SeedTime

SeedTime Money (Christian Personal Finance)

Kevin

5 Ways To Get Started Investing With Very Little Money

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5 Ways to Get Started Investing with Little MoneyDo you think that it is impossible to build a balanced investment portfolio if you have very little money to invest?

Think again.

Using very little money, you can spread your investments across the full spectrum of asset classes – stock-based mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, bonds, and even commodities.

All you have to do is know where to find investments that you can start with as little as $1. And there are plenty of options.

1. Acorns

Simply put, the easiest way to start investing with no money.  They just round up all the purchases you make to the next dollar and invest the difference.

So, say you go to the grocery store and spend $16.25, they will round up to $17.00 and take the 75 cents and invest it. If you do that over and over, it quickly adds up to some big savings.

By far, the easiest set-it-and-forget-it way to get started investing.

Here is how it works:

2. Give Betterment a whirl.

Betterment is an online investment firm that has no minimum investment or balance requirement. They do however require that you contribute a minimum of $100 per month to your account.

It is not a traditional brokerage firm that will allow you to invest in the stocks and funds of your choice, but is an excellent place to start investing with very little money.

betterment_screenshot

How they are different (and simpler)

With Betterment, you basically have two investment options. Each option is referred to as a basket that is made up of a mix of exchange traded funds, or ETFs. One basket is comprised of stocks, and the other of treasury bonds. All you need to do is to choose your allocation between the two baskets, and your contributions will automatically be invested based on the allocation.

Another benefit to small investors is that Betterment does not charge transaction fees. The only charge they assess is an annual fee equal to .35% of your account balance, on account balances up to $10,000. If you have $1,000 in your account, your annual fee will be $3.50. When your balance exceeds this amount, the annual fee will be progressively lower.

The strategy is simple yet aggressive, and this can be a benefit to someone investing with very little money. Since you don’t have a lot of money to spread over many different assets, you need to keep your investment system as simple as possible. And since you want to grow a small amount of money into a large amount, Betterment’s aggressive approach is a solid way to get there.

Nearly every large investor started out as a small one. But the advantage that you have today is that there are more options for the small investor than ever before. Start with the investment options above, build a larger amount of money, and then you’ll be able to expand your options even more.

The most important part of investing is always getting started. And having very little money is no longer an excuse.

Read more in our Betterment Investing Review.

3. Use a broker without an account minimum.

Some brokerage firms will either lower or waive minimum initial investment requirements on certain funds.

One that I have used for years is Ally Invest. There is no minimum to open an account. This won’t allow you to invest in anything you want, but as a small investor, it is still an excellent way to get started.

4. Try the Fundrise Starter portfolio

When I started with Fundrise they required a $10,000 minimum investment.  Since then they have rolled out a starter portfolio which allows you to get started with only $500. I know that might still be a stretch if you only have $100 or so to start investing, but if you can round up $500, they are a good option to consider.

I have been using Fundrise for real estate investing for almost 2 years now and I actually ended up selling my physical rental property because my Fundrise earnings were better.  You can read all about that in my Fundrise Review here.

Or check the video below for my experience as well.

5. Try out I Bonds.

I Bonds are US government securities and they can make the perfect bond allocation of a small investor’s portfolio. You can buy them directly from the U.S. Treasury through their website at Treasury Direct.

You can purchase I Bonds in denominations as low as $25 ($50 if you buy using your income tax refund), up to a maximum denomination of $10,000. The minimum term is one year, running to a maximum of 30 years.

Rate of return on the bonds is a combination of interest and semi-annual adjustments for inflation. All income is added to the face amount of the bond and payable at redemption. The current rate of return on an I Bond is 2.52% (as of Sept 2018), which is far better than what you can get on certificates of deposit for much longer terms, and for far larger denominations.

I Bonds are also tax-exempt for state income tax purposes, though the income earned is taxable at the federal level.

If you have $100 sitting and waiting to be invested, check out this video to see how I invest $100, Warren Buffet style.

Have you been avoiding investing because you think you don’t have enough money? Have you tried any of the investments above? Leave a comment!

10 Things Every Parent Should Tell Their Kids (and Themselves)

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These are 10 important things we should be telling our children - and even ourselvesWe often focus our attention on attaining success in life – having a good job, saving up plenty of money, and having a nice house, car and other possessions.

The world indoctrinates us in this path from an early age.

If you have children, you should be aware that the world is already training up your children in the same way.

But is this how we should live? Is this how our children should live?

There’s a world of difference between success – which is often an external definition of our lives for public consumption – and happiness – which is more about how we truly feel on the inside.

Because the world encourages us to seek success so diligently, we almost need to have an entirely different mindset in order to find happiness.

Along that line, here are several things every parent should tell their kids – and themselves – about how to find true happiness in life – even if financial success never comes your way.

1God Loves You More Than You’ll Ever Know

You must understand and embrace this fact, no matter how you feel about yourself or how some others may feel about you. And your children must know it too.

What it means is that you are never unloved. Quite the opposite – you are dearly loved by the Creator of the universe. You must believe this.

The Apostle Paul confirmed this when he wrote:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8:37-39 NIV

2Failing Doesn’t Make You a Failure

Failing is a necessary step on the way to success – and that’s how you need to view it. Very few people are successful right out of the starting gate in any venture. In fact, the path to success is usually marked by a series of failures. As long as you learn something from your failures, they are almost always a step in the right direction.

