How can I create a budget and stick to it?

Creating a budget and sticking to it is a great way to manage your finances effectively. Here are some steps to help you create a budget and stay on track: 

1. Set financial goals: Determine your short-term and long-term financial goals. Whether it's saving for a vacation, paying off debt, or building an emergency fund, having clear goals will motivate you to stick to your budget. 

2. Calculate your income: Determine your total monthly income, including salary, wages, and any other sources of income. 

3. Track your expenses: Record your expenses for a month to get a clear understanding of where your money is going. Categorize your expenses into different groups like housing, transportation, groceries, entertainment, etc. 

4. Identify areas to cut back: Analyze your expenses and identify areas where you can reduce spending. Look for non-essential expenses that you can minimize or eliminate without affecting your quality of life. 

5. Allocate your income: Assign specific amounts to each expense category based on your priorities and financial goals. Be realistic and ensure that your total expenses are less than or equal to your income. 

6. Create a budgeting system: Choose a method to track your budget, whether it's using a spreadsheet, budgeting apps, or pen and paper. Regularly update your budget and track your spending throughout the month. 

7. Plan for savings and emergencies: Make saving a priority in your budget. Set aside a portion of your income for savings, including both short-term and long-term goals. Also, allocate funds for unexpected expenses or emergencies. 

8. Review and adjust regularly: Revisit your budget monthly or quarterly to evaluate your progress. Make adjustments as needed to accommodate changes in income, expenses, or financial goals. 

9. Stay disciplined and motivated: Stick to your budget by practicing self-discipline. Remind yourself of your financial goals and the benefits of staying on track. Seek support from friends or family members who can help you stay motivated. 

10. Be flexible and adaptable: Recognize that unexpected expenses or financial situations may arise. Be flexible and adjust your budget accordingly without feeling discouraged. Adaptability is key to long-term budgeting success. 

Remember, creating a budget is a personal process, and it may take some time to find a system that works best for you. Be patient and persistent, and with time, you'll develop good financial habits and achieve your financial goals.

How to get rich

How to get rich

We gathered interesting opinions on “how to get rich” and as always are sharing them with you below:

Bringing in a steady income is important but when it comes to being a millionaire, bringing in multiple streams of income is even more important. Take on an extra part-time job to bring in a little extra. Side jobs such as grass cutting, car washing and even selling on eBay are additional ways to make money. With the way, the job market can sometimes dip it helps to have a backup plan. This is especially important if your full-time income is not enough to cover all your monthly expenses.

Save 10% of your after-tax income. And remember that there is always someone, somewhere making 10% less than you and they are doing just fine.

Put an advertisement in newspapers and magazines:
“EARN EA$Y MONEY FA$T!! Send $10 to PO Box … to learn how”
Then send them a letter telling them to put an ad in a newspaper or magazine with the above.

The quickest way to get rich is to not spend any of your money, and then you’ll have more than you need. If you save enough money, you might end up with the means to quit your day job and launch your own venture. That means flying coach even if you can afford first class.

Befriend some elderly rich people. Then leverage your relationship.

Get-rich-quick thinking leads to three basic errors:
1. Getting involved with things you cannot understand
2. Risking funds you cannot afford to lose, that is, borrowed funds
3. Making hasty decisions
Each of these actions violates one or more biblical principles... Together they constitute a sin called ‘greed’.

Never become content with your position in anything. Never stop pursuing your dreams and capitalizing on them.

Found a religion and ask for significant donations for your ministries. This has never failed and has made several, otherwise unemployable people, quite rich.

Having a good credit score will help you scale your business and obtain loans, financing, and further lines of credit for big purchases. On the other hand, having a poor credit score will plague you with high interest rates. Many business owners are unaware that they should be establishing credit for their companies in addition to personal credit. A few actions you can take to boost your credit score include paying your bills on time, minimizing your debt, and checking your credit report periodically.

Take whatever you want and give nothing back! (Capt. Jack Sparrow)

Rob some banks :) – like Willie Sutton. When he was asked why he robs banks, he replied slowly: “Because that's where the money is… stupid”

Rule #1 - Don't lose money. Rule #2 – Don’t forget rule #1. (Warren Buffet)

There must be a market for the product or service you’re providing. Make sure you’re providing something customers need. And, If someone else out there is already doing what you seek to do, find a way to differentiate yourself and improve upon it.

Don't invest without a stop loss. if price goes up, reset stop loss to 3-5% of low of the last 2 weeks... because, the trend is your friend, until it ends.

If you wake up before anyone else who might distract you from work, exercise, and daily organization, you’ll be further ahead -- literally. Studies have shown that the most successful among us are early risers. For one, they’re proactive problem-solvers. Magazines have gathered plenty of anecdotal evidence for this lifestyle hack over the years.

Parade the streets in suggestive clothing and, when approached, offer favors in exchange for cash :). Or smack.

Marry a well to do heiress… or her daughter :)

To set yourself up for success, start a company in an area you’re passionate about. Entrepreneurship takes hard work, and you’ll be far less likely to put in that work over the long haul if your heart isn’t in what you’re doing. If you pick an industry because you think it will be a lucrative one, there’s going to be somebody who’s going to know that business better than you do and is going to kick your ass. (Mark Cuban)

Work , find a good and compatible companion, study, save, invest, and stay healthy - simple, isn't it? Repeat for 50 years and you'll be fine.

While homeownership is a dream for many people, the entrepreneurial lifestyle is becoming increasingly remote and transient. Rather than waiting to pay off your home, it might be wise to put your monthly payments toward rent and consider other types of investments.

1. Pay off all your credit cards.
2. Max out your 401K/IRA contributions.
3. Diversify your investments
4. Rinse and repeat for 20 years.

You have talents, experiences, and passions to share with the world. You can make a living if you’re willing to offer your time and skills to help improve the lives of others -- or teach others how you do what you do to be successful.

