Do’s and Don’ts when attending free seminars and Intro to Webinars!!

May 14th, 2010 Vijaianand No Comments »

In last blog post, we talked about the real reason and importance to attend free seminars and workshops coming to your city. I hope most of your atleast convinced a bit and thinking about checking out few seminars which matches your interest. In this post, I am sharing some Do’s and Don’ts while attending these seminars which keep you out of spending money.

Here are few do’s and don’t which I would recommend.


Do’s

1. Go with an open mind to learn something new and ready to participate&share with others.
2. Take down notes of techniques, loop holes, hints, tips and useful ideas
3. Write down list of good websites which might be used during presentation.
4. Ask questions and get your doubts clarified for free.
5. Talk to the host after the meeting if you have further questions and pick their brain.
6. Try to talk to other attendees. Share, learn and create network which might help in future to create a power team of your own.
7. Note down the mileage and keep reciepts of any expenses like parking fee, lunch so you can account and claim.
8. Do take your friends or spouse only if they are interested in sitting with you and willing to learn. Otherwise you might have to leave in middle if they get bored and avoid feeling guilty.


Don’ts


1.  Don’t take your credit card or cheque book.
2. Stay away from signup and on’t get tempted by their special and attractive offers.
3.  You do not have to sit through the whole seminar. You will know when to call it quits if it doesn’t seems to add any value to you.

These tips are some of many coming out of my experience and surely will help you prepared when you plan on attending seminars. If you have few others from your experience, please don’t hesitate to share for the benefit of others.



Webinars


Alright!! We are surely in a internet age. Internet is name of the game. It makes our life easier every day in lot of different ways and getting educated is no exception. There are online universities which teaches classes and online seminars called webinars. SO if you don’t have time to attend seminars physically, don’t worry. Many financial institutions, brokerages firms and even rating agencies provide free webinars.

This is the new trend in the market these days. Webinars and webcast have become so easy for the organizers and also for attendees who don’t have to get out of their house.

List of Free Events/Webinars

1. Rich Dad Education – Realestate seminars
2. Ray Lucia Retirement seminars
3. Free Stock investing seminar from TDAmeritrade, Scottrade, Charles Schwab, Moody’s and more..


I strongly urge you try attending atleast one free seminar or workshop coming up in your city this summer and venture out. You will surely learn a trick or two. Don’t forget to let me know how it went.

Why you should attend free seminars?

May 7th, 2010 Vijaianand No Comments »

For many years, I never bothered to check the flyers and free entrance tickets offers to attend an investment  or business seminar which came via postal mail.  In 2004, when I was venturing out on different business options, I got 2 free tickets to attend an internet related seminar. It was all about internet marketing, SEO and ecommerce websites. Being a software professional, I was attracted and decided to check it out.

That changed everything. It was worth a attempt and was totally worth my time as well.  I got exposed to some pretty neat stuff which I never knew as a techie guy. I learnt many new things about search engine optimization(SEO) techniques and other aspects on how to get high rank in search engine. Actually it was an eye opener for me. May be I could have learnt them all by reading few books but it might have taken me months. First of, I wouldn’t have known where to start and wouldn’t have experimented it. With the expertise I gained in that seminar, I did my research and implemented few SEO techniques in my websites and got pretty good results. That was just a half day seminar and I was amazed by the impact of the free crash course.

After that seminar, my perspective towards free seminars changed and I started to look closely on the free seminar offers before throwing it out to see whether it’s worth few hours to gain something or not.

What are these Investment/Business seminars all about?


These half/one day seminars are hosted by different organization who are either investing institutions or teaching institutions hired by them. They arrange these seminar at big 3-4 star hotels in many big cities every month mostly from Spring till Fall season.




Their motivation behind is to attract people interested in business/investing ideas and peek interest by throwing attractive figures and numbers, hoping to lure you into 3-5 days workshops. Thats their ultimate goal to make money.  They hope, if 50 people attend a session and atleast 20 signup, that would be enough to make profitable. Sometimes seminars are also conducted by wealth management firms and brokerage companies directly to explain their products and services.


Why should I go?


Are you an stock/bond investor or wannabe investor? Are you thinking about making some extra bucks by starting a new business or want to do something different?


If your answer is “Yes“, you better start attending these free seminars matches your interest and goals. Think it’s like a free crash course.  It is so effective than reading books all day.  Next question, you might ask whether it will be worth my time? I can assure you it will surely worth your time in long term. But only choose to go to seminars that matches your interest. If you been thinking about investing in stocks and funds, go and check out stock trading seminars. If you want to know more about real estate investing, attend seminars hosted by those type of organizations.

For example, “Rich Dad Poor Dad” author Robert Kiyoski started events to talk about real estate via his Rich Dad Education group. You can look out for their events at http://www.richdadeducation.com/

Gimme some or alteast 5 reasons to attend these seminars?

I can list down many reasons but there are the 5 importants reasons/advantages to attend these type of seminars.


1. Free Education


I won’t say, you will learn everything. But you will surely learn some good and dirty tricks. You should be able to get some pointers and books which might help you to know where to start. You either pick up certain topic from the seminar and research more further to learn the intricacies which will surely help in your trade or future endeavors.


