As the Internet has exploded, many people have begun to rely on computers to assist with budgeting. Online personal finance is a multi-billion per year industry. Initially it was popular in helping small businesses with budgeting and tax concerns, but as the computer has become ubiquitous in American homes, average people have begun to regard the computer as indispensible to their personal finance needs.

One of the first, and most attractive, ways that online personal finance tools can help the average person is through automated bill pay. This is a very busy time for the average person who is working more than ever, has a family to attend to, and the many other stresses of day to day life. Automated bill pay is quite simple. The online personal finance software links a person’s checking account to their various monthly expenses. It even allows for a person to specify when they would like the bills to be paid. This makes things much easier as this ensures the account is never overdrawn. Most automated payments are made after payday. This can be done for fixed expenses such as Internet or cable TV. Variable expenses can be paid in full or with a specified amount. It not only makes sure that all of the bills are paid and nothing slips through the cracks, resulting in late fees. It also guarantees that the bills are paid before any irresponsible spending takes place. One of the goals of online personal finance is to ensure that a person lives within their means. If all of the bills are paid before any money can be spent this becomes a much more reasonable goal. Certainly there sometimes need to be other changes to one’s spending habits that need to be made, but it’s an important first step.

Another helpful feature of online personal finance is the built in tax software. Not everyone has very complex taxes. Obviously some people don’t have a family and don’t have a house or any investments. These people’s taxes are quite simple to deal with. However most people that are looking to do some budgeting have more complex situations. Real estate is a great investment for the tax breaks it gives. Having online personal finance software saves money by avoiding having to go to a tax professional and ensures there aren’t any mistakes or missed deductions. When people are using online personal finance software to remedy their bad habits, they often overlook tax considerations. Back taxes are often particularly difficult to deal with and online personal finance software can help in this regard. The larger one’s family is or the greater the number of investments someone has, the more likely it is that they have tricky taxes and need online personal finance software.

I have 2 questions:

1. what is the difference between common stocks and preferred stocks?

2. If you were to start a business of your own, would you organize it as a sole proprietorship, a partnership, a corporation, or a nonprofit organization and why?

Today money plays a pivotal role in anyone’s life. It is almost impossible to imagine life without money. So to make life easy and a lot better companies are providing cheap personal loans. These loans are meant for satisfying the day to day needs of the people i.e. the personal needs of the people. The cheap personal loans are handy for the people as they are available online which saves the processing fees to a great extent making this personal loan really cheap. These cheap personal loans can be used for any purposes like buying something, renovating your home or paying medical expenses.

Cheap personal loans can be divided into two categories

1> Secured cheap personal loans

2> Unsecured cheap personal loans

Secured cheap personal loans

Secured cheap personal loans are a cheaper version of the personal loans. In secured personal loans the borrower has to mortgage something valuable to the lender as security. But this personal loan is really very cheap as the rate of interest is quite low and also the repayment tenure is quite long. Actually it varies between 3 to 25 years. The loan amount that can be borrowed here is about 125% of the value of the asset kept as collateral. Apart from this the borrower can choose between either fixed or variable rate of interest. In loans with fixed interest rates the rate of interest is fixed over the whole repayment tenure where as in the case of personal loans with variable interest rates the rates keeps on varying every month depending on the market.

Unsecured cheap personal loans

This loan is not as cheap as secured personal loans but here the borrower do not need to put anything as security. So the rate of interest is expectedly a bit high. But you do not need to worry a lot because the repayment tenure is quite short and it varies between 1 to 5 years.

Cheap personal Loans: Interest Rates and Eligibility

The rate of interest for personal loans varies from 5.8% to 19.9% depending on the type of personal loan taken by the borrower. The repayment tenure also varies accordingly. Now the eligibility criteria for these loans are summarized below:

• You must be over 18 years of age

• You must be UK resident

• You must have a good credit history

• You must have a current account with a UK bank

So with cheap personal loans you can shrug off your financial worries and avail them according to your needs.

