A Penny Saved

After looking at it, it’s a little bit like American Idol on e-Trade. For as little as $10 plus transaction cost, you can invest in a band.

The Amsterdam-based company allows fans — or what Sellaband calls “believers” — to invest in unsigned acts in $10 increments. Once an act reaches $50,000, it is given access to a recording studio and professional production, song-writing and marketing expertise.

Appearantly, it’s gaining popularity as there is a big banner on the front page as of this writing celebrating the first band to reach $50k. Investors in that band will get a free copy of the CD, a cut of the revenue, and a share of all advertising revenue generated on Sellaband.com from the band’s downloads.

All investments are held in escrow until a band reaches $50,000 and can be moved from one band to another until the band reaches 50k.

Begin investing in Bands today at SellaBand!

I’ve talked before about how solid of an investment Gold can be.  I’ve also pointed out a nifty place where you can buy gold at goldmoney.com.

Well, here’s another nifty place.  BullionVault.com.  It works on pretty much the same principle of GoldMoney.com.  You buy and trade on gold that you own, but is stored in a safe at one of three lloyds strongholds.  Bullionvault takes a small percentage(0.08%) commission on each transaction and charges $4 a month for accounts with less than $40,000 in gold.

If you’ve got the money and you’re interested in gold investment, give GoldMoney.com and BullionVault.com a look.

Technorati Tags: gold, gold investing, gold investment, invest in gold, bullionvault.com, goldmoney.com

Money magazine put out a article called 25 rules to grow rich by.  There are some great tips in there, but a few stuck out to me.

7. To figure out what percentage of your money should be in stocks, subtract your age from 120.

I think that it’s important to realize that this number has gotten more risk heavy in recent years.  This is in part from the lifestyles that people are living.  The more expensive lifestyles require a little more money, and as a result, a more risk heavy and consequently, more reward heavy investment schedule.

8. Invest no more than 10% of your portfolio in your company stock - or any single companies stock for that matter.

Just ask the employees of Enron if this was a good idea or not. Being that heavily invested into one company can make your portfolio very shaky if the company becomes less than stable.

19. Anyone who calls or emails you asking for your social security number or information about your bank or credit card account is a scam artist.

There would be significantly less ID fraud if people would just accept this one little fact.  Too many people are still naive enough to trust anyone who calls and says that they are from a bank, credit union, or from the government.

22. Resist the urge to buy the latest computer or other gadget as soon as it comes out. Wait three months and the price will be lower.

Or consider buying it on eBay.  Many manufacturers sell their overstock on eBay at reduced prices that can be way below retail.

Those are just the ones that really stood out to me.  There are 21 other rules that are just as important and may be more important to you depending on your situation.  It’s a relatively quick read, so head on over and give it a look.

Technorati Tags: rule, money rules, investment, ebay, stock, id fraud

Investor Dictionary defines Passive Income as follows:

There are three types of income - earned, portfolio and passive income. Most types of passive income are derived from real estate/property, while other types of passive income are derived from royalties from patents or license agreements.

An income stream falling into this category, is one where money is received usually on a regular basis, where no additional effort has taken place. This does not mean no effort at all. Most passive income streams require great effort to start with.

Some examples: Interest Income paid from bank deposits. Rental income from real estate/property. Royalties from writing a book.

Unless you have massive bank deposits, you most likely aren’t going to be making much passive income that way. There are very few of us who will ever write a book, so that one is out as well. Rental income is one of the most well known of passive incomes. Again, it takes money to get into a position to make rental income. Investments in stocks and bonds could be counted as passive income if the the stock pays a dividend. Also, any increase in worth of the stock or bond could be counted as passive income.

What other ways can a person make passive income? I make a small amount here through advertisements, but not nearly enough to create much wealth from. How do you make your passive income?

Technorati Tags: passive income, income, wealth

My 1st Million at 33 has a great article entitled List of stocks with dividend yield of up to 18.6%. It doesn’t look like it’s been updated recently as a quick check of the stocks shows significantly different yields, but many are still above 10%.  There’s a few other diamonds in there as well, but I’ve always thought that if you’re going to buy stock for the long term, the higher the dividend yield is the better.  There’s more to it than that of course, but that is certainly a deciding factor.

Remember that Dividend income is passive income and the more of it you can get the better.  Also, be sure to read the whole article at 1st million as it has some very valuable advice and tips.

Technorati Tags: passive income, dividend yield, dividend, income

I’ve been a member of Prosper very nearly since Day 1.  I was a beta tester of the product so maybe it was more like Day -53?  In any case, I opened a group on Prosper almost as soon as it was allowed but never managed to get many members.  And what members I did have were inactive.  So, I’ve closed my group.

