If you want to diversify but don’t know where to start, the answer might be mutual funds!
Mutual funds are professionally-managed investment funds that you can invest in. Once you invest, a professional Fund Manager will use your money across a wide range of vehicles, which can include stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, and more. Each mutual fund has its own investment goals and guidelines (and different balances between risk and reward).
The stock market has increased by more than 13 times since 1979, an impressive return! However, stocks are one of the most volatile investments you can make – and choosing individual stocks can be risky.
If you want to chase impressive returns from individual companies, stocks are the way to go. If you want a more hands-off investment with fewer ups and downs, you might want gold, mutual funds, or ETFs.
Keep in mind that smart investors keep a healthy mix of different investment types as part of their diversification strategy!
The price of Gold generally goes up when the markets go down, as investors think it will hold its value if stocks start to fall.
Since 1979, the S&P 500 grew 13 times faster than the price of Gold. However, during the last market crash, Gold almost doubled its price (from its lowest to highest points), while the S&P 500 lost half of its value (from the highest to its lowest point).
If you are worried about a stock crash, gold might be a good place to invest. If you think the stock market is strong, stick to stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs!
The first step to starting a budget is to understand how you spend your money NOW.
For the next month, write down absolutely everything you spend your money on – from school lunches to cups of coffee to clothes, and everything in between!
At the end of the month, take a look at all your spending, and try to categorize it (Food, Clothing, Transportation, ect). This will let you see what you are spending now. Now you can decide if you are happy with your current spending, or if you want to set different goals for next month!
A “Spending Plan” is similar to a budget, but a bit easier to manage and follow. With a spending plan, you will not try to allocate every dollar of your income to either saving or spending, but set a general guide on how much you usually spend for different things.
By setting aside your savings before even looking at your other expenses, most people find it much simpler to stay under budget!
If you have income and expenses, you need a budget! Budgets are living tools that you can use to visualize how much you spend every month, and are essential to setting and meeting your savings goals.
A long stock is an expression used when you own shares of a company. It represents a claim on the company’s assets and earnings. As you increase your holdings of a stock, your ownership stake in the company increases. Read this post to learn about the components of a long stock, and what it looks like graphically.
A short stock is an expression used when you sold shares of a company that you did not own beforehand, and is described in more detail in this post!
How To Build A Portfolio: Video and Quiz!
Open this post to see a video that explains what an index is.
Click on this post to see the “What is a Stock Market?” video!
This post contains an informative video titled “What Are Bonds?”.
Click on this post to learn about what mutual funds are with an video!
Click on this post for a video on “Stocks Made Easy”.
One area of accounting is cost accounting, which focuses on internal reporting for the purpose of improving managerial decision making. Key concepts include cost allocation, cost-volume-profit and the role of a double break-even!
Risk is one of the most important concepts in investing, economics, and personal finance, yet very few people really understand just how big a role risk plays in our everyday lives. Risk plays into insurance, investing, savings, and much more!
“Property Rights” usually refers to a set of fundamental rights giving citizens control over their own land, capital, and ideas. Property rights is the foundation of all free-enterprise economic systems. It is what allows people to profit from capital and ideas, without fear of seizure by the government or theft.
The government has two main ways it tries to influence the economy – through Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy. Montetary policy involves the government directly injecting cash into the economy through government spending.
International Trade is the system under which businesses, individuals, and governments trade goods and services. This exchange from many different National economies is what makes up the Global economy. This is impacted not just by the supply and demand of goods, but the supply and demand of currenies, and the laws and policies of the different governments
“Inflation” means that the general prices of goods and services goes up from one year to another. There are a few ways to calculate inflation – from a simple “basket of goods” compared over time, to complicated economic models looking across thousands of factors
In any society with a market-based economy, the government must: ensure the common defense, promote economic growth, and strive to maintain a just society. All three of these tasks are related to the economy in one way or another, meaning everything the government does will have an impact on the economy.
The way the government organizes taxes and their spending to influence the economy is called the Fiscal Policy. Fiscal policy is controlled by congress and the president, and boils down to how they adjust spending federal money to encourage economic growth
The Time Value of Money is a concept that a dollar in your pocket today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow – because you can use it right away. The time value of money is determined by interest rates and opportunity cost – what else could you be doing with that money?
See our collection of personal finance, economics, investing, savings, business, math, and social studies lesson plans to kick start your class. Includes over 50 lesson plans ranging across every grade level, with suggested class activities and ways to integrate the stock game and other learning resources, both for in-class activities and homework.
If your school also ordered our Widget Pack for display screens, this tutorial will walk you through the first set-up! Prefer “Text and Image” guides? Keep reading! What You Need To get started, there’s a few things you’ll need: A Smart TV with a web browser If you have a Smart TV that has a Read More…
This is a library of Google Slides and PowerPoint presentations designed to accompany lessons built into the Personal Finance Lab assignments.
