Basic.esplanner: Great Website that helps you “Develop Your Own Lifetime Financial Plan”. The way the economy is going you definite want to be ready for any upcoming obstacles. Some of the feature of Esplanner:
- Retirment plan
- Saving Plan
- Achieve Living standards for now and future
- Increase spending power
- Early retirement plan
- College expense
- Many more….

Morningstar: In our always changing economy you need to make sure your money invested wisely. Do you need to check if your portfolio diversified? Well MorningStar is the right place to find out what you exactly own. It also tells you about the how is your money spread around (industry, Sector, World Region, Stock category and more).

Nerdwallet: Want to earn high rewards on your spending? Well Nerdwallet.com is the best place to find the card that will get your highest rewards for your spending. Along with the highest rewards it also helps you find the cards with the lowest interest rate.

Credit: Want to know where your credit stands and need an advice on how to improve your score for FREE. Credit.com is exactly where you need to be. It’s always a good idea to know where you are standing with your credit and how you can improve it, because sometimes couple of points can cause you to miss out on great opportunities. Let credit.com grade you.

Coupons: Saving couple of bucks here and there can add up. If everyone if using coupons nowadays you should too. Coupons.com is a great source for getting many coupons you need to save you some extra $$$

About Me

Banks Lowering Consumers Credit-Card Limits

(100% my personal point of view)

So many of us are seeing our credit limits going down. At the same time many of us are thinking why are our credit limits decreasing if we have good credit score and we are making our payments on time or minimum payments for many.

Credit Card companies forecasting is the Key:

• Companies believe people can’t afford to payback those limits anymore due to the economy conditions. (too late for that many people already can’t afford to pay back what they used so far)
• Due to high unemployment many people might use their credit cards for holiday season and won’t be able to pay back. (Well this should help the economy YA RIGHT, here goes our retail industry.)
• If you have some credit cards with good amount of balance outstanding, this is a good indicator for credit cards to cut your limit. (Debt sucks)

Now why cut limits now? Trust me its better you know now than week before shopping for holiday.

Economy

Eight year ago on 9/11 when we were under terrorist attack Dow Jones closed at 9605.51 point. After the attack market fell and cause people and countries to lose trillions of dollars. This was caused by a terrorist attack.

Now Eight years later we would expect out market to recover from the hit, but the reality is Dow Jones on Sep 11, 2009 closed at 9605.41 points, which is .10 points below September 11 of 2001. This was caused by …..(Everyone have their explanation for this I guess).

Dow Jones: “Dow-Jones Industrial Average (an indicator of stock market prices; based on the share values of 30 blue-chip stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange)” http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=dow%20jones

Let me know what you guys think and you point of views?

Economy

Is investor education adequate solution to investor fraud?

Investor education seems to bring unemployment and recession. Off course I am not saying investor’s education is useless, but it is not an adequate solution to investor’s fraud. Main problem is people don’t think rational. We want to believe in the ideas of ridicules returns which are literally impossible to achieve.

I will use an example of Madoff to show why I think investor’s education is not adequate solution. If we look at the list of people who invested in Madoff mega billion schemes were deeply involved investment businesses. Of course they are supposed to be experts at investment if they take care of people investments.
How can you believe in such a high constant return on investment? Are you trying to beat GDP of a country?
Basic Rule how can put all your eggs in one basket?

I was shocked when I saw the list of investor, come on they are bank and investment companies they are suppose to manage our money and protect us from investment frauds. NOT GET US INVOLVED IN INVESTMENT FRAUDS.

Here is a list of some investors, or I should say some investment bank who invested in this fraud scheme. (Click on the image to see complete list)

Now the question is what convinced these people to get into this scheme?
Madoff paid high return to old investor and then of course our famous weapon word of the mouth got many others into this.

Basically thinking rational is very important in any kind of education. Investor education alone, without thinking rational can be dangerous instead of helping us.

Investor education can be really helpful if used with rational thinking. Is it a adequate solution to investor fraud, no because we don’t like to think rational. We want to believe that high unachievable returns are possible.

Economy

Some questions regarding Obama’s housing plan:

I really appreciate President Obama’s effort and hard work on trying to fix the housing problem in this country, which is the one of the main problems that brought this country into recession in the first place. The problem that I have with the housing plan is that we are going to be helping the people who lied about their income when applying for mortgages and bought the houses they couldn’t afford.

