Help me to Retire

Following on from yesterdays International Living article, I came across this great site today as I was on my daily where in the world would I love to own a place hunt.
Amberlamb.com is a great resource for information on property ownership in most countries around the world. Under each areas section they provide news on the local property markets and most importantly a buying guide, property investment potential and an investors guide for that country. For instance these sections will tell you weather foreign ownership is permitted in that country and how to go about it, or if other options are available to control property etc.

The site also has a small section on international mortgages for France, Spain, Italy or Portugal or another popular European destinations.

Anyway if you’ve fallen in love with a place you recently visited or you want to know what the latest international property hotspot is then Amberlamb.com could be the site for you.

Thought I’d mention this great site that I receive daily emails from and have subscribed to their print newsletter before also.
It’s International Living. A site dedicated to overseas living / retirement / traveling and investing. I often get my daily postcard from these guys and look at picture that comes along with it (often a white sandy beach in a perfect tropical setting) and start dreaming. It’s actually a great motivator to get my self financially free ASAP!

International Living offer some free reports and many you have to pay for, but prices are reasonable. The IL team have people in many countries around the world for in country support for people looking to move / buy property there.
Countries include:

• Argentina
• Ecuador
• Honduras
• Ireland
• Mexico
• Nicaragua
• Panama
• Paris/France

Some of the free reports available include:

• Worldwide Tax Summary
• A New Life on the High Seas
• How to Manage Your Overseas Property
• How to Prepare For a Move Overseas - A Checklist

I must say when you recieve an email that has a title of live in paradise for $19 a day, it gets your attention.  This is the type of information you receive. Info on up and coming Real Estate markets around the world, that are cheap, safe and have all the modern facilities that you need. A lot of the prices quoted are very low as compared to our first world prices, which make buying something all the more tempting and all the more within reach.
So if your interested in starting your global property investing or retiring overseas in a new culture for much less than it would cost you here, head on over to http://www.internationalliving.com 

The Investors Club is an Australian property investing club that is organised to help you reach your property investing goals. To join the club is free, and to view the current properties available all you have to do is put in a request to see how much you can borrow with club loans ( no strings attached).
The idea of the Investors Club is that they locate high growth property with decent rent returns at a pre-negotiated price. The price is what I find is the only small let down with the Investors Club. As it can’t be negotiated, it’s take it or leave it, often leaving you paying slightly too much. But the club does need to make money to provide all the services it does for you and this is where they make it, in their commissions on sales. The club can often get a bit better price anyway due to being able to offer quick sales to vendors as they can present the property to the thousands of Investors Club members and have a buyer buy 4pm the next day.
The club offers many services to members including a leasing department, maintenance, insurance department, loans and legal support. It is these services and ongoing support from the club which is of great value. Investors Club property’s also have a much lower rental vacancy rate than a non member property’s.

The club holds meetings around the country so you can learn first hand how the club works and what it can do for you. It’s also great to spend time with like minded people and throw some questions around.

The core principles behind The Investors Club plan are:

1. Each investment property must involve minimal cash outlay;
2. Property selection is critical;
3. Every property must be as close as possible to positive cashflow from day one; and
4. Never, never sell.

The Club uses the motto “Never, Never Sell” as your retirement plan invloves living off the equity built up in your properties. As you will see when you go to a meeting, once you have enough properties, you can live off it indeffinetly!

Check out the Investors Club.

The Intelligent Investor is an online and paper based value investing newsletter service for ASX investors.

They provide a subscription service (24 issues (1 year) - $495) that provides you with:

• 1000 + stock reviews at www.intelligentinvestor.com.au
• Weekly email alerts reporting on sharemarket news and price movements
• 5-10 extra special reports posted to you throughout the year
• Model growth and income portfolios to guide you in your investment decisions
• Sharemarket advice from our research analysts on email and over the phone
• A 100% money-back guarantee if you’re unhappy at all during your subscription.

A great thing about this site is they also offer a FREE trial service. This provides you with 3 free issues of their reports over a 6 week period.
So head on over and sign up for your free trial, you’ve got nothing to lose, everything to gain and it will be well worth your time.

Stockradar is a handy site for the Australian stock market investors out there. Available is Stockradar’s stock of the week, a free bi-monthly newsletter that covers quite a few stocks in detail and they also offer a subscription service for a yearly fee of $346.50. The subscription includes:

• Stock Picks:
  Released Monday (pre market).
  Stockradar’s entries and exits for the week including Richard Lie’s Top Ten Stock Picks and an update on all our covered stocks.
• Stock Alerts:
  Tuesday to Friday.
  Sent direct to your email address at 9.45am.
  Also available on our website.
• Weekly Sector Update:
  Released Tuesday.
  Each week we take an in depth view of one our 24 Industry Groups.
• Risk Calculator:
  Check you risk. Is it too high? Where should your protection be?
• The Free Stockradar Newsletter:
  A bi-monthly insight to a selection of Stockradar’s highlighted stocks.

