Tracking Your Expenses

Posted on November 7, 2007 - Filed Under Money | Leave a Comment

Now that you have set your goals the next step is to track your expenses so can you see where you are spending your money, because until you know where your money is going, you won’t be able to stop it from going there.

There are two ways to track your expenses. One way is fast but hard; The other is slow but easy. The choice is yours. The fast/hard way is to spend a weekend going backward in your checkbook and through your credit card statements for the past six months. It’s hard, because you’ll work all weekend, and you’ll have gaps, particularly regarding the cash you spent, but by Sunday night you’ll be ready to go to the next step.

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Investing With Declining Interest Rates

Posted on November 6, 2007 - Filed Under Investing, Money | Leave a Comment

The Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates twice in the last two months. While that is good news if you have an adjustable rate mortgage or line of credit, is it good news if you own stocks? The answer to that is maybe!

In three of the past four rate-cut cycles, stocks actually fell in the six months following the first drop in rates. Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for Standard & Poor’s, points out that following the first Fed rate cut in 1990, stocks sank nearly 14%.

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How Much Is Rich?

Posted on November 5, 2007 - Filed Under Investing, Money | Leave a Comment

So how much money do you need to have in order to be read these days? Well it used to be that having a million dollars put you in a pretty exclusive class. But a rising stock market and Internet IPO’s have delvalued the exclusivity of that. According to Financial Planning Magazine there are now 9.3 million households in the United States with a net worth of at least $1 million. That is about 1 in 12 households. How common is that!!

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