Welcome to the 2^nd Young Politics Carnival! The carnival is growing pretty fast. Hopefully, in the next few months we will see more than twenty submissions. eFIPO’s article of the week is **Steve Faber presents Opportunity posted at DebtBlog.** Remember to try to read all the articles and comment on the ones you like. If this is your first time at eFIPO.com, I would like to welcome and thank you for visiting. Here are the rest of the political articles.

National Politics

Jeremie Beaudry presents Pentagon admits error on ‘threat’ posted at eFIPO.com Is the PATRIOT ACT going too far or are we in an age of terror?

Bill Losapio presents Will He Appoint His Favorite Cow to Pro Tempore? posted at Bill Losapio.

Wenchypoo presents Affordable Health Care on Every Corner posted at Mental Wastebasket.

Phil B. presents Freedom for Everyone « Phil for Humanity posted at Phil for Humanity, saying, “Approximately half of the world’s population is ruled by dictators, monarchs, religious zealots, and communist tyrants who restrict freedom for their people.”

Other

Brandon Peele presents Leadership Revisited posted at GT.

Vihar Sheth presents What Drives Effective Policy? posted at Vihar Sheth.

Jack Yoest presents Karen Hughes Is Always On Time With President Bush posted at Reasoned Audacity, saying, “Business owners have smaller margins for error than our larger big-company counterparts. One way a person, a company, can stand out and sell more is to respect people’s time. By being on time, your Business Blogger was reminded of this truth last year while working with small business advertisers in a trade show in Vegas.

John presents Sunnis Establish an Islamic Republic Inside Iraq posted at The Largest Minority.

Wenchypoo presents “Show Me the Money!” posted at Mental Wastebasket, saying, “This is an article about how to get more money without having to enlist the aid of minimum wage legislation, ACLU action, labor unions, or government handouts–all political things, but none are mentioned in the article itself.”

Danny Simkin presents Make every inch Amona posted at Samson BLinded.

Reform

Cliff Notes presents A Prayer for Owen Meany & The Draft posted at Business Travel Hillbillyk.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of young politics using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: young politics, blog carnival.

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Continuation of “A Different kind of Investing”, Goals Equal Success #1, and more things that I’ve learned from “The Richest Man Who Ever Lived” by Steven K. Scott.

Dreams are nothing more than the completion of goals set by the individual. Like I said before, I truly believe that every dream is possible if you have a detailed plan to achieve it. The world cannot stop you when you have the drive and plan to succeed.

Here’s the story of two groups of people that share a common dream, but have two totally different ways to attain it. They both want to be popular musicians in two different genre of music. They both have great bands, vocals, talent, and lyrics, but one band lacks motivation and planning skills.

The first band started small, but they all had the dream of greatness. The band developed a plan on how they would be able to accomplish that dream and make it a reality. They played at every place they could and always try to get their name out there. They also saved as much money as possible to be able to record their songs in a studio. They spent countless hours trying to perfect their sound. When everything was done, they finally released a studio quality CD. They found a music manager to market the band to record labels and are on the track to stardom.

On the other hand, the second band’s popularity ignited much faster. They were invited to play at some big bars in Atlanta and everyone liked their sound. After hearing a couple of their songs, I asked them to play at a party I was having. They were incredible. They just had that sound that everyone liked, but lacked the most important aspects to achieve true success.

They didn’t have any motivation or anything that resembled a detailed plan. They had less motivation than a college student wanting to study calculus (Which means they had zero motivation). After playing at a few bars, they decided that they were too good for those places and declined the offers to play again. They thought someone was just going to listen to their album and give them millions of dollars.

Instead of practicing they partied. Eventually, they couldn’t play anywhere. The band to this very day doesn’t know where they went wrong. Even with all their talent they still crashed and burned. I guess they just felt they were too good and didn’t need to practice, play, and promote.

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Continuation of “A Different kind of Investing” and more things that I’ve learned from “The Richest Man Who Ever Lived” by Steven K. Scott.

