Good Money Investment

First the Disclaimer: This is a thought-provoking article that draws upon real world examples, articles, books and websites that are readily available to the public. This article is not intended to offer investment advice. Any actions that you take in the market place should be the result of your own financial education and consultation with a licensed professional.

This is the conclusion of my 3 part series that began with Home Ownership: The Biggest Financial Scam of the Twentieth Century and was followed up by parts one and two of The Stock Market: The Second Biggest Financial Scam of the Twentieth Century.

What is Cashflow? Cashflow simply put is the flow of money. Positive cashflow is the revenue or income that a person receives from a job, investment or business. The majority of people derive their cashflow from their jobs. To the extent that they come to derive cashflow from investments and or businesses is the extent to which they will become financially free when their working years are over. Negative cashflow is the revenue that a person loses due to an investment or business.

Most people are taught to invest for capital gains rather than positive cashflow. Investment success depends on appreciation of the underlying “asset” rather than income production. This is the basis for “investing” in a primary residence or the stock market for wealth creation. Yet, success of the capital gains investment strategy is by no means assured. No one can guaranty that an asset will appreciate in value, despite the tendency to quote historical gains as justification for an investment today. The current housing and market crises highlight the fallacy of depending on capital gains to create wealth. The housing crisis alone will destroy billions of dollars of personal wealth. From the October 25, 2007 Joint Economic Committee report: (more…)

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When you think of diversification, do you think it means purchasing stocks in more than one company? Or do you think it means something completely different? For those new to saving, diversification could very well mean “more than one company” but the stock market crash of the 1920’s should tell us otherwise.

Placing all your money in the stock market isn’t the best decision for your financial future and here’s why: Let’s assume you placed all your money in the stock market three years ago–in four companies to be exact. This morning three of those four companies filed for bankruptcy. Where is your money now? Gone. For you, it might as well have been another stock market crash, as you have just lost the bulk of your savings.

Playing the stock market is scary enough without having to worry about losing everything you have invested. That is why diversification is so important. Diversification means you place your money in many different mediums, not all in the same one. Diversification is a way to lower the risk involved in investing your hard-earned money and although there is no guarantee when investing money in any medium, diversification is the closest thing to that guarantee. (more…)

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You have seen the promotions, usually online about you can start a home business absolutely free. Simply register, click on the sign me up button and you can start making money within 10 minutes. Although some of these promotions are becoming more realistic, knowing that precious few will start making money in ten minutes. Now, they claim you can start making money by the end of the day. In most respects, they are not lies, they business can be put in your name almost immediately, but how soon you start making money will depend on many factors, and in most cases the answer is just short of never.

First of all, be realistic. Who is going to simply hand over the reigns of a successful business to a total stranger for free? That being said, the offers for a free online, home-based business are real and in some cases offer the very real possibility that you can make some money. However, as in all things, you get what you pay for and when you are given something free of charge, you can’t really complain about how well it works. Before accepting a free business proposal, consider what it will take to bring customers to your specific site.

No internet business on the planet can make money without customers and in order to have customers, you have to have traffic. There are a number of ways to entice traffic to your website, but once they are there, the site is going to have to convince them to spend their money. So, How do you get traffic to your site? You have to pay for it, of course. (more…)

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