Guest Contributor on Money Questions and Answers Blog

How to Trade Commodities and Earn a Profit

Commodities represent a massive market for investors. Whether referring to oil, gold, coffee or soybeans, these physical assets can have an equally physical influence on any wealth management system. Still, there is much more involved than simply buying and selling a certain position at a discrete price when learning how to trade commodities.

Commodities trading takes years to master and nothing replaces experience. There are nonetheless a few tips and hints which can shorten the learning curve while providing the trader with valuable guidelines to follow. What are a handful of “golden rules” that professionals have embraced for years?

How to Trade Commodities

The Dangers of Over-Trading

Unlike the mantra espoused by Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street, greed is not always good. One common and potentially fatal mistake that many traders make is to over-trade a certain position. To put this another way, the investor will risk entirely too much capital within a single trade.

Many experts recommend risking no more than 2% of one’s entire holdings at any given time. Even if the position moves in the wrong direction, one’s finances will not be completely wiped away. The point of commodities trading is not to look for a “clean sweep”, but rather to amass wealth over time.

The Almighty Dollar

Always follow the value of the United States dollar in relation to other currencies. As the majority of commodities are valued in dollars, their physical worth is ultimately determined by any movements that this currency makes.

Taxes for Binary Options Traders: Know What You Owe

by Guest Contributor

Yes, taxes rank as one of the most hated things in life, but there’s really no getting out of paying. For US citizens, if you earn more than $600 in a fiscal year, then you owe the government a cut of your earnings. That applies to all sources of income, whether you’re sweating in a mechanic’s shop or making money through binary options trading. How are taxes for binary options traders assessed, though? What are you looking at in terms of tax liability when everything is said and done?

How to Report Your Earnings

Hopefully, you’ll be earning money with binary trading, rather than spending it without any return. That income must be reported each year on your taxes. You have two choices as to how you’ll report your earnings to the IRS – you can opt to call it general income, or you can classify it as capital gains. However, it’s better for compliance with the IRS to report any profit from the sale or trade of an asset as capital gains (short-term gains). Your earnings will need to be listed on Form 1040 D.

With that being said, if you’re a full-time trader, your income will need to be reported under general income rather than capital gains. That offers something of a tax break depending on how much you earn, of course. Make sure to clearly state where the income came from, and the total amount you earned from your trading.

Taxes for binary options traders working with a broker are actually a little easier. The broker is required by law to report your earnings to the IRS. In fact, your taxes are deducted from each trade as you go, so there’s little worry that you’ll be hit with a huge tax bill at the end of the year. It’s closer to the way taxes are taken out of a weekly paycheck than the way a small business owner files his or her taxes each year.

How to Make an Extra Buck with Online Entertainment?

by Guest Contributor

Playing online games and making money in the process? If only it was that simple, you might think. You should know, though, that it is indeed possible to make an extra buck while playing online games. It’s called online gambling – and please, read on before you tell me off. Gambling? Where? The All Slots Casino is a popular online gambling destination open for players in most countries of the world. It has a large collection of high-quality casino games, most of them destined to entertain, but with a handful among them with a real potential to round up your budget a bit – all this while you are having fun. The All Slots Casino is a secure, trustworthy partner, … Read more

How To Understand Your Spouse’s Views On Money

by Guest Contributor

Lesley-Anne Scorgie is the founder of MeVest, a money school helping North Americans reach their financial potential. She’s also the bestselling author of Modern Couple’s Money Guide, Well-Heeled and Rich By Thirty. Follow her @LesleyScorgie

What causes trouble in paradise isn’t who picked up their socks or took out the trash (though those things can be annoying too). It’s money; how it’s spent, saved, invested and given.

According to Capital One, 8 in 10 couples fight about money and nearly half feel their partner’s attitude towards money is different from their own. Monetary philosophies are deeply rooted in a person’s values, thus financial compatibility is as important as personality. “Money problems” are cited as a leading cause of divorce and are rarely about money. They’re representations of issues like independence, greed, trust, respect, and commitment.

Take for example a couple where one partner is a compulsive spender and the other is a saver. The saver is bound to feel like their honey is putting the couple’s dreams for the future in jeopardy just to keep up with the latest and greatest cars, clothes, shoes, home décor and more.

Meanwhile the spender has a YOLO attitude and thinks their penny pinching partner is a cheapskate.

How To Understand Your Spouse and Their Views On Money

In this scenario financial brawls are inevitable unless the couple learns to bridge their financial gaps by understanding your spouse and where their views on money came from and by working together towards common financial goals.