You ever wonder why some people are successful and others fail? According to this book, there are two significant things to do to become successful. The first thing is to plan correctly, and the second is to seek consul. This post will discuss how planning correctly can really change your life.

Let me first ask a question that I know everyone has heard before. Do you want to be rich, successful, and have loving relationships? I would say everyone I know would want to answer yes. Here comes a question that most people don’t hear after that first question is asked. How are you going to be rich, successful, and find loving relationships? Isn’t that question much harder to answer? Let me show you some steps to make this process as fun and easy as possible.

1^st. What are your goals? Everyone has there own individual goals like: being rich, successful, loved, and popular. Everyone also has a dream job that they would want to do: movie star, rock star, politician (my dream), doctor, astronaut, stand-up comedian, and etcetera. Write out all your goals. They can be short term, mid term, or long term. Make them as broad as possible. After you have them all written down, list them in the order of importance to you.

Here are my broad, but arranged goals: Relationships, eFIPO & other Websites, Knowledge, Career, Money, Charity, High School, House, Higher Education.

2^nd. After they are to your liking, write how you plan to achieve those goals. Again, make these pretty broad. Here’s my first goal with broad steps to achieve that goal.

Relationship
Spend as much time with wife and kids (I’m not married or have any kids, but still a dream of mine)
Get my kids involved in school activities
Take trips with my wife and kids as much as possible
Bring kids to grandparent’s house as much as possible

3^rd. Take your most important goal and describe it in detail. My most important goal is relationship building within my family. Here is the definition of the family life that I would like to achieve in the future. -Spend as much time with my wife and kids and have a loving family. I would love the ability to have a really strong family by always having an open door and an open heart. I want to love and motivate all my children to be whatever they dream to be. I want a loving wife that shows that we will be in love till we are grey and old. I want to be with her sitting in a hammock at 65 and still cuddling and loving each other like the first day we met. Our home will be warm and inviting to our kid’s friends, and family. I want to participate in as many activities with my kids in and out of school. I want them to feel loved, secure, and a bond that cannot be broken.-

4^th. Take your description and add a short, mid, and long term steps that are easy to accomplish. The way I want to achieve a loving family is to begin with a loving relationship with my future wife. Here is how I hope to accomplish it.

Have a great relationship with my girlfriend

• Be kind and gentle

• Be respectful and listen

• Do not overreact

Save for a ring
Prepare a speech to deliver to her parents to ask for her hand in marriage

• Outline how long we have been together

• Say how much I love her and her family

Propose
Get married

• Help in the wedding, let her make most of the decisions because it’s her day

Have a lot of fun with my new wife

• Do things we both enjoy

• Do things she enjoys

• Have nights for just us

• Have nights with friends

• Always tell her what is on my mind

Develop a very strong relationship before we decided to have children
Move to a house with a good school district and neighborhood
Have the kids
Be there for my wife in time of need
Decide whether she should work or I should work
Play sports with my kids and share my wisdom with them
Talk to them and be supportive of their aspirations and dreams
Make them feel secure by promoting a safe and comfortable household
Show my kids that their mother and I have a great relationship and bond
Promote a healthy lifestyle and exercise with my family
Have family discussions and keep an open door policy
Always stay true and loyal to my wife and kids

5^th. Do this with all your goals. I know this seems long and tedious, but it works wonders. You may be asking yourselves “Jeremie do you do this?” Yup! I have about six pages of ways to accomplish my goals and its growing. I truly believe that if you have a detailed plan, you can achieve anything. If I were to give you an address to my house, it would be nearly impossible to find. But if I gave you detailed directions then it would be extremely easy to find. Your life is not much different.

More to come soon….

Goals Equal Success #2

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These are eFIPO�s picks for finance & politic blogs of the week.

eFIPO’s Feature Finance Blog

Young Finance Guy– My name is Chris. I am a young professional in the Finance/Real Estate Industry. Growing up, my family owned a construction/development company in Northeastern, Ohio. I attended the University of Dayton and upon graduating college (Finance Major) I decided to move to a new city to start my career, instead of working for the family business. This Blog will track the trials and tribulations of my personal finance life. It�s always nice to see young people, like myself, writing about personal finance. He has a lot of good content from the perception of a young professional. Favorite article- 25 Rules to Grow Rich By..

