Eliminating Debt And Owning Safe Investments In These Markets
November 1, 2008 by admin
A recent article on MSN titled "Bad Times Ahead For Good Companies" states "The collapse of market value since autumn has actually wiped out years of progress, putting all but a few big companies’ returns for the decade below zero — an extraordinary development that has jeopardized thousands of families’ financial plans". Scary stuff.
We are living in a time where wild fluctuations in the market,combined with continuing crises in other areas of the economy, are affecting us all. From our investments, our debt load, our jobs, our security.
Looking after our families in the event of our death is the purpose of life insurance. Many people have the wrong kind, the wrong amount and are paying to much.
Debt it as an all time high and continues to climb. Many people have bailed themselves out over recent years by consolidating debts into a line of credit or their mortgage. With the real estate market cooling down and values likely to decline, this option will not last. High payments, interest costs and little savings can combine into a financial disaster for many. Learning how to eliminate your debt is becoming critical for many.
I have worked in the Financial Services Industry since 1997. My focus revolves around helping families gain control of their debt and becoming financially secure.
Consider these stats:
- Roughly half of all working Canadian’s don’t participate in a retirement plan or don’t have an employer-sponsored plan in which to participate.
- A huge number of adults – according to one estimate, approximately 75%- are not saving for retirement in any meaningful way.
Dave Ramsey, a personal-finance expert and talk-radio host, cited a recent poll in which 80 percent of North Americans said they believed their standard of living would increase at retirement.
In our hectic world, most people seem to have little time to invest in anything besides work and family. Consider this: If your boss came to you tomorrow and said, "I want to give you a $800.00 per month raise. To get this raise, all I need you to do is take this ten hour course over the next 2-3 weeks." Would you do it?
Of course you are probably thinking, but what has this got to do with financial services? Well, what if a proper, well laid out financial strategy could save you $800.00 per month. Wouldn’t that be like getting that same raise? What if it was only $200.00. Or what if after implementing a sound strategy, you had $100,000.00 more at retirement. What if you were able to send your children to college because you took the time to learn some of these concepts?
Our culture today tells us that we deserve to have everything we want because we can charge it," Dave Ramsey says. "Previous generations thought you could only have something if you could pay for it. Their lifestyles were much simpler, and retirement was a time to simplify even more.
Surprisingly, you would think that we would work at simplifying our lives, however the opposite is true. Given a choice between a simple way and a complicated way of doing things, most people end up choosing the difficult direction.
There are few places that this is more evident than in the financial products and services that are offered to us on a daily basis.
It is easy to get financial "advice" from just about anybody; your co-workers, your relatives, your friends. There is a difference, though, between true advice and well-meaning opinion. People rarely take responsibility for the harm their opinions may cause.
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