How to Invest Money Vs Where to Invest for 2015 and Beyond

It is one thing to have a handle on where to invest; but quite another to have confidence in how to invest money for 2015 and beyond. The big difference lies in asset allocation, or how to invest money across the asset classes. The “how to” will depend on your financial objectives, comfort level and the markets in 2015 and beyond.There are 3 or 4 basic asset classes, and we’ll start with where to invest in stocks. Stocks are the growth engine of your portfolio, and most investors should concentrate on large-cap diversified stock funds that pay dividends of about 2%. This way you’ll own a small piece of a large portfolio of America’s largest, well-known companies. For the vast majority of Americans with longer-term financial goals (like retirement) this is how to invest money for growth without excessive risk.To keep market risks lower stay away from low-cap (small-company) stocks and funds; and growth stocks and funds that pay little or no dividends. With the stock market hitting all-time highs, this is not where to invest for 2015, especially if riskier stocks don’t fit your comfort level. Down-side risk is rising for 2015 and beyond, and a market reversal will likely hit the smaller-company and high-growth sector hardest. And don’t increase your asset allocation to stocks in general. That’s not the success formula for how to invest money when prices are high.For most of the people most of the time, a 50% to 60% asset allocation to stocks is commonly recommended as the standard answer to how to invest money for longer-term goals. If retirement is approaching, or this just doesn’t fit your comfort level, a lower asset allocation is your answer to how to invest for 2015 and beyond – for greater peace of mind. If you would sleep better with an asset allocation of 40% or less in stocks, go for it.The second asset class is bonds, and when held in conjunction with stocks they add balance to your portfolio and offset risk. Few individual investors have either the experience or the inclination to sort through bond issues. That’s why professionally managed bond funds are the average investor’s answer to where to invest for 2015 and beyond. With today’s high bond prices (due to recent record-low interest rates) you’ll want to be careful here in terms of exactly where and how to invest money.The answer to how to invest money here: avoid the temptation of higher dividends offered by high-yield (junk) and long-term bond funds. Junk funds pay more due to the low quality of bond issues held and the risk associated with default (of interest payments and/or principal). But the real risk for 2015 and beyond is interest rate risk, and long-term bond funds are high risk in that department; and are definitely not where to invest money in bond funds at this time. Your best bet for risk vs. dividend income: go with medium to high quality, intermediate-term bond funds for 2015, 2016 and beyond.For many years now the financial industry has suggested an asset allocation of about 40% or so in bonds as a rule of thumb for how to investment money for longer-term goals. As we look down the road to 2015, 2016 and beyond keep in mind that there is a bond market and it works much like the stock market. Bond prices and bond fund values fluctuate and usually less so than stock prices and stock fund values. If interest rates rise significantly, bonds and bond funds will lose money. Long-term bond funds will be hardest hit. That’s the way bonds work, and why it is crucial that you know how to invest money in them for 2015 and beyond.If high bond prices and an asset allocation of 40% don’t fit your comfort level, go with a lower asset allocation to bond funds. Now the question is how to invest the rest of your money if your asset allocation to stocks plus bonds adds up to less than 100%. The third asset class is often referred to as just “cash”, or safe liquid investments. As to where to invest for safety and easy access to your money consider a money market fund. As interest rates rise money market fund dividends automatically follow suit. Plus, you can easily move money from fund to fund within your fund family.If you are more adventuresome consider adding the fourth asset class, called alternative investments, to your asset allocation. These are your alternatives for how to invest money to make higher returns in 2015 if the stock market tanks. Examples include: real estate, gold, and natural resources like oil. The good news is that there are specialty stock funds that specialize in these sectors, so that’s where to invest to keep things simple. While stocks and bonds have become pricy, both gold and oil have dropped in price. If either starts to look cheap, that could spell opportunity in 2015, 2016 or beyond.

