Money Hacker

Links for 2009-11-20 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-21T00:00:00-08:00

Money Hacker Article - Being Wise in the Credit Crunch

Being Wise in the Credit Crunch

2009-11-20T14:00:00.004+05:30

This is a guest article written by JD Withrow

We're all feeling the crunch these days. A little less in the wallet at the end of the week, a shrinking bank balance, and that knotted feeling in the pit of your stomach when you think about the future. There is a rather long laundry list of ways to tighten your belt, tips to curb your bad spending habits and the ever popular advice to cut out the little luxuries that you use to enjoy. No more seven dollar latte every morning, the tips tell you to brew your own and to pack a lunch while you're at it rather than sushi from the place around the corner.

They're right, you know. These are excellent suggestions. However, most lists and tips and tricks to save you money usually forget the most important piece of advice, and that is to live within your means. How can you possibly hope to stay afloat in tough times when you are digging yourself deeper into a pit of debt each and every month? The truthful answer is this; you can't.

Between loans, credit cards, in-store financing and an abundance of "no down payment, no interest until...." offers on the table, it's easy to over spend. You look at the minimum payment due and think "I can swing that!" Do that a couple of times and suddenly you have a whole bunch of little payments going out every month that add up to a pretty hefty sum, and once that no interest period is over, that debt will grow with astonishing speed.

Budgeting is obviously important, but again, if you don't stick to it, it's useless.

There is a simple solution to busting the budget and overspending and its prepaid debit cards or prepaid credit cards. You are afforded all of the safety and convenience of a credit card but without putting yourself into debt. You load a balance of your choice on the card and use it like you would any other credit card. Because you're not actually borrowing the money, there are no financing charges. Yes, you heard me correctly; prepaid credit cards charge no interest. You set the limit and when it's gone, you can't over spend as there is no overdraft option. If you budget your allowable monthly spending and load only that amount each month, you'll keep your finances under control and that is how you can be wise in the credit crunch

This is a guest article by JD Withrow, who enjoy doing freelance writing on personal finance.

Picture: alancleaver_2000

Links for 2009-11-19 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-20T00:00:00-08:00

Amazon.com: Going Rogue: An American Life (9780061939891): Sarah Palin: Books

Links for 2009-11-18 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-19T00:00:00-08:00

Money Hacker Article - Unique Ideas to Make Money for Christmas from Seasonal Activities

How to Make Big Money with Amazon Site Stripe

2009-11-19T12:46:00.007+05:30

All of us, bloggers, are aware about Amazon and its associate program for bloggers and publishers. Through applying Amazon Associate program, publishers and bloggers getting excellent opportunity to generate handsome income when adding Amazon product banners and advertisements to their sites or blogs. Do you think this would work for all bloggers? No. It wouldn't. Main reason for the failure would be not having enough traffic to your blog. Another reason could be not adding right advertisements. This would of course, turn the publishers unhappy and they will remove the ad from site to free up space.

But today the story changed entirely. Through introducing a unique program named Amazon Site Stripe, Amazon opening its door to all publishers and bloggers regardless of traffic or visitors other than your mom, to generate good money by spending little time on the net. Through Amazon site stripe program, an associate able to tweet any product information directly to millions of twitter users whenever she/he want. If anyone click on the link you have tweet, will take them directly to the product window hidden with your associate ID. If a sale taken place, you will get commission for that! Amazing! Isn’t it?

Here is the step by step guide to make money from Amazon Site Stripe feature.

1. Create a blog in Blogger. This is only for applying for this Program and Twitter account.
2. Create a Twitter account and configure it for everyone to see your tweets.
3. Go to Amazon Associate Central and create an account there.
4. Once your account approved, login the Amazon Associate Central
5. Enable Amazon Site Stripe option there
6. Search for a product and click on it to go to the product information page
7. Check for the menu at the top of your window similar to the following
8. Click on "Share on Twitter" option (see the image below)
9. In the coming new window, provide your twitter credentials
10. Find the information in the tweet window. Enhance it as you wish. Click on update. Remember to not make any changed to the shortened URL there.

You have done!

Now it is the time to do more tweets with more products. Remember to not spam on twitter with lots of tweets at a time or your account will get dismissed. As a best practice, tweet only best sellers, new releases from various product sections by understanding what people really want. Make these tweets as a practice for everyday. Confirm your tweets reaching to the right community at right time. For example, you should understand when most users visiting twitter in US time and need to tweet US products to them. You have option to create multiple accounts in Amazon focusing people from various geo location like UK, Canada, US etc..

Here are the success points when using this feature:

1. Success with this activity entirely depends on how disciplined you are and how knowledgeable on what you are doing.
2. Focus of the community with right product at right time. If you tweet a UK product to the US community, would be useless.
3. Understand the hot deals with Amazon for different countries time to time and tweet that products to the twitter users in that location. You should be aware about the timing when users entering to twitter from various locations.
4. You should create multiple accounts to focus to multiple locations to tweet right products to them at the right time.
5. As it is a new feature uniquely introduced by Amazon to the online shopping word, it may require some hard work at the beginning to get succeeded with this new venture.
6. Remember to be an early bird. Start it today before everyone get knowledgeable and starts this activity.

A requirement of having own blog comes to picture only at the time of creating an Amazon Associate and Twitter Accounts. Once it approved, you never required your blog in picture. It mean, a person who have an Amazon Associate ID and Twitter account can easily generate income if spend little time of the net everyday in right time!

With above context, I can easily say it is a unique program to create big money utilizing little time on net. You should have a look at the earliest. Best wishes.

Picture: Don Hankins

Unique Ideas to Make Money for Christmas from Seasonal Activities

2009-11-18T15:33:00.004+05:30

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning” ~Winston Churchill

Christmas!!! A time force everybody to work for more money to celebrate it in its full! We have left only one month for Christmas and if not yet started to work for more money, it is the time to think seriously for it. There are thousands of methods and ideas available to generate extra money for such seasons but, most of them are 'time require' ideas. So, moving away from all these ideas, we are now discussing some unique ides to generate more than sufficient required money to turn our Christmas more wonderful!

This article intend to helping people to explore and identify highly seasonal ideas and services that helpful to bring you lots of money before Christmas. Here are some realities you should know before going to the ideas section:

1. We have limited time of 1 month for Christmas. So any thoughts or ideas should be unique, highly practical.

2. These ideas should be able to implement by the very next moment without any capital or using minimum capital with minimum planning time.

3. These ideas should be highly profitable by utilizing 'seasonal advantages' to the maximum

4. More than an article, I would like to make this as a sharing place for your ideas.

A best practice for making required cash for a particular season is, to start a business or service that is highly suitable to the season. Now it is Christmas season, so we should explore the money generation possibilities associated to this season. Below are some well thought, practical ideas for any person who wants to take advantages from this Christmas season. Have a look and give your comments:

Best Idea #1: Start a small business that is highly seasonal! At this Christmas time, you have wonderful options in front of you to start small, home businesses that generally not required much capital. This businesses can be vary from baking Christmas cakes, cookies, wine, tree decoration items, light items etc. Seasonal business, gives you a great opportunity to earn lots of money from it because everybody is in need with these items!

Best Idea #2: Christmas season offers wonderful chances to work as part time with service providers like bakeries, bars, small seasonal equipments and gadget manufactures etc. with high bargain opportunities on wages. If you have proven skill on any of these areas, you can choose this path to generate enough money once if you are not interested to start the business as your own.

Best Idea #3: You have huge option to offer pre-Christmas services to others! This can be vary from modifications and arranging home and surroundings, preparing Christmas trees, pre-Christmas shopping, home decorations, cleaning etc..

Best Idea #4: You have another wonderful option by offering your services to frequent happening pre-Christmas parties. You can even organize these parties as a temporary event manager, arranging food items, supplying food and drink items etc. If you are an artist, you even have opportunity to perform in Christmas parties. You can even earn money by dressing as a Santa for parties and functions.

Best Idea #5: Many parents required baby sitters and pet keepers at the time of Christmas season as they can go for shopping and other activities. You can even take this path to save for your own Christmas.

Bonus idea: Identify any item that have resale value and no more required by you or any of your family members. Furniture, ornaments, books and magazines, machinery and tools, any kind of electronic gadgets are best suitable item in this category. Sell it online using any online shopping tools that have 'auction' facilities to increase the asking price. This would help you to get your intend price or more than that. You can even explore local facilities to sell the items as well, once if this option gives more money than online auctions.

