For a limited time you can read Robert Kiyosaki’s (author of the RIch Dad, Poor Dad Series) latest book for free online.

Here’s a bit about what you can expect from the book from their website:

“Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money will share Kiyosaki’s view of global economics and explore why people are now finding themselves challenged by these turbulent times. Kiyosaki will not only provide people with solutions to their financial problems, but explain what created today’s economic chaos — and how it can be eased. Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money will reveal that what appears to be the worst of times is actually an opportunity in the making, and a chance for people to invest in their financial education.”

Read it here - only available for another 2 weeks online and then you’ll have to buy the book when it comes out.

Well what a few months it has been, it’s like the last few years of the stock market’s bull run never happened.

So how did we get here? Well heres a quick visual run down.

Hopefully most of you haven’t been hit too badly if you have been trading for yourselves, but if your anything like me your Super (401k) has taken a beating in the last year. In fact the only person I know who’s super has gone up in the last year is my father in-laws, who I advised that the market was peaking last year so he smartly moved it into cash. He reminds me of it every time I see him…  If only I followed my own advice! Unfortunetaly for him as cash rates are coming down so fast at the moment, soon that won’t be offering much either.

So what do we do?

I’ve personally been getting educated the last few months, and comparing this financial crisis to the only thing that even comes close and that is bear markets and crashes of the past.
The main thing that has stuck with me from anything I’ve read or learned in the last few months about similar times like these is that after every crash or bear market money flows into property with a lag in time.  The lag is the only thing that worries me at this time as it may be longer than in the past due to strict financial conditions.
Here in Australia we do not have the housing over supply situation that America does. We have a large shortfall that is actually increasing. This undersupply is what will support Australian house prices. It all comes down to supply and demand. Sure some areas will do worse than others and even fall in value but in general we will not see huge falls in the price of our homes.
One thing is for sure at the moment, if you have the equity and can get the finance it seems like there are some great long term property deals at the moment. It’s the first time in years I’ve looked through realestate.com.au or the paper and seen some properties that actually seem cheap.  Avoid the usual supects of off the plan and high density apartments (these will do worse than others at the moment), just look for good location (with in 10ks of a city) decent property. The buyers are few and far between at the moment and some sellers are just getting desperate or sick of being on the market and they are dropping prices or accepting much lower offers.
Another thing worth investigating is property sub division. I’m currently working on splitting a property into 3 at the moment about 7Km’s from the city. The land will apeal to first home buyers with their increased building grant up until June 30 2009. I’m also dipping into some unit renovations to see how that fares in these times. I’ll keep you informed.
The 2nd lag to consider is the lower interest rates lag. It usually takes about 3 months for interest rate cuts to take any effect, but as we are getting big ones every month at the moment I think this is holding buyers off further seeing where they will stop. I’m sure by early next year they will slow down and the new year the property market should settle and have buyers return as long as unemployement doesn’t become too much of a problem.

Other problems at the moment mainly relate to finance.  Just this week 2 of the major mortgage insurers have made low doc loans a lot less usefull by allowing only a 60% lend instead of 80%. This I beleive has effected most of the big banks. This will have me looking for money else where too in any future deals which could be costly.

The other possible major finance problem is what Bill Zheng from Investors Direct calls the perfect storm. This is basically where sometime in 2009 or 2010 the world decides that Australia is in over its head financially and will not lend us any more money. We’ve been getting deeper and deeper into debt for decades and basically it can’t go on for ever…..  See Bill’s DVD’s here for more info on this one and for what he thinks you should do to prepare. I personally hope that this doesn’t occur and is sorted out some other way…..

Any way I’ve dribbled on enough for now, good luck with your Investing!

Check out this site for up to the mintue real estate and finance news.

Has America’s financial system just been repeating mistakes from 3 generations ago?

Having slowly broken free of the regulations put in place to stop such a banking crisis again it seems that yes, we are in repeat.

The next few years will be very interesting - check out the full article here.

I’ve found a great article that talks about the decline of the largest income bracket age group in America and its effects on GDP and the stock markets.

The article uses Japan as a historic reference and then goes though the same charts with the current American situation.

A very interesting read that can give you a big picture on where markets are heading in the coming years.

Check it out 

With business sentiment continuing to fall, a standard normal recession is starting to sound good… But it seems many economists are now predicting a much worse Deep Recession.
It seems that American housing prices may fall as much as 20% before leveling out leaving many with negative equity (owing more than their house is worth).

The sub prime crisis has plenty more legs in it yet and we won’t see the worst of it until the 2nd half of the year.

Rising inflation is also damping business and consumer confidence.

Interesting times ahead.

Read more here 

I found a handy little article on the myths of leasing a car.

If you are currently looking at getting your self some new wheels, it may well pay off for you to lease the vehicle rather than buy it. Leasing can be good for you if you are on the road lots and only like to keep your cars for a few years. And of course, if you are running your own business there can be some great tax advantages.

Check out the article and perhaps speak to your local finance person to get all the details on what will work out best for you financially.

I don’t as yet have children, but when that day comes I want to be armed with a life time of financial information to teach them all I know about investing before they get out of teenage hood. I for one wish I knew what I know now when I was a teenager. I think it could have changed my life to the result of being several hundred thousand dollars richer or even much much more.

So at what age do you begin to teach your kids? I think it’s never to young as long as your kids have a basic understanding of money and its value. You can then begin to teach them about the ways money can make money. Perhaps starting with a basic savings account, preferably one with a decent interest rate and no fees such as the ones offered by ING and Bank West. Get them to save at least 10% (preferably more) of every bit of money that comes their way. Make sure they don’t touch it and show them how their money is growing over the following months and years. Get them excited about it.
Once they have a decent amount saved up and they have matured a bit you could then get them into a managed fund or even open a stock market account for them. Teach them about charts and valuing companies. This can be a great learning experience for them, especially if they make some money and lose some money.

From here you can teach them about property investing and using leverage (other peoples money). You can also get them to read books like Rich Dad Poor Dad so they can learn the difference between being an employee, self employed, a business owner and an investor.

There are several books written by Rich Dad to help you in the area of teaching your kids, you can check out the range here.

I think most of all you need to keep learning about money and investing fun, especially when your kids are young, other wise they will just think it’s boring. Good luck.

In these interesting economic times, now more than ever it is important to get all the information you can on a company your choosing to invest your hard earned money in.

There are many places you can do this. There is those reports you get from your broker, there is those online subscriptions you have, there is the news releases from the ASX and other markets and then there is your own research. And what do we use to research the most these days? That’s right, the Internet. So what would you say if I told you I was about to give you a link to a page that has 200 places where you can get info on companies? Not bad hey. Unfortunately they are mostly American, but there is plenty of world wide info there to be had and of course lots of us invest in the US anyway. Good luck.
Here you go

There is plenty of talk at the moment about the US dollar’s decline.

There is now talk of many countries abandoning the greenback.  Others are dumping large amounts and the rest are at least asking to be paid in Euros or Yen.

For some, like the guys at my work its time to hit amazon.com and buy up or make that trip to Disneyland as the Aussie dollar nearly equalises, but others know that there is financial shake up occuring that could upset markets world wide.

Interesting times ahead. Especially when people like Paul Nojin from Invest4Profit.com.au make predictions like the Australian Dollar is heading to $1.14 US.  I personally can’t see him being far wrong. I guess time will tell.

Short the US $ or Long the Rest.

Some more reading on the $US here

Check out Michael Yardney’s latest tele-seminar of his interview with wealth consultant Roger Hamilton.

Well worth a listen for all you budding investors out there.

You can grab the MP3 download of the session here