Sunday 13 May 2012

What is an Investment?

By Christy Hoyle


Investments sound like something rich people do in order to become richer. There are things that you can do to start investing today.

The purchase of goods, supplies and equipment is an investment. Businesses can make profit on these investments. An investment like this is money spent to gain better returns in the long term - in fact, that's probably a good definition for investments in general.

Another type of investment is one we are more familiar with. This is one that you invest in a fund in order to make money from it. Even a simple savings account is a type of investment, as the interest you earn makes more money for you. There are short term investments like real estate and long term ones such as annuities.

You can make a decent profit in a low risk investment that might take a while to make anything. These include savings accounts, certificates of deposit, money market accounts, and certificates of deposit. They are extremely safe, but you cannot earn as much interest as the higher risk investments.

Higher risk investments usually have a higher pay off but are short term. Some high risk investments would be real estate and stock markets. Investing in a brand new company can also be quite risky, but if the business is a huge success, the potential profit can be enormous.

The following are some investments used today.

Stocks: buying a piece of the company. Buying low and selling high is the motto for this.

Bonds: Investing in bonds is lending money to a government agency. Bonds are way less risky than stocks.

Real Estate: When you invest in real estate, you may be purchasing with the intent to re-sell at a profit, or you may be buying property to use as rental property. With all of the fluctuations in the market, this can be risky.

Foreign Currency: Trading currency pairs in hopes you'll trade for something of more value.

Mutual Funds: When you invest in mutual funds, you are joining a group of others who are also investing in the mutual fund. Basically, you and the others share the cost of hiring a professional to manage your assets, and most mutual funds include a variety of different investments, such as high-risk, long-term, short-term, stocks, bonds, and the like.

Certificates of Deposit: These pay better interest, but are basically the same as savings accounts. The reason for the higher interest rate is simple: when you open a CD at your local financial institution, you agree to leave the money there for a set amount of time. The longer you agree to keep the CD, the higher the interest rate.

A financial advisor can help you decide where to place your money. Setting yourself up for retirement is better done with a low risk long term investment. If you have spare cash, you may consider a high risk, short term investment. Make a decision after reading the documentation and talking to an advisor.




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