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Home » Family Articles » 5 Easy Ways To Save And Build Wealth

5 Easy Ways to Save and Build Wealth

1. Pay off high-cost debt. The best investment most borrowers can make is to pay off consumer debt with double-digit interest rates. For example, if you have a $3,000 credit card balance at 19.8%, and you pay the required minimum balance of 2% of the balance or $15, whichever is greater, it will take 39 years to pay off the loan. And you will pay more than $10,000 in interest charges.

2. Buy a home and pay off the mortgage before you retire. The largest asset of most middle-income families is their home equity. Once these families have made their last mortgage payment, they have far lower housing expenses. They also have an asset that can be borrowed on in emergencies or converted into cash through sale of the home.

3. Participate in a work-related retirement program. Many employees turn down free money from their employer by not signing up for a work-related retirement program such as a 401(k) plan. If they did participate, with a dollar-for-dollar match they would likely receive an annual yield of greater than 100% on their investment.

4. Outside of work, save monthly through an automatic transfer from checking to savings. These savings will provide funds for emergencies, home purchase, school tuition, or even retirement. Almost all banking institutions will, on request, automatically transfer funds monthly from your checking account to a savings account, U.S. Savings Bond, or stock mutual fund. What you don't see, you will probably not miss.

5. Calculate your risk and return. If you earn 4% interest, your money will double in less than 15 years; at 7% it will double in about 10 years and at 10% it will double in 7%. Use Asset Allocation to reduce your overall risk.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

Youth Entrepreneurship, A Disappointing Truth

The psychology of entrepreneurship can be very rewarding to one who dreams of starting their own business. The freedom of being your own boss has billions of people seeking financial independence and other entrepreneurial expectations. But is entrepreneurship for everyone? Are their any restrictions on who can become entrepreneurs? Sadly, the answer is yes. Many people turn their heads when it comes to assisting young people with business projects, they believe age plays a vital part on the success of an entrepreneur, this in some cases causes the entrepreneur to abandon their dream.

Youth entrepreneurship has great wealth to it; it keeps youth out of trouble, adds growth to the economy, and establishes the opportunity for a better future of business to come. Youth is the age of anyone who is looked upon as young. Young entrepreneurs face many weighty problems such as obtaining start -up capital, leasing property, equipment and so on. When in grade school students were taught to plan for the future because they were the future. But if the present fails to make way it would be destroying the upcoming economy at an early start.

Many people have spoken on the importance of youth entrepreneurship, but few are planning for improvement. Most youth focused entrepreneurial organizations only educate on the "how to " portion of entrepreneurship. These organizations lack the resources needed to help youth secure start-up loans after their books close. What good is having an entrepreneurial education if there are no start-up funds to reward it? Locally to nationally youth entrepreneurship still battles for the headlines, hoping the discrimination would someday end.

So what about the government don't they offer funding? The U.S. Small Business Administration offers a large variety of guaranteed loan programs available to entrepreneurial minded individuals: however, these programs are not available to the younger generation due to the fact that they may not have a credit history. Therefore, I guess these loans are not so guaranteed after all.

Now let's not assume all youth or even most, have come across these problems. There have been many successful young entrepreneurs who have not encountered such setbacks and have made history. Everyone will not look upon youth as incompetent, just some who might have neglected themselves because they lacked skillful knowledge back when they were younger. The point is, help youth today so they will be able to help you tomorrow and the cycle will continue.