Everyone at some point in their lives needs to take a Personal Loan in order to subsidize their lifestyle. Taking out a Personal Loan does not mean that you are hard up for money or living beyond your means, it is simply a fact of life that Personal Loans are needed in order to keep up with inflation, a faster economy, and a higher cost of living.

Getting a Personal Loan is much easier today than it has ever been. There are any number of financial institutions that will give you a Personal Loan, most with good and reasonable terms and conditions. Because of this, getting a Personal Loan is something that requires market research, in order to make sure you get the best deal for your Personal Loan.

Personal Loans are not like other loans (Home Loans, etc.) because the Personal Loan money is for personal use, and the Personal Loan is not a very large sum, so collateral is not required. To get a Personal Loan, you just have to prove to the institution that is giving you the Personal Loan that you are financially capable of paying it back. To do this you will be asked to produce your pay slips, so that the lenders know that you can pay back your Personal Loan on a monthly basis.

Many lenders will do credit checks to check your credibility when you apply for a Personal Loan. They will not give you a Personal Loan if you have bad or unstable credit. However, there are also a lot of private lenders who will not make a problem over your credit history for giving you a Personal Loan. These lenders can be found on the internet and in the yellow pages.

Just like the lenders are concerned about taking a risk giving someone who has bad credit a Personal Loan, you must be sure that the lender who you are applying to for your Personal Loan is reputable. To make sure that you are getting your Personal Loan from a reliable source, there are some things that you have to make sure you keep in mind.

Always make sure that there is no third party involved in the process of getting the Personal Loan. This compromises your confidentiality, and could result in legal complications, or in you losing money in the Personal Loan deal. Make sure that your Personal Loan confidentiality is always maintained.

The loan repayment duration is a very important aspect of a Personal Loan application. The duration is usually anything between three and thirty years, but this is not a fixed variable, as most lenders of Personal Loans will let you extend the agreed duration. However, there are many terms and conditions set down by the lender, so make sure when you are applying for a Personal Loan, read the fine print!

Personal Loans are a fact of everyone’s life, and lenders understand this. Many private lenders will try to include third party or duration clauses into the terms and conditions, and the Personal Loan becomes a very hassling process. To make sure you’re applying for and getting a Personal Loan is as easy and hassle free as possible, it is best to go to a reputable lender for your Personal Loan so that you can get your money with the least hassle, so you can use your Personal Loan to buy what will make your life better.

Our new Darling Chancellor’s first Pre-Budget Report, delivered on 9th October 2007, caused quite a stir in the UK property taxation world.

The biggest news was undoubtedly the shock announcement of a new single flat rate of Capital Gains Tax. The new rate of 18% is to apply to all capital gains arising on or after 6th April 2008.

And it isn’t just a new rate of tax. Effectively, from 6th April 2008, we will have a whole new and much simpler property tax regime. The new flat rate system will replace the taper relief regime introduced by Gordon Brown in 1998. From April we will no longer be concerned with how long an asset has been held or whether it qualifies under the rather tortuous ‘business asset’ rules – the flat rate of 18% will apply to everything.

In the immediate aftermath of the Pre-Budget Report, early commentators were swift to remark on what good news this was for property investors. The new rate of 18%, they argued, was an improvement on the effective long-term rate for sales of non-business assets by higher rate taxpayers holding property for ten years or more: 24%.

However, as is usually the case in the tax world, things are not so simple in every case.

Sure enough, most higher rate taxpayers selling residential property after 6th April 2008 will benefit under the new flat rate regime. But many other investors are set to lose out.

The abolition of taper relief means that the ability to benefit from an effective Capital Gains Tax rate of just 10% after owning qualifying business assets for just two years will disappear. Since 2004, most commercial property has qualified as a business asset for taper relief purposes. The effective tax rate on sales of this property after 6th April 2008 will almost double from 10% to 18% in many cases.

