Buying a house is a very serious investment. However, during the sub-prime loan days, many have made the decision impulsively. This has resulted in a vast waste of capital and ultimately the severe recession we are in. RealEstate.com helps its customers avoid such bad investments by offering useful advice and financial loans for purchasing the right properties. The site contains  MLS listings for various properties throughout the US. Whether you are looking to get the best price on your first home or buying an investment property, there is plenty of inventory to choose from.

Additionally, there are online tools that can guide a buyer in choosing the best properties such as a mortgage calculator, which can calculate different types of loans with different type of payment plans and a home valuation calculator which can help a property buyer when negotiating a final price. Furthermore, the website provides informative articles and resources on how to buy real estate properties.

For instance, let’s say you are interested in New Jersey properties. The website offers thousands of listings in that area, especially in the densely populated city of Newark. On the website you can find information about Real Estate New Jersey and how its real estate industry is fairing compared to the rest of the nation.

Finding a home for sale is made simple, especially when compared to the traditional method of having to drive to multiple locations of interest. Prospective Buyers select a city of their choice and then receive a list of houses for sale, including information about price, type and size of the house, number of bedrooms, etc’. After picking a house of interest, the prospective buyers clicks on the MLS number and subsequently they are shown images and a short description. For further inquiry, buyers could set an appointment with the owner by providing a name and phone number directly through website’s ‘Make an Appointment Feature’. RealEstate.com - New Jersey also provides information on various real estate brokers working in the area. Potential buyers can contact these brokers for help in purchasing a home or property.

By utilizing RealEstate.com, prospective buyers could find and purchase the home or property they had in mind, and easily by saving time and energy.

Although it is safe to say you were not around during the California Gold Rush in 1848, you could still rip the benefits from the gold rush of today. The rise in the price of gold is tied to the current worldwide economic crisis in addition to the global threats of terrorism and climate change. In the year 2000, the price of gold was about $300 per ounce and in the last couple of years the price of gold has surged to a current value of $880 per ounce.

People need to have confidence in their investments and precious metals such as silver and gold offer a higher degree of confidence than the capital markets do in such uncertain times. However, a gold bar weighs close to 400 ounces and is worth $352,000, which makes it too expensive for most of us to afford. Nonetheless, the precious metals market isn’t just for the big players any longer, especially with such services as offered by Goldmoney.com. GoldMoney is essentially a bank although it primarily deals with metal instead of paper currency.  What GoldMoney does is to fully insure and store gold and silver bars in London and Zurich vaults, and then offer its customers to  buy gold or silver portions as investment. Orders are made onlne and are securely recorded in GoldMoney’s database, which allows them to be traceable for record keeping. When a person is ready to cash in their “loot”, GoldMoney will wire the money into the customer’s account.

With GoldMoney, the customers are the sole owners of the gold and silver, with GoldMoney basically storing it securely on behalf of the customers. For added security, the company authorizes regular independent audits of the inventory. GoldMoney accounts are free to open, there is no minimum or maximum balance requirement, and interest is earned on cash balances. Notably, a decision to buy gold or silver is not time limited, and a customer can sell their portion of the precious metals back to GoldMoney at anytime. Additonally, when a customer decides to buy gold or silver, there is a storage fee involved, but it is significantly cheaper than what is offered by traditional metal storage companies.

For years, precious metals have been considered a mediocre long term investment, but global instability has turned such investments to be highly recommended as part of a sound investment portfolio. With the help of GoldMoney.com, anyone can take part in this 21st century version of the gold rush.

2009 is upon us and with it we ponder some new year resolutions.  Although important goals ought to be a part of your daily life no matter what day it is, new year resolutions do offer an established marker for reminding ourselves of financial goals and ways to actually adhere to them.

Deciding on the resolutions themselves isn’t the difficult part.  When it comes to money matters, we all would like to do better and do not often have to think long and hard to find things that could use improvement.  However, actually implementing the resolutions doesn’t usually last beyond the first few weeks of the new year. Luckily, we can use research in psychology to better understand human motivation behavior and apply it to practicing long lasting financial resolutions:

1. Be Realistic - It’s not realistic to move from middle class to super wealthy within a year, unless you come across a serious windfall or a really great idea. People with reasonable resolutions have been shown to actually adhere to them, instead of just starting and wondering off of the unrealistic goals shortly after.

2. Keep It Simple, Spender - Although the actions that lead to accomplishing each resolution may involve multiple steps, the final goal needs to be simple. Complicated resolutions are more likely to become abandoned and soon follows the balanced budget.

3. Measure It To Manage It - Psychologists have demonstrated that having goals that you can easily track and measure gives you an advantage in accomplishing your financial resolutions. Therefore, keep in mind to always monitor your resolutions so you will know whether you are making progress. As part of this, you can set yourself some milestones to tell you if you are still on track as well as to act as motivators on the way to achieving the goal.