It’s equally important to understand that defeat isn’t permanent. Never believe that you’re a failure simply because your most recent goal didn’t materialize. It may simply be that it was never meant to be. That being the case, get busy on the next venture. Success is assured as long as you don’t quit.

3“Do for others as you would have them do for you”

That’s actually a paraphrase from Matthew 7:12. Most of us expect people to treat us better than they often do. But do we hold ourselves to the same standard?

If you want to be treated better, start treating other people better. People tend to respond to the way you deal with them, and if you find yourself being mistreated too often, it may have something to do with your own behavior. If you don’t like the way people are interacting with you, it’s entirely possible that they’re simply responding to how you’re treating them.

This is especially true when you’re dealing with someone in a tense situation. Before reacting, ask yourself, “How would I want someone to treat me if the shoe were on the other foot?”

4Choose Your Friends Carefully

It’s often said that you are the average of your five closest friends. And there’s a lot of truth to that saying. As human beings, we tend to reflect and to imitate the behavior of the people closest to us.

This makes a strong case for being careful to choose friends who represent your beliefs, values, goals, and preferences in life. Are your friends the kind of people you respect and look up to? Are they the kind of people you would go to if you have a problem? Can you rely on them if you are in trouble? Do they reflect the kind of person who you would like to be?

Friends aren’t just people who we hang out with. They’re people who shape who we are – that means that you need to choose them wisely.

5The Road to Ruin Is Paved With Debt

Regrettably, we live in a culture and economy that encourages debt. The economy is largely built on people buying things that they can’t afford and making up the difference through loans.

A loan here and there – for example a car loan, and certainly a mortgage – are sometimes necessary. But if you find yourself borrowing money on credit cards to pay for clothing, restaurant meals, vacations, and various toys – or even borrowing too much to buy a house or a car – you are likely setting yourself up for an eventual disaster.

Most people don’t realize that they are in trouble with debt until they are already in trouble with it. Easy payment plans make it easy to ignore the true impact of debt, especially when you’re early in the process.

Becoming debt free – or close to it – enables you to keep your financial options open, and that puts you in a better position to achieve some measure of financial independence.

6People Are More Important Than Stuff

Materialism is another societal norm. It’s as if the person with the most stuff is the happiest. But don’t believe it.

People often substitute stuff for a lack of real connection with other people. But stuff can never give us what we can get from other people. God created us to rely on one another, and build each other up during times of distress. You can’t get those benefits from stuff, so it’s best to learn early in the game that people should always be more important than the possessions that you have.

7Forgive Others – Forgive Yourself

In the Lord’s Prayer, it says, ” . . . and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.” (Matthew 6:12 NIV) Take that to heart! We will be forgiven by God in the measure that we forgive others. And when you’re tempted to withhold mercy from someone else, never forget that the day will come when you will need mercy from others.

You also need to forgive yourself. Guilt is a trap, and it can destroy your life if you allow it to. You will make mistakes, and at times you may even be the devil in someone else’s life. But when that happens, recognize your failure, seek forgiveness – then get on with your life.

8Make a Provision for the Future – But Live for Today

This is one of the real balancing acts in our culture, particularly if you are a Christian. We should be making a provision for the future so that we are in a position to deal with the uncertainties of life. But when this becomes the priority, we’re at risk of going in the wrong direction.

If your orientation toward the future is too great, you may be inviting the following risks:

  • You’re so focused on your own future survival, that you may miss the needs of people close by
  • You may miss the simple pleasures of today, while you are busy preparing for tomorrow
  • You may not live long enough to enjoy your provision (Scriptural reference: Luke 12:16-21 – The Parable of the Rich Fool)
  • Your emphasis on building your own provisions could blind you to the reality and necessity of God’s provision

Make a provision for the future, but live for today. Never be so obsessed with the future that the blessings, revelations, and opportunities of today are no longer relevant.

9It’s Not All About You – Or Me

We share the world with more than seven billion people. Each has their share of victories, and more than enough defeats. Neither your triumphs nor your tragedies are more important than those of other people around you.

Be prepared to genuinely celebrate the success of others. Also be prepared to help others in the face of their own tragedies. We all want others to celebrate our triumphs, and be there to pick up the pieces when we’re suffering. But we have no right to expect unless we first do the same for others.

This is also how you develop humility, and humility is the foundation better relationships with other people, and with our Heavenly Father. True happiness and success in life aren’t possible without it.

10Life is a Gift – Celebrate Each Day

None of us have any idea how much time we have in this life, or even what the quality of that time will be. Embrace the fact that life truly is a gift, and resolve to celebrate each day.

Avoid the tendency to believe that bad things have control over your life. They may have an undue influence at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that your life is ruined forever.

Each day has its own troubles, but it also has its own virtues. Do what you can to minimize your troubles, and then to embrace the goodness that’s around us every day if only we look for it. It’s just a better way to live, and a better way to be a witness to other believers and especially to non-believers.

After all, how we live – and what our attitudes are toward life – are our greatest witness to the world.

What are some other things you should tell your children or yourself? Leave a comment!











How To Consolidate Your Debt With Lending Club

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This is a much cheaper, faster, and easier way to consolidate your debt rather than using traditional banks or debt consolidation companies. Lending club makes the process extremely simple and extremely cost effective -Technology is changing everything – even the well-worn process of getting a loan through a bank.