Another group of people who may lose out are basic rate taxpayers. The new flat rate of 18% applies to everyone regardless of their income level. A basic rate taxpayer selling a property held since before 17th March 1998 would currently pay capital gains tax at an effective rate of just 12%. After 6th April 2008, this increases by a factor of a half, to 18%.

In fact, any basic rate taxpayer selling property which they have owned for five years or more may be worse off under the new flat rate regime.

-Other news in brief-

The change to the Capital Gains Tax regime is by far the biggest news for property investors. A few other points are, however, also worthy of a brief mention:

The nil rate band for Inheritance Tax (currently £300,000) has been made transferable between spouses and civil partners. This welcome measure was given immediate and retrospective effect, so that widows, widowers and surviving civil partners begin to benefit straight away.

The proposed Planning Gain Supplement due for introduction in 2009 has been scrapped in favour of a planning charge on all new developments.

Non-UK domiciled taxpayers resident in the UK for seven years or more will either have to pay tax in full on their overseas income and capital gains or face an annual charge of £30,000 from 2008/9 onwards. All non-UK domiciled taxpayers will also lose entitlement to their personal allowance if they continue to claim their current exemption on unremitted overseas income of £1,000 or more after 6th April 2008.

There are lots of similarities between mutual funds investments and investment clubs, and it is very nice that we understand them, as investors. The first similarity is that both are contributory funds/systems of investments. That is to say that the money being invested is not owned by an individual, rather, it belongs to different people. These are funds that are raised from the contributions by the members in of the investment clubs or contributed by different people and handed to a fund manager for investment, in the case of mutual funds. This therefore makes every contributor to the club are partaker of the gains or loses that accrues from the invested funds. Here, there is no separation of funds whereby you may say that Mr A is not eligible for the gains or loses of the investments because his investments were not there. As long as he remains a member of the club, he remains a partaker of the proceeds of the investments. Like wise, Mr B cannot wake up tomorrow and say that he wants the refund of his invested capital because he is not satisfied with the little fraction that was given to him or that he don’t know why they should invest in company A or B. Every member of the club is a partaker of the gains and loss that comes out from the investments, except one person voluntarily decides to withdraw his or her membership. There are some exceptions however, if as in the case of investment clubs, the club’s protocol is violated, or in the case of a mutual fund, the trust deed or the document agreement is contravened, there is always a contention here of people calling for justice, because a law has been broken.

Another similarity between the two is that both of them are for long term investment purposes. Mutual funds usually takes one year for the investments to mature, at the end of which, the profits will be declared and each individual investor will decide on what to do with his own share, whether to re-invest it back, withdraw only the profit or to withdraw totally from the investments. In the case of investment clubs, they have a longer life span before their investment could mature. Usually, it is between three to five years. This is because, they are few in number thereby leaving them with less financial muscle, which now means allowing their investments to stay longer and increase their profit margin. These two investment windows are not get rich quick program, rather they are solid investment programs that needs time to mature.

The third similarity between the two is that the funds are not under the total control of one man, as regards to investing. It involves a lot of brainstorming by the analysts of the company. One man cannot just wake up and say that this is where I want to invest this funds, it must be in agreement with the members of the executive, and because a lot of brain storming is involved, the nitty gritty of every company they want to invest will be trashed out and in the end, they will settle for the best which they have agreed. It is a popular saying that two heads are better than one, and this is one of the reasons for their excellent performances. What would have been omitted by one person will be noted by the second and everything will be critically evaluated.

There are many other similarities between these two investment vehicles, but I want to stop here. Let me hear your own views on this issue.

The stock market is one of the most lucrative markets in the world. If you want to grow your wealth, then you should consider investing in the stock market. If you invest in the stock market with discipline then you will definitely be successful in making profits. This discipline usually comes from experience and knowledge about various techniques of investment. As you can see, knowledge about the various styles and techniques of investment is important.

But there are certain basic aspects that you should have a grasp on to go about the investment process successfully. This article will provide some leads to possible ways to understand the fundamental concepts of investing.