Picture: pareeerica

Links for 2009-11-16 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-17T00:00:00-08:00

Money Hacker Article - 3 Kickass Business Ideas to Become Definite Millionaire

Highly Practical Money Saving Tips on Groceries

2009-11-17T08:30:00.007+05:30

In this section, Money Hacker providing some of working money saving tips for all who shop groceries. These tips are extremely useful to save lots of money if practice properly. I have found lots of tips on grocery shopping but most of them are difficult to follow. In this busy world, it is difficult to keep an eye on each and everything. In this context the best possible idea is to keep some of the best tips in mind always. If you read this article, I am sure you are going to get some of the tips for ever, by injecting the idea to mind and never move out from your brain.

So read below, 24 well written, highly working tips to save money to a great extend from your grocery shopping.

Highly Practical Money Saving Tips on Groceries

1. Start with arranging items properly in your shelf for easy accessible. This would help you to shop an item which really exists somewhere in your cupboard but you have not found it before heading off for shopping.

2. Practice your grocery shopping once in a week. Give preference to weekday shopping than week end. This is just logic. There are possibilities of price hike by shop keepers in week end days due to the visit of lots of customers.

3. Always have a grocery shopping budget in place before going for shopping. Make a list of all items that you need to buy. I am sure; it is not possible to make a perfect list on before going to the shopping. One best practice to not miss any required item is by noting down it on a book or diary. Keep it in an easily accessible place only for that purpose and note the items when you remember it. This would help you to have right list to carry to the grocery. Yes, this will help you save lots of money.

4. Always have a practice to check all your carts to identify any item from your shopping list still remaining there are enough. This would help you to eliminate any items that is 'wants' rather than 'needs'

5. Never go for a quick shopping! You could identify enough time for shopping. Quick shopping is a reason for losing money. Plan your shopping properly and take enough time.

6. Plan to buy items in bulk if you have option to store it. This would help you to save some good amount of money.

7. Eat before you go grocery shopping. You will spend less money at a grocery store if you shop when you are not hungry and are not tempted to buy more food.

8. Always shop alone. Bringing along children or your spouse to the grocery store will make you spend more money on the items that they want that aren't on your list.

9. It is a best practice if you visit multiple stores and compare prices of regular buying items. This would help you to immediately identify the best place to get required items with comparatively less price with other stores. Creating a price log in your notebook would be an exceptional idea!

10. Inside the grocery, have a practice of roam before start picking items. visit and check each and every bay and shelves. This would help you to identify the availability of similar items but different price.

11. Many times shoppers will only buy products found at eye level. Cheaper stock is usually found on the lower shelves in grocery store aisles. Being lazy to bend down may cost you more money.

12. Don't be brand loyal. Buy generic products. If a generic or store brand option is available, always choose it. Most of the time, both products use the same recipe and you are paying extra money for the name only. This would help you to save lots of money for long run. However remember, most of the time this point applicable to food items. It never applicable to pharmacy items, child care items etc.. you should have enough intelligence to identify to what items this point really applicable to.

13. It is a best practice avoiding readymade food items. This would cost more. Never buy any ready made item that you feel you are able to cook. This would help you to save money as well as tasty food.

14. If you are into the grocery, shop for only grocery items. Don’t buy non-grocery items at the grocery store. It may costly for you as these items generally priced much higher than discount store equivalents.

15. Remember, shoppers generally place various items nearby the payment queue. Candy, magazines and other useless gadgets generally fill in the sidelines of grocery store checkout lanes. These items typically represent the highest margin products for grocery stores and the best to tempt customers. Shop keepers looking for customers to spend after paying left over money to spend on these items.

16. It is a better idea to weigh items like vegetables before approaching to reach to the cashier. This would help you to avoid weighting mistakes happening due to any errors or purposely.

17. Remember to keep an eye on scanner to confirm any sale item scanned with right price as mentioned in the 'sale' tag. This may help you to avoid paying original price than its 'sale' price.

18. I never say to avoid any item that kept with a ‘sale’ tag. But, remember there would be some hidden intention behind adding 'sale' tag on items. Look closely to identify these intentions. For example, items reaching to the expiry date, quality less, items with manufacturing defects can be found within this deal.

19. I never against buying any item coming with a 'free' offer of anything along with. Before buying such items, watch the price of item closely to identify possible price hike due to giving another free item with it. Also, look on the free item to identify it is a valid one in the sense of expiry date, quality etc... Never buy any item coming with free offers once the free item not useful for you. Like the above points, it is certain there would be some hidden intention behind such deals too.

20. Previous idea again applicable to buy ‘one and get one free’ deals too. Check the original prices, quality, manufacturing perfection etc..., within such deals too.

21. Always carry enough bags with you to avoid losing money by buying carry bags from the grocery. This would sometime helpful to get some discounts from the offer from shops for those who carries own bags.

22. Never use phone shopping especially for groceries and never opt door delivery. This could cost you additional money!

23. Never feel free to ask for special discounts if you are a regular visitor. You may sometime get a consideration which helps you to save money.

24. Finally, be always conscious to check your bills line by line before moving out from the shop. This would help you to save any money you have spent more than the real price or from scanning, data entry mistakes by cashiers.

To know more money saving tips, here is an article : Working Tips for Families to Save Money

Can I request you to share any money saving tips on Grocery Shopping?

Picture: Kevin

3 Kickass Business Ideas to Become Definite Millionaire

2009-11-16T13:50:00.002+05:30

“Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes” ~Napoleon Hill

In my previous article, I have clearly written the kind of people who never going to be a millionaire. One among them is employees. Instead of being a millionaire self, they are dedicated to make their employer millionaire! So, if you want to be a millionaire, the best way to achieve the goal is through starting a profitable business! A future oriented, recession proof business will do better. If you are a full time employee and the lone bread winner in your home, you would not able to run a full time business unless you have enough money with you to survive until start getting returns from it. If such, you could prefer to find and start a business that requires minimum capital but highest possible returns, future oriented and capable to manage at your free times. If your business able to survive any kind of recessions or similar economical down times, it is just like a cherry on the top of an ice cake!

Here are three kick-ass business ideas for my readers. These businesses can start easily with low capital, run at your free times or easily manageable by your family members. These businesses are high return possible, excellent future growth prospects and capable to survive any economical issues like recessions.

Solar Energy Generation Systems for Home

As you aware, one of the major problems facing my administrations is the scarcity or power. Raising utility bills are a major concern for families especially those have limited income. Here is your goldmine! Grab this chance to start your business of installing solar panels for home. You are not only being the part of green revolution but also, building highly future oriented business as your own! Public nowadays becoming aware of the utilization of Solar Energy due to its high efficiency of reducing the electricity bills to a great extend. One of the most advantages of starting solar energy generation as home business is its source. Once installed, solar panels works utilizing the most reliable, always free source, sun, which never goes to empty! It is an easy business which only requires single time implementation, low manpower, almost no maintenance requirement and highly cost efficient! Take it as your wonderful business option to take the advantage from sun in a highly cost effective way.

Rain Water Harvesting - Another low cost green business program!

Rain water harvesting can’t consider as only a business! It gives you an opportunity to become a prophet of green revolution and act as an environmental officer. Rain water harvesting is a most required requirement for families or organizations in the future! Currently in China and Brazil, rooftop rainwater harvesting is being practiced for providing drinking water, domestic water, water for livestock, water for small irrigation and a way to replenish ground water levels. Many administrations all over the world practicing regulations to grant license to build new houses, apartments or business complexes only if they have rain water harvesting facility! If your city is not the one have such laws, don't worry, this is just going to be a necessity all over in the world. Remember, water requirement booming as the next goldmine. Intelligent investors from all over the world now turning to invest on water management companies who directly or indirectly connected to water businesses!

Baby Sitting Center

A fantastic option for housewives! Babysitting business opening you the door to the world of angels as well as handful of money! Take the advantage from the busy world. It is less cost business, can be opened anywhere, depends on your conveniences. From the time of babysitting started, it known as the wonderful option for women to earn lots of money and always being engaged into the wonderful world of kids. If any of your family member love kids a lot and have lots of free time, baby sitting could be an excellent option for them!

Bonus business idea!!

Do you still want a business that required very minimal capital and 100% protection from economic recessions or protection from any kind of money related issues happening inside your city, state, country, world, or in the universe? Go and start a hair cutting saloon! You will never sit free and never turn as jobless! It can start as small or large. It can start in your place or anywhere you feel the business run well. If trained well, yourself can do the business or have option to appoint any number of personnel to manage the business for you. It has flexibility to run as full time or part time, it give opportunity to decide your own charges, no recessions affect it, no making costs, no marketing, costs never come more than returns! How is it?