I have previously paid for a subscription with Stockradar, but found that their way of investing didn’t suit mine at the time. They are deffinetly more long term focused investors with wider stops (weekly stops that can some times result in large losses if not kept in check). They select as many stocks as they feel out of the top 200 that are trending upwards at the time with some decent research and technical to back them up.

I found that the free newsletter is good enough + the stock pick of the week can often be a winner.

Head on over and sign up for the newsletter and check out the rest of the site.

Net Quote is a data and news provider for the ASX. They sell software, data and infromation on the Australian Stock Exchange.
But what I find most useful about these guys is if you register a free guest account you can join Netquote and have access to your own Portfolio Manager, Daily Email and more. This email that come twice a day gives you a run down on international markets including oil, gold and international stock news.  It also gives you a great overview of key ASX stock announcements, indices and the most active stocks for the day.

So if your after a twice daily market update that comes to you, get over to Net Quote and sign up!

Now this is a great site with a free newsletter that if your into or interested in property investment you have to visit.

Michael Yardney is a property investor, developer, business owner and author. When it comes to property, over his lifetime he has seen it all and done it all before. As he has been through so many property cycles he is a great resource for information on where we are in the current cycle and what to do in the different stages of the property cycle.
Michaels motto is to only buy well located high growth properties, do your research (past growth in an area is a great indication of future growth over a 10yr period), find motivated vendors, make cheeky offers and buy investments below market price and in particular look for properties to which you can add value creating your own capital growth.

The Property Investment Update website lets you sign up for the free monthly newsletter that contains articles from Michael and a heap of other property experts.
Micheal Yardney also has a book out called “How to Grow a Multi Million Dollar Property Portfolio - in your spare time”. I have read this book and highly recoommend it and I will review it on this site at a later date - stay tuned for that!

For now head on over to the site, have a read and sign up for the newsletter.

InvestSmart is a great  resource for everything to do with the Australian Stock Exchange,  Superannunation,  Managed  Funds , Insurance, Finance and much more.
This site was one of the first sites that got my attention when I realised I wanted more from my life than the 9 till 5 drudgery.  When I first started investing in the stock market, my strategy was to get into just about every new float that I could as when they were averaged out you could effectively sell on the first day and the end of the year have a 30% plus return. It was a good theory, but I soon found out getting into every float was pretty dam hard as a one man show. I usually got into all the average ones and missed out on the doublers!
Any who back to InvestSmart where they have all the info and prospectuses of up and coming floats or IPO’s. Very handy in deed.
Another great thing about Investsmart I found out and used is their entry fee rebate on managed funds. They also refund you their commissions!!

If you sign up and become a member of the site (Free of course :)) you can set up your portfolio with their online tools showing you your assets and liabilities and your end result your net worth.  It’s good to get it down and actualy see where you are! You can also track things in a watch list like certain stocks or managed funds performance.

There are a heap of great tools and services on this site, your best off to just head over there and get into it yourself!

Investsmart 

Invest 4 Profit is Paul Nojin’s investment recommendation site for ASX stocks.
Paul began his career as a futures trader with globally acclaimed investment bank, Bankers Trust.
In the year 2000 Paul founded Marketmad.com, the original Invest4Profit website.
Paul is the developer of the Key Levels model, a maths based approach to the timing of both entries and exits.
Paul was the clearcut winner of Money Magazine’s Battle Of The Tipsters, notable as it ran during the last bear market - i.e. in the year to April 2003.
He beat Fat Prophets by 16%. He finished 37% ahead of InvestorWeb’s team. He beat the ASX 200 by 18%. That’s a pretty good record. Paul is also huge on getting the results he produces independently verified. Currenly his picks since he started the site have resulted in a 46.9% return. Not too shabby!I have used Invest 4 Profit and was happy with the results. Currently until October 20 they have a special on that will save you over $200. The deal is $770 for a years subscription.

If you are unsure, be sure to sign up for his free advice that comes out now and then. Just put your details in on the home page

The Renovation Kings - Geoff Doidge and Paul Eslick two ordinary blokes who have combined their considerable talents to build the successful property investment phenomenon that is Reno Kings.

These guys are great. They have a wealth of experience under their belts and they and keen to share it with anyone who wants to learn.

The Reno.com.au website is absolutely packed with information and resources. Firstly there are all the great articles, then there is the forums where you can chat with other investors who can help you out or have been through a similar problem you might be having. There is also a renovation materials section where the guys have listed a whole heap of the best places to get materials in your state. And to top it off there is the property links page which has a link to almost everything to you will need for your next property investment.

The Reno Kings also do Workshops which cost a couple of thousand dollars, but I’m sure you’d get more than your money back pretty quick once you take action with your new found knowledge. I’m hoping to attend one of their workshops soon.

Anyway, sign up to their newsletter to keep informed and have a look around the reno site, as I’m sure you’ll find it very handy.