Ways to Invest Money

Investing in stocks is not the only way to invest your money.  There are lots of alternative investments that you can add to your portfolio, many of which you may not have thought of.  Here we've listed some of the alternative investment ideas in our list of ways to invest money.

Start Your Own Business.  Instead of investing in stocks and bonds, invest in yourself and start your own business.  Whether buying a franchise, investing in equipment to provide services, or setting up your own restaurant or other establishment, there are lots of ways to start a business.  If you go this route, plan carefully and try to find a partner to help share costs and ideas.

Buy a Small Business.  Another way to invest is to buy an existing business.  Many small businesses are sold when the owner wants to retire or they fall on hard times.  Contact a few local business brokers and search the real estate sites to help you locate an appropriate business.  Often, you may find a business that is barely profitable and then turn it into a profitable business with some fresh ideas and better execution.

Fund a Friends' Business.  Have a friend that has great business ideas but no money.  Help him or her out by loaning them money in return for a share in the business.  Make sure you get legal help to set up the loan and equity agreement.

Lend Money to Someone Online.  There are dozens of sites where you can loan your money to average people that need cash for something.  People list their proposed loans and rates and you can decide who to loan the money to.  The websites provide the legal documents and funding help and you can help someone pay for college, invest in their business, or get the money they need for something else.

Buy Gold and Precious Metals.  Another way to invest is to buy gold or other precious metals and actually take possession of them.  Although you would typically do this through an investment account, you can actually buy metals and store them yourself.

Buy Art.  If you have a love of art and can spot a good art investment, there is money to be made by investing in art.  It usually takes years for art to appreciate in value and you'll need a safe place to store or display it.  You can hire an art broker to help you find potential investments.

Invest in Real Estate.  With a little research and some legal help, you can buy an apartment building, duplex, house or even commercial real estate and then make money on the rental / lease income.  It takes a while to learn the real estate market and find good investment.  Make sure you run lots of spreadsheets to find out what kind of cash flow you can expect.  Also, you'll need to commit to at least 10 years or longer to really start making money this way.

Buy a Vacation Rental.  Live in an area with lots of tourism or near water?  You can buy a house, cabin, condo or other vacation home and then rent it out weekly or monthly for money.  Doing this means that you have to provide a high level of quality service with quick responses to your customers.  You can hire someone to manage your rental but it will cost you 30-40% of your profit.

Flip a House.  Buy a house that is in good shape but that can easily be improved.  Then improve it, doing as much of the work yourself as you can, and sell it for a profit.  Look for homes that you can easily add bedrooms and bathrooms to, that you can easily change the floor plan to dramatically open up the living space, or that just need simple remodels and paint to unlock the value.

Buy a Foreclosure.  Along the real estate line, you can look for houses, vacation rentals or even apartment or commercial buildings in foreclosure.  Depending on your state, you may or may not be able to get a great deal by finding a foreclosure.  Do your research.

Buy Antiques.  Antiques go up in value and therefore can be considered investments.  If you really know what you're doing you may be able to make money doing this.  You can also decorate your house with your investments until you are ready to sell.  Another way to make money on antiques is to find them at estate sales and by "picking", whereby you may be able to get them at a fraction of their worth.

Buy Items to Resell.  Buying items and reselling them is basically what retail stores do.  You can take this concept to a new level and find items to resell for a higher price.  After all, tens of thousands of people make their living from ebay.  Dropshipping is another option along these lines that you may want to look into.  Whether you buy wholesale inventory and resell it online, or buy used items at estate or garage sales and resell them in a consignment shop, there are lots of ways to make this another way to invest.

Join an Investment Club.  Investment clubs often pool their members money and then invest it in assets that are approved by the club.  While many investment clubs buy stocks, there are more advanced clubs that invest in real estate and start up companies, similar to venture capital.

Buy a Website.  There are hundreds of thousands of websites for sale.  Some are just domains with no traffic and some are developed sites or premium domain names.  If you have a good understanding of how to make money with these sites, they can make a good investment.

