PCCLOSEOUT

Trusting yourself

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:59:07 +0000

With most of us, decisions come, decisions go—we make them and deal with the consequences when we have to. But we all make decisions about our lives, financial and otherwise, all the time:
What kind of a car do I think I should buy?
When do I think I should buy it?
Where should I send my child to school?
What color should I paint the bedroom?
Do I really want to go to dinner at ,y favorite restaurant on Saturday night, with such a busy week ahead and my proposal due at work on Monday?
Is such-and-such an issue worth the fight it’s going to cause if I bring it up with my partner?
Might this or that stock that I keep reading about be a good stock to buy?
Such decisions come up every day, and always that inner voice is there to guide us in making them wisely—if we let that voice have its say.
When these decisions come up, I am asking you now to start keeping track of them: What was the decision that had to be made?
What did your inner voice, your first instinctual response, tell you to do?
What did you actually do?

Please write down the answers and keep them wherever you keep the monthly bills. Now see how the decisions played themselves out, depending on whether or not you followed your voice.
Should you have painted your bedroom that ivory, which was your first impulse, instead of the yellow?
Should you have bought a new car when you knew you should have, before the old one collapsed for good? Did the stock you were thinking about in fact go up?
Didn’t you really know deep down inside that little Jenna would be better off at a school that was less competitive?
You will see the results for yourself. Testing your voice will enable you to trust it. It’s your voice, and when you begin to take action based on what you yourself truly believe, you’ll begin to feel power over your life—and over your money.

Try to deal with money yourself

admin — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 10:59:10 +0000

When I started as a stockbroker, the financial world was quite different from the way it is today, not even two decades later— and it’s still changing fast. You might think that this means it’s all the more important to have a financial adviser, or a certified financial planner like me, look after your money for you, but the opposite is true.
The changes in the financial world are actually making it much, much easier, and much, much safer, for individual investors to invest and look after their own money.
When I first started out at the city, money-market accounts were just beginning, mutual funds numbered in the low hundreds and hadn’t yet been embraced by a wide range of investors, much less changed the way millions of us now invest for our futures. Discounted ways to invest were just starting, which meant that the most common way into the stock market was through a company like mine.
With a full-service brokerage firm you’re paying full-service prices: you’re paying for their real estate, their overhead, their business lunches, their advertising, their commissions on all kinds of brokers. They are reputable, certainly,the language and workings of investment, you may even decide that the way you wish to be respectful to yourself and your money is to have an adviser at a full-service firm, fees notwithstanding.
As for the discount firms, they’re thriving. Why? Because smart consumers always flock to where they’ll get the best deals for their money. On their way, they stop to study what they’re buying and where they’re buying it.

let the money speaks

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:59:43 +0000

Do you play tennis? If so, you’ve had to learn a few new terms and concepts to play the game—set point, double fault, and so on. If you play golf, same thing—par and eagle. To cook, you need to learn about basting, sauteing, reductions.
There’s also a language of money, and by the time you finish this book you will know it.
You must invest, whether in your 401(k) or on your own, and the more the better. After you finish reading this section, by trusting yourself, you will know which kinds of investments are right for you. The decision remaining will be whether you want to invest on your own or whether you want to go with an adviser. Again, this is a decision you will reach by trusting yourself.
My own opinion is that most people have more than it takes to invest on their own, and never before has it been easier. If you are computer literate, the information sources on America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, and the World Wide Web are extensive and accurate. If you’ve never tried it, I urge you to explore the financial networks on the computer just to see what you can find: chat rooms about investing, message boards where people post investments they’ve made and how they’ve done, featured interviews with various managers of good mutual funds, and much more. You can learn a lot this way and, just as important, really begin to feel much more comfortable in the world of money.
If you don’t have a computer, for starters, and there are plenty of general-interest money magazines out there. Even the newsweeklies have personal finance columns, and in most cities there are financial shows on the all- talk stations. Eavesdrop on the world and language of money, and pretty soon you’ll know you belong.
The price of admission to the world of money is lower than you might think and, especially with the onset of mutual funds, the easiest and safest way to create your own fortune, here’s what they talk about inside.

