Invest $100,000 Now!

There's a stock market simulation at http://simulator.investopedia.com that allows you to invest $100,000 of fake money into the stock market.

This allows people who feel they don't have enough money or still not sure about the stock market to start learning how to actually invest in stocks. It's great for anyone looking to practice researching companies and investing in stocks to see if their stock choices will actually produce a good return. You can also compete with friends, family, and public groups to see who has the best stock picking skills.

As they say practice makes perfect. Get started now and learn about investing in stocks, so later on you will become a pro.

Here's the link,
http://simulator.investopedia.com

Be Financially Hip, VOTE RON PAUL!

If you are a young American and want to be Financially Hip just VOTE RON PAUL in 2008!

He tells the truth about the American dollar and why it has been recently depreciating so rapidly. Watch this video of Ron Paul schooling Ben Bernanke.

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Own MTV!

Who watched “The Hills” finale? Was it great or what?

Um… I’m just wondering was it any good?... because I didn’t see it.

Well, actually I’ve never even seen an episode of the show before, but I definitely know a lot of people who have and are truly in love with the show.

Here's an article about how many people watched the finale

Yes, shows like “The Hills” is amazing and drawing large viewings, especially young people, from all over the country and even around the world.

MTV which airs the show is doing pretty well with viewers between the ages of 12-35, so are other cable networks like VH1, Comedy Central, SpikeTV, and BET.

Imagine the amount of young viewers that those channels are receiving, it’s very big and many companies are probably willing to shell out tons of cash to get a chance to advertise to those happy spending youngsters. Those cable networks are doing very well and most of us young people just love their shows. MTV owns the youth, …..But can you own MTV?

All those television networks listed above are owned and operated by Viacom Inc. Viacom Inc is a huge multibillion dollar entertainment media corporation. They also own Nickelodeon and a number of different movie production studios, like Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, MTV Films, and Nickelodeon Movies brands. Paramount Pictures produces many blockbuster films every year, like Transformers. DreamWorks created the lovely green ogre Shrek, which came out with its third movie this past year.

Not only is Viacom into TV and movies, they are also in the video game business.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but MTV games, Harmonix and EA Games have worked together to create the game called “Rock Band”. The game allows players to pretend like they’re in a rock band, which allows people to live their dreams of always wanting to be in a rock band. In the game you can play the guitar, drums and even sing. Pretty Awesome! It’s currently available on the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.

Click here to see the entire list of all the brands that Viacom owns:

Young people all around the world are fascinated by MTV and are completely consumed into its culture. Some people even say its the MTV generation. If you are one of the many young people out there participating in this crazy MTV generation, then why not truly be a part of it and profit from it.

Viacom Inc is a multibillion dollar corporation, I considered it to be a relatively safe investment. There is probably a very little chance that MTV and all those other brands will ever go bankrupt, nor would any of us let that happen. Viacom is heading in the right direction, focusing on the youth and living up to its hype.

If you are really interested in investing for the long term, why bother with boring investments like bonds and mutual funds you know nothing about when you can invest in the MTV generation.

Later on I will go over the fundamentals of the company, to prove why this is a solid investment.

I just thought I could remind everyone that cool, HiP investments are out there and people just have to be informed.

Consider investing in Viacom and it may one day help you get to “The Hills”.

Start a business? NaH...I'll just BUY ONE!

Ever dreamt of owning a company?
How about owning some of the largest companies in the world?
How about companies that you love and you’re a loyal customer to?

Well, what are you waiting for?

Seriously!

Companies like Apple, Nokia, Google, American Eagle, McDonalds and so much more can be owned by you, Right Now!

No, I’m not kidding, this is possible!

It’s called the stock market!

The stock market helps regular people like you and me be a part of this crazy consumerism and capitalistic world we live in today, by allowing us to partially own companies that we see everywhere.

People complain about ohhh...everyone is so materialistic and only cares about buying new stuff all the time…everyone has no soul…we shop and shop…take a coffee break…and shop some more.

Sounds depressing, but I think most of those people who say this just isn’t getting any.

Well, they just don’t get it. They are the ones who aren’t on the other side, the side earning the money from all this consumerism. Because with all that money being spent out there, someone has got to be receiving it.

When you buy something, that money you used goes to the company that produced the product. That money will then go to the owners of that company.

If you are an owner of a company, like American Eagle, every time someone buys anything from their store, some of that money belongs to you!

Well, how do you become a owner of a company? You purchase some of their stocks on the stock market. No, it’s not hard, it’s actually very simple.

The process of buying stocks is as easy as 123.
1. open a stock trading brokerage account (free, only takes 5 minutes)
2. place an order to buy some shares of a company (takes about 2 minutes)
3. sit back and watch the company succeed.

