Investing Basics – What Are Your Investment Goals

When it comes to investing, many first time investors want to jump right in with both feet. Unfortunately, very few of those investors are successful. 

Investing in anything requires some degree of skill. It is important to remember that few investments are a sure thing – there is the risk of losing your money!

Before you jump right in, it is better to not only find out more about investing and how it all works, but also to determine what your goals are. 

What do you hope to achieve with your investments? Will you be funding a college education? Buying a home? Retiring? 

Before you invest a single penny, really think about what you hope to achieve with that investment. 

Knowing what your goal is will help you make smarter investment decisions along the way!

Too often, people invest money with dreams of becoming rich overnight. 

This is possible – but it is also rare. It is usually a very bad idea to start investing with hopes of becoming rich overnight. 

It is safer to invest your money in such a way that it will grow slowly over time, and be used for retirement or a child's education. 

However, if your investment goal is to get rich quick, you should learn as much about high-yield, short term investing as you possibly can before you invest.

You should strongly consider talking to a financial planner before making any investments. 

Your financial planner can help you determine what type of investing you must do to reach the financial goals that you have set. 

He or she can give you realistic information as to what kind of returns you can expect and how long it will take to reach your specific goals.

Again, remember that investing requires more than calling a broker and telling them that you want to buy stocks or bonds. 

It takes a certain amount of research and knowledge about the market if you hope to invest successfully.

Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site

As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. 

It doesn't matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.

When I'm talking about a "good design", I'm not only talking about a good graphical design. 

A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I've come across. 

Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!

1) Background music

Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. 

It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and everytime a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. 

If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your site. 

Moreover, they just add to the visitors burden when viewing your site -- users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.

2) Extra large/small text size

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! 

You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. 

No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything!

3) Popup windows

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct every time each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. 

Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. 

Your website loses its function immediately!

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it's meant to do effectively. 

Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!

Investing for Retirement

Retirement may be a long way off for you – or it might be right around the corner. 

No matter how near or far it is, you've absolutely got to start saving for it now. 

However, saving for retirement isn't what it used to be with the increase in cost of living and the instability of social security. 

You have to invest for your retirement, as opposed to saving for it!

Let's start by taking a look at the retirement plan offered by your company. 

Once upon a time, these plans were quite sound. 

However, after the Enron upset and all that followed, people aren't as secure in their company retirement plans anymore. 

If you choose not to invest in your company's retirement plan, you do have other options.

First, you can invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, certificates of deposit, and money market accounts. 

You do not have to state to anybody that the returns on these investments are to be used for retirement. 

Just simply let your money grow overtime, and when certain investments reach their maturity, reinvest them and continue to let your money grow.

You can also open an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). 

IRA's are quite popular because the money is not taxed until you withdraw the funds. 

You may also be able to deduct your IRA contributions from the taxes that you owe. 

An IRA can be opened at most banks. A ROTH IRA is a newer type of retirement account. 

With a Roth, you pay taxes on the money that you are investing in your account, but when you cash out, no federal taxes are owed. 

Roth IRA's can also be opened at a financial institution.

Another popular type of retirement account is the 401(k). 401(k's) are typically offered through employers, but you may be able to open a 401(k) on your own. 

You should speak with a financial planner or accountant to help you with this. 

The Keogh plan is another type of IRA that is suitable for self employed people. 

Self-employed small business owners may also be interested in Simplified Employee Pension Plans (SEP). 

This is another type of Keogh plan that people typically find easier to administer than a regular Keogh plan.

Whichever retirement investment you choose, just make sure you choose one! 

Again, do not depend on social security, company retirement plans, or even an inheritance that may or may not come through! 

Take care of your financial future by investing in it today.