Overcome the Six Obstacles
Knowing how to manage risk is one of the prerequisites of financial literacy. Once you’ve fulfilled all the prerequisites and become fully literate, does financial freedom follow? Not necessarily. Certain personal obstacles can prevent even the most financially literate from developing abundant wealth. Continue reading Six Traits to avoid in order to become a better investor

If you have a mortgage and you would like to refinance it, here is a list of simple tips to help you go through the refinance process. Continue reading Mortgage Refinance Tips

There are many misconceptions in investing; whether in stocks or bonds or in building an investment portfolio in general. Carl Richards at Behavior Gap has an interesting article in getrichslowly.org

Continue reading Basics in investing

1. Redeploying your passion in a hungrier market. Do what you love in an area where there’s high demand.

2. Refocusing and mining the most lucrative micro-markets. Sometimes the solution is to narrow your market, to focus on doing something valuable for a select group of people.

3. Exploiting gaps in the information needed to excel at an activity. Fields argues that one way to succeed at doing what you love is to provide information that nobody else offers, or to offer it in a way that others don’t.

4. Exploiting gaps in education. Beyond just providing information, some people can profit by directly teaching others.

5. Exploiting gaps in gear or merchandise. Using this path, you turn your passion into a product. You “build a better mousetrap”, so to speak.

6. Exploiting gaps in community. People value networks, and if you’re the first or best to create one devoted to your subject, you can become the leader in the field. Fields mentions Ladies Who Launch as an example of taking a passion for community-building and it into a career.

7. Exploiting gaps in the way a pursuit is provided. The final path is to make it easier for people to do what you love (and what they love).

Source: Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love

The vast majority of his mutual fund holdings are in the Vanguard FTSE Social Index fund (VFTSX).

According to the Vanguard site, the fund consists of mostly U.S. large and mid-sized companies that meet certain social and environmental criteria. The index tracks the performance of the FTSE4Good US Select.
Continue reading Obama’s mutual fund

An interesting interview with Jim Rogers is up at Businessweek.com

So you reject the advice about diversified portfolios?

Diversification is something that stock brokers came up with to protect themselves, so they wouldn’t get sued [for making bad investment choices for clients]. Henry Ford never diversified, Bill Gates didn’t diversify. The way to get rich is to put your eggs in one basket, but watch that basket very carefully. And make sure you have the right basket.
Continue reading How to invest during a financial crisis – The Jim Rogers way