The most important idea about investing that you have to understand is that you are investing in the companies that are listed in the stock market. You should not look at stocks as merely scrips trading in the market. You should carefully analyze the company whose stock you are investing in. You should learn to read the annual reports of these companies and you should be able to make insights about a company’s operations after analyzing different parameters. Reading various books on financial statement analysis will give you the necessary tools to decipher a balance sheet. You should understand that you will only get the requisite tools to analyze a company. The various conclusions about the company you are analyzing have to be made by you at the end of the day.

You should also get a hang of the qualitative side of the analysis. This is important as the future prospects of the company should be good. The products or services that they sell should have constant demand even a few years into the future. The business model of these companies has to be stable and they should show a lot of promise profit-wise. The best way to get this level of proficiency is to go through some of the analysis on your own and understand the various aspects that the future of these companies depends on. Another way is to read about various companies and their operations, talking to people from the particular industry to get a grip on the economics of the company.

The other aspect of investing in the stock market is the price at which you are buying the stock. You should always try to buy stocks at a cheaper price than at which it is usually available in the market. This allows you to preserve your capital in case the price was to fall further. On the positive side, increase in stock price can give you the extra profits as you bought the stock at a cheaper price. Identifying whether the price of a stock is cheap requires you to project the company’s incoming cash flows into the future and discounting it back at a required rate to attach an intrinsic value on the company with which you can compare the stock market quotes.

Once you get a hang of all these concepts, you can start putting them into practise to grow your wealth in the stock market. There are various techniques and you should study each to identify the technique that suits you the most.

Socially Responsible Investing for Idiots

Sí, Money! (http://simoney.us)

By Michael Grodsky

If I have to be an idiot, at the least I’m a green idiot. I believe in clean air, corporate responsibility, community activism, licorice, pizza and Thai food. And healthy living, freedom, and of course freedom raisins.



Shiny happy raisins

I love trees, sky, and ah, the OXYGEN! But I’m worried about the dismal state of health care, education funding, the ozone hole, the Medicare donut hole, and your little dog too! Did you know the North Pole is melting? That really scares me. Plus I need to cut down on my Chunky Monkey intake.

In everything I do, in every move I make, it seems that I’m part of the worldwide web of production and consumption. So I pertly place my recyclables in the blue bin, our family uses reusable grocery bags, and I vote. What more can a light-switch thumping, gasoline-pumping 21st century fox do?

C’mon, baby, light my SRI fire…



 

It was only a couple of years ago a friend remarked to me that real estate was the only investment that made any sense, as if his seat on the Ferris Wheel of investments, propelled by an invincible source, would forever be going up, up, UP! Instead, what happened was “up, up and away.”



The first Ferris wheel, from 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago

The desire for a sure thing is hard to resist. Albert Einstein, succumbing to pressure to support the idea of a static universe, in his 1917 paper added an adjustment number called the “cosmological constant” to his equation for general relativity. In 1931 he publicly renounced this static cosmology and endorsed the Big Bang expanding universe model, ditching the cosmological constant and returning to his original equation. He later called his bowing to peer pressure the greatest blunder of his entire life. You can read about the adventure in author Simon Singh’s “Big Bang - The Origin of the Universe.”

Many philanthropic foundations have long drawn a wall between their socially conscious mission statements that drive grant making, and the investment holdings of their endowment. There is a truism that investing for social benefit results in lower returns. But just as scientific peer consensus eventually embraced the Big Bang theory, so has the thinking of philanthropic foundations changed. The reasons are twofold: A recognition that corporate responsibility and societal concerns are valid parts of investment decisions, (1) and a growing number of academic studies have demonstrated that socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds perform competitively with non-SRI funds over time. (2)

For example, according to University of Maastricht and Erasmus University Rotterdam economists in their prize-winning paper, “we find little evidence of significant differences in risk-adjusted returns between ethical and conventional funds for the 1990-2001 period.” (3)

