Time is the secret weapon in building wealth. For those who only read the 1st paragraph of an article, I wanted to get this out there first. So there you have it. Let’s talk about why. Sylvia In preparing for a personal finance class I was teaching a few years back, I came across an […]
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Unless you end each month with more money than you know what to do with, you need a budget. If that sounds like an exaggeration, it’s not. Why Budget? Before we talk about the mechanics of creating and managing a budget, let’s talk a little about why you need one. Most of us work
Bonds are a key part of a diversified investment portfolio. In this post we’ll talk about what a bond is, how it works and the role it plays in your portfolio. A bond is a fixed income security, which means it is a security that has a fixed duration and a fixed interest rate. Fixed
If you read only 1 article on this site, please choose this one. Compounding is the magic that will enable you to grow your wealth over time. Understanding how compounding works will help you to envision how your wealth can grow over time. Knowing this will help you stick with a regular saving and investing
Capital Markets, huh? Sounds like a snoozer. I promise, it’s not and it’s important to understand how capital markets work if you’re going to buy stocks and bonds and even if you are buying mutual funds. Why do Capital Markets Exist? Most of us have heard of the stock market where stocks are traded. We’ve
Asset Allocation: Equity, Fixed Income & Cash – What are they and what role do each of them play in your portfolio. Read on to find out. Let’s start by introducing a new term: Asset Class. In order to understand and manage your investment portfolio, it helps to break our investments down into categories. Asset
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To many people, a stock is something you trade to try and make some quick money, but a stock is a whole lot more than that. In this post, we’ll look at what a stock is and how it works. First and foremost, a stock represents equity ownership in a company. When you buy a
Mutual Funds and their cousins, the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) are very common, but also commonly misunderstood. Let’s take a closer look. We’ll start with mutual funds. Most of what we talk about here applies to ETFs as well. We’ll talk about the differences later in the post. Think of a mutual fund as a
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Retirement Plans: DB, DC, 401(k), deferrals, investments, vesting….We’ll talk about everything you need to know to understand and to get the most benefit from your retirement plan. We all worry about retirement. At some point, we’ll leave our jobs and transition into retirement. This brings up a ton of questions: “When can I retire?” “How
Learning to save, and making saving part of our DNA is crucial to building wealth. Saving is going to be the catalyst that allows us to build an emergency fund, make our budget work for you, and enable us to invest. What’s an Emergency Fund and Why Do I Need One? Everyone needs an emergency