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Find the Best Stocks to Invest In

One investor's top stock pick is another investor's worst nightmare.  Indeed, if all investors agreed that there was only one top stock to invest in, then there would be no stock market at all.  It's a good thing thats not the case.  And lucky for you, because of all the technology and free screening websites, it is relatively easy to do your own stock screening and pick the best stocks that fit your portfolio and strategy.  Here are a few steps that we use when we look for new stocks to invest in.

Define the type of stock you want to invest in.  The first thing you need to is decide what kind of stocks you want based on your portfolio goals.  Are you looking for: growth stocks, value stocks, dividend stocks, large cap, small cap, micro cap, penny stocks, international stocks, stocks in a specific industry?

Turn your definition into screening attributes.  Now it's time to translate the stock type you are looking for into attributes that you can screen.  For example, if you are looking for growth stocks, you'll want to screen 1 and 5 year historical and estimated future sales and EPS growth.  If you are looking for dividend stocks, you'll want to screen for dividend, dividend yield, historical dividend growth rate and payout ratio.  If you are looking for large or small cap stocks, you'll want to screen for market cap, enterprise value and sales volume.  If you are looking for value stocks you'll want to screen for price to earnings ratio, both historical and projected, as well as price to sales and price to book value.  If you want stocks that fit into multiple categories, choose screens that will match your criteria.  For example, GARP (growth at a reasonable price) stocks could be found by screening for high growth and low PEs.  Also, you could look for high growth dividend stocks by screening for dividends and high growth.

Find a stock screening website.  There are thousands of stock screening tools and websites out there.  NONE of them are perfect.  None of them have all of the attributes you'd like to search on, and some of them that do have the attributes often are left blank.  For example, if you are screening for future 5 year growth estimates, it would require that an analyst publish that statistic.  Since many stocks don't have analysts and many analysts don't forecast 5 year growth, it would be a difficult field to screen for.  With that said, we tend to stick with the large, well known screening tools like Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, and even your broker's tools.  Check around, as there are literally thousands of screeners, and find one you are comfortable with.

Run your stock screen and download the results.  Start with a very broad stock screen so you don't miss any potentially good stocks.  And remember, the criteria that you screen on will not always reflect the company's potential.  For example, if you screen on historical earnings growth, a company that had a large write off or charge against earnings would show up as negative or very little growth.  And if you are screening on PE (price to earnings), a company that has just started generating profits could look very expensive because of the low earnings.  In other words, be selective in the criteria you screen.  Run dozens of screens until you feel like you've developed an understanding of the screens' results.  We would even recommend running several screens on different criteria, in case a good company is left off a screen because of a special circumstance or abnormality.  When you've finished your screens, download them into a spreadsheet.  You can easily download screens using CSV files and, if you don't have spreadsheet software, go to OpenOffice.org and you can get it for free.  One important note:  When you download the data, make sure that you download as much company data as you can.  For example, if you are screening for high growth based on historical EPS growth, make sure you download all of the other attributes that can help you narrow your list.  In this example, we'd recommend downloading future 1 and 5 year EPS and Sales growth estimates, company description, last 12 months and next years PE, market cap, sales, average analyst price target and any other growth related attributes that are available.

Sort your stock screen by your most important attributes.  Put all of your screens into one spreadsheet. Now that you've got a huge spreadsheet list of stocks, make a copy of the original and begin your sorting.  Sort the list by each of the attributes you think are important.  Then take the top 10 - 50 stocks and copy them to a new list.  Do this for each attribute so that you don't miss outlier stocks.

Briefly evaluate each stock based on its attributes and shrink your list.  Take this smaller list and look at one stock at a time.  Make an evaluation based on all of its attributes to see if deserves to stay in your stock screen results.  Delete the companies that don't meet most of your criteria.

