How to do financial analysis

How to Do Financial Analysis: The True Cost of Switching to Solar

Though numbers don’t lie, people do and if you don’t know how to do basic financial analysis, it’s difficult to make informed financial decisions. In this post I will scrutinize a real proposal for solar power that was given to my mom, to show how marketers pump up the perceived value of their products. I’ll also demonstrate an interesting method to net over $23,000, by switching to solar power..

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The Right Way To Teach Kids Personal Finance

The Right Way to Teach Your Kids About Personal Finance

I’ve come to terms with the fact that U.S. schools probably won’t be teaching my kids, or your kids, about personal finance. They don’t teach them how to stick up for themselves, how to think critically, or a slew of other important stuff either. With my background, I think I can do a decent job teaching some of that, however, since some parents don’t, or can’t, fill the gap, many kids become disadvantaged in ways that have a life-long, negative impact.

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These 5 Personality Traits Make You More Money in the Long Run (And How to Develop Them)

Being “bad” with money is not usually the result of stupidity, negligence or even bad luck. More often, being bad with money is simply the consequence of having personality traits that are better suited for other things. Studies like this one have demonstrated that some people seem to be born with an affinity for saving money and investing, while others lean towards instant gratification, even over a potentially bigger reward down the road.

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This Is What Really Happens When You Don’t Pay Your Taxes

The consequences for not paying your taxes have varied pretty wildly over the last several decades in the United States. Tax evaders were once literally be incarcerated for fairly low level tax delinquencies, but on the other end of the spectrum, hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt are sometimes just wiped clean if they’re not collected within a 10 year statute of limitations.

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These 5 Expenses Have the Biggest Impact on Your Net Worth

These 5 Expenses Have the Biggest Impact on Your Net Worth

There are some expenses we just can’t avoid, like taxes, health care and funeral costs. Sure you can maximize your tax savings and try to avoid overpaying for health insurance, but generally we must live, and die, with these costs. However, you can control most of your other big-impact expenses and with a little foresight, you can use these budget and investment adjustments to supercharge your net worth.

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Being debt free is overrated

This Is Why Being Debt-Free Is Overrated: The Math Behind Opportunity Cost

There’s a lot of talk, mostly in online personal finance forums, about the benefits of being completely debt-free. Not just somewhat debt-free, 100% debt-free, as in only buying cars with cash-on-hand, not using credit cards and avoiding mortgages. Though I can understand the attraction to being totally debt-free and even once wrote about why you should never borrow or lend money, being completely debt-free is a money mistake that you cannot afford to make.

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The 5 Best Ways To Make Money While You Sleep

One of the best things you can do to build future wealth is to develop multiple income streams now. Mostly, ones that require more time than money to create. Most profitable passive income sources demand a lot of your time, however, starting just one revenue stream today could prove highly profitable down the road. I started Valuist without much of a plan or even a consistent publication schedule. But after writing for a while, opportunities to make money

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stock investing versus real estate

Real Estate Versus Stocks: The Ultimate Investment Showdown

It’s definitely best to have exposure to both asset classes in some form, but if I had to choose one, I would go with stocks (mutual funds). To me, there’s nothing better than an investment you can buy quickly, pay little-to-nothing to hold and sell at the exact moment you choose. The fact that you can buy confidently during market crashes, bide your time and reap the rewards, usually within a few years, is also highly attractive to me.

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7 Proposed Changes to IRA Accounts and How They Could Alter Your Retirement Plan

The major problem with this proposal is that we’re no longer talking about the mega-wealthy here, this hurts middle class investors who don’t make the majority of their earnings from investments but want access to private equity. The vast majority of Regulation D (private equity, rather than public stock) offerings are made to accredited investors. Further, these investments are typically not highly liquid…

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15 myths about going green and sustainable living debunked

15 Myths About Recycling, “Going Green”, and Sustainable Living, Debunked

There is a lot of misinformation out there about sustainable living and “going green.” Many of the efforts that people take to mitigate their environmental impact, though noble in sentiment, are actually fueling the overuse of energy and waste of resources. There may be hope though; there are steps we can take to reduce waste and because sustainable living is actually highly cost-effective, we can hopefully pad our pockets while accomplishing something worthwhile.

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5 Money Myths You Should Stop Believing

5 Money Myths You Should Stop Believing – The tenets of personal finance are simple enough to grasp: earn money, save money, track spending and invest wisely, but things can also get really complicated. That’s because “personal finance” encompasses literally hundreds of interrelated topics, each requiring significant study to even discuss intelligently. The topic of Tax itself is so complex that practitioners have to specialize in subsections of the tax code.

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How to move long distance and the true cost of moving

How To Move Long Distance & The True Cost of Moving

You have a lot of options to get your stuff from one place to another and from what we found, there is no perfect option. Doing everything yourself is a monumental task but having someone else handle things can become expensive quickly. In the end, we opted for a hybrid moving model, wherein we handled some tasks ourselves and hired out others. A lot of what you will decide will depend on how fast you want to move and what you are personally willing or capable of accomplishing alone.

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What Your Real Estate Team Should Be Doing for You When You’re Buying or Selling a House

The best real estate teams are comprised of an experienced buyer’s agent, an organized lender or mortgage broker and you, the motivated buyer. This power-triad sets the table for the quickest and easiest real estate acquisitions. In a seller’s market, if your real estate agent can’t get ahold of the lender, you will lose properties to faster buyers.

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How To Calculate The Value of Your Job

How To Calculate the True Value of Your Job (and Why You Always Should)

Most people don’t make well-informed decisions; they mean to, but they don’t. In general, people are much more likely to make decisions based on speculation, their feelings or a hunch, than to base decisions on hard data. Even well-meaning people who set out to be informed, can get bogged down by the sheer preponderance of information (and misinformation) they have to wade through.

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pros and cons of paying down your home loan fast

The Pros and Cons of Rapidly Paying Down Your Mortgage

The idea that typical American home owner should pay down mortgage debt rapidly is nothing new. The sentiment certainly makes sense at face value; by eliminating your mortgage payment you free up a huge chunk of cash. You also no longer have to pay the bank interest, which must feel incredibly liberating. However, there are also significant problems with strategies that prioritize rapidly paying down your mortgage, namely “opportunity loss,” which complicate the issue.

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How to access your retirement funds early and without penalty

How to Access Your Retirement Money Early, Without Penalty

How to access retirement funds early, without being penalized. Investing for your retirement can actually be pretty easy to get right. However, the rules governing retirement accounts are often anything but straightforward. In my previous role at the investment firm I work for, I assisted hundreds of alternative asset investors working with “self-directed” IRA accounts. These investors are typically savvier than the average 401k holder, even they are often unclear about the rules determining contributions, and perhaps more importantly, how they can access funds early and without being penalized.

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5 Tax-Sheltered Investments That You Didn’t Know About

Most casual investors aren’t aware that they could own real estate in an IRA, HSA and even some 401Ks. Not just the ability to access real estate through REITS, IRAs can actually hold tangible rental real estate. Though typically riskier (and demanding more time and expertise) than a broadly diversified mutual fund portfolio, owning rental properties, private equity, or even a business within your retirement accounts is a secret that…

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10 Money Habits That Will Save You Money in the Long Run

These 10 Money Habits Will Make You More Money in the Long Run

At Valuist we often put broad financial topics under the microscope to provide in-depth analysis and, hopefully, determine their inherent value. But sometimes the most impactful articles are the ones that provide easy-to-digest tips on a range of pertinent topics. So, for this post, I am going to summarize some of the most important money lessons that I have learned and covered for Valuist.

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