The quickest way to lump sum earning, is through forex trading. Today forex is the biggest market on the earth with a daily turnover of trillion dollars.

How to get rich - silence is golden :)

Keep your mouth shut – because silence is golden :)

Small profits add up to big success. Consider investing: You don’t need a lot to get started, and you shouldn’t expect massive returns right away. With patience, you can turn a little bit into a large sum.

People will remember you if you make yourself known for something, or if your product or service is always available at a regular interval. This tactic particularly pays off for entrepreneurs who use social media. Consider people who have made millions as Instagram influencers by being on message when their audiences expected them to be. (Casey Neistat)

How are you going to reach your goal of being rich? What goals will you have to meet along the way? Sit down and physically compose a plan, complete with priorities, timelines, retirement plan contributions -- whatever is applicable to you and your situation.

In recent years, we've become enamored with our own past success. Lulled into complacency by the glitter of our own achievements. We've become accustomed to the title of Military Superpower, forgetting the qualities that got us there. We've become accustomed to our economic dominance in the world, forgetting that it wasn't reckless deals and get rich quick schemes that got us where we are, but hard work and smart ideas, quality products and wise investments. (Barack Obama)

The mind is a powerful thing, especially when it comes to your money mindset. If you have a poor mindset, you will continue making poor financial decisions keeping you living paycheck to paycheck. You can change from a poor mindset to a rich mindset by developing the right habits. A popular way to get motivated and create a rich mindset is to create a financial vision board. You will put up pictures, motivational quotes, and financial goals on your board and hang it where you see it every day. This helps you to see your financial goals daily and can keep you motivated.

Getting on a budget is essential when it comes to getting rich. Budgeting holds you accountable for all the money you spend. When making a budget, you want to find a budgeting method that works best for you and stick to it. You may be surprised that many millionaires stick with a budget to stay financially successful.

You can boost your current income to help in your new financial journey of getting rich. One way to do this is by asking for a raise at your current job. Be sure you have been performing well and have worked for the company for a while if you go this route. If you are a good employee, they may be willing to increase your income to keep you from looking for another job.

Rich people invest time, energy, and money in improving themselves. A man told me once, “The best way you can help people in need is to not be someone in need.” Help yourself out so you are in a position to help someone else out. This means investing in yourself to become great at something.

Commit to being great, not just average. Any industry can be a painful profession for average and bottom performers, but massively rewarding for those that are great. Those that live, breathe, and eat their profession, those that are obsessed, become great.

You want what are called symbiotic flows. Do not just add disconnected flows. Instead, find other ways you can add income to the job you already have. For example – a friend of mine, doing videos does advertising for me — and after proving himself, he started making advertisements for those connected to me. He didn't start a doughnut shop.

First, try to save $100,000. You need to prove to yourself that you can go out and get money. If you only have $10,000 saved, your only priority should be increasing your income so that you can save more. Saving $100,000 shows that you have an ability to make money and then to keep it. Most people can't do either of those things.

Learn the game of money:
- How to read profit and loss statements and other financial forms
- The rules of Tax
- The difference between assets and liabilities
- How to improve your credit
- The difference between good debt and bad debt

Find a rich mentor. Someone who understands what you’re going through. They will understand your ambition, and they can inspire you. They can also help you develop a wealth plan and help you stick to it.

Network with important people. Decide on your area of business and then network with all the players. This will drive business and opportunities to your company.

Track spending, audit expenses and use discounts and promotions on every one of your purchase.

Get rich by surrounding yourself with rich people. Be a loyal friend – offer your help, listen to them, and learn from their experience on how to get rich.

Invest in Real Estate or Stocks

Invest in Real Estate or Stocks

Here is another financial question from a close friend.
He has some amount of earnings apart from the ones that he saved for his necessities. He would like to invest the earnings in some real estate or alternatively in stocks. He has some knowledge on stocks but, heard some people reporting bad experiences when the stock market crashed before. So, we have gathered different opinions over the net, answering the question: What is a better option – real estate or stocks?

“It's really tough to make a decision between the real estate or stock. The bare minimum you should do is to study the last decade's value of land or real estate versus the stocks. The stock market condition is heavily inflated, nowadays, but the same could be said for the estate properties too. Do your homework and take an advice of a financial consultant, then make your decision.”

“It all depends on your interests and there can’t be one straightforward answer because a lot of it comes down to your personality, preferences, and style. However, many people feel Real estate is often a more comfortable investment for the lower and middle classes and is always evergreen.”

“Ups & downs occur in both the stock market and the real estate market. Before investing in anything, you need some knowledge and to study the market to be prepared in case of emergencies or market collapse. If you already have knowledge in stocks, this is a good factor to consider investing on the stock market, compared to the real estate investing.”

“In every sort of investment, you have to make sure that you possess the knowledge about the area you would be investing in to. Consulting a financial consultant is also a good idea. In the case of a real estate investments, it is a fact that nowadays every Metropolitan city is growing by fits and starts and those cities are adorning themselves with multi-storied buildings. A huge amount of land which were barren for a long time has been used for industrial purposes. So, do your study about the neighborhood you would be investing in, and only then invest carefully.”

“Stock trading is certainly the better option and is much lucrative than real estate investment. Get in touch with a professional to get the minimum training or join a group of investors to learn more, share ideas and knowledge.”

“Investing in real estate is a great way to obtain cash flow, real estate investments will be a better option. Some advantages of real estate investments are:
1. Cash Flow
2. Capital Gains
3. Leverage
4. Inflation Resistance
5. Tax Incentives.”

“Investing in real estate gives higher returns than typical investments like stocks. These are the most considerable advantages of making an investment in income-producing real estate. The income stream it produces tends to be extremely stable and predictable. The income stream is partially passive. The underlying property will typically appreciate over time. There are tax benefits to investing in real estate that is not available with most other investments. Rental properties when purchased correctly generate significant cash flow. As good as the returns in real estate are when investing with cash, they can also be compounded significantly by using leverage.”

