The best investment guide would cover investment options and investment strategy. This investment guide would be complete and start with basic financial concepts and expand to include the entire universe of investments. That’s a tall order, so let’s just start with a simple version, and talk about all of the investments in the world in plain English.

Your best investment is a good, complete investment guide. I’ve been tuned in to the world of investing for 35 years and have read over 100 books on investments and investing. Most of them center on the stock market or some form of investment technique or get-rich-quick scheme. Many are time sensitive and out of date by the time you read them. Many tell you how to invest money like the author did when he made his millions.

What you seldom get with an investment guide or book is an understanding of investment basics and a simplified blueprint of your many investment options. So, here’s your simplest and free best investment guide to all of the investments in the world. There are only 4 different investments or asset classes out there depending on how you categorize things. Once you bring it down to this level you have a basic framework to work with.

CASH EQUIVALENTS and other safe investments pay interest. Either your principal or rate of interest is fixed for a period of time. Examples include U.S. Treasury bills, money market mutual funds and bank savings accounts. Advantages include high liquidity (access to your money) and safety, low risk.

BONDS are long-term debt instruments and they pay more interest income than the above. Examples include U.S. Treasury bonds, corporate bonds and bond funds of various types. Advantages include relatively high interest income with a moderate level of risk.

EQUITIES or STOCKS represent ownership in a corporation. Examples include blue chip stocks, growth stocks and equity funds. Advantages include ample liquidity, growth and some income in the form of dividends. Risk is significant and profit potential is high.

ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS is our final category. Examples include real estate, gold, and foreign investments. Advantages include high profit potential and an alternative to stocks when they are out of favor. Risk can be significant here as well.

That’s about as simple as an investment guide can get. All investment options can be fit into one of these asset classes. The important thing is that you have a perspective, and that you understand the investment characteristics of any investment before you invest money. For example, someone pitches an investment to you. Where does it fit in our above format?

How does it rate in terms of: safety, liquidity, growth and profit potential, income provided and risk? All investment options can be and should be rated in terms of the above to assure that they fit your needs and risk profile.

If you learn how to invest you’ll have a means of supporting yourself for the rest of your life. Once you have a sound understanding of investment basics you’ve built a great foundation for learning how to invest. The best investment guide would cover both.

A retired financial planner, James Leitz has an MBA (finance) and 35 years of investing experience. For 20 years he advised individual investors, working directly with them helping them to reach their financial goals.

This down-to-earth investment guide is geared to investing for beginners. In this investment guide you will learn to invest with your eyes open, plus: what mutual funds are, what kinds are available, and how to save cash when you invest money.

Investing for beginners is like learning how to swim. Not recommended: jumping in over your head in choppy waters off the coast of Maine in January to learn the butterfly stroke. Suggestion: learn to float first, getting your face wet under calm clear water.

Don’t try to learn to invest by speculating in the stock market or in the bond pits, either. Start investing in mutual funds where professionals pick the stocks and bonds for you. These funds are designed for the investing public. In my opinion, at least 95% of the investing public is best off investing here. Mutual funds simply pool money from investors and manage a portfolio of securities like stocks and bonds for the investors. You simply invest money in a lump sum, like $5000; or periodically, like $200 per month. The money you invest buys you shares in a fund.

The vast majority of funds fall into one of four categories based on what they invest in: stocks (also called equities), bonds, money market investments, and a combination of all of the above. For example, if you invest money in an equity fund, just about all of it will likely be invested in stocks.

Equity funds are the riskiest and have the greatest profit potential, with growth and perhaps some income as their primary objective. Bond funds invest in bonds to earn higher income for investors at a moderate level of risk, generally. Money market funds are the safest and pay interest rates that vary with interest rates in the economy. Balanced funds are the fourth category and invest in a balance of the other three major investment asset classes; and this makes them a great place to start investing.

Income or interest earned in a mutual fund is paid to investors in the form of dividends. Most investors simply choose to have their dividends automatically reinvested to buy additional shares in the fund in order to make their investment grow faster. What makes investing for beginners a challenge is that each general fund category has a number of varieties.

