Investing is hard, it's nearly impossible when you're starting out. It's so hard to understand what's a good investment and what's not let alone be able to decipher what to look for in a good mutual fund. What even is that anyway? If you're reading this, you're probably like I was when I first started, completely clueless about mutual funds. It's super confusing, there are thousands of them and all of them insist they're beating the market so it's like, what're you even gonna do with that? You get analysis paralysis and give up before you even get started. What is a mutual fund? A mutual fund is a collection of stocks or bonds or securities or even short-term debt that is wrapped up into one bundle that you can invest in. By investing in it, you don't own the entire fund yourself. Your money is collected along with other investors who wish to participate in the fund. The more people invest in the fund, the more shares are created to allow people to participate …
Investing
Is Cryptocurrency a Good Investment?
Is cryptocurrency a good investment? That's a great question. It seems the past couple of years a lot of people have become obsessed with this new concept of cryptocurrency. Even if they don't completely understand it, people will literally bet the house on it. Best of luck to that guy. People get so wrapped up in the moment just because the value of Bitcoin or whatever hot new coin there is at the time is rising in price, they'll fail to recognize they're literally gambling. What is cryptocurrency? It's basically a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security purposes. That's it. Nothing more. That's literally all it is in its most basic form. It's nothing more than a virtual version of dollar bills. There's obviously more to it that I plan on writing about in another post (i.e. smart contracts, lack of transfer fees, quick remittance, etc.). But, the currency isn't backed by anything as of right now (i.e. the dollar, gold, etc.), and there's …
Which Mutual Funds to Invest in for 2019
I always love these titles. You go on any stock market-related site or subscribe to their magazine and you're bound to come across "The Best Mutual Funds with the Highest Dividend Rates This Year" or "The Best ETFs this Summer to Invest in". It's so dumb and it's all recycled material anyway. There's hardly any such thing as the best mutual fund to invest in. Especially when you consider 99% of actively managed US equity funds underperform. When you look at it that way, you figure what's the point there's no hope in putting my money with anyone, I'd rather have it under a mattress. And who could blame you when you read 99% of mutual funds aside from the ones included in that statistic in the article ended up closing up shop, and aren't even taken account for in the statistics you read about, because financial companies know you technically don't have to consider mutual funds that are no longer in existence. The thing is, most people don't truly understand the difference …
Investing for Beginners
I don’t know about you, but when I ventured out on my own trying to learn about investing and how the stock market works, I was super intimidated. After all, only 23% of millennials prefer investing in the stock market to cash. When I saw stats like that, it only reconfirmed my belief it was just about impossible to figure this stuff out. My parents used to work on Wall Street when they were my age and sometimes I’d ask what they did and they’d begin talking about futures, swaps, the bond market, par, etc., etc. and I’d be like how the hell do you even understand anything it’s a completely foreign language! It seems like a scam right? All these ridiculous terms that even some traders don’t fully comprehend. Just read Michael Lewis’ hilarious book Liar’s Poker to see for yourself how much these guys ripped people off. But the reality is, you don’t need to know any of that garbage. It’s all fluff specifically intended to confuse people like you and me to take …
The Dow Has the Largest One-Day Drop in History – How to Take Advantage of the Market
(Full disclosure, I planned way too ahead in my posts when I was starting this blog, so this post is obviously very dated. Oops.) If any of you had been paying attention earlier this year, you would have seen the Dow dropped 666 points on Friday, February 2nd, 2018. A lot of people were concerned it was the beginning of a correction or even worse, a recession. Personally, I thought it was a bad omen the reincarnation of the devil himself, Tom Brady, was gonna win the MVP of the Big Game. Apparently, it was because of some unrelated football stuff instead. Go figure. And then to top it all off, the Dow had its largest one day drop in history today, February 5th, 2018! It dropped a whopping 1175.21 points. That's 4.6% of the entire index, just from one day. The S&P 500 index also dropped 4.1% for today. As a Giants fan, if you ask me, it's because the Eagles won. I mean, just look at this. If you didn't know the result of the game or didn't even know there was even a game going …
Is $1 Million Enough to Retire?
People highly underestimate how much they really need to save for retirement. Apparently, 40% are at risk of going broke in retirement! I think this is especially applicable to those in the FIRE category who think they can literally retire on $1 million and not have to work another day in their lives by being as frugal as they possibly can. Even if they believe they can get by with a part-time job, it can be potentially very dangerous. Unless you have an extremely profitable side gig like blogging, it’ll probably be tough to make $1 million stretch as long as you would like. The problems vary from being overly optimistic to not thinking about your future self to something so basic as not accounting for inflation. Related posts: 71% of People Don't Realize They are Paying Fees in Their 401k Plan: Here's How to Take Action Prevent Yourself from Overspending: Open a Savings Account Today Save Your Money and Quit Going to the Gym The One Habit Eating Your …
Monthly Net Worth Update #4
Hey guys, welcome to my monthly net worth update. For those of you new to the blog, I provide updates every month on how my net worth is progressing. I personally always love it when I see other bloggers either post updates on their net worth, monthly income from their blogs or both. Without it, I probably wouldn't have had the confidence or motivation to give this whole blog thing a try. The other personal finance blogs really motivated me to give this a shot and see what happens regardless of the end result. What's the worst that could really happen? Get published? Find a job at a media company doing something I actually enjoy for once? Sounds good to me. I ultimately wanted a platform where I could share what I’ve learned over the past few years and track my net worth to make sure I’m always going in the right direction, sticking with my principles. And who knows, maybe along the way one of you guys will teach me a better way to approach investing. But for now, this is the …