The stockbrocker

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:01:07 +0000

There are some great brokers out there as well as some who aren’t so great, but if you’re in awe of brokers (who now often call themselves financial advisers, figuring, I guess, that broker isn’t the most confidence-inspiring title), or if you believe you can’t possibly take any investment action without one, I want you to know how it feels from the other side. I was a very good stockbroker, but I had no mystical insights, no inside sources, no information I could learn that you couldn’t learn, too. And a good many brokers out there probably feel like the Wizard of Oz hiding behind his curtain. It can be a scary business, investing other people’s money.
There is not one adviser out there who wants to lose money for you, I can promise you that. The good ones would probably rather make more money for you than they do for themselves. It’s also true that financial advisers are real live human beings with feelings, insecurities, bills to pay, dreams of their own, pride, and ego.
Imagine the pressure. Most people don’t want to deal with their own money, so try to think how it feels to be responsible for dozens of other people’s money, their livelihood, their futures. Think how an adviser feels if she recommends an investment to you that she can’t afford to invest in herself. Is she telling you the right thing to do? Think how she feels if she’s also investing in the stock herself—will it cloud her judgment? The pressure, particularly if the broker is a caring person, can lead to what I call the jitters, which is not a good state in which to make important financial decisions.
The jitters occur when raw nerves take over and important decisions about money, which after all are decisions about people’s lives, are made from fear and ervousness, rather than from that pure inner voice and true knowledge.
Suppose an adviser has built a tremendous position in XYZ stock. As he sits at his computer terminal, he watches every time XYZ moves up and he watches every time XYZ moves down. With every tick down, his phone rings and it is a client asking about XYZ; with every tick up, he awaits the next tick down, he gets jittery; the notion hits him that maybe it’s time to sell.
Now he starts punching in the symbol of that stock over and over again to get more detailed information than what the screen normally tells him. He watches the volume: What do others who are selling know that he doesn’t know? He looks at the bid, the ask, the research reports. What do they really mean? He calls a few of his friends who also have a position in the stock, to see what they think. Even if none of these people had been thinking sell, even if they reply, “Well, I really still like the stock,” something happens. Doubt has a domino effect; I’ve seen it.
Meantime the supervisor walks by to remind the adviser, who works on commission, that he hasn’t met his sales quota this quarter. To do so, he must buy some more stocks on his clients’ behalf or sell some more. Then his wife calls. They need a new furnace. Then the woman at the next screen starts jumping around with joy—another stock she has built a position in has just gone through the ceiling. She begins making excited calls to tell her clients the great news. Then our adviser
•hears a tick and looks at the screen: XYZ is down another one- half point.
After a few hours of this, the adviser makes the decision,
• s his clients, and sells the stock. End of jitters? No way; now
real test begins. If the stock starts rising, the phone begins ringing with clients wanting to know why he sold so soon. It’s almost harder not making as much as could have been made in a stock than it is to lose some and feel relief at not having lost everything. The whole experience goes into our adviser’s jittery memory bank and is automatically recalled the next time he thinks about buying or selling.
It takes an extraordinarily disciplined person to overcome these jitters and to make continually intelligent decisions based on his or her pure inner voice and what can be learned about a stock. It takes even more discipline to believe what you know when the jitters of other people who happen to own the same stock as you are spreading through a brokerage firm like the flu.
If you decide you want to go with a broker, fine. If you already have a wonderful broker who has so far done very well for you, even better. Best of all is if you decide to handle your own money and feel powerful and confident about doing so. In any case, though, it is your money—and it must be guided by what your inner voice tells you to do.

The mutual funds

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:02:10 +0000

A mutual fund starts out as a pool of money that many investors just like you have put their money in together— mutually. The manager or managers of the fund take all this money and put it into different investments. The manager is the one who decides what he or she wants to buy and sell. Sometimes these decisions are made by a team of people; more often just one person or two people decide, based on their judgment and research by many others.
Each mutual fund invests in different things, and the goal of each fund is different. Some invest for long-term growth, some for income, some for a combination of both. (Income funds invest in bonds and have lower chances than a growth fund of making a lot of money; they generate present-day income— retirees might own these, for example, after they’ve seen their money grow during their working years.) Some invest in stocks just in the United States; some, those known as international funds, invest only in stocks overseas; funds called global funds invest in both. The variations go on and on, but if you have a specific interest, I guarantee that you can find a mutual fund that addresses it. When you invest in a mutual fund, basically you own a tiny fraction of each share of stock or whatever they’ve purchased, so even if you own just one mutual fund, your money is still quite diversified, because you own a little of everything they’ve invested in.
If you had a financial adviser at a full-service brokerage firm like Merrill Lynch, he or she would have to consult you before making any transactions, and you would have to pay a commission almost every time you bought or sold anything. That’s not the case in a mutual fund, where the manager has free rein over the money in the fund and you’re not charged a commission when transactions are made. You will receive a prospectus and information with a breakdown of what the mutual fund has been up to, but you’re not notified day to day, By buying shares in the fund, you have made the decision to trust the fund manager.
A good mutual fund is a great way to invest money, particularly small sums of money: You achieve diversification, commission-free trading within the account, and a professional manager or team of managers who are buying and selling and doing what they think best.