Now here’s your basic investment guide to saving money when you start investing. There are two primary costs when you invest money in funds: sales charges called LOADS, and yearly expenses. You pay a sales charge when you buy funds through a representative. For example, you write a check out for $10,000 and hand it to your financial planner who works on commission. Then, 5% comes off the top to pay for sales charges; and each year you are invested, expenses are automatically deducted from your investment. These yearly expenses can be 2% or more of the value of your investment.

Or you can buy NO-LOAD funds directly from some of the biggest and best fund companies in America and pay NO sales charges, with less than 1% a year deducted for management and other expenses. To cut costs even more go with index funds of either the stock or bond variety. Index funds simply track an index of securities, rather than trying to outperform the stock or bond market. Expenses are low because management costs are low; sometimes costing you less than ¼% a year. Plus, index funds have another advantage. You won’t beat the markets, but you shouldn’t under perform them either.

Investing for beginners need not be a game of sink or swim. Call a no-load fund company that deals directly with the public and ask for a free investor starter kit. Then start investing when you feel comfortable, and save cash when you invest money. If you have a limited financial background I suggest you find and read a complete investment guide before you invest.

A retired financial planner, James Leitz has an MBA (finance) and 35 years of investing experience. For 20 years he advised individual investors, working directly with them helping them to reach their financial goals.

Learn how to invest money and prosper; or don’t learn how to invest and continue to invest and lose money. It’s fun to invest money when you are winning. Get a financial education and see for yourself. You will NEVER feel left out once you know how to invest with a sound investment strategy. Let’s start that financial education now.

INVESTMENT BASICS

You can not put together a complete investment strategy without an understanding of the investments that are included in the package. Nor can you build your own house without knowledge of the pieces, parts, and tools required. Concentrate on investment basics before you decide on what plan to go with, or you may not be able to finish the job successfully. This means that you need to understand the investment characteristics of stocks and bonds, and how they compare to each other and to other investment alternatives.

Only then can you learn how to invest and put together a complete investment strategy. Like I said, it’s fun to invest when you’re making money; but you’ve got to start with the investment basics. Most people don’t know stocks from bonds. Start by reading articles or other publications that get down to the basics. For example: what are stocks, what are their risks and potential rewards, and how do they compare to bonds and other investment alternatives.

Now you are ready to learn about mutual funds, which are the investment of choice for most average investors. For most people they are the easiest and best way to invest in stocks and bonds, plus other asset classes. Mutual funds are simply investment packages that are professionally managed for you. To pick the right funds you’ll need to understand the asset class they invest in: stocks, bonds, money market or specialty (other).

HOW TO INVEST

Now you’re ready to learn how to invest and put the pieces together with a sound investment strategy. ASSET ALLOCATION is a crucial part of your investing and financial education, because how you allocate your money to the various asset classes will determine your success or failure… more than anything else. Simply put, how much should you invest in stocks vs. bonds vs. other investments? This is also called your asset mix. It’s much more important than what specific investments or funds you pick.

Once you’ve put a balanced portfolio of investments together you’ve got a great foundation. But if you want to continue to build and prosper you’ll need an ongoing investment strategy to make additions and changes over time as necessary. Read articles on investment strategy, asset allocation, and how to invest. It will all come together for you if you start at the beginning and build a step at a time.

Learn to invest like your financial future depends on it. With Uncle Sam in debt up to his eyeballs and employers fighting to survive, it does.

A retired financial planner, James Leitz has an MBA (finance) and 35 years of investing experience. For 20 years he advised individual investors, working directly with them helping them to reach their financial goals.

Have you read the most-printed book of all time? According to Wikipedia, that book would be the Bible, which is at the top of their “List of most-printed single-volume books” with 5 billion plus copies.

For the record, the Quran comes in second at 4 billion. Charles Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities” is fifth on the list with 200 million copies. J.R.R. Tolkien has two works in the Top Ten – “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” (eight and nine, respectively).

The Guinness World Records website agrees with Wikipedia – “there is little doubt that the Bible is the world’s best-selling and most widely distributed book.”

The question I have for you today is this: Have you ever read the #1 best-selling and most widely published book in history? If not, I’d like to encourage you give it a try. And here’s an easy way to do so in a relatively short period of time.

Like any book, it’s important that you read the whole thing. Depending on what version you choose, the Bible is around 1,200 pages long. So if you’d like to read the Bible in a year, all you have to do is read 3-4 pages a day.

