Finance Blog

Venezuela: another sample of why socialism doesn’t work

Dorothy Smith — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not sure if you are paying attention to the current situation of Venezuela. Actually, whenever you are informed or not, I have found a great article in allfinancialmatters.com where it’s blogger discerns about the ‘Socialism doesn’t work topic’. Most of this was started back when oil prices were high and could support Chavez’s ambitions.

Now Venezuela faces both a recession on rampant inflation. Which is the reason?We can find the answer on this article published in WSJ a few days ago:

Experts in economy say Chavez socialist economic policies are the main problem of the isse, and that his attempted solutions are only likely to make matters worse.

‘Venezuela’s economy is becoming so inefficient that it is having a harder time growing even with higher oil prices,’ declared Tamara Herrera, a reputated economist at Global Source Partners, a Venezuelan economic forecasting group.

At the root of the current trouble was a huge run-up in public spending under Mr. Chávez’s government during the past few years on the back of high oil prices. To try to limit the resulting inflation, the president’s team resorted to price controls, which led to shortages and other problems.

One of the prices the government has tried to set is the exchange rate. But the system has grown in complexity, with effectively four different exchange rates, three set by the government and one set by the market—the black market.

And then which is the resason because Chavez follows such a strategy as socialism? He says it’s to help de poor, but maybe this is not the real truth. Maybe he pursues total control? Chavez isn’t living with his own mistakes, neither the ones of socialism. If he were living like the typical Venezuelan, he might have a different point of view on his policies.

For sure future economic books will have a chapter dedicated to the situation in Venezuela.

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How to check my Federal Tax Refund status

Dorothy Smith — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 05:12:16 +0000

The ones who pay taxes (yes, I’m one of these also) love to see a tax refund in the bottom line. It’s like getting a present when you don’t expect it, like an extra payment for Christmas. Getting a tax refund is cool, and is even more cooler using it to pay, for instance, some pending debts instead of spending it buying a new computer or whatever else. Yes, I used to do this also, but this is another point.

Now I’m older, and I do really prefer not to get a tax refund but paying a bit less during the year, and have the money in my pocket during the year.

Obviously I don’t judge the ones that prefer a to receive a tax refund. There are people who loves the government uses their money during a year and get it back then. Is like a forced saving. And that’s ok too.

Anyway, this is not the point of this post. I just would like to let you know that if you have a pending tax refund for this year, you can check its status with this simple web-based tool located at the IRS web site. You will need to proof you are what you claim to be using your Social Security Number and the exact amount of the due refund, but I suppose you already know these details. So, that’s it.

If you like getting a refund for your taxes at the end of the year. This tool may be useful for you.

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Quicken Deluxe 2009: a powerful personal finance tracking software

Dorothy Smith — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:03:26 +0000

It seems that the launch of the new version of the financial software this 2009 has seen a lot expense-tracking obsessives moving to Quicken. Although setting it up is quite complicated, time consuming, and exasperating, the time will be definitely worth it (if you are really interested in tracking your finances in detail).

Quicken Deluxe 2009, wich cost around 40 $, is a very secure software (of course your passwords are stored on your machine and not in a external server) and it offers some very powerful tools that compensate the bunch of problems you suffer to configure it. You can, for instance, write checks with the same software.

However, if you are looking for someting simple, forget about Quicken Deluxe, it is not an easy to use (but very powerful) financial tool. For sure you will find something cheaper, and less time consuming. Period.

The ultimate financial tool: Google Finance

Blog finances comes back with a new design

Dorothy Smith — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:00:20 +0000

After a quite long time of absence, here we come again with new financial blogging pourposes before the end of the year. And well, also with a new design for Blog Finances, more newspaper-style, to keep updating you with the most recent news of the financial world in a more clear and comprehensive way.

This is the new Blog Finances

From now, after making all the arrangements for the new design to work properly, we well keep updating our blog as usual with financial tips, news, and articles that we find interesting about the finance world. And in this new step of our “brand new” finance blog, we will be more positive than ever.

The terrible financial period that the whole world has experienced is comming to an end, at least for us, and we will focus on taking about good and innovative investing options, business building and stock trading.

Because this is definitely the only way to go.