“Stocks are good if you can keep yourself updated, all the time, and would love to keep a close eye on the stock market. Otherwise invest in real estate.”

What happens if a country decides to buy foreign currency

What happens if a country decides to buy foreign currency

Another interesting question coming from our FB page.

And it is about countries' currency rates, exchange, and prices.
“What happens if a country decides to intervene in its currency market? What if it decides to buy foreign currency? For example,  years ago Japan decided to stop the appreciation of the Yen. They started buying foreign reserves. As a result – that depreciated the Yen – their local currency.

And the answer is simply because:
-  When the Japanese central bank started buying foreign reserves, they added more Japanese Yen into the market.
-  More supply of JPY then drove the Yen to depreciate against other currencies.
-  On the other side, if Japan's central bank starts selling foreign reserves, they will withdraw JPY out of the market. JPY supply will be reduced, it will then drive the Yen to appreciate against other currencies.

Which is riskier for investing - Cryptocurrency or the Stock Market?

Which is riskier for investing - Cryptocurrency or the Stock Market?

A question from the FB page today:
Jerome shared with us he started learning about the Stock Market and recently about cryptocurrencies. He also managed to save some money aside and wonders where to invest with less risk of losing it.

First let us say that there is always a risk to lose all your investments, investing in Cryptocurrencies and in the Stock Market. With that being said, there are a wide variety of possible stock market investments, with a wide range of possible risks.

Some stock market investments are pretty safe and are likely quite a bit safer than investment in cryptocurrency. Some stock market investments are pretty risky and are likely quite a bit riskier than investing in cryptocurrency.

So, ‘Risk; is a relative term. The stock market would indeed be very risky is you are buying stock without knowing what you are doing and without analyzing the companies upfront.

Very often people buy stock based on somebody’s else opinion. Instead, should you learn how to determine yourself what would be good stocks to buy. You also set up safeguards to keep you from losing all your money.

For instance, when you buy a stock, you set a Stop Order.  Let's say you buy shares of a stock at $20 a share. You've determined, by (for instance) studying the charts of that stock, that you would be willing to risk losing $2 a share in case its performance goes down. (Which is 10% of its price and your total investment)

So you buy the stock at $20 a share and set a stop order at $18 a share. In the worst-case scenario, the price of the stock drops under $18 a share, and the stock automatically sells itself. You lost only $2 a share.

But, if your research on the stock is correct, the price of the shares will go up long-term. Another example: the price of the shares rises to $30 a share. You've already determined if the stock goes that high, you will reset your stop order for $25 a share. That way, if the price goes down below $25, it automatically sells, and you've lost nothing, and even made some profit.

Those are just some examples for using safeguards when trading. When you invest long-term you might decide ETFs are the better option. Long-term they always go up (as the economy will overall go up long-term).

The big problem with the long-term investment would be the inflation or more specifically the hyperinflation. So be sure to read about those in the previous topics where we discussed them and gave good advice - how to protect yourself.

On the other end, the cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile which creates huge fluctuations in their price – some people made a fortune there, but the majority lost their money.

In general, nowadays, investing in well-performing stocks, companies and ETFs should be considered less risky than investing in cryptocurrencies.

Warren Buffett: how to invest during high inflation?

Warren Buffett: how to invest during high inflation?

As inflation is a very hot topic in the mid of 2021, we've seen the FED saying, ‘this inflation we're seeing now is short term, and there is nothing to worry about’, on the other hand we've seen Warren Buffett talking about how he's seeing big inflation throughout Berkshire Hathaway's businesses. We've also got Michael Burry making a new big-short on bonds.

So how does high inflation affect the investors and what's the best way to deal with a period of high inflation?

All the investors want to do is - commit a certain amount of money to an investment and get more money back at some point in the future. But when we talk about inflation and investing it's more helpful to think of investing like - giving up a certain amount of buying power now, to have more buying power in the future. Like  giving up the purchasing power to buy 100 apples now in the hope that we have the purchasing power to buy 150 in the future

While you may make a 20% gain on an investment on paper over a few years if inflation is running rampant, there's a potential that your real return is zero. E.g. you could buy 100 apples before, then you make 20% on your, investment then you sell it, but after that you can still only buy 100 apples now. You've had no gain in purchasing power.

This is what Warren Buffett talked about in 1979. He said that a business with per-share net worth compounded at 20% annually, would have guaranteed its owners a highly successful real investment return, but now such an outcome seems less certain for the inflation rate coupled with individual tax rates will be the ultimate determinant as to whether our internal operating performance produces successful investment results.

It is just as the original 3% savings bond, a 5% passbook savings account, or even an 8% US treasury note have in turn been transformed by inflation into financial instruments that chew up, rather than enhance purchasing power over their investment lives

A business earning 20 on capital can produce a negative real return for its owners under inflationary conditions not much more severe than what presently prevail. And this was in 1979 and the inflation rate was 11%.

Buffett says the combination of the inflation rate plus the percentage of capital that must be paid by the owner to transfer into his own pocket the annual earnings achieved by the business, i.e ordinary income tax on dividends and capital gains tax on retained earnings - can be thought of as an investor's misery index when this exceeds the rate of return earned on equity by the business the investors purchasing power real capital shrinks even though he consumes nothing at all.

Inflation is a crummy time for investors because when you take into account its rate - you can think about the annual percentage loss of purchasing power. If you couple that with either taxes you have to pay on income received through dividends and the capital tax the capital gains tax you have to pay when you sell then your real return on your investment could be negative even if the business is going well.

In 1980 Warren Buffett made the following analogy ‘the average tax paying investor is now running up a down escalator which pace is accelerated to the point where his upward progress is nil.’

And even if you are not an investor inflation can be a crappy time for businesses as well. Inflation eats away at the purchasing power as well and businesses generally need to buy a lot of stuff to keep operating. And if this stuff is now all of a sudden more expensive, they're trapped in a dilemma either they pay the higher price to operate, therefore making less profit or they raise the prices (produce more inflation) and hope that their sales volume doesn't shrink.