It’s really that simple, the only process that might take a lot of time is finding the right company to invest in (which I will help you later on), but that’s not to hard to do if you’ve read my other article “Find Gold in your Room”.

So to all those people complaining about consumerism, they just aren’t included on the other side where the money is being made.

If those people owned shares of a company, they too will begin encouraging everyone to keep buying things from that company because in the end some of that money will be theirs.

Remember, finding the right company and the right time to invest in it can take some time, but I am here to help. But in the end, you will be surprised on how easy it is to earn money with your own money without doing much work.

This is capitalism, so if you can’t beat them, might as well join them.

Find GOLD in your Room!

Investment opportunities are all around us, but most of us are not aware of them. Finding great investments is like finding gold, and one of the best places to discover that “GOLD” is in your own bedroom. You might think that your room only consists of smelly socks and dirty laundry, but there is an abundance of investment gold just disguised as regular products.

What kind of investment opportunities am I talking about? Let’s take a look around shall we? On your desk there might be a computer, maybe it’s a HP computer. Beside your computer there might be an Ipod or a Nokia cell phone. Let’s check out your wardrobe. You might see some American Eagle, Abercrombie & Fitch shirts or some Guess jeans. The list goes on and on, and you are probably wondering how all these products of yours can actually become investment opportunities.

All of those products you bought and now own are produced by companies that are now extremely successful all because of young people like you purchasing their products. Let’s take a look back two years ago at the stock prices of these companies that were just mentioned and compare them with their stock price right now.

Company	Nov. 2005 Price	Nov. 2007 Price	Total % Return
HP	$28	$51	82%
Apple	$70	$182	160%
Nokia	$17	$39	129%
American Eagle	$14	$23	64%
Guess	$17	$46	171%

As you can see all of those stocks went up in value during the past two year. The biggest gain came from Apple, whose Ipods have been flying off the selves, thanks to all the young people.

I am not saying that everything you buy is a good investment opportunity; it just takes a little research to determine if it actually is. Choosing an investment is like shopping for something expensive, when you are planning to buy that expensive product, you usually research and compare the product with others and try to find the best value. It’s the same when investing, doing a little research and comparing before making an investment decision will always make you feel more confident with the choice, and eventually be greatly rewarded.

From what I showed you, you can now see that a lot of products just in your own bedroom can become incredible investments.

Golden investment opportunities are everywhere, take advantage of it.

Better Safe than Sorry, I DON'T THINK SO!

Stocks can be very volatile and has the tendency to fluctuate a lot during a short period of time. Due to this volatility, people insist that investing in stocks is a dangerous thing to do when investing for the future. Everyone prefers to choose the safe and cautious savings bonds to invest their money. Stocks are wild and dangerous, while Bonds are boring and safe. It's like comparing me to my grandparents.

However, no matter how wild stocks may be they almost always turn out to produce the best investment returns in history, helping many people become millionaires.

The only reason stocks can be a bad investment choice, is when your saving for the short term. Stocks fluctuate so much that it is extremely difficult to predict if your stock will increase in value during a short period of time. But if you are planning to save for the long term, stocks are by far the best performing investment vehicle.

If you are planning to save money that won’t be needed in at least a couple of years or more, than investing in stocks is the best place to achieve substantial returns.

Now be careful, diversification is very important, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone putting all their money into stocks. There is a saying that goes “don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” which means if something unexpected happens to the stock market you don’t want to be stuck with all your savings invested in the market. I’ll talk about diversification and asset allocation later on.

But first I need to encourage you to begin investing in stocks. Stocks have always been the best performing investment in recent history.

Here’s a chart comparing the annual returns of the stock market compared to savings bonds over the past 30 years:

As you can see the stock market returns were very unstable, but they still provided excellent returns almost every year.

The average annual stock market return for the past 30 years was 13.75%, while the average annual savings bond only returned 6.15%.

If you had invested $1000 back in 1976 into stocks you would have $47,403 by the end of 2006.

If you had invested the $1000 in bonds you would only have $5992 by the end of 2006.

Stocks offer the best returns and should not be ignored when investing for the future. I will eventually show how you can get even bigger returns if you learn how to discover and find great investment opportunities.

Remember stocks are volatile in the short term, but in the long term you will always be better off invested in stocks. Don’t be scared, know what you're doing and be prepared to stay invest for at least a couple of years. Investing in stocks may seem like a wild choice, but honestly it may be the greatest financial choice you make.

Be young and wild, start investing in stocks now!

Tell your LAZY CASH to get a JOB!

