Is Your Advisor Giving You The Information Needed To Succeed? - Investment Options

By Frank Miller


How soon would you want to know if your investment advisor wasn't telling you about the three major investment types? If you've only heard of two - Variable and Fixed, then you may have a problem. Unfortunately, many investment advisors routinely fail to present all three types: Variable, Fixed, and Indexed as valid investment choices to their clients. This is normally because they are unable to offer all three options or they have a personal dislike for one or more of these investment types. So what is the difference in these investment types and what do the terms mean? The simplest answer is that these terms define how interest is earned on your investment. More specifically, it tells you how your money is invested and if your money is protected from market fluctuations. Let's take a look at these various investment options.

HYIP is attractive for a lot of risk taking investors because they can invest with very small quantities. In addition, most HYIP programs are easy to get started in and follow even if you are relatively new to the investing world. Most HYIPs use a pyramid scheme, so that new investors actually provide cash to pay existing investors. As long as new investors keep coming on board, investors will continue to be paid. With a good high yield investment program this can work out, with poorly planned programs, you'll find that even the first payments are made fraudulently and things unravel fairly quickly.

If you have a 401k at work participate in it, and take maximum advantage of your employer's matching contribution if your company offers this feature (it's free money). Investing money here is automatic and almost painless. This is one of the best investment ideas available for accumulating a nest egg for retirement. Plus, the tax advantages will put a smile on your face each year at income-tax time. Open a Roth IRA with a major NO-LOAD mutual fund family and start investing money each month through their automatic investment plan. Enter "no-load funds" into a search engine and you'll see some of the biggest and best fund companies at the top of the page, names like Vanguard, Fidelity and T Rowe Price. Give them a toll-free call if you have questions - like do you qualify, how much can you invest a year, and will they send you free literature. A Roth IRA (or Roth 401k if available) is one of the very best investment ideas for accumulating money for retirement. A Roth account (IRA or 401k) is TAX FREE investing, as long as you follow the rules. Tax free is as good as it gets and difficult to find.

Unlike Fixed and Variable investments, Indexed investments are somewhat unique to the insurance and annuity marketplaces. An Indexed investment shares traits of both Fixed and Variable investments, but with one major difference - how interest is earned. With an Indexed investment the underlying funds are not directly invested in the stock market or an Index, nor are they directly invested in a bond, CD, or other fixed investment. They are however, secured by bonds or other conservative investments which provide a minimum guaranteed interest rate similar to a fixed investment. Generally, this minimum or fixed rate is lower than what is available in a purely fixed product. This is because Indexed products offer a higher maximum interest rate over Fixed investment products. The Indexed products determine the maximum interest earned using a formula based on three factors, all part of an option purchased by the insurance or investment company. They are the participation rate, the cap rate, and the reset period.

Do all that you can to learn about investing money; and especially learn about stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Once you understand stocks and bonds, getting a handle on mutual funds is a piece of cake. What are the investment options inside your employer's 401k plan? The vast majority of them are likely mutual funds - mostly stock funds, bond funds, and/or balanced funds (that invest in both stocks and bonds). There will likely also be one or two safe investment options that pay interest: a money market funds and/or a stable account. Investing money successfully in 2014 and beyond could be very difficult due to today's investment environment. First, record low interest rates mean that safe investments that pay interest are paying close to nothing. Second, bonds and bond funds pay more interest, but when interest rates go back up to normal levels they WILL LOSE money; that's the way bonds and bond funds work. Third, stocks and stock funds are pricy, having gone up in value and price well over 100% since 2009. In other words, best investment ideas are few and far between.

With an interest rate of around one percent per day, it's obvious that there is serious risk where an HYIP is concerned, but if you do the research, that percentage can add up quite quickly, making you a sizeable amount of money. If you aren't afraid of high risk investing, an HYIP may be the way to go. Just be sure to do your research ahead of time to take away a little bit of the risk associated with this type of investing.




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