Economic information and your investments
Want to manage your own money? Trying to grow your nest egg as fast as possible to retire early? Considering a strategy that will let you live off your investments now?
Whatever the situation, if you’re interested in managing your own investments, what you need most is good information. Even if all you want to do is keep track of what the professional money managers are doing with the money in your mutual funds, you’ve got to have good information. If you are trying to actively trade stocks, options, mutual funds or other securities on a day trading basis, solid information becomes even more critical.
The best strategy for many people is “buy and hold,” which basically consists of purchasing solid investments, usually mutual funds, on a regular basis without regard to market fluctuations and simply holding them for 20-40 years until retirement. So-called “market timing” is discouraged by most experts because of the difficulty in picking actual bottoms and peaks in market values. But if you want to maximize returns so you don’t have to wait 30 years to enjoy your money, buy and hold just won’t cut it, unless you luck into buying a Microsoft in an IPO.
Fortunately, you don’t need to pick the absolute bottom to add a lot to your bottom line. In the latest economic cycle, the stock market fell over 20% between last year and now. Buying as the downtrend started on a dollar cost averaging plan would have left your portfolio a little less than 20% short now. The market may still fall further, but buying now still beats buying in October of last year by double digits. But following the economic indicators and daily economic news would have given you the information you needed to see that the market was heading into a downtrend so you could hold off your purchases.
Techno music and songs available at JonLeger.com
You can now find a lot of great techno music at JonLeger.com. In case you’re interested in creating music yourself, here’s how he does it:
FL Studio
His primary tool for creating electronic music is FL Studio. FL Studio has it all: a mixer, a sequencer, loads of special effects and filters. Truly fantastic. He strongly suggests you purchase a copy! It takes a while to get used to using it, but it really makes music-making a digital breeze.
MAGIX Music Editor 2.0
When Jon needs to modify, cut and paste the sounds he uses in his songs, he uses MAGIX. It was cheap — he got it at Best Buy for $30. It’s very handy for the wave-editing that FL Studio can’t do. He looked at their site (magix.com), but I couldn’t find it. Maybe they don’t sell it anymore?
Bink Video’s RAD Video Tools
He’s started making songs based on movies and TV shows that he likes, and sometimes it’s useful to extract sounds from the movie trailers and movie clips that are available online. To accomplish this he uses the RAD Video Tools from Bink Video. They’re donationware, so be sure to give them a few bucks if you find their stuff useful (he did).
Loops and Samples
Jon has purchased thousands of loops, samples and instruments for use in FL Studio. Two of the places he’s gotten the sounds from are PlatinumLoops.com and PeaceLoveProductions.com. Both have a large selection at reasonable prices.
Hardware
He uses an audio-technica studio microphone for vocals (AT3035), and an Edirol UA-25 USB Audio Capture device to record from the microphone. He loves the Edirol because it’s very small (perfect for my desk) and supports two studio microphones and has a digital output for headphones.
If you’re interested in creating your own music, he wants to tell you this: it’s a lot easier (and cheaper) than you might think. You don’t need a studio (even for vocals). He records vocals in his office at home. All of the software and equipment costs came to around $1,250 (including the loops). The equipment all fits on my desk, and the software runs on my home PC. FL Studio needs a good bit of memory, so Jon suggests you don’t have less than 1GB of RAM (that’s how much he has and it works fine).
3 Tips for Social Networking in your business
1. Add Social Networking to your business and marketing plan.
- In addition to your traditional networking social networking is proving to be an effective business growth resource.
- Schedule time for social networking activities and set tangible targets.
- One of the edges that Obama had over McCain in the 2008 Election was his effective use of social networking sites.
2. Finding and learning to properly use the best social networking site for your business.
- It is predicted that there will be 2,500,000 social networking websites by the end of 2009 creating growth niches and opportunities for every business model.
- Finding and sharing social networking sites is part of the discovery process and learning curve. Websites like Networking Event Finders publish social networking events so you can see which networks are the most active in your local community.
- Schedule time to take the online tutorials.
- Choose a site where you can your content from your blogs, pictures, slide shows and videos.
3. Add contacts and friends strategically
- Make your social network matter by selecting and choosing contacts.
- “Social Power” power doesn’t matter if the people in your social network are not or never will be relevant to your business.
- When adding a contact or accepting an invitation, review their contacts and ask yourself this question: “Do I want to attend networking events hosted by this person?”
- Your profiles on Social Networking Sites become a public rolodex. Ensure that it sends the message that you want to communicate.
By adding social networking to your business and marketing plan, you can expand your business network globally. The learning curve is worth the time and effort required to master social networking.
Whatever Happened To The Stomach Vacuum?
How about a stomach exercise you can do while watching TV or sitting in front of a computer at work. This is an exercise that will tighten your abs in a dramatic way in just a few short weeks. It’s not uncommon for people to lose 2 to 3 inches in that time. The stomach vacuum is just that exercise. It’s a long forgotten stomach flattening exercise that can be done just about at any time and anywhere.
The main muscle that is engaged by this exercise is the transverse abdominal muscle which runs horizontally underneath you oblique muscles. The transverse abdominis muscle is basically what holds everything in, so by doing this one simple exercise you are tightening the abs and shrinking the waistline at the same time. Another reason to strengthen the transverse ab muscle is that it helps to eliminate lower back pain by stabilizing the spine and pelvis areas.
So what is the stomach vacuum? It’s pretty much what it sounds like. If you have ever sucked your stomach in for any reason, then you were basically doing the stomach vacuum. Now to actually do this stomach exercise correctly you need to suck your tummy in and picture pulling your belly button up and to the back toward your spine. Try to pull it in just as far as you can go and remember to breathe. It doesn’t matter if your sitting, kneeling or standing on your head. The stomach vacuum can be done in any position.
To start with try and hold it for 15 seconds then relax for about a minute. Now repeat it 2 more times. Over time you will want to increase the length of time you hold the vacuum position and increase the number of sets you do as well. Another option with this particular tummy flattening exercise is just to do it through out the day. Since you are not noticeably moving around you can sneak a set or two in at any time.
Do these everyday over the next couple of weeks and you will be absolutely amazed by the results.
Trading Cards Keep Kids Off Television
There are a lot of things for kids to do today that do not involve television. The challenge is getting the kids interested in doing them, and that’s where kids games come in. Games for kids can be board games, word games, and the more popular trading cards.
We like to play kids games with our kids. It can be a bit boring to move those plastic men around the board, but its great hanging around with the kids. For the most part we even play by the rules. Kids games can be a lot of fun and it’s not rotting anybody’s brain. Unlike computer games there is also a strong social component to sitting down with friends and playing a fun game.
There are a lot of options for games for kids. There are the obvious board games that we have all played from the time we were kids. There are also role playing games, word games, and for the older kids - strategy games. One genre of games for kids that was not available when I was young was trading cards.
Trading cards have become a popular pastime for kids young and not so young. However, some of the most popular games that involve trading cards can be very hard to learn. It can be annpying for a parent to sit down and play with their child if the trading cards require complex rules and have a steep learning curve. Worse, some games require you to build up usable decks from hundreds of cards.
Most parents don’t have a pile of trading cards to select from and even if they did probably wouldn’t know which cards to use. For kids, collecting all the cards (good and bad) may be fun at first; but, for parents, buying hundreds of bad cards to get a few good ones could be a real problem. Combining simple game mechanics using complete decks of exciting collectible cards could be just the answer.