Inflation can also put upward pressure on interest rates which can make it harder for companies to access loans or make pre-existing loans more expensive to pay off, and this makes it much harder for the investor to pick great stocks that are going to compound money over time.

Warren Buffett explains what type of businesses tend to do well even in periods of high inflation. Such favored business must have two characteristics:

1. An ability to increase prices rather easily even when product demand is flat and capacity is not fully utilized, without fear of significant loss of either market share or unit volume

2. An ability to accommodate large dollar volume increases in business often produced more by inflation than real growth with only minor additional investment of capital

So, on the first one - an ability to increase prices and face no consequences. The business is feeling higher costs which hurt their margins so why not push those extra costs onto the customer if they can.

And you may think –‘ that is ridiculous, no company could do that, and the customers would just go and buy the cheaper product elsewhere, but not if the company has a moat.

If you're a small production company you've spent money to train all 50 of your employees to use Photoshop and Premiere pro and After effects - that took time, and it took money. Adobe suddenly decides to up the subscriptions ten dollars more per month.

Your company management might be thinking – ‘let's switch to a cheaper alternative, maybe you find a cheaper alternative, twenty dollars a month cheaper, great but it doesn't have all the same features as what the team's already using. Plus, it's going to cost two hundred dollars per employee to train them on the new software, not to mention the downtime your business will experience to get that training done and to switch everybody over.

If you think about the clients - they are already stressing you out, they're trying to get their productions finished, and at the end of the day it's just not worth switching. So, what can you do? You just pay the increased subscription, and you stick with Adobe, and pay more.

Another example: Apple has such a strong brand mode and a strong ecosystem that it's completely normal for them to squeeze a little bit more, and a little bit more out of all their customers each year.

In 2012 iPhone average selling price was just over $600. At the end of 2018, it was almost $800. Nowadays, it's even higher, and that's not even considering the plethora of add-on subscriptions. Apple will somehow force upon you whether it be AppleCare or iCloud or Apple Music, there's no escape and that's the point. So, during inflationary times look to the companies with very strong moats which can raise prices without consequences.

Secondly, you want the business to have an ability to accommodate large dollar volume increases in business with only minor additional investment of capital. So, if your business is not just able to pass on extra costs to the consumer, that means that you're going to have to cope with those costs, which means lower margins to generate your profit. It means you need to be able to increase the amount of business you're doing.

Essentially, what Buffett is saying here is - you want companies that are growing and are also easily scalable. For example - a shipbuilding company would struggle on this point. It costs a lot to build a big ship, you're not going to make huge margins doing it, but it's also very hard to increase the number of ships you're delivering each year. That would take enormous investment, into new shipyards and it'll be slow to wind up.

And if you consider a company like Facebook on the other hand if they can’t pass on the extra cost to their customers (which are the advertisers),  they could just choose to bump up the frequency of sponsored posts or of other ads. When a user is scrolling Instagram or Facebook they see three ads, instead of seeing two, and Facebook could do that very easily, and very quickly.

3. And Buffett has one more piece of advice for those seeking the best strategy during a time of inflation. Invest in yourself!

Sometimes there's just no escaping. Stock market investing in these times can be hard, so and given the fact that we're dealing with fairly high levels of inflation what can we do?

To improve your own earning power, know your own talents. Very few people maximize their talents and if you increase your talents, they can't tax it while you're doing it, they can't take it away from you. If you become more useful in your activities your profession - doctor, lawyer, auto repair, etc… - that’s the best protection against a currency that might decline at a rapid rate and the best investment.

And a good passive investment – is an investment in a good business. If you own an interest in a good business, you're very likely to maintain purchasing power no matter what happens to the currency.

Warren Buffett is indirectly acknowledging that it's hard to do well as a stock market investor when inflation just keeps ramping up. It's a bad time and your real return can be zero, so probably a better thing to do is invest in yourself, up-skill so that you can achieve a higher level of income. And your personal buying power would not fall - make yourself more valuable.

Overall, Warren Buffet gives us those 3 invaluable points. Those just come back down to the competitive advantage of you and your business – have a moat, be able to scale quickly and cheaply, and the last one is to invest in yourself.

How to protect yourself from hyperinflation

How to protect yourself from hyperinflation

And another question from the FB page. Jane is asking ‘with all this money printing that's been happening already, how can we make sure that we are protected from inflation or even worse – hyperinflation?’

And we will be presenting a couple of points to help you guys be protected from hyperinflation.

1. Put yourself close to the raw materials
Stay close to land or anything that could be transformed like lumber. If you look at lumber - you need to have land, you need to cut down the tree it goes through a process and is transformed into standardized logs. Then it goes into producing furniture, then into storage and then you buy the final product at your store.

If you look at it there's a lot of added value that goes through the process of just taking lumber and selling it. And if you can get closer to the lumber then hyperinflation will have less of an impact on you because what you will do essentially is you will cut your own trees down, you will buy the machinery to cut it and make it and you'll learn how to process.

You'll get it at a lot cheaper price and it's the same with everything other raw material. If you can get closer to land transform it, sell it - you can protect yourself from hyperinflation. It's an easier way to protect yourself. The same goes for agriculture, forest, oil commodities, etc.

2. Learn new skills in high demand
In case of hyperinflation - all service in high demand will increase quickly. For example, the maintenance on your car - an essential service that you need it's going to be in high demand, because if people need it, they'll pay a lot more for the service

And if you can learn how to do maintenance on your cars, oil change, construction on your house, etc. this will have a lot of value.

Let’s say that right now it costs about $100 an hour – car maintenance and $65 an hour for construction. In case of a high inflation or hyperinflation - this is going to go a lot higher, and if you learn how to transform your time into value, then you can protect yourself.

All those skills that you learn you essentially can transform into money then or you can do your own house, you can do your own floors, you can buy your own product and work with it.