4. Change Your Work - Changing the work surroundings could help you meet your financial resolutions sooner, instead of just making your boss richer. Our work environment has a direct effect on what our bank account looks like currently and its  future growth prospects but sometimes we forget that there could be better career paths, work locations, or second jobs that could help us meet our financial resolutions, and sooner.

5. Spread The Word - Publicly committing to your resolutions has been shown to make it easier in accomplishing them, probably since you then feel more responsible for what you committed to. This is quite easy to accomplish with the help of social networks, by starting your own blog, commenting on your Twitter or Facebook account, sending an email to a trusted friend, etc’.

6. Winning The War - When it comes to financial resolutions, having a few bad days usually should not significantly matter to your overall financial state, as long as such days are interspersed among many good ones. You could say it isn’t the battle, but the war that matters; if you are facing a financial assault, get back and fight!

7. Seek Support - Resolutions are not completed mostly when lack of motivation sets in. That is why it is important to get feedback and support from someone you trust. Research shows that having a social support network can be pivotal for accomplishing your personal goals. So join an investment club or ask anyone you know that has knowledge of money management, to provide you the necessary help for adhering to your resolutions.

Because having money represents such an integral part of our daily lives, financial resolutions may appear to be easier to adhere to than other new year resolutions, such as becoming more physically fit. However, the road to prosperity requires, the sometimes elusive, perseverance and, therefore, it is important to apply the above rules for helping you adhere to and carry through your financial new year resolutions.

In this recession, with the price of fine metals such as gold going up to $830 an ounce, some may consider selling their unused jewlery to make extra money. For example, the website www.newyorkgoldsilver.com belongs to a business that offers to provide cash for gold, silver, and platinum goods extracted from such items as: old broken chains, bracelets, gold coins, gold watches, etc’.

New York Gold & Silver Exchange has a store in the middle of the Diamond District of Manhattan on 47th Street as well as a second store in Dallas, Texas. The company accepts items from store walk-ins as well as mail-ins, with a promise of a high quality customer service for either. If you can actually come to either one of their locations, you can even watch your items going through the appraisal process, including the melting of the item and the distilling of the metal content of the item.  Notably, the customers can choose whether to receive their  payment in cash, wire transfer or check.

If you are looking for affordable jewlery as holiday gifts, the company also sells such fine items as coins, watches, rings, etc’ at a relatively affordable rate. Besides individuals, the company also offers their services to jewelers, retailers, manufacturers and pawnbrokers who would like to convert their extra merchandise as liquidation of Inventory, jewelry showcase buyout, even dental Gold reclamation. All part of making the most out of a bad economy.

In the last couple of days, the world has received yet another painful reminder of why it is important not to blindly believe “sophisticated investment” offers that you may “luckily” come across. Bernard Madoff, the head of Madoff Funds, was turned in by his own sons for securities fraud. Madoff has admitted to defrauding numerous investors out of what could amount to $50 billion dollars.

What Madoff has done was to create a hedge fund and run it based on a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a fraud where investors who join the fund are paid from the investment money of subsequent investors. This works farily well in a good economy, where new investors keep joining and consistent returns can be guaranteed regardless of how the stock market actually does. However, when the economy sours and many investors wish to cash out at once, the scam is revealed.

Madoff was a well known figure within financial circles since he was the head of NASDAQ in the early 90’s, and this helped him draw many rich investors. Over the years the fund grew in reputation due to Madoff’s “secret formula”, that apparently his sons or any of his other employees were not privy to. Some of the many big name investors that got duped are Stephen Spielberg, real estate titan Mort Zuckerman, and the famous humanitarian Elie Wiesel as well as other less famous people who invested much of their retirement money in the fund. Although Madoff will undoubtedly go to jail, this does not help the fact that he devastated the financial lives of many charities, retired people, and other wealthy investors.

Since every major story has some lessons that we can all learn from, do be sure to keep in mind the combination of the following:

1.  Be involved with your money on a daily basis, since it can never be truly left in autopilot mode. If an investment, such as a mutual fund, hedge fund etc’ appears to be involved in something suspicious,  just sell it. Never just set and forget your investments, assuming that it will be taken care of by some financial guru. It is your money, and you make the ultimate decisions on your investments.
2. Conduct your research. If you are not financially savvy or do not have the time, make sure you have a financial advisor and accountant that you trust to help you make financial decisions. But even with the help of others, educate yourself on whether what you are being told has merit.
3. If an investment seems too good to be true, it probably is. In the above case, the fund was performing too consistently, over both times of prosperity and past recessions. This should have raised some red flags for anyone who wished to examine this investment objectively and practice due diligence.
4. Diversify your assets. Many investors forget, or usually ignore, this pivotal rule of investing.

It is an especially sad story because so many intelligent and trusting people were struck by it and, if any money is recovered, it is expected to be pennies on the dollar. We can just hope that people will really apply the above 4 lessons and that more oversight will prevent future fraud on such a massive scale.