Picture: lepiaf.geo

Links for 2009-11-14 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-15T00:00:00-08:00

Links for 2009-11-12 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-13T00:00:00-08:00

Money Hacker Article - 5 Magic Personal Qualities behind the Success of Warren Buffett

5 Magic Personal Qualities behind the Success of Warren Buffett

2009-11-12T19:29:00.005+05:30

Do you think super investor Buffett born with magic investing qualities? Or, do you believe he has extra ordinary qualities than anyone in this world? If you think so, you are totally wrong. Buffet is just an ordinary person born in Omaha with ordinary qualities. If it is, then what magic he had done to develop such qualities that brought him ultimate success? There would be lots of questions and doubts you may have. Read this article to know the top 5 magic qualities Buffett have and which brought him to the top of investor world.

Yes, he has not born with any extra ordinary qualities than all of us have. It is true, but he had succeeded by developing all important qualities required by a successful investor. He had polished the skills to the right extend. His efforts finally gave him an ultimate result of fantastic success as a super investor!

Passion

Buffett has right passion to investing. No doubt. He had identified his passion at the time of childhood and had done his maximum to develop this passion to the right level. Those who have read about him may know his childhood activities and how it later helped him to become a successful investor. This is an exciting lesson for all investors. Remember, any effort that have enough passion, finally reach to success it really deserves. Buffett is the best example to learn how one can identify his passion and how it can develop to next possible level to achieve incomparable success!

Common Sense

Have common sense, have common sense. This is not a word from me. These are the word from most successful investors in the world. If you buy and read the classics written by Benjamin Graham or Philip Phisher, majority of their advices focused based to the use common sense. If you go through the investing activities of Warren Buffett, you can feel the role of common sense played in each action. Investor and investment success highly required approaches based on common sense. For an example, when investing on a monopoly company in the right time, you are not only protecting your money from huge lose but also, utilizing the opportunity to grow your wealth to the maximum by utilizing the popularity of the product or service among public! This is happening by the given interest of public to the product or service that they are not able to survive without. If it is the only company manufacturing such product or service that public always want, chances of closing out or losing invested capital is merely ‘none'. Buffett used this common sense approach when selected his investment candidates and that lead him to the right success!

Discipline

Discipline is the other name of Warren Buffett. If you read more about him and his activities, you will amaze by knowing the discipline he had shown! Yes, he is a disciplined investor and developed this quality from the childhood itself. Discipline known as the first mantra of any investor and a most required quality for each investor to learn and develop. I have already covered the requirement of discipline with number of articles in this blog and which itself shows the importance of building this quality.

Determination

Buffett has high level of dedication to this job. He never crossed or compromised with this quality at any time in his career or life. Determination to the job considered as the door to success. This is a lesson for those who claiming as investor but, considering investing as a part time hobby or business. Always remember the requirements of having dedication and determination to the work. This is not only applicable to investing but applicable to every area.

Patience

Let the rain come with water or rock. I am bothered least. This is the approach of Warren Buffett! I never heard or read about any situation that put him panic. Whether it is a huge market correction or long lasting economic recession, steep volatility of the prices of stocks where he invested heavily, Buffett never missed the coolness and calm. This is the result of patience he have practiced and applied self.

These are the five magic qualities considered as the pillars behind the success of Warren Buffett. We have lot to learn from his life, qualities and activities. We have lot to do to develop such right qualities to become successful in life or the area where we really committed to. I don't believe anything impossible if I really want to achieve and when trying hard for that. An honest self assessment and putting little effort before committing to anything, certainly produce amazing results. Success will be always yours.

Readers, how do you feel about this article? I strongly feel I have covered everything that I really want to pass to the world. You still can help me more through a simple comment or sharing a thought you have.

Picture: Randy Son Of Robert

A Thank you Message to Money Hacker Followers on Twitter

2009-11-11T12:33:00.005+05:30

I just want to write a quick thanks note to all my twitter followers! It is my pleasure to see and following all of you there. Hope we can work together there in Twitter for mutual benefits. I have taken special care to follow each of you in return and read each DM receiving to me. I am also visiting each of the links introduced to me and bookmarking which is relevant to my activities. I will continue available in twitter always.

You guys/gals are really awesome. Appreciate your connection to me! My sincere thanks to those who have visited to read my blog articles and all the given comments as well as your subscriptions of my present and future articles via RSS or E-Mail. I will do my best to support each of you through the maximum possible ways.

Why Should You Follow Money Hacker on Twitter?

1. You have enough reasons to follow me on twitter if you not have done the same yet. As a follower, you ensures to receive most recent, updated articles on Personal Finance, Financial planning, Retirement Planning, Child Investments, Value investing, Free new e-books and Money saving tips at the very next moment if someone posting it anywhere in the world!!!!

2. You have also increasing your chance to get more followers!

If you are not the one among the group, can click here to follow me now.

Once again a big Thank You for everyone following me.

A hats off from Money Hacker to this wonderful community!!!

Picture: suneko

Links for 2009-11-09 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-10T00:00:00-08:00

Money Hacker Article - Reasons Why Gold is the Most Powerful Investment Today

Reasons Why Gold is the Most Powerful Investment Today

2009-11-09T14:10:00.007+05:30

Do you know, whenever huge stock market correction or a heavy economic recessions to put public panic over lose of investments, gold prices start shoot up. Correction or economic recessions are the best supportive factors for this behavior. What is the secret behind it? To get the answer, we should know the real power of gold. From the ancient era, gold is the only metal maintaining its superior position intact, in the sense of price and demand, among public regardless of Geo locations, religions or any. There are no such metal or investments or consumer items are able to claim this status. That is the power of gold, the most wanted precious metal today.

Gold has Superior Ability to Hedge against Inflation

All of we know that inflation happening by increase in the money supply and it raise the prices. Gold and silver is money and a store of value. It is the "Currency of last resort" as Alan Greenspan has stated many times through the years. Gold doesn't pay interest, dividends, doesn't restate earnings, and has no lawyers, accountants, CEOs or CFOs lying to you on television. Gold doesn't ask for bailouts, doesn't go back and cannot cook its books. Gold can’t be debased or printed at the will of a company or government and holds its purchasing power.

Gold sits there as a store of value is labor intensive, and a one ounce coin will not split into a bunch of half ounce coins at the direction of the "Pin Striped Bandits" on Wall Street. Also Gold is the ONLY asset class in the last ten years to increase in value and retain every dollar of its purchasing power.

The earth’s crust only yields so much of it. It has value due to the fact that its rare and one cannot reproduce it without the hard work and real labor it takes to obtain new material from the ground. This is why its money. It represents a store of the value of the real working man. The labor and costs required to obtain an ounce of gold is the same as the labor, materials and costs to produce a fine handmade suit of clothes. This value has not changed in 5000 years. Gold and silver were money and represented a store of value long before Charles Dow ever invented that exchange.

It has value for all these reasons, but the most important one is the fact that it cannot be reproduced for a low cost.

More over the above, Gold is the ONLY asset class in the last ten years to increase in value and retain every dollar of its purchasing power. As an international medium, it's liquidity are superb compare with any other investments, asset class. People can debate all they want about gold and silver but the fact is where everyone’s stocks, bonds, real estate etc. have declined in value, only physical gold and silver are up.

From the ancient period, gold considered as a best monitory asset than ordinary commodity item. It's amazing ability to act as a powerful hedge against inflation, made gold a pet of central banks across the world. They are rapidly increasing their gold reserve where dollar was previously enjoying this position. Losing value of dollar forcing central banks to increase gold reserves as a parallel solution to hedge against inflation by identifying its value, power and capability

There are lots of factors around influencing the price of gold. Purchase and sale of gold by central banks, supply shortages due to faster growth in demand, lose of dollar value, interest rates and increasing domestic demands are some them.

For investors various methods available to invests in gold. From buying physical gold to investing in gold mutual funds are some of those available options. Investments in gold, in any form, can't consider as an investment for higher returns. Instead, gold highly considered as a 'safe investment' asset. Inclusion of gold as an asset class in the overall portfolio brings the advantages of diversification and provides higher stability.