You can now streamline the whole borrowing process and consolidate your debt with Lending Club.

Lending Club is the largest and most well-known of the rising class of direct lending platforms that enable both borrowers and investors to bypass traditional banks.

It just could be the better way to get a loan for millions of people.

How Does Lending Club Work?

Lending Club is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending site that enables investors to invest in the loans of the club’s borrowers. Since this is a form of direct lending between the investor and the borrower, there is no “middleman” skimming profits along the way.

That means that the interest rate charged to borrowers can be lower than what it is for typical credit cards, while investors get higher returns than they can on traditional bank investments.

Loans are risk rated, and assigned interest rates accordingly. The grade is based on credit score, income, employment, length of credit history, debt-to-income ratio (DTI) and other factors.

Lending Club started in 2007, and since that time it has handled more than $20 billion in loans, while paying nearly $600 million in interest to investors. The service has been growing at a rate of over 100% per year for the past several years. The process of P2P lending may eventually become the new normal in personal lending, especially since bank lending policies have become tighter in recent years.

The Lending Club Borrower Advantage

Getting a loan on Lending Club is a simple process:

  1. Customers interested in a loan complete a simple application at LendingClub.com (step-by-step below)
  2. Lending Club evaluates the information (with no impact to the applicant’s credit score), determines an interest rate and instantly presents a variety of offers to qualified borrowers
  3. Investors ranging from individuals to institutions select loans in which to invest and can earn monthly returns

The entire process is online, using technology to lower the cost of credit and pass the savings back in the form of lower rates for borrowers and solid returns for investors.

Lending Club offers borrowers the following advantages:

  • Easy online application
  • Low fixed rates, starting at 6.16% on the best credit grade for personal loans
  • Fixed monthly payments
  • Flexible terms
  • No prepayment penalties
  • No hidden fees
  • Friendly service
  • Personal loans up to $35,000
  • Business loans, up to $300,000 at rates starting as low as 6.16%
  • Home improvement loans

Your privacy is protected – investors and borrowers never know each other’s identities, and the site never sells, rents or distributes your information. The only information that is shared is what’s necessary to complete the requested transactions.

How to consolidate your loan

They really couldn’t make it much easier.  In fact, you can probably do it in a small fraction of the time it would take you to get a traditional debt consolidation loan.  Just follow the 4 steps below to see how to get started.

1. Figure out how much debt you want to consolidate.

Add up all the outstanding debt you have that you want to roll up into the loan.

2. Head over to LendingClub.com

Next, fill in the amount of loan you are going to get, then select “Debt Consolidation”, and then select your credit score.   If you don’t know your credit score, there is an option for ‘not sure’.  Then click “Get Your Quote”

DIY debt consolidation with lending club

3. Get your rate

Now fill out the remaining fields and then click “Get Your Rate” to see what rate they can offer you.

lending club debt consolidation loan application

4. See if you are approved and what rate they offer

Lending club debt consolidation rates

Now you can just click “Get Loan” and you will be off to the races!

get started with your debt consolidation now

A Real-life Example From a Fellow Blogger

Source: Debt Free Adventure

Fellow blogger Matt Jabs provides his own Lending Club debt consolidation loan experience on his blog, Debt Free Adventure.

Matt and his wife, Betsy, wanted to consolidate four separate loans into a single debt consolidation loan with Lending Club to lower their interest costs.

Here were the four loans they needed to payoff:

  1. Auto Loan – Capital One @ 10.5%
  2. Credit Card 1 – JP Morgan Chase @ 14%
  3. Credit Card 2 – Capital One @ 16.25%
  4. Credit Card 3 – Citigroup @ 19%

Based on their credit profile, they were able to secure an $11,000 loan from Lending Club to pay off the above debts. They were charged a rate of 9.32%, which was a serious reduction from the high interest credit cards they were paying off. They paid a total of $85 in origination fees to obtain the new loan, but ultimately saved $500 in interest expense for their efforts.

There are success stories like Matt’s all over the web, and on the Lending Club site. A lot of people are finding it faster, easier and more private to get a loan through Lending Club rather than endure the cumbersome and often embarrassing process of going the traditional bank loan route.

Some Caveats on Debt Consolidation Loans In General

Before taking on a debt consolidation loan, make sure that you are aware of a few important realities:

  • Debt consolidation isn’t a get-out-of-jail free card – once you’ve done the consolidation, you still owe the same amount of money that you did before.
  • The loan should either provide you with a lower monthly payment or a quicker payoff of the combination of the loans that you are consolidating.
  • A payment reduction should be used to increase your principal payments, so that you repay the debt consolidation faster than the original term.
  • You should not borrow money from any other sources until the debt consolidation loan is completely paid – otherwise the debt consolidation will become just another loan.
  • The overriding purpose of the debt consolidation should be to get you out of debt – not make your debt easier to live with.

If you keep those realities in mind, then a debt consolidation loan can work for you. And if it will, then Lending Club is an outstanding place to make it happen.

get started with your debt consolidation now

Have you done a debt consolidation with Lending Club?  Would you?