“Building Wealth” combines exercises from budgeting, spending plans, savings strategies, credit cards, and all points in between in a life-long strategy to build financial security
Raising a family is expensive. According to CNN, it costs over $230,000 to raise a child from birth to age 17 in the United States! Some say that no one is ever prepared to be a parent until it happens, but with a bit of wise financial planning, you can at least worry a bit less about money during the journey.
Your home will probably be the biggest purchase you make in your lifetime. Buying a home not only saves money on rent, but is a serious asset that can appreciate over time. Since homes are so expensive, (almost) no-one buys them in cash. Instead, homes are typically purchased with a special type of loan, called a “Mortgage”, that breaks the principle and interest into equal payments over the entire term of the loan.
Want to buy a car? Stick to your budget! Besides the base price of the vehicle, keep in mind fuel costs, insurance costs, how much it would cost to replace commonly damaged parts (like the front and rear bumpers), and even things like vehicle registration!
“Spending Shocks” are large, irregular expenses. Many people do not budget enough to successfully deal with spending shocks, which can be detrimental to their personal financial health. If you don’t want to get struck with a shock, invest in your rainy day fund!
There are a variety of unemployment programs, and other assistance programs, that exist in order to help with people facing hard financial times, and low incomes. Some of these include Unemployment Insurance, SNAP Food Assistance and Housing Assistance, and more. If you find yourself in a tight financial spot, knowing about these programs can be the difference between a quick recovery and a spiral of debt
Building a budget or spending plan is tough. Sticking to the plan is even tougher. Remember to “Pay Yourself First”, and don’t lose your head – stick to the plan!
Budgeting, and trying to grow your savings, can be extremely challenging. However, there is one easy technique you can use to make sure your savings are always growing: Pay Yourself First. This is where you set aside your savings immediately after getting your paycheck – reducing your temptation to over-spend throughout the month.
Bankruptcy is a type of forced debt settlement, and is a legal procedure. When you declare bankruptcy, the courts will gather all your unsecured creditors together, and hear the debts you owe. They will then examine all your assets, and pay out as much as they can to settle as many debts as possible.
There are a variety of Debt Management Services that are available via credit counselling such as debt management plans and debt settlement. Different services have different impacts on your credit score, but they can help avoid bankruptcy and get your life back on track.
Consolidating your debt means taking out one big loan, and using that to pay off all outstanding balances from all your previous loans. This can make the debt easier to manage, and stop late fees and interest payments from building up.
Everyone has had financial emergencies – when a huge spending shock breaks your budget or spending plan into pieces. If you have more than one emergency in a short time, such as if you lost your job, your outstanding debt balances might start to spiral out of control. But, you can try to ease these troubles by calling your creditor to discuss debt negotiation.
It happens to everyone: a monetary emergency happens, such as a car breakdown, draining your bank account. Bills are still coming in, and you already know that you will not even be close to paying off everything this month. How can you get out of this situation with the least pain?
One of the cornerstones of strong personal finances is knowing why you buy what you do, and knowing how to research your purchases in advance. What are some of the ways that you would research a purchase? What types of purchases demand the most research effort?
Every high school student makes a choice when they are about to graduate – enter the job market right away, enter a trade school, or enroll in a university? While you can always switch paths later in life, the year immediately after graduation will have a ripple effect that can last a lifetime!
When deciding whether a product is worth it or not people typically think that if the benefit of the item is greater than the cost, they should go ahead with the purchase. However, there are more factors at play here that should play a role in buying decisions, tread carefully!
Health Insurance is usually the most complicated and expensive insurance you need. Unfortunately, it is also usually the most important, making it very difficult to avoid the cost. With very few exceptions, health insurance is mandatory for all citizens in the United States.
The most challenging aspect of starting to invest is picking the first few stocks to add to a portfolio. Every investor has their own techniques and strategies, but some fundamentals remain – buy what you know, do your homework, and don’t overthink your first steps!
Use this tool to search for jobs and internships, either near you or around the world. A great way to get introduced to the job market, and identify what qualifications you need to build to land your dream job!
Experienced workers have a job search lasting about 43 days, and fresh graduates can expect a longer wait. Your search will be much harder if you make one of the following very common mistakes. Avoiding all 5 of the mistakes described in this article will not promise an interview, but hitting any might mean you are missing out.
Internships are an increasingly popular phenomenon, with a little over 1.5 million positions per year in the United States. But not all internships are created equally – students with paid internships typically get a lot better experience and better job prospects than those with unpaid positions!
Have an interview coming up? Looking to improve your interview skills? Show up on time. Be neat and clean. Know exactly what you’re there for, take notes, and ask questions!
How can you get your resume read, let alone rise to the top of the pile? Enter keywords – your new job search best friend. In big companies, your resume will have to get past a robot filter before human eyes ever see it, so pay attention to key words to get past the gatekeeper!