There are several methods to accumulate gold to the portfolio. Here are some of them to choose depends on investors:

1. Physical Form - In the form of Ornaments, Coins, Biscuits, Bars etc..

2. Paper Form - Gold Exchange Traded Funds or Gold ETF

3. Other - Gold Commodities and Futures

4. Mutual funds - There are number of mutual funds available in the market known as gold mutual funds. Before investing to these funds, one should know that these funds are not investing on gold directly. But, invest in gold companies or work as a fund of funds by investing on other funds, local or international, who invested on gold and mining companies. This is comparatively a bad option.

Dear Readers, In the beginning of this article, I have said the gold price shoots up when market corrections or recessions happening. What do you think about that? Do you feel investors looks to invest heavily on gold when such situations arises and is that the reason gold prices shooting up at the time of corrections or recessions?

Special thanks to: alcan52
Picture Credit: motoyen

Money Hacker Best in October 2009

2009-11-06T13:51:00.001+05:30

Here is the time again to introduce the best article I have posted with Money Hacker in the month of October 2009. In this month, my blog have seen number of fantastic articles that have enjoyed by lots of new and regular visitors. Here is a link to some of that best article for your immediate access and read.

Secret Value Investing Formula - You Never Find in Books - This is really a wonderful article lots of people agree with that. It using some of the simplest approach to introduce and understand what Value Investing really means. If you read this article, I am sure you will get complete idea on what is value investing and how to move to become a good value investor. This is my promise.

Guide to the Core of Family Financial Planning - Is an article useful to understand what really financial planning means and what is the importance of financial planning in the context of a family. It shares some well collected and visited tips which I have practicing for long time.

Money Hacker Free E-Book Download - Here is a gift for my readers and new visitors. A well written e-book anyone able to download freely from this site. This is a collection of practices and step by step guidance to become protected from recession and financial problems. It also a good workbook to start and plan your finance in a well, fail proof way. Download and enjoy. If you don't like this, I bet I will stop blogging!

The Role of Comparison to Make Successful Decisions - It is a funny article exposed the importance of the word and activity "comparison". Human nature always compare things but through this article you will get to know how comparison help us to take wonderful investment and personal finance decisions!

Revisiting Margin of Safety Formula - Margin of Safety Formula is the classic gift from Graham to the investors. There are lots of people still struggling to even understand this formula in a proper way. Here is your right place to know all about this formula to practice this as a value investor!

Two Lessons Honeybees Teach Investors - This is an interesting article for investors, especially beginner investor to learn 2 biggest lessons from honeybees. I am sure you will enjoy reading this article, to the utmost because it had written in a way anyone can understand the moral properly.

Picture: Matti Mattila

5 Stock Investment Mistakes I Always Careful to Avoid

2009-11-05T13:21:00.001+05:30

“Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age” ~ Ambrose Bierce

Here is an interesting article would share some lessons from my own investment experiences. An interesting factor is, I have committed all the listed mistakes but only once. I am sure, these mistakes never happen to me again. But, yes, I have committed all of these mistakes at the beginning of my investment activity and got the wonderful result of heavy lose. So, I thought I will give an opportunity to you to think and take right actions when similar situation arising to you.

Penny Stock Investing - At the beginning, when I started my investment activities, I was not only interested to invest on penny stocks, but I was worshiping them. Finally, the amount I have invested to some penny companies which is presently not available in this earth. It vanished away with all of my hopes. I learned from it. Penny stocks are just like drop of water falling to the desert. It would be there for seconds before vanishing forever. No one capable to recollect it once after it disappears. So, penny stocks are my nightmares now to even have a look!

Investing as per Broker - If you read my Investing Biography, you came to know the mistakes I have committed at the beginning. It was so fantastic for me. I have believed each and every word from my broker and finally, it gave me with excellent result of ‘total lose’. I found my broker loving me a lot as a client because; I was a regular trader with him. He was getting lots of profits from my trading activities and thus, was taking care of me. He was even ready to build a tea plantation inside the office to provide me fresh tea whenever I required. Today, after 15th years, I still hate to visit his office or have chat with him. Remember, brokers never advise you to invest for long term. Any recommendation from any broker intended to only short time than long term value investing. You can’t expect any help from any broker on long term value investing but, ample from him on trading.

Believing Tipsters - Tipsters are some kind of cancer to the investor community. They can say anything like barking dog. I have once invested to an auto stock by believing the word of a tipster, and now I am searching for that company with Google map to locate. I feel the company may hide somewhere in the African jungles. Remember, do you show a treasure to anyone else, instead of taking it as your own? Tipsters never lead you to treasures but, they are there to lead people to hell. Do you know there major success factors? Their tongue, baseless words and of course, lots of fools around the investing world!

Investing without Research - As I said with earlier article, research and study is an integral part to investment success. Without research, an investor shouldn’t able to make successful investment decisions. Beginner investor has 4 ways to acquire right investing knowledge. Reading right books, from the biography of legends, from your own life experience and finally from the mistakes you commit. This would finally shape one as a right investor by having his own set of successful investing rules!

Investing Little - I was buying 10 stocks of 25 companies at the beginning of investments. This style 'helped' me to lose possible profits. Investing little is a good habit but, only if you wouldn't like to cry later. This is the reason once Buffett said; once have identified a right investment, invest heavily to that. Never commit mistakes of investing little amounts to lots of companies but, have a habit of heavy investments with well researched, fantastic candidates. You will certainly be a winner!

Dear Readers, I have already said that I have committed all the above mentioned mistakes and learned good lesson from it. Is anybody around here feels no such mistakes happened to him? if yes, I can say either you have not yet start investing or a big liar. Do you agree or do you required me to show my back to get your kick?

Picture: Nick J Webb

3 Activites for Investors to Practice When Market is Peak

2009-11-04T13:30:00.003+05:30

“The quality of life is determined by its activities” ~Aristotle

When I have started investing, found a general practice between investors that, no one interested to invest money when the market is its peak. In other word, if you ask any investor about the time he wants to avoid investing, the answer would be the same, at the peak of stock market. Is that true? Can we invest when stock markets are peak? What do you think? I think we can easily invest. The reason behind my answer is, market peak doesn't mean all the stocks are overvalued. In the same time, you never going to get all stocks as undervalues when market is its bottom line!

I am coming to the point. Anyway, for an ordinary, retail investor, it is difficult to find an undervalued stock when the market is peak or find an overvalued stock when market is its bottom down. So the simplest action is to avoid investing when the market is at the top.

If you are not investing when the market is peak, then what would you do as an investor? Naturally your activity as an investor limited when market is in its top. So, it’s the time to identify some constructive activities to do when you are not able invest in the stocks. Here are three activities any investor can practice at his or her free time or when out from the market.

1 Plan and Accumulate Capital – One of the major problems facing by any retails investor is, the insufficiency of capital when it really required investing. In this context, why don’t we think about a right accumulation plan? Generally, we do not do anything when market is up with bullish trend due to the fear on losing. But, accumulation doesn’t require taking care on any situations. It can start at any time. If not investing, think about accumulating capital little by little. Go and start a special savings account to add money little by little to it when surplus is in your hand. This would help us creating enough capital for future use. This habit certainly helps you to have enough funds with you to get right shares at right price!

2. Identify Next Possible Investment Candidates – As I said earlier, stock market peak is our time to not do any investing activities but to do something constructively. If you really have bored without any activities, think about creating your own list of best possible investment candidates for the future. Enter to the market and identify the best candidates available there. Look around in the public places to understand the must have products and services. Identify right companies who offering services or products that public not want to avoid or live without. Frequently talk to people to understand their interests on products and services necessary for their life and companies who are in the picture with such products and services. Take frequent look at shopping malls to identify what people frequently buying to survive. This would help you to create a best list of wonderful companies who offering products and services which is unavoidable by public anyway. Some of the companies from this list could be your next perfect investment candidates!

3. Conduct Your Research and Study - Research and study on the investment possibility of a business is an integral part of successful investor. Take your list created in the second step and kick start your own research. Why such product or service are in the group of necessities, what are the status and background of the company who manufacturing this product or offering service, how efficient and innovative is its management, what are the strong points it have to survive with market with bad time like recessions, what are the possible weakness, how well its financial performance for several past and present years, who all are its immediate competitors, what are the major advantages this product or service offering than its competitors, what is its earning potentials, how good the company is to treat their investors, all should come under your scrutiny. Dear friend, it is not a one or two day process but, it may sometime take considerable time!

Above mentioned 3 activities not only help you to finalize your next investment candidates but also you can spend your time constructively when there is no activity remaining for you in the market. I am sure, if you do so with total passion and dedication, it would take considerable amount of time for you to get final result with the list of your next investment candidates!