9 of the Best Money Habits of the Wealthy

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9 of the best money habits of the wealthy
While it’s tempting to believe that wealth is about being lucky, the reality is that it’s mostly about using God-given wisdom and developing the smart money habits. If you can do that, and avoid too many foolish mistakes with your money, there’s a very good chance that you will have more money than you need. And that is a good place to be in. Because, while I strongly believe in sacrificial giving (giving when it hurts), there is no denying that when you only have 2 nickels to rub together, you can only give 2 nickels – at most. But if you have a lot more, you can give a lot more.  That is what I am aiming for. So here are 9 money habits for you to start implementing today:

1. Live Beneath Your Means

This is the most fundamental habit of the wealthy. That’s because no other wealth building strategy is likely to work if you don’t get this one under control. Quite simply, living beneath your means will provide the capital that you will need to do everything else that will be necessary in order to become wealthy. This means that whatever you earn, you will live on something less. You can set up a percentage, such as 70% or 80% of your income, that you will live on. The rest will be used to fund your efforts to build wealth. This will mean living in a less expensive home than you can afford, driving an older car, preparing meals at home, and learning to enjoy inexpensive pleasures.

2. Pay God First

“But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” – Matthew 6:20-21
Not nearly all wealth exists on earth. You should want to allocate some of that wealth to your Eternal future. There’s an earthbound benefits to this as well – when you give money, you are demonstrating your ability to live without it. That’s an important part of learning to live beneath your means, and avoiding the human tendency to allow money to rule your life. Think of it as a process of letting go, so that you can concentrate on more important things.

3. Pay Yourself Second

Just as with the case of giving to God, when you “pay yourself” – which is allocating a percentage of your income to savings – you prevent yourself from spending it. That will help you to develop discipline to both live beneath your means, and to accumulate money. Just as important, it’s a form of automating the capital accumulation process. When you immediately put money into savings, you develop a fast, efficient way of building capital. Basically, it takes the money out of your hands, and puts it where it will do more good.

4. Become Self-Funding

Or put another way, you should avoid debt. Any debt you avoid now will mean more cash flow in the future. That’s because debt payments reduce cash flow, and make it more difficult to accumulate savings. This is another aspect of living beneath your means. You’ve heard it before, and you need to incorporate the concept into your own life – if you have to borrow to pay for something, you can’t afford it. And if you can’t afford it, you don’t need to have it. Debt creates future obligations that you don’t need if you want to become wealthy. It also creates the kind of debilitating stress that keeps you from reaching your goals.

5. Invest, But Don’t Speculate

This means investing your money in assets that have a proven track record. That can take the form of investing your money in high dividend paying stocks or in index funds, rather than in individual stocks. While it’s sometimes true that speculative investments can make you rich, it’s far more likely that they will crash and reduce your wealth. And since we all have a limited amount of time in this life, you don’t have time to be losing money. Better to invest on a slow and steady course, then to subject yourself to wild swings in investment values. If you are new to investing, let me be your mentor through my 10x Investing Course.

6. Diversify Your Investments

There’s no such thing as a truly all-weather investment. That’s why you need to have your money spread across different asset classes. People sometimes get carried away during bull markets in stocks, and put all their money into the market. That can produce miraculous returns on the way up, but it can lead to painful crashes in wealth when the market reverses. Spread your money across stocks, interest-bearing investments, real estate, and even commodities. Each of those markets will go through a bull phase at some point in the future. But since you can’t know when that will be, you need to be positioned in advance. I walk you through all of this in the 10x Investing Course. Diversification will make that happen.

7. Set Goals and Create Plans to Reach Them

One of the reasons why so many people struggle is that they set their minds on just getting by.  Goals aren’t just arbitrary – they represent the definition of your endgame. In effect, they create a mission that defines your future course. And they are absolutely necessary if you want to have a future course. Once you set goals, you have to develop workable plans to reach them. A goal without a plan is just a wish. A plan makes it real, by creating a series of steps that you have to accomplish on the way to reaching the goal. Those steps are your action plan, and they should define what you do each day on the way to your goals.

8. Control Your Habits and Hobbies

We’re all creatures of habit, and that’s both a blessing and a curse. You’ll want to do your best to make sure that your habits are full-on blessings. That means that you have to develop habits that will move you in the direction of your goals. Bad habits are any forms of behavior that will either slow or reverse your direction. You’ll have to sort out your habits, and make adjustments as necessary. Hobbies are another area of major concern. Hobbies can be good if they are recreational in nature, and enable you to “recharge your battery”. Exercise and reading are two good examples. But others can be destructive. Hobbies that are enabling you to improve your game need to be emphasized, while those that drain your time, energy, and money, need to go.

9. Never Give Up!

Wealth-building is not necessarily a straight line forward. Along the way, you will experience failures and disappointments. You need to be prepared for those outcomes. But even more important, you need to be ready to move beyond them. Many people start out with solid goals, plans and intentions, but they get distracted and discouraged by troubles along the way. Never allow those troubles to take you completely off your game. If you want more on this topic, check out the video below, which is all about the habits of successful (and wealthy) people!
https://youtu.be/yOEPvRwzoGQ

What other habits would you add?

Let us know in the comments!

Why You Need Life Insurance and Why it Needs to be Term Insurance

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Why you need life insurance and why it needs to be term insuranceIt’s unfortunate that so many people don’t consider life insurance to be very important.

They’re much more concerned with health insurance and auto insurance, since the need for such coverages is usually more immediate.

Life insurance doesn’t seem important until it becomes necessary, and then it becomes critical!

