I have historically been a proponent of buying the “dip.” That is, purchasing stock more often when the market is distressed. I found that some methods of buying the dip provide better returns than the more commonly recommended strategy of, “dollar cost averaging.” However, lump sum investing typically beats both strategies.
Read MoreHow 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..
Read MoreThe 5 Best Money Moves to Make When Inflation Is High
In late 2021, consumer prices rose 6.2% in the United States, compared to the previous twelve months, marking the highest inflation rate in over 30 years. Let’s take a closer look at how that figure breaks down.
Read MoreThese 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.
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreThe 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
Read MoreReal 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.
Read More15 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.
Read MoreThe 5 Most Tax-Efficient Investments (And Which Investments to Avoid in Taxable Accounts)
In my position as a tax compliance specialist in an investment firm, I actually spend a lot of time thinking about the tax implications of investments. So, I wanted to share some of the insights I’ve gleaned over the years and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of some of the most tax efficient investments.
Read More5 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.
Read MoreHow 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.
Read MoreWhat 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.
Read MoreWhy Excellent Clients Should Demand Excellent Service
The best businesses have always prioritized their customers above all else. But over the last few decades, as the improvement of the internet has allowed a lot of the competition
Read MoreHow 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.
Read More5 Reasons Why Dividend Investment Strategies Are Overrated
Dividend investment strategies are too often touted as, ‘easy passive income.’ These strategies have been around forever but have become extremely popular on social media, among beginner investors. The appeal
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