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Different Credit Card Debt Solutions

The tidal wave of consumer debt accumulating from unchecked personal credit card debt threatens to overwhelm our nation even as the lenders themselves reap the benefits. Americans have grown addicted to spending without care for their own income and budgets are something our grandparents used to employ. As a nation, we have almost lost track of the notion of saving for the future – aside, of course, from the exceedingly wealthy who no longer bother with banks within the United States – and our economy suffers as a result. More to the point, our citizens suffer as well from the drop in property values and rise in unemployment that are direct results of the consumer debt explosion. Credit card bills are killing this country, and it is past time that we do something about it.It is more than understandable how this all happened. Just turn on the television: every other commercial advertises either the untold benefits from plastic purchasing (The sheen! The class climbing! The convenience!) or the consumer credit counseling surgical practicalities (The desperation! The condescension! The oh so marketable convenience!). Somehow, along the way, the average American household managed to rack up around eight thousand dollars in unsecured debt almost wholly from credit card usage. The past decade, as home appraisals skyrocketed and well paying jobs could be plucked from the vine, there was not much reason to worry. This was the American millennium, after all, and things would never change.Somehow, an unprecedented period of economic expansion came to an end, and the real estate bubble finally burst. And, more to the point, a good number of borrowers found that they were having trouble making even the minimum payments upon their various credit cards. Who knew? The tyranny of unsecured debt has at last seeped into the household accounts of most of our citizenry and the effects are everywhere. Beyond the new budgeting, though, and the tightening of belts, families need to take a close and educated look at their credit card problems and see what can be done. There are a number of debt managements solutions that have arisen in the past few years purely to deal with such situations although the simplest debt relief is the most annoying: a halt to purchases. Serious attention paid to expenses and savings accounts are the foundation of any lasting credit card debt relief.Above all else, families must stop spending without regard to the future. Heads of household should collect all credit cards and, while not necessarily setting them aflame, at least keep them tightly locked away from the grasp of misguided purchases. One of the greatest problems facing consumers is this culture of commercialism. Credit cards really are an addiction, and otherwise ordinary people will find themselves driven to buy something they do not really want simply because they are depressed or worried. This is precisely the sort of action that the credit card companies are counting upon. This is the reason that the credit card companies offer new accounts at rock bottom rates to borrowers just exiting Chapter 7 debt elimination bankruptcy even if the borrowers successfully washed away debts owed to the same credit card companies. They figure the borrowers will be all too likely to resume past spending habits – this time, without hope of bankruptcy protection for near a decade – and, more’s the pity, the credit card companies tend to be correct.Obviously (as you would hope, actually) credit card debts are dealt with according to their debtors’ credit ratings. The Fair Isaacs Corporation devised the FICO credit scoring system more than fifty years ago expressly to guide lending institutions toward equitable treatment of borrowers regardless of rage, gender, income, or, really, anything beyond the borrowers’ history of payment and capacity of credit. To this day, the exact equations remain a mystery – and they grow more complex by the moment – but the overall methods remain a sorta miraculous triumph of democratic capitalism. No matter their earnings, consumers that maintain excellent FICO ratings will always be able to garner credit balances well above what they should ordinarily deserve.Unfortunately, that availability of credit card debt leads untutored applicants toward significant debts they have no hope of soon paying off. At this point, debt management solutions are necessary. They come in a few different flavors, but all of them contain severe disadvantages. The ideal debt management solution is – yeah, that’s right, we know – to never get yourself in debt. Careful budgeting, spending only when needed, cutting out wasteful expenses, and all proper household financial techniques will do more to prevent credit card debt from overtaking consumers’ lives than a string of limos carrying debt professionals. Alas, since you are already reading this article, we are going to presume it is too late to apply preventive measures, but there are still steps available to successfully deal with the credit card debt problems as they stand.As your credit card companies will explain (along with many, many other credit card companies that you have never heard of), the easiest solution would be to just transfer all existing credit card debts onto a single account. Presuming your credit rating has not dipped to fraudulent levels, virtually every credit card company should be eager to take on your existing debts for initial rates nudging zero percent. At the same time, every representative