Fortune Watch

There has always been a need for retirement planning and today is certainly no different. There are many types of retirement plans that are available to you. You will need to take the time needed to evaluate what your current financial needs are and what you expect the future to hold.

You must keep in mind that your planning today is not just for the ideal future, but the future that will be reality for you if things turn out to not be ideal or according to your plans today. By starting early and contributing the maximum that you can afford, you will have a better chance of being prepared for the unforeseen.

Unsure of what you will need for retirement? Are you on track or not? Don’t forget that life expectancy is getting longer. Today you can expect to live 20-30 years past retirement and, suddenly, the amount you need to retire comfortably with a major change in lifestyle gets very large.

Lets say that today you need $40,000 to live on and you retire in 20 years, you will need a minimum of $800,000 to carry you through retirement. That is assuming that you will live an additional 20 years after you retire and are in good health.

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Credit cards can be an excellent tool to help you manage your finances. But sometimes we make poor choices, or sometimes the events in life take us beyond our expectations and we are left to foot the bill. Perhaps you have had a few months of extra, unexpected expenses that you are now paying for. What can you do?

Gather together all of your credit card bills and add up the amount that you owe. Factor in the extra expenses you haven’t heard on your credit cards since you receive those bills. Add to that about ten or twenty per cent, which is the “whoops, I forgot about that” factor. Then, with that figure, start shopping around for a loan.

Get the loan and pay off your credit card bills. If you think that you may still use your credit cards, you may want to hide them away so that you reduce the temptation to use them. Now, instead of having several credit card bills at a high interest rate due by the end of the month, you now have one bill that is due once a month at a lower rate. This is called consolidation. At first glance it may not seem obvious why you’d want to do this but there are two reasons:

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The last message you want to see while investing in the stock market.

What is the stock market trying to tell you?

If you watch the stock trends closely, there’s always a message that tells you the future, because stock prices are never about today. They only tell you what to expect—it’s bizarre, but sometimes when the stock of a loss making company spirals upwards, it just means good times could be ahead.

You can read the messages if you’re careful enough and spend some time in analysis.

However, the impulsive stock market jockey does not really care about the trend. More often than not, he only gets one kind of message from the stock market:

Beginners who are not aware of current trade investments and who don’t have enough capital to invest may face a lot of setbacks. These factors, however, should not discourage an individual from investing. If you are too scared to take the risk, you lose a lot of opportunities.

Investing gives you the leeway to increase your income. If you just simply put your money in a savings account, a 2-5% interest will not do to secure your future. Since in this set-up you can easily pull out your savings account, it increases the likelihood of you spending the money in unnecessary expenditures. In a short span, your money is gone and that leaves you with nothing.

Lay down the cards. For beginners, the first thing to do when you plan to invest your money is to have a reality check. To start off, do you have a capital to invest on? It is not just capital but do you have a risk-capital?

Add up your assets and check which of these you are willing to bet and let go. This may be hard at first especially if all of which are valuable to you. But if you carefully choose which assets are of lesser value to you, this will make it easier for you to accept loss if your first investment fails. Since investing is also an expense, consider it a loss anyway but with a potential to grow.

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Market corrections are inevitable and healthy. Stock market corrections can be excellent opportunities to purchase common stocks at bargain levels. Veteran stock investors are not seeing anything in this turbulent market that is particularly unusual.

The fact that this market roller coaster is being pushed by a credit crunch instead of surging inflation or some other economic disaster doesn’t change the need to take a deep breath and sit tight.

Corrections, pullbacks, or whatever you want to call them are a natural part of the market cycle.

If you take a look at the past, there has never been a correction that has not proven to be a good buying opportunity. It has taken an average of less than three months for the market to make up those corrections, which is why most veterans plan to ride out the bumps.

When the market begins its return to normalcy, you don’t want to be on the sidelines. The secret to wealth has always been to “buy when there’s blood running in the street and sell when everyone is pounding at your door, clawing to own your equities.” You must have enough faith in yourself to buy when the rest of the market is selling.

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