Help me to Retire

If you became suddenly ill or hospitalised or even dead would your family know what to do with all your affairs?
Do your family members understand all your financial dealings? Would they know where to start in paying your bills?
These are all important questions that you should sort out now while you are fit and well. I’m sure we’d all hate to see our hard earned investments disappear or go down the drain just because we hadn’t planned for the unexpected.

Heres a list of some things you should have easily on hand in case the worst should happen:

• Up to date medical insurance information
• An updated will
• Power of attorney information
• Life insurance information
• A basic guide to your bank accounts - numbers, passwords
• A basic list of bills in case someone else needs to help you pay them
• Spare keys for both house and car
• Details of all your investments and what needs to be done to look after them

Also think about people to notify of where these details are stored. Either papers stored somewhere accessible, on a certain computer or USB drive or even somewhere password protected on the web.

Anyway its something to think about. Sure you might think I’ll be dead so I won’t have to worry, but think about making life a bit easier for your loved ones left behind.

Check out the full article on this subject here.

Paul Nojin from invest4profit.com.au is giving a way one of his current recommendations. Equinox Minerals (ASX ticker symbol:EQN) is a copper and uranium play that Paul thinks is quite underrated and has a lot of potential.

EQN is developing the Lumwana deposit in Zambia which is Africa’s largest known copper deposit. Production doesn’t start until mid 2008 but once it gets going it will ramp up fast. The Lumwana mine also has a lot of Uranium in it. Of course companies like this are also often take over targets.

Check out the full report here, and as always make your own investing decisions.

Good luck.

Investors Direct one of Australia’s best property investor finance brokering companies is for a limited time offering a free report (Valued at $299) on How Little Known Creative Finance Strategies Can Increase Your Property Investment Satisfaction by over 67% - Guaranteed!

What you’ll discover in this exclusive report:

• Why FINANCE is the reason you invest in properties
• The 10 types of investor … which one are you? And how to kick start your investment activities NOW!
• The 3 critical stages of finance – how to plan ahead
• The 11 ways to instantly increase your borrowing capacity (without increasing your income)
• The 9 little-known ways to create instant equity (using little or none of your own money)
• The 8 ways to create instant cash flow
• The 6 deadly traps financiers don’t tell you about which could hurt your investment
• The 20 most common mistakes investors and financiers make with property finance – and how you can avoid them
• Why there are no rules in property finance

This is a great free PDF download from the guys at Investors Direct. If you are involved in investment property or want to be in the future I highly recommend you downooad and read this!

Grab it here.

Propertyupdate.com.au have updated their site to now include downloadable audio of teleseminars that they have conducted. This is great news for all of us who have missed out on the teleseminars for various reasons.

At the moment the only one on the site is the teleConference with Michael Yardney and Pamela Yardney
answering listeners property questions and discussing the launch of their new book - All you need to know about Buying and Selling your Home.

Check it out. You can either listen straight off of the site or download the MP3.

How much in savings and superannuation do you have? I’m sure you’ll agree that in order to retire you’ll need a lot more than $25 thousand. Unfortunately there is a lot more people than you’d think that only have about this much. Yes, a lot of them are in the under 35 years old category as you’d expect, but there is also a lot of older people in this quite worrying situation.

This article I found gives you the percentages of what you need to be saving for your age group and also links to an online calculator to help you. Remember, now is the time to start planning for your retirement. There are many ways to help you get there quicker, just search this site for ideas.

I reccomend that superannuation and savings is your security/backup plan not your main and only investment vehicle.

If you haven’t already, Start today!

A friend just  found this article and sent it through to me.  It’s titled :

Stop Picking Stocks — Immediately! Why the world’s greatest stock picker stopped picking stocks, and why you should, too.

It is an interesting read and talks about how Benjamin Graham (known as one of the worlds greatest stock pickers) in the end believed that is was just too hard and not worth it. In his early days of the 1930’s and 40’s the stock market was a lot less sophisticated than it is now making inside and special information uncoverable if you searched hard enough. But these days insider trading is illegal and all information about all trading companies is released to everyone at the same time.

Anyway have a read of the full article for a different point of view and ask yourself how are you going picking stocks? Is it worth your time? Is it worth the money?

Following on from one of my earlier articles (10 new ways to make money online) this one gives you what are some of the current best online earners. And surprise surprise if good old eBay isn’t number one…
Ebay is a great place to start online. You can start by selling things around the house you don’t want anymore. Maybe you have some movies you don’t watch anymore, or a game you don’t play or a book that you have read. All of those items will sell on eBay. Once you have gotten the hang of things you can then move into getting your hands on some wholesale pricing and starting your eBay store selling new items. Give it a go, it really is very easy. The eBay site gives you step by step instructions.
Here’s the list:

1. Selling Ebay Items
2. Turnkey Sites/Basic Promotion
3. Tweaking tip #2 to make even more money
4. Write a blog
5. Pay Developers to code you a 100% original website
6. Learn SEO (Search Engine Opimisation)
7. Creating a directory
8. Start a paid service website
9. Create a content rich newsletter
10. 10 Do PPC to CPA

Check out the full article here.

The internet is a great teacher, so if you don’t understand anything above, use your friend Mr Google.

Hopefully you’ve all read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad. If not head on over to your favourite online book store and get it right now! This was the book that got myself and a lot of other people into financial education and investing. I just wish I read it about 5 years earlier.

The author Robert Kiyosaki is a great teacher of how the the financial world works. He is always alerting you to what the rich do and what the poor do to help you change your financial habits. His main emphasis is on becoming an investor and or business owner and not being an employee or self employed. That is what the rich do, and that is what he encourages and teaches you to do.

The Rich Dad website has a heap of audio and video podcasts available for download. In these podcasts Robert and friends go through a range of different information to help you on your way to financial freedom. Its all good information that’s well worth the download.

There’s nothing like getting free advice so head on over to the Rich Dad site and get yours now.

Robert, his wife and other associates have also written many other books that are well worth while.

I’ve previously alerted you to the free yahoo group ASX data that is delivered daily to your mail box.

Today I have another place to tell you about.

Float.com.au is a bit of a strange one actually. It has been around for years, but the site has remained unfinished for all this time. But, it is updated every single trading day at 5pm (EST) with free end of day data for the ASX in either text, csv or zip format. You can also pick what type of data you need for your individual charting program.

There is also an area where you can download previous months / years of data back until January 1997. Not bad at all for free. A lot of data places charge quite a bit for this information.

The only other page on the Float site that seems to be of any use (or finished) is the Glossary page under the help section. It explains a whole heap of different market terms.

So if your in need of a great free data service for the Australian Stock Exchange, look no further than here.

The E-Minis Market has only been around for about 8 years, but in that time has seen huge growth.
Basically with the e-minis you trade the stock index futures of the S&P 500, DOW and NASDAQ. E-minis Global have an education program that you can go through and learn to day trade this market. All of the learning happens online. The best part of the training I think is the live trading room you get to log into and watch their trader mark signals on live charts and tell you when to enter and exit.
Another advantage of just trading indexes is that you don’t have to worry yourself about company profits and reports. Those things can play havoc with company stocks. Also trading futures gives you some great leverage power!

Anyway E-minis Global offer a free DVD to explain all of the above and much much more to you. Head on over there now to grab yours (free postage to Australian and New Zealanders).  If you like what you see in the DVD, they offer a one day course to take you further (currently free, usually $495).

Check it out