Foundation investment choices seem to be increasingly guided by effect upon society as a whole, not just financial gain, according to a recent Los Angeles Times article. (4) Fresh thinking in the nation’s largest foundations may be driving the impetus ever faster: The $8.5-billion William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Menlo Park), the $6.1-billion John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Chicago), the $7.8-billion W.K. Kellogg Foundation (Battle Creek, Michigan) all have made recent changes to improve the social effect of their investments. (5)

SRI assets are also growing faster than assets as a whole: according to the non-profit Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report, SRI assets rose more than 258 percent from $639 billion in 1995 to $2.29 trillion in 2005. Over those ten years, SRI assets grew four percent faster than the entire universe of managed assets in the United States. (6)

Some have already been on the SRI track: the nation’s second largest foundation, the Ford Foundation, along with others such as the F.B. Herron Foundation, the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the Nathan Cumings Foundation, have for a long time aligned their charitable and investment practices.

What is Socially Responsible Investing?

Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is a broad-based approach to investing that now encompasses an estimated $2.3 trillion out of $24 trillion in the U.S. investment marketplace today. (7) The release of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment–subscribed to by some of the world’s largest institutional investors, asset managers, and related organizations representing over $9 trillion in assets as of mid- 2007–underscores the widespread acceptance of the principle that investors cannot, in the long run, achieve their goals by investing in corporations that externalize their costs onto society. (8)

How do I research SRI funds?

A good place to start is the Social Investment Forum (http://www.socialinvest.org). Look at the resource list at the end of this article too.

How do I start investing?

If you participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan, there may be SRI funds already available to you. If you manage your own IRA or other plan, look into what’s available. But don’t just go adding a fund without considering the entire makeup of your portfolio.

The key to earning decent long-term returns and limiting overall risk is to have a proper asset allocation, meaning you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. For do-it-yourself-ers, check out the government’s website about asset allocation (http://tinyurl.com/2825hw), or purchase “All About Asset Allocation” by Richard A. Ferri ($13.57 at Amazon), a great introduction to the topic. Your personal financial advisor or company where you have your investment or retirement accounts can help.

How do I know which funds will produce the highest returns?

You don’t, you can’t, and you won’t, so just forget about it because past performance doesn’t predict future results. The day-to-day ups and downs of the market receive the media attention, but the daily, quarterly, or even yearly returns are largely irrelevant in constructing an individual’s portfolio whose objectives are long-range.  What you want to look for are funds that perform well over the long run within their particular sector, as compared to the appropriate benchmark indices. Various areas of the economy are always moving up and down and sideways, and so far no one has ever been able to know ahead of time what the pattern will be. Asset allocation, I’ll say again, may be the key to long-term success in building a financially secure future. Not panicking helps too!

What makes an SRI fund different?

If a prospective company is a fit according to a fund’s stated objectives, research is performed to determine whether or not it’s a good idea to buy stock at the current offering price. It boils down to the question “Within the guidelines of the stated objectives of the fund, will this purchase help to achieve the highest possible return for the fund’s shareholders?”

The three core socially responsible investing strategies are screening, shareholder advocacy, and community investing. Screening means a fund will include or exclude companies based upon criteria such as alcohol, tobacco, animal testing, and human rights, among others. These screens can be positive (e.g., including companies that treat employees well) or negative (e.g., excluding companies who do business with disturbed musicians).

Keep in mind that, as with all mutual funds, SRI funds have no guarantees of future return.



In any case, you’d better take this lad’s offering of raisins!

If you use electricity, drive a car, and participate in many other activities of daily living, in a very true sense you are already investing in the companies that allow and encourage your consumption. In other words, you are part of the “market” whether or not you actually own stocks or mutual funds. Socially responsible investing can be a way to make your dollars work toward something in which you believe, and support those companies you believe have a vision in line with your own.