of every credit card will urge such a change in debt and mollify the borrower by insisting they will pay off the balances well before the adjustable interest rates would rise.Of course, the very reason most borrowers are in this state is precisely because they cannot guarantee they could repay their debts and the last thing such debtors need is more capacity to spend. Remember, not only are the borrowers consolidating their credit card debts upon a single card risking the interest rates rising to over twenty percent should they fail to repay their obligations within a specific time, but they are also allowing themselves more space for foolish purchases upon the cards that remain. It is not a double edged sword; it is a ticking time bomb. The number of credit card victims genuinely served by credit card consolidation within credit cards could be counted… well, it would resemble that initial rate offered.For some borrowers, debt consolidation loans that are not themselves tied to credit cards may make a bit of sense. Unfortunately, in order to get any sort of decent interest rate, these sort of loans tend to be secured. Low interest unsecured credit accounts do exist, but, alas, they tend to only be offered to those without credit or income issues and tend to be only above six figures. Secured debts are almost always available, witness the current sub prime mortgage lending crisis, but most debtors haven’t much significant collateral to offer beyond their own primary residence. In other words, debt consolidation loans may as well be considered home equity loans, and this creates a whole new sort of problems.Whether you first think of a consolidation loan walking through your bank and noticing the ever present advertisements or listening to the sweet sounding pitch of a telephone salesman, there is no worse way to rid yourself of credit card debts. To be sure, the rates will be lower – they would have to be – and the payments, stretched to ten or thirty or however many years, will surely be much lower. At the same point, though, the eventual money paid for that original debt will be exponentially higher considering the wonders of compound interest, and, as with debt consolidation through other credit cards, this still leaves open other credit accounts without penalty or reason to curtail destructive spending habits.There is, as every borrower knows, one worse option when eliminating credit card debts. Despite the legislative carnage wrought the past few years, Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection does still exist as a palliative, but anyone who has seen friends or family suffer the effects knows just how little Chapter 7 bankruptcies could not consider this actual protection to any borrower’s life. Above all else, the 2005 congressional alteration of the United States bankruptcy code effectively forced anyone thinking about declaring bankruptcy to surrender all assets (even cherished items handed down through generations) to threat of seizure by government authorities for court auction so as to repay the original lenders for a trifle of their actual worth. Nowadays, the court trustee must consider the filer’s assets as according to replacement value rather than, as formerly, the resale value. To fully imagine the distinction, look around your living room and imagine the worth of the items when sold at estate sale compared to the cost should they be purchased at mall stores absent haggling. The Internal Revenue Service was heavily involved in the passage of this legislation, if that needs to be said.One can always talk directly to representatives of the credit card companies and plead for forgiveness. In the case of sincere and demonstrable (and, most importantly, tragic) mishaps, they will sometimes shrug away partial debts so as to avoid the bad publicity, but one shouldn’t expect forgiveness from lenders. There are also several state and federal government programs, dizzying in their numbers, that apply to various borrower predicaments, but, at the same time, one should never expect consumer debts to explicitly fit into statutory regimens. It is not exactly a hard life for this generation of borrowers. Even thirty years ago, this sort of credit availability and (relative) unaccountability would have been beyond imagining.Still, there is a financial burden and the lenders will eventually demand payment. Should the payments be of sufficient worth, the lenders will have no choice but to start legal proceedings to attempt to recoup their losses. However, it is important remember that such action are extremely expensive and the absolute last resort of multinational corporations. More than anything else, these sort of businesses are terrified that their debtors will simply disappear or (hard as it is under current circumstances) declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It’s virtually impossible to declare bankruptcy these days, but company guidelines are famously slow to notice the evolution of consumer practices and still worry over the dissolution over promised obligations.In the wake of our sudden credit card debt crisis and the limited powers bankruptcy protection now holds (and, more to the point, the limited understanding of such among credit card companies), other financial services have come into their own which play with that slight threat yet existing. As long as Chapter 7 bankruptcy still has the potential to eliminate credit card debts, borrowers still have one ace in the hole when arguing cases with their lenders, and a new business has developed to enable the singular