All of these decrease the impact of hyperinflation when you learn something, when you transform, when you look at doing the oil change. It takes 15 minutes to do your old change and you save about 30 to 40 USD.

And you multiply that by 4 - that's a lot of value in a little bit of time, that you can transform your time into.

3. Use debt to your advantage
So, the  inflation devalues the value of currency. This is something that a lot of wealthy people utilize. They use debt to get richer, because if you're saving money then that currency is being devalued at a very fast rate.

And if you're investing and you're using debt and if you can have long-term fixed debts, you could use that debt and use inflation to pay it off. But make sure that interest rates are lower than inflation if inflation is at 5-10%, make sure that your interest cost is lower.

Hyperinflation destroys the value of the currency by like 50% a month. That’s the worst-case scenario, if you have $100000 in the bank what's going to happen it goes from 100k to 50k, than it goes down to 25k and then 12,5k in just a couple of months.

When you use debt, that inflation will devalue the value of that long-term debt.

4. Invest in hard assets
invest in real estate, invest in gold, in silver, invest in land and commodities.

The only thing you need to be careful with gold and silver right is the huge premium when you want to buy it. There's not a lot of people that are selling it and if they're selling it, they're selling it with a huge premium.

And you would need insurance to store that gold so if you have it at home. There's a lot of companies that insure all your assets at home.

So gold, silver and land commodities, real estate are the best to invest in when hyperinflation or even high inflation hits.

--
So, those 4 points cover at least the basics on how to protect yourself from inflation or hyperinflation, let us know in the comments which one is your favorite.

How to invest in gold


A question from Facebook. Alan is asking ‘How to invest in gold?.’ Probably Alan has been scared from the money-printing machine and the risk of inflation. And the question is probably in the heads of thousands of our readers.

So, today we will write about the topic on gold investment and how to invest in gold as a beginner. In May 2021 gold has recently hit an 11-year high trading at above $1900 an ounce.

1. Investing in physical bullion
This is the actual metal, and it is going to be either in coin or bar form, typically if you're buying from a reputable source this can be anywhere from a quarter of an ounce all the way up to 400-ounce bricks.

If you can afford a 400-ounce brick of gold, that’s great and as of mid-Jun ’21 this would be at about $750 000.

Physical bullion is priced about 1-10% over spot price. Typically, it's 1-5% percent at any given time but in 2021, with endless money printing, a lot of people are not trusting fiat currency and there's a lot of demand for precious metals ,that's why the price is going up, and now the dealers whether it's a coin shop or an online broker are charging closer to 10$ over spot.

If you don't know what spot price is, say gold is trading at a thousand bucks an ounce for example. If you add 10% premium to that you're probably going to be getting into that gold for about 1100 an ounce.

You also need to buy quality, as the most popular types are coming from mints or they're coming from highly reputable sources. So, you should only be investing in investment grade gold that's the whole point of the investment. You're looking for purity of 99.5% or higher.

Many investors only buy 99.9% or higher, and the most popular ways to invest in this as we mentioned are coins, because of its divisibility and its ability to be stored very easily.

If you want to make a comparison to silver, it's trading at about 1 ounce of gold can buy you about 50 ounces of silver. It means 50-times more space if you are to store silver. So gold is highly divisible and takes less space than silver to store for the same amount of money invested.

You can buy from any reputable online or offline merchant, and check if they discretely and quickly ship to you.

2. Investing in gold ETFs and gold funds
They trade exactly as stocks and ETFs, and are referred as paper-gold. And there are 3 types of these ETFs.

The first kind are investing in a company or an ETF or mutual fund or an intermediary that invests in the physical bullion, as we mentioned in the previous point.

You can pull your money together; they hold the physical bullion, and they basically mimic the spot price.

The second way are investing in ETFs or funds that invest specifically in gold futures contracts. These are companies that do exactly what the first example does, except they're not holding the physical gold and they typically don't take delivery. They're literally just betting on the future price of gold.

The third option you have are gold mining companies, which have become very popular over the past few years. You would be investing in ETF that owns a bunch of gold mining companies and is based on how those gold mining companies do.

As an example, a popular gold-holding ETF is Spyder gold shares – GLD.  What they do is, as mentioned is they hold the physical bullions. So that ETF is typically going to mimic the spot price as mentioned.

You also have to take into consideration that the capital gains tax is going to be higher than other ETFs. So, when you dispose of your position, you would probably be paying a  higher tax potentially up to 28%.

And the 4th option is investing in gold futures or options, and it is for advanced traders only. This is for people that either do this as a living or have been doing it for many years, and they know exactly what they're doing.

3. PROs and CONs of investing in gold

3.1 PROs of investing in gold
Number one is, that gold is a hedge against inflation. With the money printer printing trillions and trillions of dollars, it’s not surprising  people lose their confidence in fiat currency. And they go back to something that is a historical store of value.

There's a finite amount of gold and it is considered hard money. This is all to battle decreased purchasing power ever since the US went off the gold standard in 1971.

Number two is all about portfolio diversification. Many people are investing in stuff linked to the financial markets, and gold is an opportunity to bring diversification to your portfolio, outside of just equities or stocks.

So, people need to provide true diversification and introduce that to their portfolio. And you can do that through precious metals such as gold.

And then final advantage is that it is easy to get started. All you need to do is literally go online, pick a reputable merchant and you can literally get started immediately.

ETFs and funds are just as easy as buying a stock so those gold ETF and funds if you already have an open brokerage account you can literally get started in investing in gold in a click of a button just by buying shares of those ETFs or funds.

3.2. The CONs of investing in gold
Number one is that it doesn't earn you anything. It is literally a pet rock, so if you invest in the physical bullion, you're going to throw it somewhere in a safe or at a bank deposit box, and it's literally just going to sit there.

There are no dividends no compound interest and no passive income coming from that investment. It is a double-edged sword, because it's not correlated, and it can't earn you passive income.