Resources and suggested reading

1.    “The Mission in the Marketplace: How Responsible Investing Can Strengthen the Fiduciary Oversight of Foundation Endowments and Enhance Philanthropic Missions.” Social Investment Forum Foundation’s resource guide for foundations to manage risk and leverage their investment assets more fully with their core philanthropic purpose, while creating lasting value. http://tinyurl.com/35t49h

2.    “10 best” list of companies. Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine rates the citizenship disclosures, policies and performance of large-cap, public companies in the following industries: Auto & Vehicles, Paper, Technology Hardware, Technology Software, Transport, and Travel & Lodging industries, Chemical, Energy, Financial, Media and Utilities industries. http://www.thecro.com/node/580

3.    Social Science Research Network. http://www.ssrn.com/

4.    United Nations’ “The Principles for Responsible Investment.” An investor initiative in partnership with UNEP Finance Initiative and the UN Global Compact. http://www.unpri.org/

5.    The Social Investment Forum; national membership association dedicated to advancing the concept, practice, and growth of socially and environmentally responsible investing. http://www.socialinvest.org/

6.    Social Investment Forum’s 2005 biennial report. http://tinyurl.com/258794

7.    Sristudies.org, a resource for quantitative aspects of socially responsible investing. Includes an annotated bibliography of studies of socially responsible investing. A project of the Moskowitz Research Program, which is affiliated with the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

8.    Socially Responsible Mutual Fund Charts of Financial Performance. http://www.socialinvest.org/resources/mfpc/

9.    SocialFunds.com, an advertising-driven website with information on SRI mutual funds, community investments, corporate research, shareowner actions, and daily social investment news.

10.    “Handbook on Responsible Investment Across Asset Classes.” For asset allocation junkies, individuals and institutional investors the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship created this work. http://tinyurl.com/2ffqbu

Footnotes

1. The Maturing of Socially Responsible Investment: A Review of the Developing Link with Corporate Social Responsibility by Russell Sparkes and Christopher J. Cowton. Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 52, Number 1 / June, 2004.

2. SriStudies.org

3. International Evidence on Ethical Mutual Fund Performance and Investment Style, paper by Rob Bauer, Kees Koedijk, Rogér Otten. Limburg Institute of Financial Economics, November 2002. (socialinvest.org/resources/research)

4. Foundations align investments with their charitable goals by Charles Piller, Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2007. Section C, p 1.

5. Ibid.

6. 2005 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States. Social Investment Forum. (www.socialinvest.org)

7. Socially Responsible Investing Facts. Social Investment Forum. www.socialinvest.org

8. PRI Report On Progress 2007. PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment), United Nations. (www.unpri.org)

Image credits

Sun-Maid/George Bush composite image

•    First Sun-Maid packaging to feature a likeness of Lorraine Collett as the “Sun-Maid Girl,” 1916. Designer unknown, incorporates painting by Fanny Scafford. Public domain in the United States.

•    Photograph of Bush speaking. Brazil, November 6, 2005. Agência Brasil, a public Brazilian news agency, produced photograph. Published under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5 Brazil.

Fox/Morrison composite image

•    Foxes by Franz Marc, 1913. The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. Public Domain.

•    Jim Morrison portrait, 2007, by Amadeu.taradell. Released by author into public domain.

Ferris Wheel/Superman composite image

•    The first Ferris wheel from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The New York Times photo archive. Public Domain.

•    Screenshot of 1941 cartoon Superman. Fleischer Studios. This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice, and its copyright was not renewed.

Musician holding Valentine’s Day raisins composite image

•    Photo of musician Jeff Hawley, 2007.  Manager, Marketing Content Pro Audio and Combo Division, Yamaha Corporation of America. Courtesy of Mr. Hawley.

•    Photo, August 3, 2005 by Mazbln. Halberstadt, Klosterkirche St. Burchardi, Ort des John-Cage-Projektes “As slow as possible.” Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

•    Original painting of Lorraine Collett by Fanny Scafford, 1915, later used on Sun-Maid raisin packaging. Public domain in the United States.