Play As A Team

Teamwork and financial boundaries are critical when planning your future with someone. Though you may not like to deal with financial matters, it’s irresponsible to ignore them. Consider the task of checking-up on your finances like regular maintenance on your car. If you care for your vehicle, it will run smoothly and for longer than if you neglect it. You don’t want to find yourself in a bad financial position you weren’t aware you were creating.

Financial ‘chores’ like paying bills, and buying stocks should be shared equally and each partner should be able to perform EVERY financial chore. Just imagine the chaos if your partner got hit by a bus and was in a coma for a month. What would happen if your mortgage was up for renewal or you needed to pay your VISA bill? Would you be equipped to handle those tasks?

The team approach is also necessary to build wealth, which requires couples to play the exact same game that wealthy people play – to keep what they’ve worked so hard to earn.

Budget

The tool that governs the financial boundaries any couple sets in their relationship is a mutually agreed upon budget. It allows you to spend less time worrying about money, and more time on your relationship. And, rather than being restrictive, you can incorporate affordable fun.

Get comfy with your partner, pull up a spreadsheet and identify all sources of income: employment, government support, your “side-hustle” (no, this isn’t dealing meth, it’s a second source of income). Move on and list expenses like mortgage payments, school fees and car loans. Don’t overlook smaller purchases like coffee and banking fees. If you can’t figure out where your money’s going, keep ALL receipts for four weeks; then review. Determine what’s left over – subtract expenses from income. If you’re short, cut back. If you’ve got a surplus, congratulations; you need to save more.

Important Saving and Investing Tips You Should Follow Today

by Guest Contributor

As members of the working class, we spend most of our time at work making money so we can pay the bills, put food on the table, and treat ourselves once in a while. To be able to live comfortably, one important saving tip is to somehow increase our source of income and to cut down on our spending.

The good thing money is, it is never too late for anyone to start saving and investing—whether you just got out of college or someone in their late 50s, you will find each and every tip on this article very helpful if you wish to live a more comfortable life and secure a brighter future free from debts and other unnecessary financial obligations.

SAVING

Do not rush and start small

It is important that you start out on a financial goal that is easy for you to achieve. You can start by allotting $30 from your monthly paycheck to establish your emergency fund in cases that lead to inevitable expenses—such as if your car needs some repair, you unexpectedly got laid off, or you need money for medicine.

Set aside a small portion of your paycheck every month until you are more comfortable saving a bigger amount. This emergency fund must not be kept as a long-term asset but instead in savings account or money market account that is highly accessible for you in case of emergency.

Do not spend more than you can earn

Ask yourself these questions: (1) Do I spend more than I can actually earn? (2) Are my debts starting to accumulate out of hand? If you answered yes to either of the questions, then you are probably overspending. To be able to live comfortably, one must learn how to live within one’s means. List down your expenses and take a moment to think what needs to go and what needs to be prioritized.

Three Solutions to Save Our Savings – Empire of the Fund

by Guest Contributor

Lending Club Passive Income With Automated Investing

The following is a guest post is by Professor William Birdthistle, author of the new book, “Empire of the Fund: The Way We Save Now“. You can find out more about Professor Birdthisle and his book at EmpireOfTheFund.com.

Empire of the Fund is an examination of the way we save now. For a video précis of the book, here is a short trailer:

Over the past thirty years, America has embarked on a grand experiment – perhaps the richest and riskiest in our financial history – to change the way we save money. The hypothesis of our experiment is that millions of ordinary, untrained, and busy citizens can successfully manage trillions of dollars in a financial system dominated by sophisticated investments firms – firms that on many occasions have treated investors shabbily.

As ten thousand baby boomers retire from the workforce each day and look to survive for almost two decades largely on the mutual funds in their individual accounts. We will soon learn whether our massive experiment has been a success. And if not, we will soon also discover just how large the costs of failure will be.

Three Solutions to Save Our Savings – Empire of the Fund

The End of Pensions

A generation ago, large numbers of Americans enjoyed the support of pensions offered by their employers. Pensions, of course, guarantee their beneficiaries a steady stream of payments from their retirement until their death. Together with the benefits of Social Security, pensions provided secure retirements to millions of working Americans. The golden age of the pension, however, is effectively over. And it may never have been all that gilded, as not once in the past thirty-five years did more than 40% of American workers ever participate in such a plan.

Today, the benefits of Social Security and pensions are alarmingly inadequate. The average monthly benefit for retirees from Social Security is now $1,335, or just over $16,000 per year. Pensions, meanwhile, have rapidly disappeared from our economic ecosystem: public pensions are underfunded by trillions of dollars, and the number of U.S. private-sector workers covered solely by pensions has fallen to just 3%.

Americans in the future will have to support themselves far more on the success or failure of their personal investment accounts.