That’s because you can’t buy life insurance after the fact.

What’s almost ironic is that life insurance is generally one of the least expensive types of coverage you can have, at least when you buy term life insurance. And though most people don’t give it much thought, it’s actually the most necessary.

Why You Need Life Insurance

We usually tend to think of life insurance in terms of providing a death benefit that will help support our loved ones after we die. That’s one purpose, and maybe even the most important.

But there are a few more:

Paying for final expenses

Though it’s possible to do a relatively inexpensive funeral, you can’t do one for free! Even a modest funeral will cost several thousand dollars. If you have no life insurance, and especially if you have a few liquid assets, this could create a deep hole for your loved ones in the event of your death.

Uncovered medical expenses

Since death is frequently preceded by an extended period of medical treatments, that can result in out-of-pocket expenses. For example, if your health insurance policy has a $4,000 deductible, and a maximum out-of-pocket of $6,500, your family could be stuck with those bills after your death.

This is even more true in an age of Obamacare, where health insurance typically includes high deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums in order to make the coverage more affordable. But if you have no health insurance at all – and millions don’t – your family could be facing tens of thousand dollars in medical bills. Life insurance can prevent this.

Debts

Any loans cosigned by a family member that are outstanding at the time of your death will become obligations to your family. And even if a family member didn’t cosign for it but want to keep the asset, like car or house, those loans also become the obligation of the family.  But of course, they will have to deal with those obligations without your income. This can stretch an already limited household income to the breaking point.

Your life insurance should include a large enough death benefit to not only cover final expenses and outstanding medical costs, but also enough to pay for outstanding debts, particularly car loans and credit cards. If you really want to provide for your family, your death benefit will be high enough to pay off the mortgage on the family home.

Money for adjustment

After your death, your loved ones will be traumatized. This can lead to reduced income, due to missing work. It could also increase health-care costs, as the family experiences more frequent illness, as well as emotional trauma. A life insurance policy can help to offset these expenses, giving your family extra money to adjust to life without you.

Who Needs Life Insurance?

Up to this point we’ve been focusing on the need to have life insurance on your own life for the benefit of your loved ones. But you should also strongly consider having policies on each of them. Any of the financial situations listed above that your family can face in the event of your death, can also effect you should one of them die.

So to answer the question, who needs life insurance?, the answer is everyone! That includes newlyweds, stay-at-home-parents and everyone in your family.

It’s often felt that single people have no need for life insurance since they have no dependents. But if you are single, and you have family – parents, siblings, and even nieces and nephews – you should still have some life insurance.

At a minimum, you should have enough to cover final expenses, medical costs that anyone has paid on your behalf, and especially any loans where a family member has cosigned in order for you to get a loan.

Cosigned loans don’t disappear because the primary borrower dies. The lender can still go after your cosigner. Having life insurance will prevent that outcome, and keep your family member from being pursued for full payment of the loan.

Why People Don’t Have Life Insurance

There are a number of reasons why people don’t have life insurance, but here are three of the more common ones:

Not enough money

If your budget is tightly stretched, it can be legitimately difficult to find money to pay for a life insurance premium. However, that should make you realize even more that if your household finances are tight while everyone is alive and well, it will be infinitely worse should one of you die.

In addition, there is a term life insurance policy that will fit virtually every budget. It’s worth cutting an expense or two to make room for this all important financial service.

“I have a policy at work.”

Many employers do provide life insurance for their employees, but it usually caps out at a relatively low level, generally no more than $50,000. At today’s cost levels, that’s a very minimal policy.

And then there is also the problem that you could lose your life insurance should you lose your job. And when that happens, it may not be so easy to find affordable life insurance, particularly with no job income.

Fear of death

Some people don’t like to even talk about life insurance because it’s like betting on your own death. They may even reason that just the fact that you are taking a life insurance policy increases the chance of your death.

But the reality is that you will die someday, whether or not you have life insurance. And the only fair course of action is to have a policy in place, for the benefit of your family members.

Why Term Life Insurance Provides the Best Coverage

Cost is a significant factor in making any purchase, including financial services like life insurance. But once you recognize the absolute necessity of having life insurance coverage, it’s just a matter of finding an affordable policy.

The best choice is term life insurance. It’s not just less expensive than investment type policies, like whole life insurance, but much less expensive. It’s possible to purchase a term life insurance policy for just 10% of what it would cost for a whole life insurance policy with the same death benefit.

That means that the $200,000 policy that will cost $3,000 per year for whole life, can be had for around $300 with a term life insurance policy.

The difference between the two premiums is that whole life includes an investment provision. The additional premium that you pay goes into the cash value of your policy, as well as payment of the many fees that are associated with whole life policies.

Term life insurance, on the other hand, is pure life insurance. If you buy a term policy, and invest the difference in premiums (between term and whole life) in an index fund, you will have better investment returns than you would by “investing” through a whole life insurance policy.

Term policies also provide you with the ability to match coverage with need. For example, your greatest need for life insurance is when your children are very young. Let’s say that you have preschool age children; you can take a 20 year term life insurance policy that will cover your family until your kids are adults. Once your kids are grown, you won’t need as much coverage.

You can do the same thing with your mortgage – match your life insurance with the outstanding balance on the loan.