What I want is a new group to join.  I don’t necessarily want to be the leader.  I’d like to find a group that has some Money Bloggers in it and has a rather large number of members.

I know that there are a few of you out there that actively use Prosper and I’m assuming that you have groups that you belong to.  Please mention the name or give the link in the comments to this post.  I’ll take a look at them and pick one.

Technorati Tags: prosper, prosper group, lending, social lending, leader

I recently finished reading Todd Lipscomb’s “Achieving Prosperity“.

The advice and methods that Todd gives in the book are quite good.  He tries to keep everything simple and remind the reader many times over that the only tried and true way to becoming prosperous is by long term ethical investment.  As many get quick books as there are out there, I was refreshed to find that this was not one of them.

I must admit that I was a bit disappointed with the book as there were numerous grammatical errors throughout.  Obviously, as a self-published book, you should expect more than normal, but there were entirely too many.

If you can get around the errors, the underlying principles that Todd lays out for the reader are sound principles.  He doesn’t get into very deep detail with any of it, instead pushing the reader to explore, discover and learn the subject in order to become an educated investor.

You can read the full review at thatedeguy.

Technorati Tags: investment, investor, achieving prosperity, prosperity

The Dow closed at a new high(or at least close) yesterday.  Of course this brings out the buzzards with their ever familiar cat calls.  “Bubble,  Buuuuubbbbllleeee,” They say.  If they are traders, they’re selling and maybe even selling short.  And there is a slight chance that they are right.

You see, the Dow, just like anything else has cycles.  Three years ago, the Dow had sunk pretty far from it’s all-time high.  That all time high was reached three years before the bottom was reached.  Are you seeing the pattern?  Three years.  If it follows the pattern, we should see it hit begin to decline and then hit bottom in 2009.

Does that mean sell off all of your stock and hold it in a high interest savings account?  Not if you’re a long term investor.

This is where dollar-cost averaging comes into play.  As prices decline, you buy more stock.  Each time you buy more stock at a price lower than before, your average cost of purchase goes down.  In the long run, when the market comes back up, your profit margin on any potential sales goes up with it because of the lower stock purchase price.

So, don’t run from a declining market. Run towards it and begin buying.

I feel that I should mention that I’m not a trained finance professional and that any advice found here should be double checked with a financial professional before you do anything.

Technorati Tags: stocks, dow, dow jones, stock, dollar-cost averaging

Much like any other precious metal, Gold is also an investment medium.  An investment in Gold can mean many things and can help weather the storm of a recession.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the price of Gold never goes down.  It does.  Just not as often as the price of your current favorite corporate stock.  The graph at left shows the price of gold over the last 30 years.

As you can see, after hitting a peak of 615 in 1980, the price of Gold dropped down to a rather steady 350-420 an ounce.  A quick drop down beginning in 1996 ended in 2001 and now the price of gold is over 600 an ounce again.

It goes without saying that investing in Gold can be fairly lucrative.  Swings of several hundred dollars over just a few years could make for a tidy profit.  It also makes a fairly good long term investment.

So, how do you invest in Gold?  There are several ways.  You can actually buy Gold and keep it in a safe deposit box.  There are also several other ways that include buying stock in gold producing companies, and even stock in Gold itself.

The National Mining Association has an excellent resource on investing in Gold.  There’s a table of the historic gold price that dates back to 1833, and a very informative section on ways to invest in gold.

Ah Gold.  That precious shiny metal that everyone seems to love.  Whether you like your gold in it’s… ahem… gold color or it’s white version, whether in 14 karat, or 24, you’re bound to think that $600 an ounce is a little steep.  It also probably doesn’t bode well for your wife’s christmas present this year.
Seriously though.  Gold is a precious metal.  That means it’s in a limited supply.  Anyone who has ever taken a basic economics course knows the idea behind the law of supply and demand.  As more and more people find ways to afford gold and more and more products use it(it makes a great electrical conductor) the supply dwindles and the price will go up.

Will it stay there?  I don’t know.  I left my crystal ball at home today.  What is for sure is that the demand isn’t going to go anywhere.  Only a major depression would even make people think about not using as much gold as they do.

Investing in Gold is and always will be a great investment.  Some years it’s a really good long term investment(which I recommend) and other years a fair amount can be made by active trading the commodity.

Be careful though.  I’m not a trained financial analyst and I’m certainly not someone you should be using as the be all of financial advice.  Talk to your certified advisor before you risk all your money on something.

Technorati Tags: gold, gold futures, gold commodity, trade gold, gold ounce