Have you ever been told by your parents to “Get off Your Lazy A** and go find a job!” Your parents saw you one day sitting on the couch watching TV, and thought maybe it’s about time Junior found a part-time job. You probably ended up taking their advice, as you needed money to pay for things like new clothes and cell-phone bills. Also, your parents didn’t seem to be the generous cash machine they once were. Well here you are, working part time earning some nice extra cash, so you can spend on some “necessary” luxuries.

Hopefully after enough spending, you realize you have extra money left over, so you put it in the bank. At this moment if you have some extra money in your bank account, I would like to congratulate you, You’re Saving. I don’t mean to be sarcastic, but you are doing the number one most important part of being financially HiP.

If you have extra money in your bank account, are you planning to use it within a week, month, or even a year? Well you probably don’t know when you’re going to spend the money, but the point is that your money should not be sitting around just waiting to be spent, it should be WORKING instead.

Yes that’s right Money can work too. How? Well, by earning you interest! Now where can your money go work and earn interest? They can start at your local Savings Account, but not just any savings account, a High Interest Savings Account, such as an ING Direct Savings Account.

You see when your money is just sitting in a regular checking or low interest savings bank account, your money is like sitting on the couch watching TV, doing nothing. Your money is not active, definitely not working for you, and most likely not reaching its full potential.

It’s really simple and fast to open one of these accounts, and they will really help you in the future to continue saving. I always get frustrated when I hear people not opening a High Interest Savings accounts, and have so much cash stuck inside a regular checking account. I guess I can’t be too angry, most people are just not informed. Most banks don’t tell people about these accounts until they are actually asked. The banks would rather talk to you about their new credit cards instead.

Most of the banks in Canada now offer these high interest savings accounts and almost all of them don’t charge any monthly fees and a minimum balance is not required. These accounts are usually online, but they are very safe and secure.

Here are some banks that offer these High Interest Savings accounts:

Bank	Annual Interest Rate
Bank of Montreal	2.60%
HSBC	4.25%
ING Direct	3.75%
Scotiabank	3.50%
Royal Bank of Canada	4.00%

I would recommend opening an account with the bank your already with, but it's perfectly fine to open one with a different bank because it's really simple to transfer funds between banks.

All of those accounts include:

- High Interest paid monthly

- No Monthly Fees

- No minimum balance required

- Total protection and security

So get your lazy cash off the couch and make it start working for YOU!

The RICH Formula

Ever thought that life would be so easy if only there was some sort formula that you can follow to become incredibly rich. You just follow the formula and “pOOf!”, you instantly become unbelievably wealthy. Yes life would be great, but would you believe me if I said that something so absurd actually exists and has been used by the wealthiest people in the world to help create their wealth. Think life can’t be that easy. Think again.

I’m here to introduce to you a formula, so simple, that can make you become amazingly rich. And guess what I’m going to tell you all for FREE.

The formula of riches is called…

Compound Interest

You might of heard about it before, but this mathematically equation can really help everyone become rich.

Here it is:

FV = PV(1 + i/n) ^t*n

What do those letters stand for,

FV = Future Value
PV = Present Value
i = interest rate
t = time
n = how many times the interest is calculated within a certain time (t)

Here’s an example,

You have $10,000 in the bank and earn 5% in interest for the year.
How much interest do you earn for the year,

5% of $10,000 is $500
($10,000 * 0.05 = $500)

So at the end of the year your new balance will equal your initial deposit plus your interest earned, which becomes $10,500.

Then what happens next year when interest is calculated again, you still earn 5% in interest, but how much interest will you earn?

Well, 5% of 10,500 is $525.

In the second year interest earned is $525, but in year one you only earned $500. The reason for the difference, is proof of the work of compound interest. As you see you are actually earning interest on the interest earned from the previous year.

Your new balance will then becomes $11,025.

The great thing about this formula is that you don’t need that much money to get started, the most important part in this formula is TIME.

Do you see were “t” is placed in this formula? It’s an exponent. And if you understand how exponents work you will know that the bigger that number is the bigger the final value will become. You are trying to create the largest final value for yourself, so having a larger “t” value will greatly help increase your final value.

If you’re young, you probably don’t have that much extra money to save, but you definitely have what is most important, TIME.

Becoming a millionaire by the time you retire is really simple, all you need is very little money to start and a lot of TIME.

Here's two different scenarios,
1. 18 year old saves only $100/month until they retire
2. 30 year old saves $200/month until they retire.

If they both earn the same annual interest rate of 10%, by the time they retire at 65, who has more money?

After doing the calculations, the 18 year old will have Over 1 million dollars, $1,103,048 to be exact.

How much would the 30 year old have? Well $685,691.

The 30 year old will not become a millionaire, even though he saved twice as much money every month.

Time Really is Money, so don’t waste it and get started as soon as possible.