 

eFIPO’s Primary Politics Blog

Gun Toting Liberal — Slightly left of center� but this blog is DIFFERENT! Even though I am not a liberal, this blog is still an interesting read. I always like reading opinions from a different view points. I really enjoyed reading this article Cheney: Bobbing For Apples Form Of Interrogation. So if you�re liberal or conservative, check them out!

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I can’t write a long post about stocks today, because I have to prepare for Halloween. Small cap stocks are probably not going to go up much more than they currently are. On the other hand, I can’t wait till I see the explosion of large cap stocks at the end of the 4^th quarter. Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up, so the stock market is on sale. Like I said before, there are a ton of deals on the retail sales level. So shop around! Have a Happy Halloween too!

Mutual Fund Performance (All grouped together)

• Friday, October 20, 2006 – Full Value $10,403.26

• Friday, October 27, 2006 – Full Value $10,628.86

• Increase of $225.6 which is a ~1.02% increase.

Individual Stock Performance (All grouped together)

• Friday, October 27, 2006 – Full Value $2,281.27

• Friday, October 20, 2006 – Full Value $2,252.16

• Increase of $29.11 which is a ~1.01% increase.

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Let me just start off with an example.
You have five years of return data from your portfolio.

Years/Returns

• 1- 10%

• 2- 18%

• 3- 21%

• 4- -3%

• 5- 17%

The way most people calculate their returns is to add all of them up and divide by the amount of years. Your average annual return would be 12.6% ((10+18+21+ (-3) +17)/5) =12.6).

This seems like the correct answer right? Not really. Let me show you another example so you can see the flaw using this kind of equation.

You purchased a mutual or stock at $100.00 per unit and it does not pay any dividends. The first year it goes down to $50.00 per unit. The second year it doubles up to $100.00 per unit. You would assume that you didn�t make or lose any money right? Well wrong again. Using the same equation your annual return would be 25%!

Years/Returns

• 1- 50%

• 2- 100%

• (-50+100)/2= 25%

Now that you see why the conventional way of finding your return is flawed and delivers false returns, let’s view the real way to calculate your return.

1st. You have to change all your returns to decimals. After that use this equation to find your real return.

((1 + (1st yr. return)*

(1+ (2nd yr. return)*

(1+ (3rd yr return)*

(ect….)) ^ 1/ (number of years)-1

We will use the information from the first example.

((1+.10)*(1+.18)*(1+.21)*(1-.03)

*(1+.17)) ^ 1/5=.122 *100% = 12.2%

I know this equation involves a calculator and an extra one minute of work, but it shows you the real return on your investments which is crucial.

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Conclusion of Things You Can Control

• 4^th. Doubling up- If you are trying to diversify your investment portfolio, don�t double up on your funds. Let’s say you already have a large growth cap mutual fund. Buying another large growth cap fund would just be redundant. If you end up buying two large growth cap funds you will have a lot of duplicate stocks. “You think you’ve got a bunch of different investments; instead you�ve got one big investment of the same kind,” said Ross Levin.

• 5^th. Reading your annual report- I know most people just throw out their annual report when they receive it in the mail. It’s scary, long, complicated, and boring, but there is one section other than the performance statistics you should be looking at. Investment future for the fund is very simple to comprehend. It just shows if the fund has a new manager, and if the fund will be seeking different involvement for your stocks. If you want small value stocks and it changes to small growth and medium value, then maybe you should seek a different fund.

• 6^th. Big time changes- This is almost the same thing as the 5^th thing you can control, but has one unique difference. Buying and selling changes. Let�s say you have a fund and it has been performing very well for the past five years. Then suddenly your fund starts going down hill. You call up the fund manager and ask why it’s been dropping so much. He tells you that it�s because of excessive trading activity and venturing in new markets within the fund market. The “stock picking” manager decides to sell some major stocks and purchase totally new ones.