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An introduction to the Forex Market

Dorothy Smith — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:47:23 +0000

For the begginers in the subject, the foreign exchange market is also known as the forex market. Trading occurs between a couple of parts with various currencies is the basis of the forex market. The FX market is over 30 years old, and started it’s walk in the early 70’s. In resume, the forex market is about trading and selling of currencies.

The stock market and the forex market are different things, and one of the big points is the immense trading that takes place on the forex market. There are millions and millions that are traded in a daily basis, more than two trillion of USD are traded in a daily basis . The amount is much more elevated than the money exchanged on the daily stock market of any region . The forex market is one that involves governments and banks and those similar types of institutions from other regions of the world.

What is traded on the forex is something that can easily be converted in cash. From one currency to another, the availability of cash in the forex market is something that can happen fast for any businessman from any region.

The difference between the stock market and the forex market is that the forex market is global, worldwide. While the stock market is something local, that takes place only in a given country. The stock market is based on businesses while the the forex includes any region and currency.

While th stock market has set business hours, the forex, due its international appeal is open 24 hours a day, because the immense number of countries that are concerned in forex trading. One market opens, another closes, but you can be active all the time.

The stock market in any region is going to be based on only that countries currency, say for instance the Canadian Dollar, and the Canadian stock market, or the United States stock market and the USD . However, in the forex market, you are concerned with a lot of types of countries and currencies.

This is just an introduction. You will have more entries on this subject soon here at Blog Finances.

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Refinance or not

Dorothy Smith — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:02:01 +0000

Refinance or not. This is the question. While refinancing may ever seem the best options when we the pressure of the montly payments falls over us, you should be aware that in some cases refinancing may be against your interest and may be not worth the costs. If you have reached this page, you may be consirering if you should refinance or not. Here you have four points where your refinancing plan may be not as good at it seems at the first glance.

If you have been paying a loan for many years, for instance more than 10 in a 30-year mortgage, refincancing may not be recommented since it’s going to increase the global cost of your loan.
If you’ve missed payments, or you don’t have a good payment history, probably you won’t get a good refinancing rate to make refinancing worth it.
To get the best conditions, you’ll need to keep your borrowing to less than 80% of your home value. So, maybe refinancing is not worth it when when you have already borrowed more than 80% of your home value. Consider this when you are thinking in refinancing or not.
Do you have a spending problem? While asking for some extra cash during a refinancing to pay daily debts is a common procedure nowadays, it may be a fatal mistake. Your short-term loan is turning a long-term one. If you face this situation refinancing may act against your interest in the long run.

Getting started in Domain Investing

Dorothy Smith — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:00:37 +0000

While a long time of skepcisism, Mainstream media has finally discovered the domain industry. And while the main interest grows around domain names, it seems like a perfect time to invest, or continue investing, in this relatively new market.

If you are new to domain names, you first need to understand what makes a domain name valuable, this will definitely save you a lot of money in the long run. Domaining is about buying domain names that could become valuable in the future and marketing them to make them attractive to potential users. Without doubt is one of the markets that still can reward you with an almost incredible return on investment if you are good enough.

Some key factors that matter when you think to put your money in a particular niche or domain name are ease of retention, commerce potential, length, extension value, and avoidance of numbers and hyphens… But it’s not just size and extension that matters. And we will write about this soon at blog finances.

Once you have learned this very first lesson, you can start creating your portfolio, and to do this I would recommend you to visit our past article Investing in domain names, that will show you some ways to enter the domain business without leaving too much money in the chance.

Investing in stocks online, save those annoying fees

Dorothy Smith — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:00:36 +0000

Nowadays, with the improvement of the online security and increase of the online stock brokerage offers, the online stock trading is becoming more and more popular. Investing in stocks online avoids the need of getting a personal broker and it’s cheaper than it used to be in the “real world”. For people trading with low volume this should be an option to be considered.

While there are some websites that charge some comissions on each trade, there are some others that only charge you an initial fee to join them. Also, there are some that charge commissionn based on the number of stocks you trade in each transaction. For instance, if you sell 100 shares, some online investing sites will charge less than $5.

However, the bad point is that you should sharpen your knowdlege to avoid taking risks, since you will be taking decisions on your own without an “assistant”, and there are several tools that can help you to do this. Although most sites provide you some good tools that will help you to take some goog stock trading decisions, I would also recommend to use some other external financial tools. One of these es Google Finance tool, which was threated in the past in this blog.