Be financially HiP now, so you won’t be financially crippled later.

Read my Magic of Compound Interest post to see the formula in action.

Magic of Compound Interest

If you had 2 choices, which one would you choose to receive the most money?

1. Begin with $0.01 and have it double everyday for 30 days, so on day 2 your amount would be $0.02 and on day 3 it would be $0.04, this continues for 30 days. After the 30 days you collect the money.
OR
2. $100,000

What would you choose? Wait that 1 month or go for the instant $100,000?

If you picked the $100,000, it’s not a bad choice, but definitely NOT the BEST choice.

Let’s figure out how much the first option would be worth after 30 days.

Drum roll please……………………..

$5,368,709.12

Yes that’s right, the amount is Over $5 Million!
You think I’m kidding, take a look at the chart.




















So taking the $100,000 would be nice, but the $5,368,709.12 would be much better! You can see just how much more money the first option produced.

You’re probably wondering how something as little as $0.01 turned into over $5 Million.

It’s all because of the MAGIC and POWER of a formula called COMPOUND INTEREST!

The Purpose of MoneY

Are you young, active and full of energy? Do you own all the latest gadgets and trendiest fashions? Go out almost ever weekend to hang out with friends at the mall or see a movie? But realize at the end of the day…you’re BROKE!

Most of you probably have a part time job or gets an allowance from your parents. You realize that you have this extra money might as well spend it and have some fun. Well, that’s true; one of the main purposes of money is to exchange it for products or services that you want.

But do you know exactly how MONEY WORKS? Think about it, money is so much more than just a piece of paper. You use it all the time, but probably never think twice about what you are actually doing. Using money to buy things becomes so easy for you that it just becomes a natural reflex. You probably never thought about how such a small piece of paper, like a $100 bill, can purchase so many things. I mean if it was just a piece of paper why would anyone sell you products in exchange for it.

Actually, money and more specifically cash, is really just based on trust.
TRUST that when you give someone money when buying something that they can use that money in return to buy something else.
CONFIDENT that anytime in the future you want something you can use money to purchase it.
In the end, without our trust and confidence, it is only physically a piece of paper.

Money is universal. It simplifies everything.

Think of a world without money. That would be pretty awful; how am I going to be able to purchase my next new pair of Adidas sneakers. But seriously, how would you purchase anything, like food?

Here’s an interesting scenario about a world without money:
You walk into the grocery store one day and say to the cashier “I would like to buy this box of Coco Puffs.”
The cashier responds “Ok, can I have something in exchange?”
You then take out a pack of brand new HB pencils. “Will these pencils be alright?”
The cashier looks at you funny...then answers in a snobby tone “Sorry…but we only accept plastic pens”.
You then walk out the store frustrated that you left your pens at home.

Well that was pretty stupid…but I hope you understand my point.
Money can be exchanged for almost anything with no questions asked.

Other than buying stuff, money can do so much more. I will start talking about saving and investing later on, but first you must remember this:

You WORKED HARD for your MONEY!
All I’m asking for you is to take the little time necessary to understand WHAT Exactly are you WORKING FOR!

First PosT!

Hello? Anyone there?

Well this is my first ever post on my first Blog.
I'm new to this so don't judge me; )
I guess I'll start by talking about what this blog is all about.

This blog is dedicated to all the young people out there who don't know anything about finance and investing. We like to call those people Financially Illiterate. And there's a lot of them out there!

I just read this article today about how teens lack financial literacy. It was written on April 5th, 2006, so over a year ago and I doubt much has changed.

Here's the link, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/04/05/financial/f142918D21.DTL

In the article it states that “On average, high school seniors answered correctly only 52.4% of questions about personal finance and economics”. So they passed, but barely:(

One specific stat that stood out and surprised me the most was this:
“Only 14.2 percent correctly said that stocks likely would offer the higher growth over 18 years of saving for a child's education. That was down from 17.2 percent who knew the right answer in the 2004 survey. In this year's survey 44.8 percent thought a U.S. savings bond — one of the most conservative investments — would offer the highest growth.”

Wow….only 14% said that stocks would offer a higher growth over a 18 YEAR period than a savings bond! oucH. I know that stocks can be very volatile and that they sometimes produce negative annual returns, but over 18 years, which is a very long time, the majority of stocks have increased multiple times to produce enormous gains during such a long period.

Well I’ll go further into detail about the stock market later on, but first I would like to say that this blog is about educating the younger generation about making simple, effective and important investment decisions.

Most young people today might think that investing might be too difficult, complicated, or even too boring to get started.

But I am here to prove that investing is actually Simple, Fun, Exciting and Entertaining!

You too can be FINANCIALLY HIP.