Dear Readers, how many of you feel all these activities could finish within one month? If you confident to say you can do it within one or two month then, what would be your reaction if I call you a big fool?

Picture: mikebaird

3 Powerful Factors to Decide a Personal Financial Planning Success

2009-11-03T13:56:00.004+05:30

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now” ~Alan Lakein

Do you have a well defined financial plan in picture? If you have, you are the luckiest because lots of people still don't know or struggling to plan their finance in a better way. Frankly speaking, It is impossible by anyone in this world to have 100% perfect financial plan, but still highly possible to have a perfect financial plan for life. In this article, I don't have any plan to talk about creating a financial plan instead, I would like to introduce three major factors to compare and check your present financial health. I am sure, this would help you to identify your present financial status and to take necessary remediation to rectify any errors if there.

Financial health checkup highly depends on three major factors: Debt position, Expenses ratio and Savings status. Here is detailed information on each factor to understand well how each of this influence your financial plan.

Debt Position: This should be your start up step to understand your financial health. Check your debt status first. You can easily do it by comparing your monthly income flow to the debts you have. If 75% or more of your monthly income goes to pay debts, certainly you are in a bad financial position with debts till the neck. Get required counseling immediately to become debt free. If 50% or more goes to pay debts, you are still inside the dangerous zone. You also required approaching well qualified professionals to get proper advice and counseling to become debt free gradually. If you are paying 30% or less of your monthly income to pay debts, you are of course in a safe zone but, need well disciplined approach to clear off all the debts early as possible. Read my previously posted, well written, working plan to become debt free. Practicing these steps would certainly helpful to know how to escape from debts through simple steps.

Expense Ratio: Better financial plan always required better budgeting in place. This would help to limit unnecessary expenses to a great extend. If your total monthly expenses take 70% or more of your earnings, it is clear; you don't have a good spending plan! Seriously consider budgeting to control your expenses. When a perfect budget in place, you are taking control on your earnings and expenses and sealing all loop holes through which unnecessary money flows happening.

Savings Status - Savings known as the core of financial planning. It decide how much you can invest for achieving your goals, how big and perfect your emergency fund will, how do one able to meet unexpected money requirements etc. As it is the major factor to analyze your financial health checkup, your present savings against monthly income provides a clear picture. If your savings is less than 25% of your monthly income, you are certainly have the financial risk from savings.

Now it is the time to sit in a calm place and assess yourself to identify how good your financial health is. Above factors help you to get clear picture on your present status and assist you to move with further to rectify any errors. Remember, financial planning success never measured on the basis of having no debts or how large is the monthly savings of one. Instead, it should measure with the perfect life standard from the beginning to the end.

Readers: I have mentioned Debt Position, Expense Meter and Savings Status are the three factors to identify financial health. Do you completely agree with me or still feel if there is another important factor(s)? What is your opinion?

Picture: p22earl

Money Hacker Best in September 2009

2009-11-02T13:36:00.000+05:30

It is the time to revisit some of the best article I have posted in this blog for the month of September. There are some good post you may have missed as a late comer to this blog. Here is a list of best article posted by me and by various guest writers, for your information and visit.

A Fasting Approach to Kill a Habit That You Don't Want - Is an article using a simple approach to stop a bad habit for permanently. This is a good article to read and build some best possible controls to your life.

Featured Video: Top Ten Money Saving Tips - A superb video I have found while searching for one in the you tube. It explains 10 highly possible tips to save money. It is really worth having a look.

Should I Take My Pension More Seriously - A guest article from Paul Roberts, opening some facts on the pension plan and related activities. This is one of the famous guest article in this blog.

Test to Measure Your Investment Skills and Performance - Here is a well prepared test to measure your investment skills. This is totally helpful to identify who you are as an investor. As it is the only, best test available with this blog, never miss it!

How Your Investment in Knowledge Convert You as a Successful Investor - A well written article with some of the important point an investor always bear in mind to avoid costly mistakes. This is a popular article in this blog and I have found lots of readers enjoying this!

Best Place to Think About Life and Money - Personal experience based article to understand the meaningless of running behind money. This article written in the background of a funeral yard and it included all the points any individual know before running behind money. A certain read.

Weekly Tour to Commentators Websites

2009-10-31T08:39:00.003+05:30

“Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them” ~ Albert Schweitzer

Moneyhacker again visiting the commentators websites and resources in this weekend! This is my regular practice, visiting Moneyhacker commentator's websites and blogs and selecting some of the good article from their sites to add with Moneyhacker weekend link list for readers to provide excellent information on anything they want. Here are the weekend link list with information on the resources collected from commentator's websites and I am sure these are highly useful for you. Dear commentator, thanks to your visit and added comments.

It is Moneyhacker's duty to honor our visitors and commentators, those who make this blog more resourceful! I have utmost respect to the visitors, guest writers, commentators and to all those associated to this blog in one or another way. This is not the first link list including articles from blogs and sites those commentators have but, it is a regular practice from me. Through doing such, I would like to provide benefit these people by directing traffic to their sources too.

This section solely intend to give honor to commentators blog and/or site. It anyway should not consider as a recommendation or support to any products or services found at their sites. You are only responsible for any action as per any information given in any of the below listed blog or site

PennyStockExplosion.com - Is a blog providing all information about penny stocks. This seems a good resource to learn ab out penny stocks.

Highest CD Rates Info - This blog provide information about CD rates from various banks. It also listed CD rate information from various states along with a hosted carnival on Personal Finance News.

Yes Debt Free - A good resource to know all about debts as well as very useful information on how to become debt free. It has number of well focused articles on being debt free. they have a well writer article "7 Ways to Erase Debt' attract me a lot.

Tips and Tricks Depot - As its name meant, it is a database of various tips and tricks on technology, blogging and others. A nice place to visit and have a look.

Blogging Know How - This is a blog introducing some of the best ideas that beginner as well as experienced blogger required. Have a look and enjoy this resources!

Picture: Arenamontanus

Mortgages With Credit Challenges Can Be Overcome

2009-10-29T14:00:00.006+05:30

This guest article and sent by Don

There are many people who are paralyzed by the fact they have been labeled as a bad credit risk. Their once pristine credit report now has dealing with payments, and items in collection. Life as they know it has seemingly passed them by. The fact is nearly 5,000,000 homeowners have lost their homes to foreclosure since the housing market was turned upside down in 2006.

That number is expected to climb to over 8 million before this market reset is complete. If you are in this situation and you are determined to keep your home, you will need to contact a number of bad credit mortgage lenders, and explore the options that you have. It may be that your present lender may be willing to modify your loan and the terms of that loan.

If you have any equity in your home the chances of you modifying your loan and/or refinancing your loan are much better. If you do not have equity in your home, it will be a little more difficult, but you can still accomplish your goals.

Look at it this way, bad credit mortgage lenders exist for one reason. Can you guess what that is? If you guessed that they are there to loan money and write mortgages for persons with bad credit, you are correct.

The biggest issue you will face with bad credit mortgage application is reestablishing your credibility with potential lenders. Assuming you have always paid your bills and obligations on time, potential lenders will want to know how you will do that again. They are not interested in your bad debts or credit history per se.

They are interested in two things. That is your ability to make the payments on your new loan, and your willingness to do so. What ever else you may have been told, these are the two main concerns with any lender. Lenders simply care about your ability to make your payments, and your willingness to do so.

So, how will you convince a prospective lender that you have the ability to make the payments? Obviously, if you have a new job and your salary supports that kind of loan you're seeking that will help. If you have added income from perhaps your spouse or any other source, then you can document that as well. Anything that you can do to show a prospective lender that you have the resources now to make payments on a loan establishes your ability to do so.

There is a second part to that standard. Do you have the willingness to make payments on time to your new lender? Believe it or not there are many people with the resources to make payments on time to their various creditors.

For some reason these people choose not to pay them on time. They have no chance at securing a loan. The biggest single source of evidence that you have the willingness to pay your bills and subsequently your new mortgage payments is your history. With an exception of the financial event that occurred in your credit because of unforeseen circumstances or a catastrophic expense in your family, you can show your new lender that you have always paid your bills on time. Your lender will look over your application and consider how much risk you pose to their company or to the lender. It may be that you pay a half a percent or more higher than you would normally pay because of the credit damage your report shows.

At the end of the day a half of a percentage point should not make or break the deal for you. After paying on your opinion known for some time it may be possible for you to refinance at a lower rate, should that be a good idea in the future. Remember what we said earlier. Bad credit mortgage lenders are there to make loans to people with bad credit.

This guest article written by Don.

