The following is a guest post from Rachel Anna on investing.
If you’ve decided to start investing, congratulations. It’s one of the smartest ways to guarantee your comfort later in life. Stocks, bonds, money market accounts, 401(k)s, IRAs—there’s a wide range of options that you can use to incubate your nest egg while you wait for it to hatch.[1] Investing is popular and profitable, but it’s essential that you have a plan of attack before you start.
How many times have you begged your partner to get better at managing the family finances, only to have her/him roll eyes, shrug shoulders and beg off being capable of handling such responsibility? It happens all too often between couples. One manages the money the other mostly takes care of the household business, for lack of better word.
In our home, I am the financial decision maker, SMB doesn’t have much interest in knowing our tax bills or investment returns.
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Somehow I don’t feel like writing another personal finance topic today, also in weekend edition I talk only on personal matter. On weekends, OCAAT becomes a white board of my state of mind. If you follow my blog for only my financial advices, you may not get anything out from today’s article. If you follow my life, a bloggers life, you may get some insight in to my inner self. I know some of you do follow my weekend’s life snippets. At least the emails I receive indicate that fact.
On financial and money management matters, although, I am strict and disciplined, as a person I am very easy, flexible and weak. A somewhat do-as-you-like kind of guy. I am nostalgic and way more emotional than average men. I get hurt easily and am extremely fragile. In my personal life I often feel insecure.
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Before I go about with the post, a disclaimer. We do not have gold invested in such a variety of ways that I am going to describe here. Our gold is entirely in Jewelry form. As you might have heard by now, India is one of largest gold buying countries in the world. The reason being a social culture, where gold is given by the parents to their daughter on her marriage. It’s a social custom.
There, as soon as a daughter is born, parents start buying gold for her future marriage. No wonder that in our marriage SMB got lots of gold. We had to open a bank safety locker for their safe keeping. Apart from the jewelry, we used to own gold ETFs which we sold off last year, fearing about a gold bubble, after almost doubling my money in 4 years. But, the sad part is gold is even higher now.
I am not complaining for that, I can’t sell at the peak, no matter how hard I try. No one can time the market correctly. We are happy we sold off our position at a fantastic profit. And we have all our jewelry intact which we will probably not sell ever. Let’s now begin with the rest of the article. This may be useful to you if you are looking for gold investing in near future.
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Here is the gloomy Picture on the state of social security. This infographic is created by my friend Craig. The concept and topic were given by me. But, before you proceed with this, I will urge you to go over social security administration’s own infographic on the state of social security fund and its future.
It’s not good, either you start saving for your retirement today, if you are not up to it or, be prepared to work till you drop. There’s no alternative in sight, that I can think of, especially for the readers who are in their forties or younger.