• Why are we helping the people who lied about income when buying houses?
• Why use US citizen tax money to help people who will own the equity they weren’t suppose to help in the first place?
• How will the person feel who worked two jobs to keep up with their mortgage? On the other hand people who don’t work so hard will be helped.
• What is the guarantee that these people will not fall into the foreclosures again?

What’s the grantee these mortgages won’t be defaulted later again? I believe most of these houses will be in the bubble of foreclosure again. In order to receive help for government; we should recheck the mortgages application for the people who are in danger of losing house. If they gave legit information when applied, then they should receive help. We should also go seriously after the mortgage brokers who helped people to get mortgages with incorrect information.

Anyone who cheated when applied for mortgage shouldn’t receive help. Yes it will bring more houses into the market and decrease the housing value, but let the people pick these houses, who can. Someone lose is always someone’s gain. We should definitely help the people who deserve help, people who lost their jobs, and help them save their homes, only if they provided legit information to start with. This idea doesn’t sound so great for short term, but I think it will help in long term. We don’t want to see this problem again in coming future again. If these houses default again soon, I am sure we will hit depression straight.

The reason I think it should be done this way is because, if your friend provided wrong information when taking mortgage and bought the house, and you decided not to cheat you lose in both way. First of all they cheat and then we help them keep the money and increase their equity, not so fair.

I think we should use the money from this plan to give buyers incentives to buy new house and also help the people who actually bought the houses with legit information, this way we can avoid the problem of these houses defaulting again and plus we can get some inventory off our shoulders.

Just a note to people who think this package will stop foreclosures and fix the housing problem- This package will not do any of that, what it will do is only slow down the rate of foreclosure. The rate will still continue diminishing on an upward slope. Last but not least, don’t expect to see the effect of any stimulus package right away; it will take a year or two for the public to see the effect.

Advice, Economy

I am not expert at this subject and might change my view later but for now here is how it goes.

Capitalism is an economic system which I believe is THE BEST way to success, competition and life. Yes we can say everyone gets a good piece of pie and live happily. It is a happy feeling, but this I believe takes away the incentives from a person to work harder than others and slows down the process of growth nationwide. It is way better than communism and socialism where you have ownership is ascribed to community as whole. On top of that productions, capital, and land are centrally controlled. Now when everything is controlled centrally, it makes all the consumers price takers rather than price makers. When consumers are considered price takers, that¢s when the nation has monopolies and Oligopolies. Monopoly is when there is one seller and many buyers and Oligopoly is when you have few sellers and many buyers, compared to perfect competition in which there are many sellers and many buyers.

I met a few people who believe that socialism is the best way to run the economy; sure it is the best if you don’t want to work your way up. USA is looked upon as an example to prove that capitalism doesn’t work and many people believe that government should control a big chunk of economy. Why not who wouldn’t want to have monopolies so we can all be price taker instead of price makers. If government takes control I think it will have a very negative effect according that’s what I believe but, like I said before we will have more monopolies and Oligopoly. I think government controlling the economy is a bad thing but government regulating is a good thing. Due to the lack of government seeing the mistakes in big company’s books, we are in recession. So if you can work hard to regulate the market and make sure law is being followed we will have a lot less problems then we have now. Now we have government auditing the big companies and finding big holes in the sheet and come on we all know they didn’t show up in a day or two.

The reason why I think Capitalism is the best is because you have competition which brings down the prices, you want to work hard because you know the harder you work more success you will gain and keep, people want to invest in their futures because in capitalism production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained by hard working private individuals and corporations.

As long as we have government regulating the market and make sure that people follow the law, and let the market be free we can once again achieve the heights of success.

Let me know what you guys think and you point of views?

Economy

“Love is a feeling that needs to be expressed, rather than just told”. –Younas Saleem

While I was sitting down thinking to myself why showing how much you love someone is important and this weird thought comes to my mind. It is really amazing how we say we really love someone and the person we love doesn’t feel the same way about it. It is very important that you show how much you love someone, and not just wonder that the other person can imagine how much you love them. Don’t take me wrong, but I really think that it is important that you show your love to have a strong relationship with anyone. This situation doesn’t only apply to love; it definitely works if you want to show someone how much you appreciate them. There are many times when we are in situations where we would just ignore or shout at the person we love because we are tired or we just don’t want to talk to anyone. We don’t think about how the person will feel because of our actions, but for sure we sit and think yes we can treat the person this way because we love them and you should be able to express all your feelings to the person you love. If we think about all the things we do in our life that we really don’t want to do, and still do them because we have no choice. Why can’t we take a moment and think if we just give the person we love some time and not be mean to them, how happy it will make them even though we don’t want to do it. Now that shows how much you love the person instead of ignoring them and thinking I can because I love them.