The best way to shop for a term life insurance policy is through an online life insurance site like SelectQuote. The advantage is that you can provide the information once, and then have the insurance companies come to you with quotes. This will give you the advantage of being able to make side-by-side comparisons, so that you can select the best policy for your needs at the lowest possible price.

If you’ve been delaying getting life insurance – or if you know that you don’t have enough coverage – start shopping today. Life insurance gets more expensive as you get older, which means now is the best time to get a policy.

This article was sponsored by SelectQuote, but all thoughts and opinions are our own.

I talk about why I recommend Life Insurance and how you can get your quotes in this YouTube video.

12 Things You Can Learn That Will Make You Better at the Game of Life

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These are 12 simple things that you can learn today to help you become better at the game of LIFE!...We go to school to learn hands-on skills that will enable us to be better at earning a living. But many of the skills that will make you a success in life have little or nothing to do with earning a living. They’re mostly about living your life, interacting with other people, and improving yourself. And sometimes they even help you earn a living. Here are several things you can learn how to do today that will make you better at the game of life....We go to school to learn hands-on skills that will enable us to be better at earning a living.

But many of the skills that will make you a success in life have little or nothing to do with earning a living.

They’re mostly about living your life, interacting with other people, and improving yourself.

And sometimes they even help you earn a living.

Here are several things you can learn how to do today that will make you better at the game of life.

1Learn How to Learn

You can learn almost anything you need with a simple Google search. My son and I figured out how to change the ignition coils in my car just from watching a YouTube video. You can do the same with virtually anything else you want to learn.

Just Google “how to [fill in the blank]?”  You’ll be surprised to find out that many things are much simpler than you ever imagined.

This is not only a great way to get the information you need, but it’s also an excellent way to shop more intelligently, and to learn new skills.

2Cook Your Own Meals

Since World War II, the percentage of food that’s prepared inside the home has been declining steadily in favor of restaurant meals and prepared meals from grocery stores. While that may be incredibly convenient, it’s a very expensive way to live.

Cooking is a very under-appreciated skill. Not only will mastering it help you to save money on food, but cooking is also a form of personal expression. It’s a way of adding your personality to a meal, and even to create entirely new concoctions. We all need creative outlets, and cooking is a chance to do it without leaving home.

BONUS: check out Cooked on Netflix for a little inspiration.

3Handle a Job Interview or Make a Sales Pitch

I’ve lumped these two together, because they really are the same thing. Or more particularly, handling a job interview is a form of making a sales pitch where the product is you.

At some time or other in your life you will need to be a salesperson. Handling a job interview is one common example. You can’t hide behind the I’m not a salesperson argument every time. Learning how to pitch yourself or some other product, service, or idea will open your horizons. Failing to embrace your inner sales persona can only hold you back. And it’s mostly a matter of believing in yourself and what it is you’re pitching.

4Manage Your Time Efficiently

We each only have a limited amount of time each day, and how we use that time is one of the biggest determining factors in whether or not we succeed in what it is that we are doing. Successful people tend to master time control. Less successful people often openly struggle with this.

Work on concentrating the most productive time of your day on doing the activities that will be most beneficial to you and to your family, church or organization. This means avoiding the human tendency toward creative avoidance. If you are in sales for example, the first, best part of your day should be spent making sales calls. Leave less critical tasks to be handled later in the day when your energy level is lower.

And see if your production doesn’t increase.

Highly Recommended book: Getting Things Done by David Allen

5Travel Light In Life

Whoever has the most toys wins! That saying sounds emotionally satisfying in a world driven by consumerism. But it’s not a particularly efficient way to live.

Accumulating stuff has a way of weighing down our lives, in much the same way as being overweight weighs down our bodies. You simply don’t have complete freedom of action when you have a pile of stuff that needs to be stored, maintained, protected, and paid for.

Keep your possessions down to a well-controlled level. That will also help you to reduce the clutter in your life that can also impair free-thinking.

For more check out this Podcast interview Bob did with Joshua Becker:

6Control Your Excesses

There are a lot of very talented people who self-destruct because they can’t control their excesses. We can easily see this with people who are addicted to alcohol and narcotics. But less obvious is people who are addicted to food, social validation, being part of the crowd, or being on the social cutting edge.

It’s not always enough to be good at what you do – you also have to be good at avoiding behaviors and activities that will slow you down.

7Avoid Debt

Avoiding debt applies to both traveling light in life and controlling your excesses. This is because it can weigh you down, and reach an excess level that destroys you financially. For these reasons, avoiding debt may be appropriately termed a life survival skill.

As a rule, the less debt you have, the better your life will be. Less debt means more options, and more mental clarity.

Avoiding it is a skill as much as anything else.

8Live Beneath Your Means

You can avoid most financial problems in life just by learning to live beneath your means. If you can, you’ll always have extra money available. That will not only help you to accumulate savings – that can act as a cushion against the uncertainties of life – but it also helps to keep you out of debt. After all, if you’re living within your means there’s no need to borrow. And if you have savings, you’ll always have a source of money to go to without having to go into debt.

Living beneath your means also gives you the flexibility that you need to make major changes in life. For example, it frees you up to take a lower paying job or to start a business if that’s what you choose to do. If you are living at or above your current income level, taking a lower paying position may be impossible.

Living beneath your means also provides you with the ability to become a long-term saver. That means that you will have money available to invest for a more prosperous future.