But let’s be a bit more realistic and assume that it’s unlikely you’ll read the Bible every day for the next 365 days. So how about this goal: you read the Bible five days a week for the next 50 weeks. This gives you a little breathing room, right?

Here’s the math on this approach: 1,200 pages divided by 250 days equals about 5 pages per day. That’s all it takes – five pages a day, five days a week, and you’ll have read the whole Bible in a year. What do you say? Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

If you goal is to read the Bible in a year, check your version to see how many pages it has. Whatever the amount, divide it by 250 to get the approximate number of pages you’ll need to read, assuming to go with the five days a week plan.

Of course, if you’d like to take less time, say six months instead of twelve, just double the number of pages per day.

One final comment: there’s no need to wait until January 1 to start. You can begin today! Any day is a good day to read the Bible, the best-selling book of all time.

If you have decided to sell books online – used or antiquarian books, specifically – one of the first skills you need to develop is knowing how to identify first editions.

The process of doing this, remember, is never one of looking for first editions; the focus should always be on eliminating candidates that aren’t. The best we can do in the field, when decisions to buy must be made almost instantaneously, is to start with a big pile of books, most of which have little or no value, and end up with a small pile of books, 50% or 75% of which will ultimately prove to be first editions. Then, if the price is right and condition is good, we can buy them and take them home for further investigation.

The most productive first step you can take in this process is to eliminate book club editions. Why? Because they far outnumber trade editions. Concentrate only on the most obvious designations. A blind stamp or printed mark on the lower right-hand corner of the back cover is an automatic toss, keeping in mind that publisher logos and ISBN numbers appearing in this same location do not indicate BCE status. The words “Book Club Edition” or similar ones appearing anywhere on the dust jacket or inside the book – another toss. The absence of a price on the dust jacket? Toss. The words “Literary Guild” on the dust jacket, spine or title page – toss. A “W” on the copyright page – toss. A five-digit code in a small box on the back of the dust jacket, a missing number string above the far right bar-code grouping on the back of the dust jacket, or any intuitive evidence (e.g., a laid-in book club slip or brochure) that indicates BCE status – toss.

Another productive step is to look for edition status on the copyright and/or title pages. Number strings that start with ‘2’ or greater numbers (recall, of course, the Random House exception), letter strings that start with ‘B’ or later letters, the word ‘reprint,’ words that imply a previous publication by a different publisher (e.g., permission to publish granted by so-and-so, first published by so-and-so), the presence of more than one copyright date (exception – a collection of stories, poems, essays, etc., reprinted from periodicals will often list multiple dates but may still be a first edition), dates on the title page and copyright page that don’t match, and again, any obvious intuitive indications (e.g., the words “second edition” or “second printing”) – all tosses.

A third step is to eliminate reprint publishers. The following article gets into more detail on this, but for the time being, if you simply memorize the following six publisher’s names, you’ll be three-fourths of the way home: A.L. Burt, Collier, Dial, Grosset & Dunlap, Tower and Triangle.

Finally, consider tossing books that are in poor condition or, especially if publication dates postdate the 1930’s, lack a dust jacket.

That’s it. Memorize this information and you’ll graduate from a clueless buyer of fiction into a reasonably accomplished one overnight.

If you have a website and want to make money with it, you have probably heard of affiliates. If you are unsure of what an affiliate is, it is quite simple to explain.

An affiliate, or advertiser, pays you for having links on your website to their website. You can be paid in one of several ways – every time your page loads and their banner appears, whenever your visitor clicks the banner, or when a sale is made after one of your guests visits the affiliate’s site.

Let’s say that you are a book lover and you have a website that is dedicated to those who love to read. You could offer reviews, articles about writers and more on your site. This will attract like minded readers. When your visitors see the link pointing them in the direction of a book reviewed on your site, they will be more likely inclined to click on the link and purchase the book – particularly if it is a popular book or has favorable reviews.

You can write reviews of books and post them on article directories as well. All of these articles, which can be republished across the Internet, will point back to your website. This will increase your traffic even more and provide more hits for your affiliate. It’s a winning situation all around.