2. Learn new tricks

Even if you are Pro and knowledgeable in your field, you can still crab some funky tricks from these semianrs. I never knew a website called “Zillow.com” until I attended a real estate seminar. I got to know many great tricks and decent websites just by attending these seminars. I didn’t know how real estate flipping or wholesale worked. Thanks to these seminars.  Many seminars are hosted really with entertaining and well prepared materials to create interest among auidence to attract them to sign up. You will surely enjoy it.

3. Free Materials

You might be lucky enough to get some giveaways and free offers in these seminars. It is just worth to get these giveaways like CD’s and books even if the seminar is not upto your expectation. One thing tough, try to take seating in front rows so you can hurry and crab these giveaways if offered.

4. Networking

These seminars provide a great ground to talk and network with like minded people. You may even end up learning and partnering with those who attend these seminars.

5. Tax Advantage

Last but not the lease, do you know you can write off the time spent and vehicle mileage to attend these seminars in your tax returns? Especially if you own a business or file self employment tax return, you can claim them under business expenses. This is really a good kick to top off all the pros in attending these seminars.

Hope these 5 reasons will convince you to attend these seminars and workshops. I will also talk more about the do’s and don’t in my next post and share some experience about the new trend in the seminar industry, Webinars and Webcasts. Watch out…

Source: Image from web.

Tax Planning – Stock Investment Strategies – II

April 27th, 2010 Vijaianand No Comments »

In the last couple of posts, we been looking at how Tax planning can have an effect in your tax preparation. We saw the difference between Tax Planning and Tax preparation. We also started digging in deep on how the cost basis and stock selling strategy can save you some money. In the previous post, I started explaining about different types of determining cost basis and will complete in this post. At the end of this post, you will know which methods helps on different situations. So read on.

Check out the cost basis using FIFO method before moving on to read so you can better understand the difference.

Average cost is another method for determining cost basis and is only used with investment/mutual funds. To determine the average cost, the total cost of all shares purchased including any invested dividends is divided by the total number of shares held.


Once this method is used, it must be used each time the taxpayer sells shares in a mutual funds. This method is most effective if the shares purchased first have the lowest cost basis.


Average cost has 2 different ways of calculating according to the stock purchased periods. The single category method is when the investor takes all of the purchase amounts and divides by total number of shares owned. The double category method sorts the total shares owned into a short-term and a long-term holding period. Then, the average cost for each category is identified.


For example, Jan buys the Vanguard growth fund

  • 200 shares on January 3, 2001 at $20/share

  • 300 shares on September 5, 2002 at $25/share

  • 200 shares on April 20, 2008 at $22/share

On Oct 15, 2009 she sold 500 shares at $20/share. What is her cost basis according to the average cost method?


According to the single category average cost method, she would take an average of the purchase prices and divide by the total number of shares owned:

  • 200 shares at $20 = $4,000

  • 300 shares at $25 = $7,500

  • 200 shares at $22 = $4,400

  • Total cost = $15,900

  • Total shares = 700

  • Average cost per share = $22.71

So the gain/loss for this sale was:

  • 500 shares ($20 – $22.71) = -$1135.50

Therefore, Jan had a net loss of = -$1135.50


The specific share identification method implies that specific shares are used to apply against the shares sold.


Before selling shares, the shareholder must inform the broker or fund company regarding which shares are to be sold. These instructions must be given at the time of sale or transfer, not later. The broker or agent must confirm this request within a reasonable time after the sale.


This method can be used effectively only if the shareholder has kept accurate records and has followed through on the receipt of confirmations from the broker. It allows the shareholder to control the capital gains taxes that he or she has to pay because this can be determined by selecting the shares to sell. You can tell your broker to sell your highest-cost shares when unloading part of your holdings in a stock. Using this “specific ID method” requires you to identify the shares to be sold by specifying their cost and purchase dates. You must also receive a written confirmation of your instructions from the broker or keep a record of your oral instructions. Put this in your tax file for safekeeping.


Which method is suitable and when?

Specific ID method is the best method for tax purposes because the investor has absolute control over how much the gain from a sale would be. Long term or short term gains can also be controlled. This is the preferred tax basis method for investors who actively manage their portfolio for tax efficiency. It is also not the most cost effective because of all of the effort that is required for proper record-keeping.


If you don’t follow th procedure, you must use the first-in, first-out (FIFO) method, meaning the shares you bought first are considered sold first. Those were likely the cheapest — giving you the biggest possible tax hit. The point to remember is that you must take action at the time of sale to use the specific ID method.

Short term Vs Long Term

If you have both unrealized gains and losses in your portfolio, but want to make some sales in a certain way matching them property to get the best effect.  First, the general rule is try to sell long-term holdings (held over 12 months) first to benefit from the 15% maximum long-term capital gains rate. Then, unload your short-term holdings.


Then in order to offer offset those gains, you can sell the loser stocks for loss to balance it out. You will generally get the most tax-saving for the buck by selling short-term holdings for a short- term loss by taking advantage of short-term losses offsetting short-term gains which would otherwise be taxed at the regular income tax rate and any leftovers then offset long-term (15%) gains.

By following the above strategies matching your situation, you can either save some money by not paying to uncle sam way beyond the tax season. That concludes the tax planning – Stock investment strategy by doing cost basis analysis.

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