Tools to help you understand your investments

This writing is intended for beginner investors who are serious about investing.  Please note the writer of this post is a beginner investor.

I have thought about investing many times.  I never felt comfortable or ready to make a decision to pull the trigger; in other words, I was unable to make the decision to make a purchase.  Why did I felt that way? Because I was unable to understand the wealth of information available.  Or, I did not feel comfortable to make a purchase based on my understanding of the information I have reviewed.

Investing is not scary or risky if you understand the information you are presented with.  There will be losses, there will be gains, you can continue to invest as long as you have capital.  Your greatest capital of all is yourself.

Recently, I revisited some of the online tools I tried maybe a decade ago when I was considering about investing my own money.  At that time, prior to using those free online tools, I studied, I read and then I employed strategies I read about.  A decade ago, I did not understand anything I put into my lists or the strategies I read about.

Now, a decade older, I am smarter and wiser.  Investing strategies have not change much while the tools developed and available to aid you have gone through some minor upgrades and changes.  These change may be minor but it made my work more efficient and smooth.  I already knew the type of investments I wanted a decade ago and I am now ready to shop.  As in I have a modest liquid capital and a more mature mindset.  With these two things in hands, I am now a serious beginner investor!  So, here is my strategy:

1.  Ensure you have a cash flow.  This could be a job you dislike or dividends
2.  Read some articles about different types of investments to choose what investment makes sense to you.
3.  Narrow down your articles to find the experts who invest in the type investments that is comfortable for you.
4.  From the articles that those "experts" write, you will be able to find some stocks that may resonate with you.  This is where you start placing potential investments on your list.
5.  Put in monitoring mechanism. Monitoring quarterly would make sense from an accounting point of view.
6.  Don't waste too much time on funny news.  They may be interesting and fun to look at and research into but for every interesting news you venture into, you are missing time to look for news for sound investments that are harder to identify and also require your attention and support!

This quarter, I will be focusing on High Dividend Yield Stocks.  This type of stock is less volatile because the dividends shareholders receive cushion the fluctuation in prices.  Just remember, whatever you hold, you already own. If the company you invest in continue to exists and it has a history of paying dividends, it should continue to do so.  Unless if some major changes happen.  Major changes can include an expansion, an acquisition of another business, a finite cessation of a relationship with an important person, or a decision to retire. 

You need to monitor your investment to know if you want to continue to hold on to an investment.  An investment that once was sound, secure and reliable may not always remain that way.  For example, let say, you bought a stock five years ago and the market price today is exactly the same.  You made 0% gain in five years.  If that stock pay dividend while you held on to it then at least you made some gain from the dividends distributed to you.  Hopefully, the dividend it paid is better than a high-interest savings account and is enough to cover the cost of each trade.  Remember, you have to pay money each time you place an order to buy or sell.

Hopefully, by the end of the year, I will be able to find my own High Dividend Yield Stocks.

I hope the above was helpful.  Good luck with your investments this year.  Protect those nest eggs!

18 hours crash course

Recently, I attended a weekend crash course on life-saving skills.  At the end of the course, you demonstrate what you learned to see if you have obtained such skills.  I went in as a blank page, had some intensive training for 18 hours in one weekend.  Obviously, I did not obtain life-saving skills up to the standards they are looking for.  So... will I be able to recognize someone who needs a rescuing? Maybe?

If I was evaluating myself, I would say that I would be a great bystander to help a rescuer but I did not want to be the rescuer.  As a bystander, I will remain calm, listen to the instructions of the rescuer and assist that rescuer to the best of my ability.

I am not the type of rescuer they are looking for because my rescue will be clumsy, appear questionable and ends abruptly as soon as I feel that I have removed that person from imminent danger.  That is my best as a rescuer.

Anyhow, although I failed to meet their standards, at least now I have some material that I can review and revise whenever I feel like it.   Happy Monday! :)

Carry on~

Scrapbook

Scrapbooking is one of my favourite past time.  With technology advancements, we can now scrapbook by using the computer.  Some people are more dexterous and have better vision than I.  These people may even be able to scrapbook on their tiny little mobile devices.  I would not recommend scrapbooking on a small little mobile device because your eyes will go bad.