Pictrue: jakerome

Roles of Education to Investment Success

2009-10-28T12:01:00.006+05:30

I have received a comment from Bhupu, a Moneyhacker reader as well as a beginner investor, under an earlier posted article 'Road to a Successful Investor". Here what it says: "Actually I have an interest on investment but i don't have good knowledge about it..Is there anyway one who can give me a good advice about the knowledge required for successful investor,,. I wanna take a class but I'M in dilemma which subjects to choose ,,I really don't know ... plz I wanna appreciate your great help.." I have well, posted an immediate reply to this loyal reader with some information that any beginner investors really required.

I thought he is a reader may have left the blog after reading some article and adding above comment. But, I was wrong at that point. He have added another comment as the continuation of mine which went this way, “Well thank you very much Sherin... so I should not need to do any MBA or DEGREE Program to become a successful investor,,, or how about it if I continue or stop? What may be its advantages and disadvantages? Will my MBA program have any relationship with investment? Is business and Investment are different? Please I appreciate your help Dear Mr. Sherin." I have acknowledged to this second comment by informed him that I am in my desk and almost prepared a new article (this one) as my answer to his doubts. I thought it would be nice to post an article on the basis of his comment rather than adding a long comment as the reply to him. Thanks Bhupu. I hope, you may enjoy this article and get right clarifications to all your doubts and questions. This could also be helpful to any later visitors to this blog!

In this special article upon his comment, I would give some detailed information on his questions.

I should not need to do any MBA or DEGREE Program to become a successful investor,,, or how about it if I continue or stop? What may be its advantages and disadvantages? Will my MBA program have any relationship with investment?

Acquiring knowledge is always good. If you have selected a subject to that you have deep passion, I am sure, no one can beat you once entering to the real world upon completion of your higher education and acquiring enough hands on knowledge. Your authentic knowledge received from higher study along with deep passion to the subject, automatically lead you to the high comfort range and later turn as a real expert in that area. We can take ‘Warren Buffett’ as s superior example. He was carrying investing as a passion from his child hood and later received best possible higher education on the same subject that supported his career as an investor to a great extend.

Warren trained under “Benjamin Graham”, the father of value investing, on the subject to which he had deep passion. He has later received high authenticity to his knowledge and profession which helped him to create his own investing rules. Which later lead him to the tremendous success as a professional investor ! In this context, if you have deep passion to a subject and planning to go for higher education on the same, I am totally agree to go ahead and build your career. You will certainly be succeeded.

More over considering as a business, investment is an art. Some people may have this as a passion from their childhood. Some other build it later as a passion to the successful career. Those are from the latter category, required to work hard to build proper authenticity as an investor through right study and practices. Appearing for higher education help us to get knowledge on the subject in a better way but, when come to practical, one should not follow the books but required to build own investing rules.

As said, building a set of successful investing rules is not easy. These rules should be able to overcome any failures. It is a time taking process. One of the best supporting factors to build such rules are ‘own experiences’. An investor have a lot to learn from own experience. Any happening mistakes, factors lead to the success of an investment are some of them. Even though, I prefer to read maximum about the life, activities and achievements of investment legends like Warren Buffet and Benjamin Graham. Reading great books is another way to get fantastic knowledge as an investor. My personal collection has a book on Warren titled “Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist” which was enough for me to get right knowledge on his personal life, study, career startup, ideas and activates. An investment advisory guide from genius writer Philip Fisher titled “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits” I still consider as my bible for selecting a stock.

Is business and Investment are different?

I don't think business and investment are different. Instead, I can easily say ‘Business’ is a common caption for an umbrella of activities. Investing is the one among them. If you are a professional investor, your business is investing as well as your profession too.

Dear Readers: What do you feel on my answer to Bhupu? If you feel I have missed something, inform Bhupu, other readers and even me, to get knowledge.

Picture: CubanRefugee

How Not to Get Conned Out of Your Money

2009-10-27T10:05:00.012+05:30

"A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection" ~ Crystal Eastman

This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson

Making enough money and being able to save some of it is a big thing in today’s economy, what with all the jobs that are being lost and the investments that are going down the drain. So imagine your plight if you end up being conned out of your hard-earned money. In today’s world, it’s not just enough to know how to earn money, spend it wisely, and save some of it for a rainy day; you also have to know how to protect it from fraudsters who are out to scam you out of your dough. In order to keep your money in your account and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, here’s what you need to do:

How Not to Get Conned Out of Your Money

• Keep your credit and debit cards carefully: It’s easy to steal money from people who are not careful with their credit and debit cards and their PIN numbers. Thieves who are on the lookout know how to skim credit card numbers and use them to perpetrate online fraud and use your account to purchase goods and services. If your cards are stolen or lost, report them immediately so that you’re not held responsible for their misuse. And teach your children too how to use credit and debit cards wisely.

• Check all your bills: Check each receipt for your credit card before you sign it and ensure that you check your statement every month before you pay your bill. If you know for sure that you are being billed wrongly, file a complaint well in advance so that you sort out the matter before it becomes too complicated. And keep your receipts so that you can cross-check them with your statement at the end of each month.

• Never get greedy for “free” money: This is one of the biggest ways people get scammed – in case you receive an email or text message claiming that you’ve won the lottery and that all you have to do is provide your bank information, delete it at once. Once you give out your account number, you will be asked to pay a certain amount of money as “processing fees” before you can receive the larger amount. And since you want the jackpot, you don’t mind paying out the smaller amount, and this is how you get conned out of your money. Be very wary of people who ask you to pay upfront for providing you with a service or just getting a prize to you.

• Don’t give out sensitive information: It’s not wise to give out even seemingly innocuous information like your date of birth and your mother’s maiden name to strangers or even put these up on your social network pages. If any information out there could be used to hack into your bank or email accounts, remove them at once, even if there is just a tiny possibility of this happening. You can never be too careful living in a world that is always connected and where your money can be stolen without guns and holdups.

This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson, who regularly writes on the topic of online executive mba programs. With a background in journalism, Adrienne brings both her background in writing and passion for business and entrepreneurship which she obtained from University of Houston to her feature pieces at Executive MBA programs. Adrienne welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: adrienne.carlson1@gmail.com

Moneyhacker thoughts: I believe people who are rich generally have well understanding on how to protect your money and that is the reason they are being rich and rich more! What is your opinion on that?

Picture: Henrique Vicente

What is an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA)?

2009-10-26T11:42:00.004+05:30

This is a guest article from Stacey Cavanagh

With any global recession at corporate level, follows financial difficulty for families and individuals. And while it is, by no means, as young as the most recent economic downturn, the IVA is something about which you may have heard more in the last twelve months than you had done previously.

But just what is it all about? Essentially, IVA stands for Individual Voluntary Arrangement and it enables you to reach an agreement with creditors to which you owe money. A piece of government legislation, an IVA is a real and legal alternative to bankruptcy for those who have found themselves in debt exceeding £15000, who are in regular employment and who are experiencing extreme difficulty in meeting their repayments.

This type of agreement can assist with a number of debts including, but not limited to, credit card debt, rent arrears and outstanding store card balances.

Essentially, the way it works is that a licensed IVA provider will negotiate your monthly payments with your creditors on your behalf, ensuring that you are left with sufficient money to meet your other expenses and enjoy a reasonable standard of living. In order for them to do this, you will have to supply the provider with information ascertaining to your total household income, your assets (including your house and car etc) and also complete information about your debts. This will include creditors, references and outstanding balances. This will allow for the IVA provider to negotiate your payment with your creditors and come to an arrangement whereby you make one simple and manageable payment each month.

If you meet the minimum requirements for an IVA and are in a situation whereby you are finding your monthly payments increasingly difficult, then it might be in your best interested to seek IVA advice and ascertain whether this could be solution for you.

This is a guest article written by Stacey Cavanagh

Picture: jordigraells

Financial Resources for Readers

2009-10-25T18:14:00.005+05:30

Today is a lazy Sunday. I was searching for some resources in Twitter. But, later found some of the best resources that I thought I would share with Moneyhacker readers. Below, I have added links to all these resources with a small description on each. The best resource I have found among this group is a collection of well written free e-books.

Along with these, some of the best article also here in this list. All of them are well written. Have a look and enjoy your reading.

Financial Resources for Readers

1. Downloads and Links from IDA Marketing Inc

Here is a list of downloads and links that helpful to provide knowledge on securing financial future, financial security, banking basics, managing money etc. These are some but have other lot more free e-books and links in this page. This would be a best place for beginners to enjoy fantastic reading on the financial subjects that they like. Visit this resource here....