The Lifetime Guarantee Scam

admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:08:18 +0000

“Lifetime guarantees” are sometimes used in chain stores that do brakes, mufflers, alignments, or transmissions. These are almost always a bad deal for consumers, who pay higher prices for the initial repair with the mistaken belief that they will save money in the long run. But they probably won’t. If the original muffler lasted 80-90,000 miles, the second one will probably last longer than the rest of the car. So why pay extra for a lifetime guarantee? Especially when it might be worthless.
Think about it: Why would a repair shop—that’s in business to make money—want to do a lot of repairs for free? They don’t plan to. They plan on selling additional usually high-priced parts and services to most of the people who come back. And they’re often quick to refuse warranty work to customers who won’t buy additional repairs. They just make up an excuse that sounds good, like: “Your disc pads do have a lifetime guarantee, but they wore out because your calipers and (insert more high-priced parts here) are bad, so I can’t warranty your brakes without first replacing the expensive parts.”
Chain stores frequently use the lifetime guarantee scam to sell additional, unnecessary repairs during the initial service. When shop personnel can’t find any legitimate parts that need replacing, they can always say, “Those parts haven’t failed yet, but we can’t guarantee your brake job without replacing them.” The implication is that it’s not safe to leave those parts on the car, when they might actually work fine for another 4 or 5 years. Of course, they neglect to mention that. This scam is also used on customers who refuse to buy additional parts after being told that the parts are bad.

General types of legal forms for business

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:04:09 +0000

There are three general types of legal forms for business: a soie proprietorship, a partnership, or a corporation. A great majority ofbusinesses start as sole proprietorships. Forming this legal organization is fairly easy. Few requirements and licenses are needed. Sole proprietorship, although popular to first time business owners, is the most vulnerable to lawsuits. If you and your spouse hold any Torrens Title under your names, creditors could easily attach and levy that real estate to satisfy any judgment against you. Once personal liability is established, your exposure to collection may go beyond the investments you placed in a business enterprise.

Food Manufacturers and Processors
Manufacturers and processors of foodstuffs, drinks, toilet articles and similar goods shall be liable for death or injuries caused by any noxious or harmful substances used, although no contractual relation exists between them and the consumers. If the injurious condition of the article is traced to its origin, the immediate vendor is unaware of the manufacturer’s fault and he cannot be liable for the injuries the consumer may suffer. But if the noxious condition is not due to the manufacture of the article but to something that happened to it while it is in the hands of the vendor, like expiry, abandonment, or carelessness in its custody, the vendor becomes liable for his own negligence.

The Solos: Travails Of “Exposed” Property Owners

admin — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:57:15 +0000

The simplest and oldest form of business is the sole proprietorship. When one person owns a business enterprise, any income from that business is considered his personal income and is fair game to creditors. People who are engaged in conducting business for themselves may be classified as sole proprietors. Look around every nook and cranny of Philippine urban and rural communities and you will notice the proliferation of sari-sari stores. A sole proprietorship is the easiest, least cumbersome business entity to create. There are minimum permits and licenses from the government. The sole proprietors, in general, own all or most of the business property and has exclusive responsibility for the management and control of the enterprise.
Many small businesses start as sole proprietorship’s. If you start a business on your own — without partners—you will be a sole proprietor. You might get by with a city business license, a resale license, and a “doing-business-as” or fictitious business statement ). If you use your own name, you may not need the DBA. But you may discover
that your business is sending you signals that another form would better suit your needs. In a sole proprietorship, legally and practically, the owner is the business, and any capital must come from the owner’s own resources, and those borrowed from financial institutions. The availability of limited alternatives for raising financial capital is perhaps the greatest disadvantage of the sole proprietorship . In reality, the biggest disadvantage of solo ownership is that you alone will shoulder liabilities. You are the shock absorber of lawsuits. Sole proprietorship is the simplest form of ownership. It is also the most risky. The owner pours in his own money into the business enterprise, reaps all the profits and shoulders all the risks and losses. Just like a general partner in a general partnership, the sole owner’s personal liability extends beyond his investment in the business entity. Creditors could reach his personal assets in case of a lawsuit. The sole owner is practically defenseless against legal attacks.

Suppliers of Consumer Products

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:56:23 +0000

The suppliers of durable or non-durable consumer products are jointly liable for imperfections in quality that render the products unfit or improper for consumption and those resulting from inconsistency with the information provided on the container, packaging, labels or advertisement as well as for imperfections in the quantity of the product when their net content is less than that indicated in the container.

Directors, Trustees and Officers of Corporations
Directors, trustees, and officers of corporations who willfully and knowingly vote for or assent to patently unlawful acts of the corporation or who are guilty of gross negligence or bad faith in directing the affairs of the corporation or acquire any personal or pecuniary interest in conflict with their duty shall be jointly and severally held liable for all damages suffered by the corporation, its stockholders, members and other persons . Directors of corporations are required to act in utmost good faith .

Manufacturers and Importers of Defective Products

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:23:11 +0000

Any foreign manufacturer or importer will be liable for redress, independently of fault, for damages caused to consumers by defects resulting from design, manufacturing, construction, assembly and erection, formulas and handling and making up, presentation or packing of their products, as well as for the insufficient or inadequate information on the use and hazards of those products.

Sellers of Defective Products
The seller of defective products is also liable when it is not possible to identify the manufacturer, builder, producer or importer, or when the product is supplied without clear identification of the manufacturer, producer, builder or importer, or he does not adequately preserve perishable goods .