9Negotiating

There’ll always be a need for effective negotiating. Many people find negotiating distasteful or even intimidating, and for that reason they often concede victory to the other party without a fight. But negotiating is more a matter of protecting your interests than some sort of hard knocks skill.

Whether you are involved in getting a new job, buying a car, buying a home, or settling a dispute with another person, you’ll need to have some level of negotiating skills. The better that you are at it, the better your life will be.

10Speak Less, Listen More

This is a real talent that not many people have. When you listen, you learn. And one of the things you learn is what other people are thinking, and that can make dealing with them much easier.

But the key to listening more is learning to speak less. It’s simply not possible to listen when you’re the one doing the talking. Listening makes you more empathetic, and tends to disarm other people. When you show that you are prepared to listen to another person’s position, the defenses go down and you have an easier time making your point.

That can lead to better relationships with other people, as well as more favorable business transactions. It’s a skill well worth mastering.

11Express Yourself With Confidence

Have you ever noticed how some people command respect when they speak? Part of this is the mechanics of your speech – they just seem to have superior verbal skills. But it’s probably true that more of it comes from emotional factors, like the confidence they project when they speak.

None of us are knowledgeable in all areas, so it’s perfectly okay to let others know that you aren’t an expert. But when you are knowledgeable, it’s important that you express your positions with confidence. That confidence is the attention getter, and the primary reason why people respect your opinion, even if they don’t agree with you. Knowledge is everywhere (and easily obtained on the Internet), but it’s the ability to project that knowledge that wins people over.

If you’ve never had much confidence when it comes to expressing yourself, take small steps. Try being more confident where you are most knowledgeable. Over time, as you increase your knowledge base, you may find yourself becoming more confident overall.

12Believe in Yourself

Nearly every other skill or practice on this list is more doable when you believe in yourself. This isn’t about being arrogant, but rather having a quiet confidence in who you are and what you’re doing.

Other people can usually sense whether or not you believe in yourself. If they sense that you do, you’ll earn their respect and often their help and support. But if it’s apparent that you don’t believe in yourself, you can easily end up being ignored or even becoming a victim.

This isn’t a plan to become the leader of the pack in all that you do, but rather to approach everything in your life with the quiet confidence that you can handle what it is you’re trying to do.

Master some of these skills and behaviors, and you’ll likely find that you’ll become better in all areas of the game of life.

What are some things you’ve learned in life that made you a better person? Leave a comment!











How Much Money Are You Wasting by NOT Refinancing Your Student Loans?

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The average student owes $35,051. If you owe student loan debt in this range or higher, you may be wasting money by not refinancing.

How much money are you wasting by not refinancing your student loans

Whether or not you can benefit by refinancing your student loans will depend upon the interest rate that you are paying on your current loans.

Private source student loans usually carry higher interest that includes variable rates that could start low, but rise over the course of the loan term. Private student loans are also credit-based, so interest rates can run into double digits if you have less-than-perfect credit.

Here’s information that you can use if you are interested in refinancing your student loans.

Know the Difference Between Student Loan Refinancing and Consolidation

When it comes to student loans, the terms “refinancing” and “consolidation” are sometimes used interchangeably. In fact, they are two very different processes, and generally involved two different student loan types.

Student loan refinances are provided by private money sources, such as banks and online lending platforms. They can be used to refinance both federal student loans and private student loans.

The advantage of a refinance is replacing existing student loans with a new loan that offers a lower rate of interest. This can often result in a lower monthly payment, which can be made still lower if you can also extend the repayment term of the loan.

The disadvantage of doing a student loan refinance is that you must credit qualify for the loan. The lender providing the refinance will consider your credit history, your income, and your debt-to-income ratio in determining whether or not to extend you a loan. For this reason, refinances work best for borrowers with strong financial positions. A weak financial position can result in either higher rates than you currently have, or outright loan decline.

Student loan consolidations are available only for federal student loans. The general purpose is to consolidate several federal loans into a single loan with one monthly payment. Unlike student loan refinances, consolidations do not require that you be credit qualified in order to take the loan.

The primary negative with a consolidation is that it will not lower your rate of interest on your loans. Consolidation loans instead use a weighted average of the rates you are paying on your current outstanding student loans. If you have several loans, that weighted average will result in a new rate that is lower than the rate on some loans, but higher than on others. However, you can still have a lower monthly payment on a consolidation loan if the term on the new loan is longer than the various terms on your current loans.

Still another disadvantage of consolidations is that they apply only to federal student loans and not private loans.

We’re going to discuss student loan refinances in this article. If you would like to consider a consolidation loan instead, you can get more information at Student Loans.org from the US Department of education.

Be Careful When Refinancing Federal Student Loans!

In refinancing your student loan debts, it’s important to understand that interest rate is not the only consideration. Federal student loans come with certain consumer protections, and those protections will be lost in the event that you refinance those loans through a private lender.

Those protections include emergency forbearance as well as income-based repayment plans (IBRs) and public service loan forgiveness (PSLF), that will enable you to either lower your monthly payments based on your income, or have your loans forgiven entirely by working in government jobs for at least 10 years.

Where to Refinance Your Student Loans

One of the more popular student loan refinance companies is:

SoFi Student Loan Refinancing

SoFi is coming up quickly as an online peer-to-peer lending platform that specializes in student loan refinances. One of the biggest advantages SoFi offers is in its underwriting criteria: the platform uses nontraditional credit underwriting, and considers merit (education and career experience) and employment history, in addition to your credit profile. SoFi states that their members save an average of $14,000 when refinancing their student loans through the platform.