This column is meant to provide general information, and should not be construed as providing investment, legal, or tax advice. There is no guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of the information in this article. There are no guarantees of future return for any fund, nor an endorsement of any investment product. Mutual funds are sold by prospectus only. For complete information on mutual funds including sales charges and expenses, call your financial professional for a prospectus. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. Links are provided herein as a courtesy, and no guarantees are made as to the accuracy of the content on the referenced websites.

Sí, Money! - Vol. 2, No. 1  February 2008 - http://simoney.us

Investment advice is usually geared toward those with thousands, or at least $1,000 to invest, in addition to the standard three-to-six-months salary socked away in a savings account.

Most of us know how important it is to supplement our retirement with additional investment in traditional taxable investment accounts. Simply maxing out your IRA contributions and putting away 6% of your paycheck into the employer’s 401(k) just may not do it, but not everyone has the thousands that most investment advice requires.Here is a plan developed with the ultra-small investor in mind. It takes just $100, every month for a year.

Should You Invest?

First, it is important to prioritize your financial concerns. If you have high-interest credit card debt, do not invest until you are debt free. While it is possible to make more money investing than you are losing on finance charges, it is highly unlikely. Your money is best spent lowering credit card balances.

Also, if you have no cash savings, you should consider putting this plan off until you have savings equal to at least three months’ salary.

Finally, if you would be devastated if you lost all of the money you invested, you should probably stay away from directly investing. While not likely if you are conservative, it is possible to lose all or some of the money you invest, no matter what the security.

Start Investing With Just $100

1. Open a brokerage account with a low-cost online broker. It’s important that you’re not paying more than $5 per trade, because that’s money that will be coming out of your investment. Also, make sure that the broker you choose has no minimum account balance, or fees will eat up your entire balance. For more about discount stock brokers you can visit our broker comparison chart.

2. Fund your account. This is where you send your first $100 to the broker via check, wire transfer, or ACH transfer. I recommend ACH transfer, which is like an electronic check, because a check will take a few weeks to process and a wire transfer is too costly for investing such a small amount.

3. Make your first investment.

What you invest in is, of course very important, and professional investment advice is too expensive if you’re only investing $100. But studies have shown that the best returns come from widely diverse portfolios.

Now, you can’t easily have a widely diverse portfolio with $100, since that won’t even get you one share of Google (GOOG) or Toyota (TM). But Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) make it easy to invest a small amount of money in a wide variety of securities, because they are shares in a larger pool of securities. The Vanguard Total Stock Market VIPER (VTI) tracks over 6,000 U.S. stocks, and it’s like investing your first $100 in the entire U.S. stock market. The iShares MSCI-EAFE (EFA) invests in stocks from Europe, Australia and Asia. The iShares Lehman Aggregate Bond (AGG) tracks the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index, and it’s like investing your $100 in the entire bond market.

If, after three months, you have put $100 into each of these funds, you will have a well-diversified portfolio that should withstand most of the market’s fluctuations. Losses in any particular sector of the stock market should be offset by gains in other areas of the market. Add to it each month, never investing less than $100 at a time, and you should see the value of your account grow just as the stock market does.

There are many ETFs to choose from and they are getting more diverse, including junk bond and commodities funds. Personally I would stay away from them until there’s at least $1,000 in stock and traditional bond ETFs, since the majority of your portfolio should include traditional investments, not alternative investments.

As you watch your investment grow (and then pull back, and then grow again) you should learn more about asset allocation and portfolio diversification, which are the keys to investment success. The more diverse your investments, the more you will be able to withstand volatile markets when stocks dip.

Finally, when the total value of your investment reaches $10,000, you should consider seeking professional investment advice and transferring your holdings to traditional mutual funds, which are a bit easier to manage, but typically have higher investment minimums.

Whichever way you plan to invest, this section will give you some tips and techniques to get you started

Understand why you are investing.

One of the keys to successful investing is identifying your investment goals, and the time frame over which you will invest. What do you want to do with your money?