You can have the big name affiliates on your site, such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble. They are trustworthy affiliates that people know and trust.

With the right marketing and the right affiliates, you can actually make upwards of $1000 selling books with affiliates.

If you need money now, like I mean in the next hour, try what I did. I am making more money now than in my old business and you can too, read the amazing, true story, in the link below. When I joined I was skeptical for just ten seconds before I realized what this was. I was smiling from ear to ear and you will too.

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In a world that is coming more and more competitive, parents are turning to educational toys to give them and their children the upper hand. However, there is a big separation in believers and non-believers. A lot of parents believe that educational toys have no purpose what so ever, while other parents swear by them. The question we’re going to try answer in this article is do learning toys work?

All of the educational toys that are developed are created by a team of experts. These are education professionals who are seasoned when it comes to childhood education. They know how children respond to information and how to get the most of your child’s natural ability. When you are deciding on whether you should make your own learning toys or to purchase them, you need to think about what you want to get from them.

The experts who have made those toys have thousands of combined hours that they have poured into the product. Each product is made so that your child can excel at a specific topic or theme. The books or toys have a specific purpose when it comes to educating your child.

Another reason why educational toys are so popular is simply because children love them – and are learning from them. They are designed with a lot of colours and pictures which makes it extremely stimulating for children. educational toys can come in a variety of forms. You can purchase books, actual electronic toys, flashcards, DVDs and even wooden toys that can be used for educational purposes.

In an effort for educational toys to have a better reputation amongst parents, there are studies being done to prove their worthiness. The truth is that the studies completed across the world are constantly showing that early education toys help a lot in improving the mental state of your child.

By using educational toys, parents are building the foundation of their child’s educational life. They are creating positive learning habits that will last a lifetime, into adulthood. The earlier that parents start working with them on their children’s early learning habits and their early learning experiences the more benefit children will derive from this later on in life.

If you want to give your child a head start in life, then start using educational toys. They are affordable and have proven themselves to be worth their weight in gold.

Melanie Thomas (CEO Melrose Kids Ltd) is a mother of two boys and lives in London, England. Melrose Kids Ltd are the official distributor of Brainy Baby® products in the UK and Ireland.

Introduction:
Education can act as a powerful tool for reducing poverty and unemployment and achieving a sustained human development. When we compared our country education with other developed/developing country, the education in our country is not suitable to the current situation/practical life. All over the world governments are strictly follow the procedure of generating libraries along with schools, colleges etc. because the emperor Napoleon said the “Build up libraries otherwise we would build up prisons”.

Generally in all the countries are understand the importance of higher education. In 1980s American president Ronald Regan take several steps to improve the higher educations. In a survey, among the 10 world’s best universities, 9 universities are situated in America. Most of the countries are including the basic education as a human right. In our India itself the education quality in corporation schools and private institutions are having huge differences. For instance the education system in institutions like IIM, IIT is differing from other institution. IIM an IIT institutes students are having more future benefits like employment, salary etc. rather than the other institutes. The syllabus difference between Tamilnadu and Kerala. We can give much more examples to prove in equality in our education system.

According to human resource development department report in our India only 77% of the students pursuing their higher secondary studies. In which 61.6% of the students stop their studies in between of higher secondary. The total no. of schools, colleges is increased slightly when compared to previous years but the education quality is down fall. Even though the students well educated they can’t able to get a job because of non practical syllabus in many education institutions. It is the right time to introduce the “education revolution” through uniform education.

Uniform education:

In current situation only the richest students are able to get quality education in metric and private schools. The government of Tamil Nadu going to introduce uniform education system in eliminates the in equality in education. In 1960’s Gothari commission insist government of India to introduce uniform education in every states and also the committee stressed to increased the allocation of finance to the education with that committee’s recommendations the government of India introduced “Sharva Shiksha Abiyan”. But the result is not up to the level. The Government of Tamilnadu comes forward to introduce the uniform education with the recommendation of Muthu kumaran committee. Uniform education will reduce the burden of the school children through reducing the no. of books and notes and also. It will make pull stop to the indirect collection of amount from the children by way of using text books. It is the good thing in one side but in other side the quality of government school not up to the mark of private schools.