advantage consumers retain. Debt settlement isn’t so terribly different from Consumer Credit Counseling. The debt settlement professionals have essentially the same approach when dealing with credit card debts, but, unlike the CCC hordes, they actually work on behalf of the debtors.The ugly little truth about Consumer Credit Counseling companies is their dependence upon credit card companies. There’s a reason they have the advertising budget to blanket late night television with ever more desperate commercials, after all. The CCC industry will – at pains – lower interest rates for their favored customers as well as waive past due fees and over limit charges that never should have been assessed in the first place, but they won’t ever even try to lower actual debt balances. Consumer Credit Counseling isn’t much of a lie, really. They do counsel consumers about credit. It’s just rarely counsel that the consumers should follow.Certified debt settlement specialists, on the other hand, work solely for their debtor clients. Moreover, they place the burden for financial burdens squarely upon the lenders. This isn’t the same thing as borrowing the price of a carton of milk from the nearby store, after all. These are massive conglomerates whose profits depend upon not only convincing naïve borrowers that they can buy whatever they want without consequence but also allowing them the credit to do so. The borrowers, admittedly, are not without fault, but the lenders themselves have institutional malfeasance that must still be addressed. Fortunately, for the moment, anyways, this is where debt settlement comes into play.Debt settlement companies negotiate on the part of the borrowers in attempts to lower the overall balance originally owed. Seems too much to ask, but credit card companies regularly let loose more than half of their promised funds in exchange for a payment schedule vouchsafed by a respectable debt settlement firm. Credit cards, by their nature, as with anything that could charge twenty percent annual percentage rates, assume a certain risk that is backed up by the guarantee of tax write offs for delinquent borrowers. Otherwise, they would never lend so much to so many with so few resources. These credit card companies are conglomerates betting on fractional chances of profit one way or another. All traditional notions of ethics and morality should seem as irrational and disparate as that of someone going to war for a Klondike Bar. Credit card settlement really is a different sort of system, and owing has nothing to do with it.

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Earn Money Online Tips

I am going to go into great detail, about ways I have found through trial and error, of how to make an honest living online. Want to ditch your boring 9 to 5 day job? Wouldn’t be great to make an honest living from the comfort of your own home? You can be in your pajamas to earn money online. You may one day log into your affiliate marketing account and realize you have earned hundreds, if not thousands for a simple days work. I am not gonna tell you that earning money online is a walk in the park, it is not! It does take work like anything in life you have to learn how to do it properly to be successful at it. But if you follow these money making tips, you will be earning money online in no time. But the question still remains how much money can I earn? This question entirely depends on you, and what your work ethic is. Here are some tips to get you started earning some money.Tip number one: If you are looking to earn money online I would definitely recommend you sign up with a free ClickBank account. ClickBank is an online marketplace that has over 10,000 digital products for you to choose from to promote. They have been around for 10+ years, and are very well-respected in the Internet marketing industry. ClickBank vendors pay up to a 75% commission which is unsurpassed in the Internet marketing industry. Digital products are very convenient for customers, and merchants alike. As soon as the initial costs are covered through the development of the informational product, everything else is pure profit. So these merchants, can pay you the affiliate an excellent commission! There is a lot of great ways to earn money online through ClickBank. I would recommend once you sign up with a free affiliate account through click-bank promote only informational products with a high gravity. A high gravity on ClickBank, is telling you the affiliate marketer, that this vendors program is actually earning a lot of money online. The higher the ClickBank gravity the hotter the seller. So if you are looking for an honest way to earn money online, look no further than ClickBank. Sign up with a free account it should only take you about 5 to 10 minutes. Trust me this is an excellent way to earn extra cash.Tip number two: If you would rather sell physical products, not related to informational products I would recommend you sign up for an affiliate account at link share, or the pepper jam network. They are both excellent online marketplaces for potential affiliate marketers. The reason I like these two to earn money online, is because of the quality of the vendors involved. You will not have trouble making money through these two affiliate marketplaces. They have a lot of well-respected, major corporations for you to earn money through. Sign-up for a free affiliate account with one of these merchants, or maybe even Both it does not matter. Browse through their online marketplace, and find a couple affiliate programs with a high