Do you want to save for a goal? Do you want to invest a certain amount? How long do you want to put that money away for?

Your goals and time frame

When investing money, many people have a specific goal in mind. If this is the case for you, you need to decide what time frame is attached to that goal — short term, medium term or long term?

Short term (1–3 years) deposit on a home overseas holiday new car starting a family Medium term (3–7 years) boat house renovations Long term (7+ years) children’s education deposit on a holiday house retirement

Rather than having a particular investment goal, some people may just want to invest a sum of money, for example, an inheritance. If you are in this situation, you need to decide what you want from that money. Do you want to use the money in the next year or two? (in which case you are a short-term investor).

Or do you want a regular income? Or do you want it to achieve capital growth over the long term?

A short-term investor would be more likely to choose a more conservative investment like cash, to ensure that their capital is available in the next one to three years when they need to access it. A long-term investor would be more willing to invest in growth assets such as shares, as they do not need to access their capital for at least five years, so are usually less concerned about short-term ups and downs. They recognise that the potential returns are higher in growth investments, and if they are held over the long term the risk associated with short-term volatility is reduced.

Don’t forget that superannuation is one of the most tax-effective ways to invest for the long term. If you would like more information on superannuation, contact your financial adviser.

In considering which type of investment is most suitable for your goals, a professional financial adviser can help you with this decision after analysing your investment objectives, particular needs and financial situation.

2. Become an investor instead of a saver.

Many people invest but only some become wealthy. Why? The mistake many people make when investing is that they treat their investment as saving. So what is the difference between saving and investing? Saving is what you do to build up funds for something, like a holiday, and when you have the amount saved, you withdraw your capital from your investment and spend it.

Investing is different. People who want to build wealth invest their money for the long term in growth assets, such as shares and property. Their strategy is to spend the income that the investment produces, but leave the capital invested. They don’t withdraw the capital, so it stays there to grow, which in turn allows more income to be produced.

If you do this it will take you a while longer initially to get to your investment goal, but in the long run you will find that the extra wait has been worth it. As the years go by, you may have an increasing additional income stream from your investments and your standard of living can rise accordingly.

So what’s the secret to becoming wealthier? It’s easy! Start investing, and stay invested.

Other Tips to Remember…

Start early and take advantage of compound interest.

There is always a ‘good’ reason for not investing, but there is actually an even better reason to start investing right away. In fact, starting sooner rather than later is one of the best investment decisions you can make. The reason? So you can take advantage of compand interest. The problem is that compound interest works against those who hesitate. Most of us studied compound interest at school, so we know how it works. But it’s not until you start looking at practical examples that you realise how powerful it can be.

Use market movement to your advantage.

Dollar cost averaging - One way to ride out the market’s ups and downs is a technique called dollar cost averaging, typically used in managed funds. With dollar cost averaging, you don’t have to focus on where share prices or interest rates are headed. You simply invest a set amount of money on a regular basis. Dollar cost averaging is an investment technique that can help turn the odds in your favour. The idea is that you buy less units when the market is up, and more units when it is down — automatically.

Don’t try to time the market.

One of the excuses many use for not investing is that it is not the right time to invest. These people are likely to be under the misconception that they have the magical powers to be able to predict the future. They are under the illusion that the path to riches is a matter of getting on the right horse at the right time.

However, as investors begin to learn the vagaries of markets, they begin to realise the insurmountable difficulty in picking market movements. Trying to pick the magnitude and direction of market movements has cost even the most experienced investor dearly. Don’t chase returns.

Investing in the fund that had the best performance last year may be a big mistake! Most fund managers will offer you a choice of many different types of managed funds, from shares and property to fixed interest and cash, to mixtures of all of them. There are also usually a range of different share funds investing in different parts of the world. Given such a wide choice of investments, and the ability to switch your investments between them for little or no fees, some people make the mistake of chasing returns.

Chasing returns means that you are moving your investments across to the fund that had the best performance last year. Why can this be a mistake?