2. Seven ways to save heaps of money this week - and every week!

This is a good article from Jane Baker shows how one can save money in each day of the week. Everyday expenditure can quickly add up to a huge drain on your finances. Just take a moment to think about how much you actually shell out every week on things like petrol, a night out with friends and grocery shopping. Now imagine if you could do exactly the same things every week, but spend less. Read more here....

3. 7-Step Financial Recovery Plan

The stock market crash leading to the recession at the end of 2008 caught many by surprise. If you’re among those whose savings and investments were ravaged by the economic downturn, don’t despair. To lose your assets in such a manner is a traumatic experience, to be sure, but you can bounce back. The first thing you should do is explain the situation to your loved ones so they can offer their support during these trying times, then follow our 7-step financial recovery plan to reclaim your monetary standing. Read full story here....

4. 20 Ways to Waste Your Money

This is a fantastic article written by Erin Burt, Contributing Editor, Kiplinger.com. Whether a newbie or seasoned budgeter, nearly everyone has spending holes -- leaks in your budget that drain money with you hardly noticing. These small drips can add up to big bucks. Once you find the holes and plug them, you'll keep more money in your pocket. That spare cash could be the ticket to finally being able to save, invest, or break your cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. Here are 20 common ways people waste money. See if any of these sound familiar, and then look for ways to plug your own leaks. Read full article here...

and finally,

5. Personal Finance According to Video Games

Most people either justify video games as “entertainment” or vilify them as “time-wasters.” With a few exceptions (the Wii can actually help you become physically fit) they are almost never thought of as a tool for learning useful life skills. And yet even in those games that are not labeled as educational, where the game play consists primarily of blowing your enemy to bits, it is possible to learn some things that are useful in personal finance, often without even realizing it. Plan well, conserve your resources, and form alliances — these things come up regularly and are just the start of what video games can teach you about personal finance: Read more on this story here....

Picture: Dwonderwall

Two Lessons Honeybees Teach Investors

2009-10-24T19:37:00.002+05:30

“For so work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom” ~ William Shakespeare

You may wonder on the title. Honeybee is a small insect and what it can teach to an intelligent human like us? Just wait. The time not yet came to surprise. At the very first, read this article. This would tell you some classic truths associated with these little insects.

We are now visiting to the world of honeybees. They would generally build swarm in hidden places to escape from disturbances and enemies. They are very tiny but can consider as a best example of hard work. They start their day immediately after the sun rise. Until sun set, they would search for flowers and collect nectar, drop by drop. It then accumulates to their swarm. They never become bored to search for flowers. They are ready to go anywhere whether it is far from their swarm or not, to achieve their goals. Finally, this little by little collection grows to the considerable amount of honey.

This is a moral story for us. No. It is a reality. It teaches two major lessons to investors. At the very first, it teaches us the requirement of discipline. Successful investments always depend on the discipline of an investor. Disciplined approach helps to grow our money when investing little by little. An investor could use the Dollar Cost Averaging if investing on stocks or can select Systematic Investment Plan if mutual funds.

Once an investor identified a good stock or mutual fund, he should move to invest on that. If an investor not able to identify a right time to invest, should take DCA or SIP path. This would help him to invest his money little by little and time to time in a disciplined way to grow his money to the maximum possible heights. This is the first lesson honeybees teaches us – Always be a Disciplined Investor!

If you have enough intelligence, you may have guessed the second quality what honeybees teaching us. Buffett once said, “Once you have identified a right stock, invest considerable amount”. This is the context to learn the second point.

Once if you are not willing to take the path of DCA or SIP to invest small amounts in time to time, your next option is to accumulate amount little by little to build a good capital. Remember, this path highly suitable for the people who have good knowledge on stock selections and know the right time to invest but not having enough money when right time approaches. If you are the one in this group, learn from honeybees on how to accumulate money little by little as they collect nectar. This is the second lesson – Have good money saving habit!

So, act intelligently. Have a well disciplined approach. Have a good saving habit. Watch the honeybees and learn from them about discipline, saving and success.

My Question to the readers of this article: Honeybees generally attack others when try to collect their accumulated honey. Even though, people steal the honey and go away. Similar situation sometime happen to investors too. Once if you lose your investment or the money you have accumulated, what would be your next best action? Would you stop investing or saving money? Or, would you bring back the rhythm again as a phoenix? What would be your action?

Picture: faeparsons

Revisiting Margin of Safety Formula

2009-10-23T18:16:00.011+05:30

"Take advantage of the market's temporary insanity to load up on quality stocks at bargain prices" ~Warren Buffett

"Margin of Safety" formula considered as a blessing from god to the value investors through Benjamin Graham. Even after celebrating its half century, it still stands as the best ever found, trusted formula for value investors. There are lots of researches happened based on this formula to enhance maximum or identify more better formula than Margin of Safety, but it never produce any right results. Graham's Margin of Safety Formula still stands as the best one didn't left any space for another formula to beat it. As one of the Warren Buffet's highly trusted formula, it enhanced his own strategies to push his wealth to a whopping 3400 times over 44 year period!

Whatever you read or heard about Margin of Safety formula, you never become bored if you get a chance to read more about it. I have added some best articles to introduce this formula in a simplified way. These articles explaining Margin of Safety and simplifying the understanding. As this formula came to us from a world famous genius and father of value investing, even my knowledge is limited in the sense of understanding. Now, it is the time to explore that long hidden articles in this blog:

Before coming to the point, we would start this section with somw best advices from Warren Buffett about the selection of a business to invest. Once you have identified a business using his approaches, you can move to the next step, i.e. using 'Margin of Safety' formula to identify the safety of buying the stock to your portfolio.

Below are the critical parameters that Buffett use to select stocks:

1. Any business with strong fundamentals: Simple and understandable businesses, having consistent operating history and favorable long-term prospects.

2. With strong and excellent management: Management of any company should be rational, candid with shareholders, resisting the compulsion to act just to prove a point.

3. Business with stable financial history: Stability in high profit margins and return on equity, sustained growth in earnings, less capital requirements on an incremental basis, low or nil debt on the books.

4. Selling at attractive valuations: Keeping a strong margin of safety, available at a significant discount to their intrinsic values.

Buffet never said any person required extra ordinary skills to have superior investment success. Instead he once said, "Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing". As this is the word from world's best investor Buffett, there is no possibilities to become it as a flop.

It is the time to revisiting the best article I have posted earlier. This article would help you to get well understanding on Margin of Safety formula: Simplifying Benjamin Graham's famous "Margin of Safety" formula

So here is another article "Decoding "Margin of Safety" The CLASSIC FORMULA from Benjamin Graham to Value Stock" , is a simplified version of above formula. Once you have read the previous article, go ahead with it and get full understanding on the formula.

I am sure, reading both above article give you perfect idea and understanding on the formula.

Here is a small video to know what Warren Buffett thinks about Benjamin Graham

My Challenge to readers: Do you still feel there is another formula that able to beat Graham's Margin of Safety or better than it? I have already said it is the best ever formula for more than 50 years and if you have a better formula than this, I challenge you to inform why you feel your findings are better?

Picture: kevinzhengli

The Role of Comparison to Make Successful Decisions

2009-10-22T15:06:00.003+05:30

“The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience” ~ Milton Friedman

Do you have practice of compare things before making any serious decisions that probably influence your finance or money? If you haven't, I strongly feel you are missing some great chance to get more value to your decisions. Comparing things have both, good and worst effect but, it depends on situations. In this article, I will tell you the real power of the magic word ‘comparison’ and how it works for you in a better way. This could help us to take right decisions.

Whether you are an investor, financial planner or an ordinary individual, you could not or never able to forget the power of ‘comparison’. Comparison can play huge influence to your decisions. You may aware or not, but it is the truth. Whenever someone takes any decision, comparison plays huge roles to its success with the knowledge of him or not. Below are some examples, shows how comparison helps people to take proper decisions at their various actions.

The Role of Comparison to Make Successful Decisions

Investment - Before taking any investment decision, we generally research about the product or business. Major portion of it can be done only though comparing its features, prices or qualities with its peers or competitors. This would bring us to a fair level to take proper decisions.

Mutual funds - Comparative study plays huge roles when selecting a mutual fund to invest. From the experience of successful mutual fund investors and experts, the best fund can be identified only through comparing it’s qualities with similar type funds in the market. Generally, performance, fund manager efficiency, costs associated to the fund and market experience will come under scrutiny.