Number two is the cost for storage. If you keep it in the house safe – you might get robbed. And you may want to keep it at a bank and even then, although this is rare, what if there's a run on the bank, or what if that bank burns down. Of course, there's insurance, but the point is that the storage could become an issue and if you just want to keep the physical amount of gold in your premises you will also need to invest in some sort of security.

Number three – you are paying premium over spot and then you also have taxes as a collectible when you go to dispose of your position. Basically, the premium we mentioned is anywhere typically from 1-5%, and right now in this environment it's right around 10% and then this is also taxed as a collectible up to 28% of the value.

4. Final thoughts on gold investments
Gold is a  great way to diversify your portfolio. It is a good practice for everyone to have at least 5-10% of either gold or precious metals to make up their portfolio.

At times, silver could be also under-priced, but gold has typically considered a better store of value.

The point is to preserve wealth over years – that’s the idea of the precious metals.

And a well-diversified portfolio would be: a little bit of precious metals, a little bit of real estate assets and then you have your typical usual suspects - stocks and bonds. Then with the hype over crypto nowadays – people are calling it virtual gold, but we still have to see if it will stand the test of time.

Also, if the interest rates do not go up in any time in the near future, it means that the gold is extremely valuable asset.

Hopefully, we managed to answer the ‘How to invest in gold’ question, and to give you some hints how you can get yourself started and add gold and other precious metals to your portfolio.

What is the state of the US real estate market (May ’21)

State of the US real estate market (May '21)

Today’s topic is about the US hyperinflation, and how is it going to impact the real estate market. And let’s start by quickly mentioning that the real estate market is crazy right now and the real estate prices are up 20%. Also, we’ve got stocks mostly up with some small exception, we've got commodity prices up. We're seeing prices of everything going up and it's because of the FEDs money printer.

The whole situation is  leading people with assets and wealth to have more of it, which allows them to shop for more real estate. More institutional buyers get into the rental real estate market. More people buying houses directly from ‘open door ‘or ‘zillow’ instant offers. Large landlord entities taking those properties away from other home buyers.

And this all creates more demand for real estate and drives up prices even more. Everybody with a pre-approval letter is immediately going to shop for a home. And the market is on pins and needles waiting to see what happens with longer term inflation. We have most investors right now knowing that we have massive inflation happening and we expect this inflation to continue due to supply shortages.

Over the near term the Federal Reserve takes the stance not to worry, as this is only transitory, and these issues are going to go away. We're told that these issues will not stay for the long term, inflation will come down, we'll balance out around two percent. And the rates will be risen slowly.

A lot of people in the investing markets, however, don't believe this. They're concerned that the Federal Reserve is going to lose control, that we're going to have hyper-inflation and maybe the mortgage rates are going to go through the roof and real estate prices will be going down.

We already know that there is a clear link between mortgage rates and home prices, or rental property prices, or cap rates on commercial real estate. Quick easy rule is the rule of 10x! For every 1% that mortgage interest rates increase - home prices rental property prices go down 10%.

If you get a half percent increase in rates, prices tend to go down five percent. A quick example of this happening in history – look at May of 2018. What you're going to find is the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates, resulting in real estate prices falling instantaneously within a matter of a few weeks. We saw real estate prices tank 10% - 12%. They recovered by the end of the year but only because the FEDs started reversing course.

Fast-forward to May 2021, the FEDs are saying ‘we're considering maybe injecting less cash into the markets.’ And the first target they'll likely look at is reducing their purchases of mortgage-backed securities. And here's what's happening right now. The Federal reserve is buying 40 billion a month of mortgage-backed securities.

When they stop buying these bonds mortgage rates are going to go up. And if you want to get into the real estate – you probably want to get into real estate before the taper. You can then lock in a 30-year fixed rate mortgage but be prepared for some potential volatility.

There are a two possible scenarios to occur in the following months. Scenario one is the inflationary direction. By September or October ‘21, the taper may have already started getting priced in. Mortgage rates might be higher, but the market's going to anxiously be looking if the rates are going to continue going up. And it will heavily depend on the inflation – is it going to stay, go up or down. This will determine if there is to be a crash or even further inflation.

In short-term – if you're trying to buy now, you probably want to get in before the FED starts talking about tapering mortgage-backed securities. Once that happens, probably the mortgage rates are going to jump up a good chunk, probably half percent would not be unreasonable, very quickly within a day.

You just want to lock in then, if you're thinking about buying after September, October, wait for September, October watch what happens – we will probably know then if the inflation is temporary. At that time, we would be getting the Q3 reports – so we will get an overview how are companies seeing inflation, what are company margins looking like, is inflation here to stay, is inflation starting to inflict downwards.

If we start seeing an inflection to the downside we might be at a place where we say the FED was right - we didn't get big long-term inflation. If that scenario happens - real estate prices could stay stable and potentially continue to trend in the current direction. Probably, not at those 20% rates, but more like 4-5% natural growth if the supply stabilizes.

The second scenario is if in September, October we start seeing inflation ramp up and not down. The short-term transitory nature of inflation we're expecting doesn't happen to be short-term – but long-term instead.  It happens to be systemic and lasts for 3-4-5 years.

The FED has to then raise rates much sooner than expected. That will force mortgage rates up even faster so the taper's going to push rates up. The FED freaking out pushes rates up and real estate prices could literally collapse.

if the fed had to raise rates say 2% in the matter of a month, be prepared for that potential change in market value. If you are locked in on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage - doesn't matter. Your payment doesn't change, nobody can margin call you, you're not going to lose your house

And if you have short-term variable rate - financing rates might change, and you should be prepared to have to start paying more on your mortgages. This is a risk factor if you have a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage you don't have that issue you can ride this out if you're looking to buy after September, October ’21.

The market is weird, right now, and a good advice would be only to buy properties if you can get them a hundred thousand dollars under market value. As an example, a property in California that is closed on $500 000, and could be sold at about $700 000, once the renovation of about $40 000 – $50 000 is done is a good investment.