Uniform education’s other important content is crating or building near by schools to children’s. But the government of Tamil Nadu doesn’t give any matters regarding the nearest school systems. The Government of Tamil Nadu also failed to include the medium of instructions as Tamil. Because Mr.Muthukumaran committee strongly stressed about providing of education in the mother tongue. The education minister also failed to include the very important content of uniform education is appointing sufficient no. of teachers to each children in the Government Schools.

Recommendation:

From the point of view of us and also from the point of view of experts, we wished to suggest. Some recommendation and we expect something from the Tamil Nadu education minister to develop the rural children education rate.

1. The Government must develop the infrastructure facilities. The Government schools are not having enough infrastructure facilities like in private schools.

2. It most of the rural schools the teacher student ration in too low (5 classes: 2 teachers). Merely introducing common syllabus we can’t expect uniform education development in all schools. The state Government should came forward to allocate more finance to the education development.

3. Most of the politicians like PMK leader Ramadoss expect the State Government should come forward to provide LKG & UKG education to all the rural students. Because, all the urban area students are going in the Ist standard after completing these courses. But most of the rural students are joined with out these courses. So far four committee are arranged to analyze Indians education position. All these committees are recommends one thing severally that is “nearby schools with mother tongue common schools”.

4.A childe should get its education with out going long distance. For that Government should construct more no. of schools in rural areas. So for the Government didn’t explained about the nearby schools construction.

5. Government school teachers are getting more salary than the private school teachers. But the pass percentage is too lower than the private schools. Government didn’t give more attention to praise the teachers and also punishing then when they are mislead.

6. Every year Chennai Municipality receives Rs. 70 crores as education tax. As per I April 2009 situation the idle amount is Rs. 120 crores with his amount the Chennai municipality can improve the 250 corporate schools to star category. Government should concentrate on spending collected amount towards school education development.

7. Even though the Government schools are giving free lunch, no fees, free uniforms and free text books, still most of middle a low class peoples are interested to get the appoint form the private schools. The Government should give been attention towards this actions it should find the reason.

8. Most of the rural students are stopped their education in between (nearly 70% of the students stop their education with in 10th STD) classes. The reason is poverty and also the schools infrastructure education plan, test formation and also job opportunity from the education. The Government should try to change the education system of our state. The every student should be assured with job opportunity.

9. According to latest report from 1000 students only 50-60 students are having the capability of getting jobs. It arises due to non job relevance syllabus and also lack of library facilities in our schools. So the Government should increase the library facilities in each & every schools.

Conclusion:

Uniform education system may create an education revolution in Tamil Nadu and it will scatter over all the states. The Government also will make keen attention towards the education system in our country. We hope the uniform education syllabus will reduce the imbalance between the rural student’s knowledge and urban student’s knowledge. It is the time to create education revolution in our country. We believe our state forward its first foot step to wards education revolution. In uniform education, common syllabus is one of the foot step, still there are many foot steps are inform of us we have to cross them in order to get a quality education and also to provide quality education to our state students. Government may do and God will help them.

Our children devote much of their free time to watching television – seemingly captivated by the screen. Some of the parents do use television as babysitter too! The children have continuously contact with the screen, I do wonder how the television programmes influence the way they understand and interpret both the content and the world in which they live in. Although children have everyday contact with other media and many other forms of expression and communication, visual media alone are seen as speaking “universal language” accessible regardless of age. Hence, I strongly believe that television programme does influence on children’s attitudes, knowledge and behaviour.

Parents play an important to controlling children watching television. It is essential that parents play an active role in educating their children that television is only a form of leisure activity and they should not be addicted to it. Children can relax and learn through television programmes but parents should be able to select and filter the different programmes that are suitable and catered for their children. There are some programmes on television that give bad influence and wrong interpretation of reality, and that can affect the cognitive development of children. There are too many prejudices and stereotypes put through the media, which can influence what children see and think.

Watching too much of television can actually destroy a child’s communication, social skills. It can also affect the child’s emotional development. Through the screen, everything is visual and real. It is difficult not to believe what you see and thus, for children, when they watch television, they absorb everything that is being shown. Children learn through their visual senses and process it cognitively. If they were to watch non-educational programmes, there might be a tendency that the child would learn and mimic what he sees. Their communication and social skills is influenced by what they see and learn from the television. This can be rather unhealthy.

