a great heart surgeon or a great athlete. Having the right temperament, skills set, and discipline all play into whether or not you will be successful. There is also an element of luck involved.

Investment Research 101

Many people are ready to take the plunge and begin researching their own investments. This article was designed to help the investor turn his ideas into profitable investments.

Tax Strategy: Asset Placement

Asset placement is a tax strategy that minimizing tax liability by placing certain assets in certain types of accounts. This article discusses asset placement and tax reduction.

Making the Most of Your Retirement Funds

Are you ready to begin investing your retirement fund money? The choices can be daunting but it might help to break them down and look at the potential asset classes that are available to most retirees. This overview does just that and provides some explanation and definition of each.

You May Not Need As Much Money In Your Retirement Funds As You Think

Many Americans panic about whether they have enough money in their retirement fund. But you might not be in as bad of shape as you think, if you look at the problem of building a secure retirement differently. Every additional dollar you can earn from outside sources can remove the need to save $25 in retirement funds based upon the famous four percent rule in retirement planning.

Dividends, Interest Income, and Rents Are the Key to Building Wealth

When it comes to building wealth, think of investing as the process of writing checks to acquire dividends, interest income, and rents.