You can refinance both federal and private student loans and there are no application or origination fees. Loan terms can be up to 20 years. Fixed rate APRs range between 3.50% and 7.74%, while variable rate APRs are between 2.13% and 5.93%. You can refinance up to the full balance of your qualified education loans.

SoFi also offers unemployment protection. In the event you lose your job, your loan payments will be suspended for up to 12 months. In the process, SoFi will actually help you to find a new job.

Have you refinanced your student loans?  Why or why not?

Let us know in the comments below!













5 Things Wealthy People Do Differently

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When it comes to the wealthy, there’s often a belief that they’re rich because they were born into money. While that’s certainly true for many, it isn’t the case across the board. Many of the wealthy have had to work their way up to being rich and to do so they’ve had to adopt a different set of habits from most other people.When it comes to the wealthy, there’s often a belief that they’re rich because they were born into money. While that’s certainly true for some, it isn’t the case across the board.

Many of the wealthy have had to work their way up to it and to do so they’ve had to adopt a different set of habits from most other people.

We can learn a lot from the wealthy, at least those among them who had to create the wealth they now enjoy. More precisely, it’s the habits that got them to where they are that we need to focus on and learn from.

What are those habits and practices? Here are five of them . . . .

1. Delayed gratification

One of the hallmark traits of the self-made wealthy is their willingness to do without today for a more prosperous tomorrow, also known as delayed gratification. That means a willingness to live beneath their means for as long as it takes to reach their financial goals. While their peers are showing a tendency toward embracing the good life at the first sign of prosperity, the would-be wealthy take a pass on all of that.

While others are saving 6-10% of their annual incomes—usually for retirement—people who want to be wealthy often save 20, 30, 40 or even 50% or more of their income.

Imagine how much money you’d have saved in 10 years if you saved half of your income during that time? The fact that no one ever sees this happen is one of the reasons that people believe that the wealthy somehow “come into money.”

True wealth accumulation tends to be a very quiet affair.

2. Frugal spending habits

Part of the reason that the wealthy are able to accumulate vast fortunes is because of their obsession with getting a deal. The self made wealthy learn early in life that you never pay full price. The combination of this habit with delayed gratification is a powerful force when it comes to growing wealth. Not only do you spend as little money as possible, but you buy at a discount when you do.

While most people are buying the most expensive house they can afford, the rich-in-progress buy beneath their means, and buy the cheapest house in the neighborhood to boot. They first ask themselves, “how much house can we afford?”

The same is true of buying cars, if one wants to be rich someday, he buys a conservative car and may buy it used as well.

3. Avoiding consumer debt—or any debt at all

One of the advantages of frugal spending habits is that by always spending less, there’s also less need to go into debt. If you plan to be wealthy, that’s as it should be. Debt represents a reduction of future cash flow and the wealthy will avoid it. By paying cash on the barrel, there are no strings attached to what you buy that might compromise your ability to continue saving money at a high rate.

Notice how the drive to save large amounts of money causes frugal spending habits, which then enables the ability to make purchases without using debt; the three habits combine to form a pattern that brings the aspiring rich to the point of great wealth earlier than an outsider might expect.

4. Favoring low risk/high yield investments

If you want to be wealthy, the first rule of investing is not to lose money. If you have a small amount of money to invest you might be tempted to put it all into high risk growth stocks in the hope that a big run up in value will make you rich. But if you have—or hope to have—a large portfolio to invest, you might not take that kind of risk. Your investments will be in assets that are unlikely to collapse in price, reasonably likely to grow in value over time, and able to provide a steady cash flow while you wait for them to grow.

A perfect investment asset might be an undervalued (and therefore very likely to grow) blue chip stock (not likely to collapse) with a history of above average dividend yields (steady cash flow).

5. Majoring on the majors

This attribute is part good habit and part talent—or perhaps it’s an outgrowth of having a financial life that’s cash rich, frugal, debt-free and filled with low risk/high yield investments. Whatever drives it, it’s a powerful force that enables the rich to multiply their wealth over time.

The wealthy tend to be able to identify and concentrate on the areas of their lives that are most likely to earn them the most money. Call it majoring on the majors or whatever you like, but they have the ability to center on the most profitable ventures and to let go of nearly everything else. They often do this by delegating non-profitable activities to others or maybe even to make them somehow go away.

This is easier to do when you have money to pay others to handle them for you or when your finances are relatively uncomplicated. If, for example, the wealthy person has a business, he might pay someone to handle specific aspects of the operation that are necessary but produce little or no revenue. That frees him to concentrate all of his efforts to generating more income for his business. As a result, his business and his income grow much more quickly, making him wealthier still.

Considering all of the habits above, it seems that becoming wealthy is really a lifestyle as much as anything else. Once you adopt it—by living beneath your means, staying out of debt, and saving large amounts of money constantly – you have capital to invest (conservatively) and to pay others to free you up to make even more money. It’s not so hard to see why the wealth of the self-made rich seems to spring out one day as if there’s a winning lottery ticket in the mix.

And just a reminder, there is a higher and better purpose for our wealth than just spending it on ourselves and to him who has been entrusted with much, much is required.