Will the next market crash be worse than 1929 or 2000

Will the next market crash be worse than 1929 or 2000

Jeremy Grantham is a co-founder and chief investment strategist of Boston’s GMO. Jeremy believes that in 2021 - U.S. stocks have become an epic bubble and will burst so badly to outshine the crashes of 1929 and 2000.

Here is what Jeremy Grantham outlines

1. What happens when the market crashes
I believe that the bull market, started in March 2009, the longest bull market in history, have matured into a speculative fever of rare proportions, a fully-fledged epic bubble. It would be surprising if we have one that long that didn’t end up with animal spirits beginning to freak out a bit.

Achievement like that normally takes a friendly economy and even friendlier FED behavior, but this one managed to do with somewhat wounded economy on a global basis. We even had more spectacular FED and Government friendliness. The usual moral hazard that has been going on since Greenspan arrived the 90s.

The result of that is that confidence has risen and risen and risen until finally people are reaching for the greatest demonstration of confidence, they have had in their investment career. They are borrowing more money to throw it into the market, their belief in the market is profound, the common wisdom is that the FED on your side, how can you lose. And nowadays there appear to be no doubters at all.

The belief is that – all you need is the FED on your side and the stocks will rise forever.

And some of the signs to look for a bubble are, e.g. look at over-the-counter trading. Last Feb it traded about 80mil shares for the month, and it worked its way steadily through the year until Nov, when it was about 380mil. And then in Dec it went to 1.15 trillion shares for the month, having tripled and tripled again in just a month. These are spectacular performances.

My own stock at Quantum scape came into the market at 10 and shot up to 130, and it became bigger than GM or Panasonic. And it is a brilliant company, but it already admitted it won’t be producing any batteries for 4 years. So, no sales, no income for 4 years and yet bigger than GM.

There has been nothing like that in 1929, nothing of that scale. Nothing like that in 2000 either. 1929 run into great depression and global trade problems, so you really want to the first leg down, which was big enough.

The analogy with 2000 is better, and it went down 50% back then. And the reason it went down only 50% and bounced back relatively quickly was because FED came charging into the rescue. And you can have a lot of rescues when you start at a 16% long government bond for example in 1982. You can have a bull market as you go down from 16 to 12 and another bull market from 12 to 8, and 8 to 4.

And now we are down at about 2.5% and you have to realize that most of the easy pickings of saving the game by ramping rates down is behind us. At the lowest rates in history, you don’t have a lot in the bank to throw on the table.

The idea that the real world doesn’t count and all you need is money – to generate real wealth – I am pretty sure most of the people feel it’s an illusion. The situation where we have a deadly virus, and the economy is obviously on its knees and the FED is doing everything it could – and would that be enough to save the system?

In the end the system is about the amount of people working and producing, the amount of capital spending, the quality of education and production of the workforce.

COVID-19 brought spectacular excesses on the part of the FED and the Government writing checks. Unprecedented, and the combination was very powerful.

And the market had the opportunity to crash a couple of times, e.g. in 2018 – the last time. And those bull markets can go on forever. You don’t know how high and how long they could go.

In the back of everyone with bear’s mindset must be surely Japan in 1989. During that time, they managed to get to 65 times the market earnings. It has never previously gone over 25. So, the markets are unpredictable – when we avoid the burst of euphoria.

Tesla is an emblematic as crazy investor behavior. At the same time, anyone who has bet against Elon Musk has lived to regret it so far. Going short is only for experts because you can get into bankruptcy very quickly. My recommendation is to not go short individual stocks.

When you reach such levels of hyper-enthusiasm, the bubble has always, without exception broken in the next few months, not few years.

“You can’t maintain the level of near ecstasy for a long time. It can’t be done because you’ve put in your last dollar. You are all in. What are you supposed to do – beyond that point? Time comes when you can’t borrow any more money and can’t take any more risk.”

How do you keep this level of enthusiasm going indefinitely?

And if the Government is going to write unprecedentedly large checks, then indeed the all-in position can expand one last desperate notch. The sad truth about the so-called stimulus is it didn’t increase capital spending significantly; it didn’t significantly increase the real production. This will lead to an even more spectacular bust.

The flow of dividends and earnings – that’s the only think you can end up eating, and sooner or later the stock market – will once again – sell on the future flow of dividends.

On 23 Mar 20 the FED managed to engineer a revival of the credit market and ultimately a spectacular rebound in stocks. But if we go before COVID you would notice we have already lost considerable power on the economy. We had fewer people working and we had a reduced stream of goods and services.

This is a monetary game, and you can keep these little monetary bubbles going for just so long, as long as you keep confidence rising. And when confidence reach extraordinarily high levels – the history books are clear – it’s very difficult to increase the confidence further.

2. Investing in 0-rate world
Although there are many arguments why the current valuation might be even low, e.g. discounting future cash flow at a lower rate – I don’t find them appealing enough.

Seen 30 years bonds yield dropping down from 16% to about 2%. In about 2000/2001 those were about 4.1/4.2% and we thought this will be the lowest forever and now it is even lower, and negative all over the world. We have got an artificial interest rate structure, driven down into negative territory, e.g. 20% of government bonds have a negative real return. In other words, you pay to lend them your money, not the other way around.

The same happened with cash – it is deeply negative. Many people literally pay the banks to deposit money, instead of earning anything out of that deposit.

Selling everything in the high will work just fine, however there are major discrepancies as there were in 2000, between US tech, which is overpriced. So, the value of the low-growth stocks is about as cheap relative to the high-growth stocks. All of them are at risk at some degree.

The good news is that oversee they don’t have the same bull market and the same overpricing as we in the US. You can go to the emerging markets – they are not that expensive, compared to S&P they are as cheap as ever could be.

As you won’t be able to make a decent return 10-20 years on US growth stocks (they are heavily overpriced now).