What is scrapbooking?  According to this author, scrapbooking is creating a book from scraps.  Scraps are unwanted materials people have discarded.  I have created a few scrapbooks as presents for friends.  I would first collect photos of them from them and from people around them.  I would also buy a scrapbook album and scrapbook paper to make my finish product, the scrapbook, more luxurious.  I would also request people around them to write about them and submit their written letters to me for sticking into the scrapbook.

The finished product is a very personalized gift.  The scrapbook can have photos, letters, used tickets, cut out from magazines, dried plants, etcetera.  As you can see, a computer-generated scrapbook will not have the same feel and look as a scrapbook created from scratch and without the assistance of computer or android technologies.

The experience of making a scrapbook without a computer is also very different.  You get to use glue, tape, etcetera.

Recently, I finally made two "scrapbook" for myself.  It was actually my first time scrapbooking for myself.  When I do things for myself, I am lazy so I opted to use the computer to help me with my creation.  I did not get to enjoy the cutting with scissors or gluing with glue experience; however, I got to put in more stuff into the scrapbook and it was possible to make copies of such "scrapbook".  The finished product also looked more professional.  There was more room for writing because everything was typed and not handwritten.

Yesterday, I was relooking at the two scrapbooks I made for myself.  It always brings joy to me when I look at them because I relive the experience of whatever I documented about in these two scrapbooks.  I was very detailed with my notes, I wrote about people I came across, my accomplishments, my thoughts, and feelings at that moment in time.  If I did not write about them, I probably would not remember everything I wrote about.  In addition, my writings helped me remember things I would otherwise not remember, some of which were not written.

In summary, the most important component in a scrapbook to me are the photos and the writings.

The other day, I started wondering if blind people scrapbooked.  If they did, what would they put into their scrapbooks?  Similar to me, they could put in their own writings but in Braille form and other tangible things that can fit into a scrapbook.  Unlike me, they would not put in any photos but instead, I think it would be interesting if they can put in sounds from a collection of sounds they have collected and are scrapbooking about the journey they took to collect those sounds.

If the technology was available, I wonder how a blind person would utilize such technology to create their own scrapbook.  As a person who can see, the photos enrich my experience as I read my own writing.  If I was blind, I would imagine that a recorded sound would enrich my experience as I read my Braille.  I prefer reading silently in my head or hearing myself speak out my own writing so I would imagine that a blind person who can read Braille would also prefer to read silently to themselves and have the options to hear the recorded sounds they collected at the right moment and activated by them. What do you think?  Anyways, I am going to investigate!

What is happening in your classroom?

Dear my non-existent readers, have you been following my social media presence today?

Facial

My mom likes to give me facials.  She would ask me from time to time if I would like to have a facial to which she almost always receive a resounding no.

I prefer to wash my own face and a facial usually last anywhere from thirty minutes to one hour.  Anyhow, today I said yes and I am now trying a new mask which I like. It smells good and feels nice on the skin.

While lying in bed and waiting for all the good stuff to sip into my skin I thought isn't it nice to just lie here for fifteen to twenty minutes and do absolutely nothing.  You see, my body need some rest.

Anyhow, this is how I currently look with the mask look.

My face shall look deeply cleaned after.

Morning Walk

It is going to be spring soon and the weather is starting to become warmer.  Every morning feels a little livelier as animal returns.  It's nice to wake up in the morning, take a walk and feel nature winding up for the day.

The light is still dim because the sun is only slowly rising, the streets are pretty empty and you hear bird warming it's lung through chimes and songs.

I think that is how we are suppose to wake up. I am slowly moving my body as my mind slowly wakes up.

Our society has improved a lot but sometimes it is making us rush too much and taking away the enjoyment of doing things naturally and simply.  For everything there is a season.