Same goes for appreciation, I was sitting with a couple of my friends and talking about some person who was really helpful and how much we appreciated her. It is very good to acknowledge how much you appreciate someone, but if we go and tell the person  how much we appreciate their help and maybe just buy them a flower, it will make the person so much happier and shows them how much you really appreciate them.

So I don’t know if all this talk made any sense, all I was trying to say was that it is really important for a person to SHOW how much you appreciate them, instead of just thinking about how helpful the person was.

You can appreciate or love a person all you want, but unless you show them how much you love/appreciate them they will never know the value of your love or your appreciation towards them.

Advice

Some facts about our Current economy I found here and there.

• As of Dec 2008 number of Unemployed people: 11,108,000
• Worst economy in 75 years
• US auto markets are on the edge of Bankruptcy
• Consumers are spending less and less and 70% of US GDP depends on it.
• Housing market is on its worst level in years.
• Foreclosures rate are sky rocketing even more.
• Let’s not forget the CHAPTER 11 filled by Lehman Brothers and many other companies and more to come.
• And list can go on and on. Please some any important economy facts here.

I found an interesting article about Barack Obama’s plan for our economy which you might want to look at. After all we must remember he is getting into a worst timing of economical timing. People expect him to fix all the problems as soon as he takes the seat, but remember it took years to get into this mess and it will take time to fix things as well. We should support him and work with him to start the process of fixing these issues and keep in mind it will take years to recover, not days.

Here is the Article

“How to Get Your Finances Ready for the Obama Era”

“When it comes to the economy, Barack Obama has been managing expectations the way Joe Torre managed the 1990s Yankees: with grim-faced seriousness and an aversion to rah-rah cheerleading. Just as Torre never promised great results from his teams of all-stars, Obama never misses a chance to remind the voting public that there are “no shortcuts or quick fixes to this crisis.” But the ongoing recession and market turmoil have driven expectations through the roof all the same. It’s a rare event indeed when a cabinet pick can drive the Dow up 500 points, or when a president-elect can draw a nationwide audience with radio addresses about the economy. (Franklin Roosevelt didn’t launch his “fireside chats” until after he got sworn in.) Starting Jan. 20, Obama’s own economic dream team officially takes the field—carrying all those expectations with them……………..”

**Read Full Article**

Economy

My name is Younas Saleem. I was born in Lahore, Pakistan and moved to the U.S in 2000. Most of my childhood years was spent in Pakistan. My childhood was full of one hospital trip to another. First, it was a fractured arm, another time, a broken foot, and yet another instance where I injured my head not once, but 3 times. On top of all of that, I burned my arm once and jumped off the second floor of my house on a dare. Having such an eventful childhood set the tone for the rest of my life, however- not in terms of hurting me, but by ensuring that I would set out into the world and explore all possibilities without the fear of falling. I knew the consequences; whether it was a period in a hospital room or perhaps a minor setback in the workplace, but everything in the end has taught me to leap into life without looking down.

Currently, I am living in Queens, New York. I work as an assistant coordinator at International High School Technology Department (please see my resume for responsibilities at my work). In my department we have a total of 10 people (you can click here for the opinions those people have of me). While working full time, I am also attending school full time as a senior at Queens College, majoring in Corporate Finance and Economics, and also a minor in Sociology. It is pretty difficult both working and attending school full time, but I am able to prioritize my time well regardless. It also doesn’t hurt that I love what I am studying. It really captures my attention, and I find it fascinating to learn about the way financial markets perform, the appropriate management of financial risk, the valuation of financial securities and what caused them to have the effect that they have. It is really interesting to see how big companies fall in this market and how one company’s losses can be a big gain for another company.

In five years, I would like to be a chief finance officer (or as close to this position as possible) and to have an idea for the successful start of my own business. My goal is to become an entrepreneur and make my own name in this life. At this point in time, because I am graduating this June, I am looking for a job related to my major which will assist me in moving on into the financial industry.

Life will go on and opportunity will come…

About Me