Basic Finance Lesson 9: Classic IRAs vs Roth IRAs

The following is a very basic post on classic IRAs vs Roth IRAs. Retirement accounts can get a lot more exciting than this once you have money to put in them and, especially if you own your own business. To give you an example, while IRAs limit you to 5K per year in contributions, SEPPS […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson 8: Introduction to Mutual Funds

    There is more to mutual funds than meets the eye. I think you’ll enjoy this session of the basic finance bootcamp as I give you an introduction to mutual funds. You will want to use this post next time you’re thinking about investing in them. It will serve as a nice checklist for […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson 7: Market Orders Versus Limit Orders

So now that you know a little bit about how the stock market works, let’s make sure you have some of the lingo down. As you will see below, ignorance on some of these terms can make your slick trading techniques costly. Today we are going to discuss market orders versus limit orders. The most […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson 6: Preferred Stock

We already talked about common stock in a previous post so this is a little out of order. However, better late than never. For completeness, here is a discussion about preferred stock. Enjoy. Preferred Stock When most corporations want to raise money, they do so by borrowing money or issuing new common equity (i.e., common […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson 5: Municipal Bonds

You’re probably sick of talking bonds by now, but we have one more category that we have to cover before you have all the basics that you need in this category. This last major bond category is municipal bonds. As the name implies, municipal bonds are bonds issued by local and state governments. While most […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson 4: Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, and STRIPS

This is lesson 4 in my basic finance bootcamp series. I hope you are not getting bored to death. Again, think of this as the foundation for many of the more exciting, exotic topics we discuss in the futre. In the last lesson, we talked about bonds. Bonds can be issued by private companies but […]

Basic Finance Bootcamp Lesson #3: Introduction to Notes and Bonds

We were going to talk about preferred stocks today but I wanted to fix up the post a little so it would be more clear. So, instead, today we will skip ahead to an introduction to notes and bonds. An Introduction to Notes and Bonds In addition to issuing common or preferred equity to raise […]