Many parents often question me why are their child shows aggressive behaviour so often in both school and home and that they are usually imitating the actions of the cartoon characters that they have watched in the television. Hence, I believe that this sentiment goes out to many parents with young children and pre-school teachers.

Through observations, I realised that many behaviours are learned quickly through observation and imitation of others rather than gradually through the shaping process. They observed what is being showed on the television and displayed this aggression to others. These aggressions are very common in our young children now. Thus, I strongly believe that television can largely affect the behaviours of our young children.

Adults’ attitude toward watching television is very important. We cannot simply use television as a source of babysitter for our children. Instead, they should use it as an educational tool for our children to take their step into learning like showing children educational programme like Shapes ABC, etc. Hence, as parents and pre-school educators, we should preview the programme before allowing our children to watch it. We can talk to children about what they have watched and share with them our own beliefs and values. It is our responsibilities to let our child know what is right and what is wrong!

Hence, caregivers should give them more opportunities of exploring and experiencing with the world instead of gluing them to the television. In order to prevent this aggressive behaviour, parents should really consider the type of programme they show to their child. Children use their five senses and movement to experience and explore the world that they live in. Hence, we should offer them with more fun activities rather than having them spending hours in front of the television.

Television does play an important role in our children’s life. It is a good tool for our children if we know how to control and make use for their learning opportunity. However, there are too many programmes on television that content violent which may leads to aggression in our children’s behaviours if we do not supervise them wisely.

If you haven’t attended a home show yet, let me share with you my most recent experience, so that you can determine if it might be worthwhile for you to attend one. It is a great place to get home improvement ideas under one roof. While home shows are usually not free to attend, the small investment of $10 or so per person can have a big payoff if you are actively looking for home improvement ideas.

Recently I attended my local Home And Patio Show and found over 200 vendors displaying everything from lighting fixtures to African violets. It’s impressive, there is so much to see and absorb, take some paper and pencil or a camera to document any great ideas that you want to capture.

There were many vendors that showcased outdoor patio treatments, including paving materials, pools, lighting, and outdoor kitchens. There were landscape architects that presented ways to create a landscape plan for your home. There were several vendors with hot tubs that could be installed in an outdoor deck.

Some vendors provide support services to homeowners such as security systems, insect control, and insurance. Others display tools and equipment that could be useful to a homeowner such as the Big Ladder. I have seen this product demonstrated several times and it still amazes me, how easily it converts from one size to another, can be supported on uneven surfaces, and can be used as scaffolding.

There were several vendors which displayed and demonstrated replacement windows, siding, and painting solutions. Yes, you can buy regular exterior paint or something called liquid siding, which is warranted to last longer than paint. If you want outbuildings such as sheds or saunas, this is the place to check them out.

One entrepreneur had created a heavy-duty liner which could be used as an insert for your SUV so you could carry rocks and logs without damaging the inside of your vehicle. After emptying your load, just wash out the liner with a hose, let it dry, and put it away. I was impressed, but I don’t have an SUV.

Another big area of focus was interior floor, kitchen counter, and kitchen cabinet choices. This is a great way to find out the latest materials and treatments that are available. If you have questions regarding something you’ve seen in magazines, take the magazine with you and ask away.

The show took me several hours to go through and I learned a lot. When you start, make sure you get a map or listing of the vendors. Mark which ones are a must visit from your perspective, and start walking.

It’s really important to stop and ask questions. It’s not a high pressure sales situation, just an opportunity to get some basic information and determine if you’d like to speak with someone from the company again. The representatives at the show want to answer your questions, otherwise it would be a very boring 2 or 3 day time for them.

Make sure to take a canvas bag with you, because you’ll be leaving with lots of goodies. This show I left with my canvas bag overflowing, a floor lamp and a yard stick. The lamp I purchased while the yardstick was a freebie.

And hope that you find that perfect solution or idea at a home show. If your home needs a makeover or just some minor upgrades, we’re working to be your trusted source for tips on things to do for you to maintain and upgrade your home. Our focus is on doing things economically and safely, whether you’ve just moved in or are getting your home ready to sell. Check out [http://www.HomeHowToGuides.com] to find many more tips for making your home your special place.