Online stock trading can bring you success if you find the correct place to do it. In this term, I don’t pretend to recommend any particular site. But doing a bit of research on your own will bring to your attention some major reliable sites that, definitely, will make your investing life a lot easier. Spend that time and help yourself to avoid those annoying fees.

Debt Calculators

Dorothy Smith — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:50:55 +0000

Do you want to improve your financial situation? Are you worried about your recent high bills? Do you really know which is the real interest are you paying up on your bills? Well, there are many questions that could perfectly apply to what I’m going to tell you today, and today’s posts talks about debt calculators which you can easily find online.

These tools are very easy-to-use and most of them are also free. Thes utilities help you to know which is your real situation and this is the first step to find a solution to your problem. This sort of tools show you, in a graphical way, some how can can you improve your financial status.

If you go and try to find an specialist to make this sort of calculations, which is very respectable, they will also use a debt calculator, so probably you will do better trying it on your own (even if you are willing to pay for the service after). Debt calculator is one of the basic actions you should perform when you find yourself in a delicated situation due debts. It’s very important you are aware of what you spend, and the “solutions” provided will really help on that.

Whenever you decide to give it a try and use the calculator in your own, or go to a professional to make it done, you should use the debt calculator properly. When you “discover” your real financial situation, keep your mind focused and go and solve it. It may be hard, but the first step to solve your debt problems is accpeting them.

To fing a debt calculator just go to google and search fot “Debt Calculators”, there are plenty and very useful ones.

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Investing in domain names

Dorothy Smith — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 03:34:00 +0000

Some days ago we were talking about how to start your online business finding a market for your websites, both to make money with a website or just to invest. Today we come with another related topic: Investing in domain names.

Yes, it may sound strange, investing in a domain name? Yes, you are right. During the past years some people saw the boom coming and registered the best available domain names and kept them for further resale. How did it end? Well, we have now the millonaires of the dot com era.

With this I’m not saying you will become millionaire investing in domain names. Well, in fact, domain investing it’s a hard business but also domain names are now a new investing field for ambitious modern investors. Many invested in stocks or homes in the past, now there is the option of domain names, it’s quite similar, but less known. Doing a bit of research you will find a lot of specific sites that talk about domain investment and where you can find some valuable tools and information to start your domain investment business.

Actually most of the big names are taken… How I can start then?

Well, there are two things you can do. Buy good names from private portfolios (it’s the expensive option) or catching expiring domain names (the cheapest but hardest way).

Buying private portfolio domains

To start creating your domain portfolio you need to set-up a budget, decide a niche (it’s recommended to mainly invest in one or two categories), and buy some names that you believe may be they may increase its value during the following months or years. Where to find these names? Well, you may check some domain selling sites (as Sedo.com or NameDrive.com) or perform a search for the terms “Domain portfolio” or “Buy domain names” in google. You will find plenty of sites with plenty of domains for sale.

Now it’s a good time to invest in these sort of volatile goods since people is more skeptic about them these days, because of the current economy status, but they will grow up in value in a few months or years. However, before start buying try to find out which sort of domains are valuable, it will save you money.

Invest in expiring domain names

Domain names are registered in a year by year basis. If people doesn’t renew their domain it expires and becomes available for public registration. This scenario is called domain drop.

There are many situations where a domain can end up expiring, including that the domain owner forgets about the renewal and let a valuable domain go. Many valuable domains expire every day (between 30,000 and 60,000 names daily) and doing a good research you can find real gold mine domains there.

To fight the “domain drop” and catch some good domain names to invest in them you need to contract a domain drop catcher. These “catchers” own powerful robots that will fight to register the domains you want for a small amount that starts at about 16$ (and up to hundreds of US$), this sort of operation is called domain backorders. There are many robots over there, as SnapNames or Pool (which are known to be the best but more expensive) but there are also some small domain catchers over there that are cheaper and give decent results. One of these sites is Name Captor, which charges 15.99 $ per operation and gives good results.

I encourage you to get some information about this quite new form of investing that’s becoming more and more popular every day. On the following days I’ll try to extend the information about this topic here at Blog Finances. Stay tuned!