commission rate, to earn money online with.Tip number three: Now that you have signed up through a couple affiliate networks, and have your free affiliate account in place, it is time to move on to your next step to earn money online. This is my best piece of advice I could give you to earn an honest living online. To make money on the Internet, you need to know what you are doing period point blank! This involves a learning process on your part, join an affiliate marketing forum such as the warrior forum for starters. The warrior forum is the number one online forum for Internet marketers worldwide. There is some great marketing minds on this forum. Browse through some of the posts, and start learning the how to-s of affiliate marketing. Ask questions, read some forum posts. My next step to earn money online would be to learn from people who are already making a great living online. This would involve reading a good e-book, or joining an at home earn money online program, that can take you step by step by the hand, and show you exactly how to be successful in your money making quest from home. Remember, knowledge is power and power is money. Spend about 25% of your time learning how to make money, and the other 75% of the time actually accomplishing your tasks at hand. Which is promoting your affiliate products. You can promote your affiliate products online through the following methods, I am going to show you how to earn some money, through these marketing methods that I personally use. Let us move on to step four!Tip number four: Here is some tips to monetize your affiliate programs. This is a tip I recommend to every brand new affiliate, or anyone for that matter looking to earn money online. Learn the bum marketing method! This should only take you about a half-hour to learn, and it is absolutely mandatory for you to get an understanding of this concept if you want to earn money online. Even if your not an affiliate marketer, you still need to know and understand this concept, if your serious about generating a substantial income from the Internet. This is a free course, just Google it and read up on this concept. Okay, so now you have signed up to some affiliate marketing networks, your starting to learn to earn money online. Hopefully you read some good e-books, or joined a highly ranked course to teach you how to make money with. You have read up on the bum marketing method, and have a basic understanding of the basic concept being taught. Let us move on to step five, this is the good part! This will show you how to earn money online through classifieds, forums, articles, blog posting, and your own affiliate marketing website.Tip number five: I always recommend new affiliates to start writing classifieds, to get a basic understanding on how to rank your classifieds high for your chosen keywords. Once you start getting your classifieds ranked on the first page of Google for the title phrase you are going after you have learned the bum marketing method successfully, and should start earning some money online through the classified ads that you write. Some of my favorite online classifieds to use are US free ads, craigslist, and kijiji. Kijiji is eBay’s online classified website. Do not ask me how they came up with that name. All that I know is they get a decent amount of traffic so take advantage of that. There are tons of other online classifieds out there to earn money with, but these are my three favorites. So feel free to experiment!Tip number six to earn money online: Posting an article directories! Extremely important, article directories have great sticking power on the Internet. This means the articles that you write will be floating around on the Internet for years to come. They can be earning you money now and well into the future. You want to write articles based around whatever affiliate product you are trying to promote. My favorite article directories are hub pages, EzineArticles, E. how, Article dashboard, and Go articles. Remember, use an article directory such as those listed that has a high page rank. So you can rank high for your keyword phrases on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing! Writing articles is free, and is one of the most effective ways to drive free targeted traffic to your website, blog, or affiliate ads. So you can inevitably earn a lot of money online through writing quality articles. Article writing is too powerful to ignore, so take advantage of this opportunity, and start writing some articles.Tip number seven to earn money online: I already told you about the importance of online forums above to learn some money making tips. But there is a very important feature that you can take advantage of through forum directories. That is, most online forums out there allow you to have a signature link. A signature link is basically a link to whatever you want, it could be an affiliate product you are promoting, a link to your website, or a link to a blog etc… whatever you are trying to promote online, and make money through you can put a link to that product in your signature for that particular forum. Once you set up your signature link, every forum post that you make in that particular forum will show up with your signature link at the bottom. The more active you are in that forum, the more publicity you can get from your signature posts. If you have a good product in your signature posts, you can earn a few bucks just from posting in online forums, through your forum posts. So take advantage of forum postings!

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