The higher you bid up the price of an asset, the lower the long-term return you will get. There is nothing you can do to change the equation. Every day the market goes higher, you know one thing for sure – that the long-term return will be less than it was the day before.

Growth stocks have outperformed (over the course of the bull market) value stocks by almost 400 basis points. What if, after the bubble pops growth, growth is still ahead and there is no redemption for the value investor? It will be historically unprecedented for that to happen.

“I have no confidence and have not had any for over 20 years in price-to-book and P/E and price-to-cash flow, price-to-sales, even, as a measure of true value. A measure of true value is the long-term discounted value of a future stream of dividends.”

A growth-stock is of course worth a higher ratio than the low-growth stock, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be overpriced. And value should be cheap for what you are. You should build-in the growth, build-in the quality.

I am also worried about an inflation. We don’t live in a world where output doesn’t matter, and we can just print paper forever. Sooner or later, this will bring huge inflation, that we haven’t seen in 20 years. Everywhere across the globe the price of critical food and metals is going up. Together with the rapidly declining growth rate in the workforce, towards zero and negative.

So, this is a bad time to be caught over speculating.

It is very difficult to allocate in a world of zero rates, stimulus, declining productivity, potential for inflation. Secondly, of course, diversifying – it’s always a huge advantage, and third – the low-growth stocks in the emerging market world are perfectly reasonable if you need to own stocks, and most people do, that would be the way to go.

It will take trillions of dollars to decarbonize the global system – all those companies, doing that, will raise and grow significantly. Those will dominate everyone’s portfolio. Find a good climate change fund and invest into it.

If you think about investing into Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency – ask yourself – what is the future value of the dividend stream of it? It is nil, it will never pay you a dividend. If you are desperate, can you eat it? Its entire value is on the greater fool. Bitcoin could be worth a million dollars a unit if you find someone to pay it.

And we could think in a similar way about Gold. The difference is that Gold has had a 12,000-year test, and it passed it very well. And Gold also has some other fallback qualities – it doesn’t tarnish, it’s unique, everything ever made of gold is still around and will be around for a very long time. On top of that Gold is heavily used in manufacturing and production of expensive goods and materials. Bitcoin lacks all those.

Bitcoin is 100% faith. Come the next market phase where faith is at a minimum, what do we think will happen to something whose entire reason for existing is faith and nothing but faith?

3. What US government is doing for the economy
Ironically, I believe that Alan Greenspan is responsible for the current situation we are. The FED policy of acting and talking along the lines of moral hazard played a tremendous role.

Alan bragged that he contributed to the strength of the economy through the wealth effect. And  there is such effect indeed. If you have the market doubled – 3 or 4% of that gets spent and helps the economy. But the cost of this is tremendous – we live in a real world of people and production and overinflating the value of something does not justify the little growth.

In the end it will all get to a negative wealth effect when the market regulates itself.

Another example are SPACs. Those should be a completely illegitimate instrument. They are just an excuse for people with reputation and marginal ethics to raise a lot of money and take 20% of it for themselves, and a complete rip-off in the sense that the professional hedge funds always liquidate before taking any real risk. And of course, SPACs will make money in the late stages of the bubble, but if you look at the first six years, they had a sub-average return for taking all the risk.

SPACs don’t have enough legal requirements, enough restraints, enough checking. They’re a thoroughly reprehensible instrument and should be disallowed.

The IPO should also be reformed. IPO is a license to reward the fidelities of the world at open. Direct listing made a little easier would be the way to go, but SPACs are terrible.

If you are looking for the very early warning signs of a bubble breaking you find the stocks that have done the best, some particular SPACs, and Tesla, and Bitcoin – and you see that they start to have these big daily drops, and then they recover, and they drop, and they recover.

And the market in 2000 didn’t go together – they took out pets.coms and shot them, the rest of the market continued to go up. Then they took out the junior growth stocks and shot them and the market kept going up, and then they took medium growth stocks and shot them too, and finally by the summer they were shooting the ciscos and the entire tech part of the market. And that had been 30% at the market peak of the total market cap. And yet the S&P by September was at the co-equal high of March which meant that the other 70% had continued to rise.

So bubbles don’t necessarily break on mass, but having sliced off the tech, and the dot coms, then finally the 70% like a giant iceberg rolled over on mass and went down for two and a half years by 50%.

4. US capitalism crisis
The right way to fix the economic inequality is to stop nurturing the moral hazard, and start leading and managing through a monetary policy as opposed to fiscal policy.

By simply pushing up asset prices, you make it difficult to impossible for people to get into the game. The purchase of a house is too expensive, the purchase of anything in stocks is much higher per unit of dividend.

Secondly, the compounding of wealth is reduced. If you have a 6% yield on your assets, you can reinvest them and you can double your money in 12 years. If you turn it into a 3% yield by doubling the price, you are worth more on paper but in real life you only eat the dividends and now they are 3% a year and you double your money in 24 years. So, in 48 years, you are down to a quarter of what you would have been, and so on.

And the gap becomes ruinously wide. The higher the asset price, the lower the rate at which you can compound wealth. And the rich get richer, as you price down the yield, and the poor get squeezed. You are not creating any real value; you are not creating more production and government spending is quite different.

Instead of writing check to everybody, if we write checks for particular infrastructure – we will be doing necessary investing. If we invest into an efficient grid – everybody benefits. So, the Government should come with a strong public spending program, emphasized at the repairing bridges and roads, and green infrastructure, research, training and retraining of people for green jobs.

A corporation in the mid 60s felt it had responsibilities to its workers, it was on the cusp of starting a nice pension fund, a defined benefit. The corporation felt the duty towards the city and the country. All of that is largely gone, but it didn’t go overnight. The idea that the corporation should only care about maximizing profits is a terrible business formula.

If you say as an individual ‘My only interest is to maximize my advantages,’ which is what they say at the corporate level, you are a sociopath. And we are not, as individuals, like that. A lot of us do the odd altruistic act and those are incredibly important in the long run.