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What exactly is a Revocable Living Trust?

admin — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 06:01:59 +0000

A Revocable Living Trust, also simply called a Living Trust, is a legal document that is created by an individual, called a Trustmaker, to hold and own the Trustmaker’s assets, which are in turn invested and spent for the benefit of the Trustmaker.

This covers three phases of a Trustmaker’s life:
1. While the Trustmaker is alive and and in good health
2. If the Trustmaker becomes mentally incapacitated thus making him unable to decide for himself/herself.
3. After the Trustmaker dies.

Phase One of a Revocable Living Trust: The Trustmaker is Alive and Well

If the Trustmaker is good health and sound mind, the trust agreement will have specific rules allowing the Trustmaker to manage, invest, and spend the trust assets as he see fit. Thus, the Trustmaker will go about business as usual with regard to assets. The Trustmaker will also be able to use his or her own Social Security Number as the taxpayer identification number for the trust and file income taxes on IRS form 1040 instead of form 1041.

The next part of the article will cover phase two of a Revocable Living Trust.

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Basics of a permanent portfolio fund

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:37:23 +0000

The permanent portfolio fund is a type of investment that is made to offer a solid performance whatever of what is going on in the market. Here are the basics of permanent portfolio funds and what they have to offer you as an investor.

Permanent Portfolio Fund

The idea for permanent portfolio funds that you have a mutual fund that could withstand any market conditions. This was accomplished by investing in many different types of securities. Putting emphasis on investing in things that you could find outside of the stock market.

A permanent portfolio school of thought was to invest in an equal proportion of stocks, bonds, cash, and gold. Therefore, the original investment mix was 25% of each type of investment. In today’s conditions the current composition of the fund is 25% precious metals, 10% Swiss franc bonds, 15% real estate and natural resource stocks, 15% aggressive growth stocks, and 35% in government securities such as T-bills. In this way investors funds regardless of what happened in the economy feel more secure. Although with this fund you have to expect a slow and steady growth curve. This type of fund has been proven to gain value steadily over time.

Investing: Permanent Portfolio fund Investment
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Six Traits to avoid in order to become a better investor

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:29:35 +0000

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. Despite all their knowledge, they’ll continue working full time just to pay the bills instead of living the life they dream. By learning to recognize these personal obstacles you can overcome them. What are they?

1. Fear
2. Cynicism
3. Laziness
4. Bad habits
5. Arrogance
6. Disappointment

Follow-up for these six bad traits will be posted soon.

What exactly is a Revocable Living Trust? A Revocabl

Mortgage Refinance Tips

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:46:17 +0000

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.

The credit score that you have will be pulled out when you start the application process for a mortgage refinance. You will need to submit documentation to support your application and you will probably be asked for more documents as you move towards closing the application process.
1. Get your documents ready. By being prepared, you are able to close your application process at just the right time, such as when rates hit a low.

2. Make sure your credit rating is in good shape. Simple charges such as a late fee can pull down your credit score. Using credit reports to fix problems with your credit as soon as possible.

3. It doesn’t make sense to hope for an economic downturn. Rates could fall some more, or could rise just a bit. But remember, these days, rates are very good so don’t wait for another collapse to make your move.

4. Pick a rate early. Know what rate makes sense for you early so you know what rate you should decide to refinance your loan so you know if it is worth it, financially.

5. Waiting for rates to move down further can backfire on you if the market suddenly swings up. Stick to your decision. If you have made your choice to refinance, make your move on it.

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Basics in investing

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:24:10 +0000

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

Many of the commonly-used approaches to financial planning take long-term average rates of return and then make the assumption that you will get that return every year. Say you build an investment portfolio that you think will have an average return of 8.5%. Just because the average is 8.5%, it should be obvious to anyone that has been alive the last 12 months that this does not mean we will get 8.5% every year.

While this may seem obvious, the implications are huge.

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Basics of a permanent portfolio fund The perman
Investing: Permanent Portfolio fund Investment

How to profit from your passion

admin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 06:28:34 +0000

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

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Obama’s mutual fund

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 14:50:06 +0000

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.

The fund’s Top 10 holdings, according to the Vanguard site are:

1. JP Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500)
2. Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500)
3. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500)
4. Intel (INTC, Fortune 500)
5. Qualcomm (QCOM, Fortune 500)
6. McDonald’s (MCD, Fortune 500)
7. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500)
8. Amgen (AMGN, Fortune 500)
9. CVS Caremark (CVS, Fortune 500)
10. Gilead (GILD, Fortune 500)

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Basics of a permanent portfolio fund The perman

How to invest during a financial crisis – The Jim Rogers way

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:06:44 +0000

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.

You can go broke diversifying. Ask anyone who’s diversified in the last three years. They’ve lost money. Nonprofessionals are always jumping around, thinking they have to do something. If they have a big success, they think they need another one right away. That’s when hubris sets in at its worst. That’s when people really should go to the beach. It happens to me too.

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