Laziness has been a plague for humanity from its beginning. In Christian mythology, laziness is one of the seven deadly sins. Those who were lured into its nets were threatened with hell’s fire.

Today, there are many businesses that exploit the collective indolence. See for yourself the ways in which laziness takes over and poisons our lives.

1. Not having a retirement fund

At 20 we don’t necessarily think about life’s “sunset” but old age can come quickly and you will need a fat bank account if you want to cover all your needs.
You could start by putting aside as little as $200 or $300 each month. Put them into a retirement fund or savings account. Use whatever pleases you, but start saving.

2. Not paying the credit card bills on time

Laziness overcomes any logic, especially when you have to take 5 minutes out of your time to pay your credit card bills. The later you pay, the bigger the interest will get. The single and most efficient solution is to pay your obligations on time.

3. Not looking for the best offer

You may think that a single deal will not save too much, but when you always look for a better price, you will sooner or later find that you can save quite a bit of money.

4. Not making a shopping list

This is a classical scenario in which laziness “attacks your budget”. If you’re not spending two minutes of your time to pencil out the shopping list, then most probably you will end up buying lots of useless things. Also, it is very important that you don’t shop when you are hungry. It makes you buy all the things that make you salivate.

5. Not selling the things you don’t need any more

You have a CD/tapes collection that you don’t listen anymore? Do you have lots of decorative objects which serve as surface for dust? You probably have a small fortune in your house but you don’t even know about it. Start selling on the Internet or, if you can, participate in a backyard sale.

6. Not taking advantage of sport centers offered by the employer

We can see that corporations are more and more interested towards their employees’ health. If your employer puts at your disposal such a wonderful opportunity, just take it and save money on a paid fitness center.

7. You are sleeping too much

If you’re sitting too much in bed you are losing both time and money. First of all, the time you’re losing could be converted into something that could yield, now or in the future. Reading a book is a much better solution than sleeping too much or wasting time. Secondly, you could have health problems if you’re sleeping too much or not having a right lifestyle.

8. Lack of moving

Be active! If you’re using public transportation, get off some stations before the final destinations and let your body move. As with #7, this is a good solution to avoid possible health problems which could harden your financial life even more. Always try to keep in shape.

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Bank savings accounts currently offer paltry rates of interest. If you put leave all your money in banks it should be safe but will not grow much. The stock market offers much more interesting returns but because of the element of risk many people avoid it. Worse still they might enter the market at the top and then sell out later at the bottom. Here are some simple rules to help you navigate the market and build a large stock portfolio over a long period.

1. Diversify. Spread your risks by investing in a number of stocks in different markets and in mutual funds, bonds and other instruments. A good rule is that no one stock or other investment should be more than 10% of your total portfolio. Invest in different geographic areas such as US, Europe, Asia and emerging markets. Diversify into property funds, commodity funds and hedge funds. This should give you protection against a collapse in any one particular sector.

2. Do your research. Take advice from various sources. Invest in some companies whose products and strategies you like. There are a multitude of comparison sites and other resources on the internet to help you to analyse and understand investments. Past performance is no guarantee of future performance but I would generally prefer to choose a mutual fund or unit trust that had been a strong performer over the last two years and which offers low management fees.

3. Run the stars and sell the dogs. Monitor your investments and compare their performances against the market index. If some of your holdings do well then the temptation is to cash in and take a profit. It seems natural but if you are in this game for the long term then you want investments that grow over the long term so when you find winners cherish and retain them. On the other hand you should ditch the dogs that significantly under perform the market. The temptation is to hold onto them in the hope of a rebound or worse still to increase your holding at the lower price. This is generally a poor strategy and it is safer to take a small early loss rather than a large one later on. Do not cling onto stocks for emotional reasons. Sell the dogs and run with the stars.

4. Reinvest dividends. A surprisingly large part of the overall growth in most portfolios comes from reinvested dividends rather than in appreciation of the stock prices. A yield of 3% may appear small but over a period it makes a big difference. Choose some investments with a solid history of dividends and use them as the ballast in your ship.
5. Be contrarian. This advice is much easier to give than to observe. When the stock market is low buy stocks. When the stock market is high sell your worst performing stocks and buy other investments such as property or bonds.

6. Take the long view. You are in this for the long term so do not make frequent trades – the commission will eat into your funds. Do not follow fads and fashions. Diversify in a sensible way. Do not panic when markets occasionally crash – these are buying opportunities for the brave.

Finally be prepared to sell when you eventually need the money. You invested it to build financial security for you and your family so it is better to use it when needed rather than to scrimp along in order to become the richest man in the cemetery.

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The Iraqi dinar “investment” opportunity is a scam that has been around for a few years and has recently been regaining much of its former popularity. The opportunity is pitched as a way to profit from a nearly worthless Iraqi dinar that is “sure” to appreciate in the future. The scammers promise that millions of dollars in profits are virtually guaranteed if you buy the dinar at today’s values (about 1,000 dinar to one US dollar) and then exchange the dinars back for dollars at a later date once the dinar exchange rate has improved.

However, there are some fundamental problems with the Iraqi dinar scam that potential buyers should be aware of before they begin investing in one of the most illiquid currency markets in the world.

Lack of Registration

It is illegal in the US and in most other major economies to market an investment without appropriate securities registration. The scammers get around this requirement in two ways. First, it is technically legal to sell hard currency for its numismatic value. In other words, it is possible to sell hard currency as a “collector’s item.” Second, some dealers will register with the US Treasury as a money service business (MSB).

Registering as an MSB is something that dinar dealers will do to put on the appearance of registration and government oversight. However, the difference between a legitimate MSBs and dinar dealers is that a real MSB is not marketing an investment. So ask yourself; if a business has to lie to get around registration, are they really making a legitimate offer?

Dinars Are Sold on Misleading Hype

The potential value of an investment in dinar is often illustrated with references to what happened to the Kuwaiti dinar following the first Gulf War and the German deutschmark following World War II. These would be good examples except neither one was a free-floating currency at the time, so the value was mostly a function of policymaking and official currency management. It is also a fact that no rational investor would base an investing decision on two instances of past data (more than 60 years in the past) without considering all the times this investing strategy did not pay off.

Will the Iraqi government pursue a policy of currency appreciation in the future? Since an appreciating currency makes funding your brand new government and paying off past debts more expensive, it seems unlikely. An economy in Iraq’s situation is more likely to experience a currency crash or intentional devaluation than a sudden and dramatic reflation.

In fact, more recent currency history would seem to show that it is more likely that the dinar will depreciate further in the near term. The fallacy that dinar dealers are relying on is that a growing economy will result in a stronger currency. That is not the case. As the recent examples of Venezuela, Turkey, and Mexico show, a growing economy is as likely to be accompanied by an inflating (weakening) currency as not.

Many dinar dealers refer to the value of the Iraqi dinar prior to the 1990 Kuwaiti invasion (One dinar = $3+ US dollars) as evidence that the potential for the dinar is theoretically unlimited. They don’t mention that the pre-1990 dinar has been demonetized (worthless) and that its value was arbitrarily set by an autocratic regime led by Saddam Hussein. Following the embargo, the ability for the Iraqi government to manage its currency’s value collapsed and it spent the next ten years at 2,000 – 3,500 dinar to the US dollar.

thanks SD

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