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The Stock Market Crashes-Here’s What I Did

Stock Market Crashes-Time to Get Greedy Investing is all about fear and greed. When the stock market crashes, people get fearful and start selling. This leads to even lower stock prices because there is less demand, which leads to more selling, and then the stock prices drop even further. When the stock market is going up, people get greedy. They keep buying and buying, even when it’s apparent that the top is near which forces…

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My Financial 20s

I got a question from one of my readers about how young people can take control of their money and their lives and she wondered about what I did successfully and what I would have changed about my twenties. It’s an excellent question! My Financial 20s: What I did right Paying off Student Loans I did quite well in my 20s financially speaking because I paid off my student loan debt as quickly as possible…

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The Minimum Amount to Begin Investing

A short video about why I recommend people save up at least $10,000 in order to get started with ETF or dividend stock investing. For some solid investing advice, check out Steve Peasley’s book: Above Average Investing for the Average Investor. It’s one of my favorites for giving you the goods about investing, minus all the hype and fluff.

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Know What you Don’t Know

confusing pension

Last night, I had one of my coworkers ask me about pension plans in Korea because I think she assumed I would know since I wrote a book about finance for ESL teachers: The Wealthy English Teacher: Teach, Travel, and Secure Your Financial Future. There of course is a wealth of misinformation floating around on Facebook and other online forums, as well as expat bars. This is compounded by the fact that the official information…

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What I’m Buying: VDY (Canadian High Dividend Yield ETF)

The problem that’s not really a problem I’ve talked a bit about how I’ve been sitting on almost $10,000 of cash, waiting for the market to crash so I can buy. I actually like to have all my cash invested, along with around $30,000 on the margin, so that was $40,000 I didn’t have put to good use. Now, I do realize that having too much cash isn’t really a real problem, but it was…

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Too late to Start Saving for Retirement?

It’s never too late to start planning for retirement You might be reading this post when you are in your late forties, fifties or even sixties and thinking that your financial landscape is pretty bleak. You are perhaps thinking about if it is too late to start saving for retirement. Perhaps you have lots of debt, including credit cards, no emergency fund and nothing in the way of retirement savings or other assets such as…

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The Wealthy English Teacher- Available on Amazon

 The Wealthy English Teacher: Teach, Travel, and Secure your Financial Future is now available on Amazon. It has a much bigger potential audience than my most nichiest of niche first book about how to get a university job in South Korea. I’m hoping that it’s the type of book that people really like, and tell their friends about, who in turn tell a few other people. So far, I’ve sold a decent amount of copies in…

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What about Investing in Gold and Silver?

My Old Coworker’s Obsession I remember a few years ago when I worked with a couple guys who were obsessed with buying gold and silver. They were totally and completely convinced that stockpiling these two assets, physically was the best way to put their hard-earned dollars to work. I remember thinking that this seemed like a complicated endeavor because you had to go buy the product and hope you were not getting ripped off, then you…

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What I’m Selling: Wal-Mart Stock

With the recent run-up in stocks over the past year, I’ve been slowly exiting positions in my portfolio that I wasn’t 100% confident in and reducing the money I’ve borrowed on the margin and going to cash in anticipation of a medium-large drop within the next year (hopefully!). Wal-Mart stock is one of them. Why I’m Selling Wal-Mart Stock Retail is Ultra-Competitive Retail is an extremely competitive space as consumers are pretty fickle. It’s just…

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5 Truths for Wealth-Builders

I was just cruising around on Yahoo Finance and I ran across this article which sums up pretty nicely what I think about personal finance. 5 Power Truths for Wealth Builders by David Ning. I particularly liked the ones about considering the downside and a little effort can lower your expenses. With regards to considering the downside, he mentions stocks and how many people don’t consider that that hot stock which seems to be going…

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Short-term vs. Long-Term thinking and how it relates to financial success

These past few days, I’ve been working away on my new book about financial freedom for teachers abroad and the following thought has been running through my head. Financial success all comes down to short-term vs. long-term thinking. There are lots of people who don’t think beyond the immediate in front of them-today, this week, this month and next month. These people often struggle to pay their bills each month and live in the land…

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Am I Worried About Losing All My Money in a Stock Market Crash?

I was talking with a friend yesterday and she was asking how much money I can gain or lose in a single day and if I was worried about a stock market crash, or not. Short Answer: I can gain or lose $3000 or $4000 or even more in a single day and I’m not worried about it. Here’s why: the gains or losses in my portfolio are not actually real gains or losses because…

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What I’m Buying: Energy Stocks

I normally like to have around $20 000-40 000 invested on the margin (money borrowed from my broker), which I can get at a really low interest rate (1.62% for the first $100 000 with Interactive Brokers) and then invested in dividend paying stocks that pay 3-5%, which leaves me with a nice profit of around 1-3% (after taxes) on that money. Except lately the markets have been going up and up and I’ve been…

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What if the Stock Market Crashes?

US stocks are flying high lately, with the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting record highs. I just checked my portfolio and was shocked to discover that I’d just made $7000 US in the past 30 days. Now, I’m under no illusion that these are “actual” gains because what goes up, must come down. Here’s what I do to prepare for the inevitable. I like to have at least 5 or 6…

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Passive Income Report October 2014

October 2014 wasn’t a great month for me in terms of passive income with a total of $253.44. Check out my October 2014 passive income report. Iherb and Amazon were pretty disappointing partly due to Iherb not offering any free shipping to South Korea and traditionally dividends are not plentiful in November. Compared to previous Years: 2013: $268 2012: $296 2011: $352 2010: $28 Onwards and upwards! My Ebook should be coming out in the…

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It’s always time to buy stocks

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I’ve been wavering in indecision about what to do with my excess cash. Sitting on it earning 1% interest is a terrible option because I’m actually losing money due to inflation and I can earn more than that on basically all of the stocks that I own because of the dividend, no matter what the actual stock price is. And you’d also know that I eventually…

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Some of my favorite dividend paying stocks

When you invest in dividend paying stocks, you invest like an old lady. It’s considered one of the most conservative ways that you could invest in individual stocks and in order to be effective, it has to be done over the very long-term. 10 years would be the absolute minimum I’d recommend and “forever” is even better. The hope is that I’ll eventually just be able to live well off the dividends I receive and…

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