• This will be reported in your annual report, usually prior to the major change. Sometimes it won’t list the individual stocks that will be traded, but it will disclose the selling and buying of securities. This will usually have a short term drop in your fund, because they are selling your high priced stocks and buying new low priced stocks. If excessive trading isn’t your bag, move to a more conservatively held mutual fund.

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Portfolio returns are usually pretty unpredictable. You can never forecast what return you will end up getting. So you should just throw your money anywhere and pray for the best right? Wrong. There are a few variables which the investor has full control over.

• 1^st. Portfolio manager selection- If you’re investing in mutual funds you can always read up on the manager and look at his/hers past performance. Look at what stocks he/she buys and sells, what his/her past long term returns were (8+ years), and what the managers philosophy is.

• 2^nd. Expense costs-This is one thing that can really make or break your return. If your return for the year was 15%, but you have a 4% expense cost then your return shrinks to 11%. Expense costs are needed because you paying for peoples educated guesses and management fees. Studies have shown that low-expense funds are more likely to outperform more expense funds overtime. So definitely shop around.

• 3^rd. Taking on the risk- No risk, no reward, right? Well sometimes risk can just be dumb. I always believe in sticking with the stuff you know. If you want to be in developing markets and extremely high risk ventures, more power to you. I’ll be just fine sticking with the markets I know. For example: My mutual fund portfolio does have an international fund, but always lags behind my other funds. Just because some international markets are doing well for a few years does not mean they will always do great. Overall the S&P has always outperformed international markets long term returns.

More control factors coming up soon. Do you have any that aren’t currently listed?

Things You Can Control#2

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Why cant people beat the market? Everything I read talks about how most investors in the stock market always lag the S&P. Are people being stupid or just ignorant? I think it’s a combination of the two. The worst investor is an uninformed “in it for the short term” kind of investor. They buy the “hot” stocks when prices are high and sell when prices are low. Good strategy…. Not!

The best investors on the planet always plan for long term results and they usually study the companies or sector they are investing in. Would you drive a car on the highway without first learning the basics about driving? Hopefully you said no, but most peoples investing styles is to jump right on that highway and learn as you go. This investing style will lead to many bad crashes and a lot of money loss.

There’s so much information for investors that it makes it hard to believe that people can still lag the S&P. First, if you don’t know what you are doing invest in ETF funds. At least you will be matching the return of S&P. Secondly, stick the companies you know and trust. More people lose their money in companies they know nothing about. Pick companies that have a long and positive history and seem to grow at a steady pace.

Jonathan Clements, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, wrote “There’s a lesson here for investors. Want to improve your results? Try sticking with funds that generate consistent performance. Take balanced funds, which typically hold 60% stocks and 40% bonds. These might seem like an unexciting choice. But that lack of excitement leads to better investor behavior. Over the past 10 years, balanced-fund investors have enjoyed a dollar-weighted return of 8.8% a year, not much below their funds’ 9% average total return.”

Boring investors usually end up making more money than bad active investors. Boring investors buy less risky securities and let their money grow, while bad active investors buy and sell at the drop of a dime.

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These are eFIPO’s picks for finance & politic blogs of the week.

eFIPO’s Feature Finance Blog

Canadian Capitalist– A record of my personal financial experience in Saving, Debt Management and Investing. This is one of the top Canadian financial blogs and it’s easy to see why. All of his articles are very detailed and replies to comments very quickly. If you live in Canada and need financial advice, head over to this site today. This is where I found out that Wendy’s and Tim Horton’s will be splitting up. Read more about this topic in this article. I didn’t even realize they were going to split and I even own Wendy’s stock!

eFIPO’s Primary Politics Blog

Martian Anthropologist — Thoughts on politics, religion, society, and more, from the Martian and his fellow bloggers. This website’s author has a very unique writing style. He writes great commentary and not afraid to speak his mind in his articles. I really enjoyed reading THIS Is Proof? Read the articles and remember to comment as much as you can if you enjoy the article.

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