Insurance – Selection of a best insurance product can be done through comparing its features, facilities with similar products available in the market. Comparison plays major roles in the insurance space than any others. Whether it is a unit linked, health, general, child, auto or any other, a well study through comparing it to its peers help people to identify whether it is a right one for you or not..

Loans - Do you think any of us blindly apply for a loan, whatever kind it is, without learn about the interest rate and comparing it to the rates and features from other providers? Do you still require more explanation on the importance of comparison when dealing with loans?

Credit cards - Naturally a person required to compare the interest rates, charges, period, and any other features with all other cards available in the market. Comparing features and various rates considers as the best practice when dealing with credit cards.

There are many banking instruments, public and private instruments, whether it is for investors or for others, can identify its quality through comparative study only. This is informing us the role of ‘Comparison’ to take decisions and its unavoidable magic power.

Question: Could someone tell us a product or service that available to buy directly without a study or comparison? If you feel one is there with you, what made you to consider it doesn't require any comparison?

Picture: TheBusyBrain

Did You Know You Could Pay-off Your Debts with an Administration Order!

2009-10-21T13:46:00.005+05:30

This is a guest article from Debbie Brown

Are you amidst a tough financial crisis because of your debts? You could pay off your debts with the help of an Administration Order in UK. An Administration Order is a single county court order which will help you to clear your debts and stabilize your finances. An Administration Order includes credit debts and certain other debts. This debt solution will enable you to make single payments every month to the court. The court will get in touch with your creditors on your behalf and divide the money amongst them on a pro-rata basis. You will have to pay 10% of your payment as a handling fee to the court. This is deducted directly from the payments you make. Once an administration order is executed, your creditors cannot take any legal action against you. With an administration order, all the interest charges that were being added to your debts will be frozen.

Did You Know You Could Pay-off Your Debts with an Administration Order!

To apply for an Administration Order, you must fulfill certain criteria:

• You must have at least one County Court Judgment or CCJ issued against you.
• You should have at least two creditors.
• Your total debt amount must be less than £5,000.

To begin with, you need to apply for an Administration Order. For this you will have to fill up a N92 form. This from is available at your nearby local county court office. This form comes along with a number of tips and guidelines that will help you to fill up this form. This form will contain detailed information about your debts and remember that the debt amount should not exceed £5,000. An administration order is granted by the court only to individuals. If you have a partner who shares your finances, in that case you will have to apply for the order separately. For employed individuals, an Attachment of Earnings Order will be made.

While you start filling up this form, at first you need to put the name of your local county court on the form. The N92 form is divided into four parts: Part A, B, C and D. In Part A, you will have to fill up details such as your family history, employment and financial status. This part looks like your personal budget sheet and you can refer to ‘statement of means’ for filling up this space. Here you even need to give information about your weekly or monthly outgoings as well. After this comes Part B of the form. Here you need to list all your debts such as priority debts, total credit debts and others. It is essential to mention the account number and the creditor’s address. This will help the court to reach out to your creditors easily in order to make your repayments. After this in Part C you will have to mention how much you can pay off every month to pay off your arrears. In the form you will have to mention the amount you can pay off every month. If you need any assistance regarding this, you can always consult the court staff. At last when it is time for you to fill up Part D of the form, there is a warning! Part D is a declaration stage. You must sign this part in the presence of a court officer to prove that the information in the form is true to your knowledge. As a tip, remember to keep a copy of the form.

After filling up this form, you need to submit it for approval by the court. Once it is accepted by the court, they will be informing your creditors regarding your administration order. Creditors will be given a time period of 16 days to respond negatively or positively. In case no objections are raised by the creditors, the court grants the order and accepts your offer of payments. After the order is granted, you will be free from creditor attacks. However, if your creditors object to the Administration Order, the court arranges for a hearing and the district judge takes the final decision. Here you and your creditors will have to attend the hearing. At times creditors sent their representatives for attending the hearing. Both the parties get a scope to explain their case, and once the problems are then resolved, the district judge will make the order. Once the judge gives a verdict on your behalf, you are sure to make way for a debt free life.

This is a guest written by Debbie Brown from UK Finance Community

Picture: byoogle

How To Save The Most On Auto Insurance

2009-10-20T11:28:00.002+05:30

This is a guest article by Cole Sileven

Did you know that the majority of shoppers buy insurance on the same day they need it? It makes sense doesn't it? Insurance is the transfer of risk for a set payment or premium. Rates are determined by the risk so if you show you are less risk than the average driver you'll save more. Insurance companies take into consideration many factors including when and how you shop for insurance.

When To Buy Your Policy:

So lets say you purchase your policy a week in advance. There's a good chance you may earn a discount for shopping in advance. I've seen this first hand, many Insurer's are using the date you buy insurance as a rating factor. Shopping in advance shows your responsible not to lapse and to take care of things before the last minute. No insurance company likes chasing clients for payment. What are the chances they'll have to chase an individual who purchases their policy a week or even a month in advance.

How To Buy Your Policy:

If there is anyway you can do this, pay for your 6 months or year up front. Coming up with this amount is easy for some and not for others. If you do pay for your insurance up front that relieves the Insurer from having to keep up with payments and payment reminders. You'll see as much as 10% off and more for paying for your full policy up front. If you pay several hundred or thousands a year on auto insurance, this is definately the way you'll want to go. You may even want to designate a credit card for insurance purposes only. Get the paid in full discount while building credit at the same time.

Combine Your Insurance Needs:

In most cases if you combine your auto and home policy with a single company, you'll see very low rates resulting from the multi-policy discount. Sometimes the rates will still be more compared to your auto policy with Insurer 'A' and your home policy with Insurer 'B'.. Rates will vary from one case to the other. If you currently have you home and auto insurance with two separate companies it's worth your while getting a combined quote to see if you can save more.

Multiple Insurance Quotes

No matter what you're in search for it's always good to comparison shop. The same goes for insurance. By comparing low cost auto insurance quotes, you will more than likely save several hundred a year. Insurance companies rate shoppers differently. One Insurer may favor older drivers while other Insurers may find it more beneficial to give better rates to younger drivers. By comparison shopping you'll be able to find which insurance company can give you the most competitive rate for the coverage needed.

This guest article written by Cole Sileven from Low Insurance and Security

Picture: annia316

Money Hacker Free E-Book Download

2009-10-19T14:07:00.008+05:30

Finally, my long effort for releasing a right freE-book produced right result. Money Hacker officially releasing its first freE-Book for subscribers and visitors. This e-book fully packed with guidelines to protect individuals and families from recession related job loses and finance. My e-book could be a right companion for individuals and families to design necessary action to protect from issues related to job and money.

More than focusing to a particular subject, this Money Hacker e-book titled as "Master Plan to Protect You from Recession Forever", highly tuned to work as a single point resource to cover various most required guidelines divided as following parts:

Money Hacker Free E-Book Download

- Identifying Money Sources for Emergency - Covers requirement of emergency fund and ides to create enough emergency fund for individuals and families.
- Protecting yourself from being jobless - Guidelines to tune skills and build additional skills to get a job at any time if required.
- Secondary or additional income generation possibilities and steps - Covers ideas and tips for exploring additional income generation possibilities.
- Protect self and family using the wide possibilities of insurance - Educate how to select right policies after identifying exact requirements.
- Productive guidance to become debt free through affordable steps - A classic solution to become debt free using simple steps
- Classic list of money saving tips from day to day activities - Ideas on adding control on daily activities to identify and save possible money from each action in a harmless way.

Money Hacker is an "UnCopyright" blog. Releasing its copyright allows anyone to frequently use any of its contents as they wish. Money Hacker's first e-book also coming with 'UnCopyright" status to make it as a 'source code' for others to alter as another excellent article or e-book, rewrite, publish, copy or distribute the contents frequently. However, a credit back to the original sources highly appreciated but not a necessary.

Getting this freE-book is really simple. Don't miss this opportunity and be the one among getting this e-book as first!

Follow this simple three step process to download:

1. Click on the Image or this link, type your e-mail and click on "Complete Subscription Request" button

2. Check your e-mail to see the confirmation mail

3. Confirm clicking on the link first link (considering my given effort) and download e-book from the given link in the same mail!

My humble request is to confirm the subscription as first as your gratitude to my effort. I am sure, you will like this e-book as its subject is so deep and presented such a way to understand for anyone who read it.

I love to see you all here in my blog. I also love to see your comments and suggestions to bring the quality of this 'UnCopyright' blog to the next level. Any action from yourself as a visitor could help to achieve my goals.