Further investigate the stocks on your list.  Your list should be down to a reasonable number of companies at this point (maybe between 50 and 250).  Now its time to individually investigate each stock.  Go to your favorite finance website (like yahoo or google finance) and plug in the ticker.  Then take a long look at all of the fundamentals of the stock.  Start by looking at the description to see if its even a company you'd consider.  Then, look at the historical financials, their performance versus prior expectations, their historical price charts, analyst estimates, price targets and future projected growth rates.  Then read some of the press releases to see what others are saying (not that they are right, but they will give you some insight as to the current sentiment surrounding the stock).

Create a watchlist of stocks that you are interested in.  When you find a stock in your list that you feel has potential, put it on your watchlist.  Create your watchlist on your favorite stock website so that you can monitor it from anywhere and update it as things change.

Monitor the stocks you like and wait for a buying opportunity.  Now that you've got a list of your top stocks to invest in, monitor them for a while.  Read the news each day for the stocks you're watching and see how they perform during earnings season.  Watch to see if they outpeform and how they react during market swings.  Get familiar with them and start to feel which stocks have the most long term potential.

While monitoring the stocks, look for new stocks to add to your list.  While you are looking for the best stock to invest in, make sure and add new stocks to your list while you are doing your research.  For example, when reading articles about one of your watchlist stocks, take note of the other stocks mentioned in the articles and investigate them to see if they are worthy of inclusion into your watchlist.  Continually monitor and update your watchlist with new stocks and by removing stocks that no longer meet your criteria.

Invest in the top stocks from your stock screen.  During this process of evaluation, start buying shares in the stocks you like.  You can start by buying small positions at set intervals, or you can wait for pullbacks or other events to start buying.

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Make Sure You Are Crystal Clear About Your "Invest" Definition

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In today's unstable economy, many people are searching for alternative means of making money and creating their own retirement plans. It is becoming clear that corporations and governments cannot guarantee a pension upon turning 65. As a result, many are taking control of their own futures and putting their money into investments like property and shares. For others, it may be a distant dream, but they are not quite sure where they should begin. The definition of "invest" is a broad one and there are several methods.

Buying a property is considered a fairly safe kind of investment, because real estate appreciates in value. There are a couple of different options to choose from. You can purchase a single home, a multi-unit complex or a vacation home to rent out to various tenants; alternatively, you can purchase a home for a low price (for example, a foreclosure, ) renovate it, then sell it for a higher price. Each option has its pros and cons and it's important to do some research before making a decision on which method you will go with.

Becoming a landlord is a huge responsibility, and you will need to become familiar with the local laws regarding tenants. They will be well aware of their rights, so you should be aware of yours. If you consider yourself a handyman (woman) and can install floors, renovate bathrooms and apply a coat of paint, then flipping properties may be for you.

When you complete the renovations yourself, you save money and increase your profit. When everything has been done, sell it at market value. Once it's sold, you can collect a nice big lump sum of money. Now, you can find another home and repeat the entire process. When you rent your properties, you receive a smaller amount of money, but it is a steady monthly income.

Keeping a lump sum of money in a bank account is not a good wealth-building method. If you decide not to purchase any more properties, another investment option is shares. When you buy the shares of a company, you are becoming part owner of that enterprise.

There are many public organizations and companies that offer their shares for purchase. You can get them via a self-directed investment account or a stockbroker. Due diligence and research are imperative before deciding which companies to include in your portfolio.

You make a profit with shares by buying low and selling high. Depending on the type of company you invest in, you could see profits in just a few weeks, or it might take a few years. Many people buy stocks and hang on to them for at least 10 years; others sell them as soon as they realize they will make money.

But above all be clear as to your invest definition, and increase your knowledge and resources, you are able to make better decisions. Having a comprehensive plan is a good first step to taking care of your financial security. The time has come to stop depending on governments and corporations to provide your funds for retirement.

It's essential to get very clear about where you are targeted, so check here that you are on cue with your invest definition.

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