3 Ways To Increase Your Income To Meet Your Financial Goals

Everyone’s financial goals are slightly different, whether they’re focusing on paying off debt, saving towards an investment goal, paying for home renovations like a spa inspired bathroom or something completely different. However, one thing that most people have in common is that they want to feel comfortable financially, which is where we come in. We’re here with 3 ways to increase your income to meet your financial goals, and when this is combined with a focus on reducing your outgoings at the same time, you can completely change your finances for the better.

Declutter Your Home and Sell!

One of the most simple things you can do to make some money quickly is to declutter your home and sell your unwanted items. You might think you don’t have anything of value, but you’d be so surprised at what people buy, and small purchases can add up to make quite a big difference. So, go through your home room by room (this can be over a number of weeks or even months in your spare time, trying to do it all in a day will be quite overwhelming) and then decide what you want to get rid of. Then, start posting your items on local marketplaces or websites like Vinted and Depop. It’s worth just putting your items on there as you’ve got nothing to lose and someone might be looking for exactly what you have to offer!

This could be anything from an old set of coasters you forget about and never use, perhaps an unused eyeshadow palette, an old pair of jeans that no longer fit or some accessories you never wear. Kitchenware also tends to do well on local marketplaces as there will be plenty of people moving into their first place and wanting to find things cheap! This takes a bit of time, but you get the double benefit of having a good clear out and making some money. Anything that doesn’t sell after a few months you could take to a charity shop.

Utilize Skills and Become A Tutor

For people who have an existing skill, perhaps you’re very good at maths, play an instrument well or can speak multiple languages, then using spare hours for online tutoring can be great financially. Online tutors tend to make between £15 and £23 an hour depending on what it is they’re tutoring, so even if you do this for 4 hours a week when you have spare time, you could be making an additional £400 a month. This makes a huge difference, whether it’s an extra £400 for you to invest or by making additional debt repayments. If you’ve got the skills there then make the most of them and you can earn a really good amount of money doing something you enjoy.

Consider Investing

If you’re quite financially minded and are interested in the industry and its markets, then you could consider investing. As much as people on social media say it’s something you can start straight away and be good at, in order to have successful investments that are stable and make you good money, you need to do your research. Spend time looking at different investment options and markets, choose something you’re interested in and then get learning. When you have a good understanding of the chosen market, as well as a full awareness of the common investment and broker scams that are out there, you will make safer investments that can help you make money. There are plenty of resources out there to help you learn, and we’d recommend utilising a mixture of different ones, so you can get a well rounded overview of the industry, how it functions and the strategy you’ll choose for investing specifically.

About The Author

Daisy Moss is a freelance writer specializing in vintage jewelry. When she isn’t writing you will probably find her looking for her next investment in Hatton Garden.

 

The Human Touch: Emotional Intelligence in Prop Trading

Introduction

In the trading world, where analysis and execution take center stage, it’s easy to overlook the significance of emotional intelligence. Many traders focus on skills and market knowledge, paying little attention to the profound impact emotions can have on their decision-making process. This blog delves into the importance of intelligence in trading and how it can differentiate successful traders from others.

Grasping Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is an individual’s capacity to understand, manage, and express emotions effectively. It encompasses self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and proficiency in building relationships. Emotional intelligence is vital in decision-making and risk management in trading prop firms. In this section, we will explore:

Recognizing Emotions

Accomplished proprietary traders know their emotions and can assess emotional reactions while executing trades. They comprehend how certain emotions like fear or greed can influence their judgment and learn ways to control impulses while avoiding decision-making.

Responding to Emotions

Maintaining composure during high-pressure situations is crucial for executing trades. Traders who possess intelligence develop strategies for managing stress. They can recognize when emotions are influencing their decision-making process and take measures to prevent those emotions from impairing their judgment.

Mastering Self-control

Controlling Impulses

Proprietary traders with intelligence can resist actions driven by gut feelings or temporary market trends, which may lead to irrational decisions. They practice self-control techniques like breathing exercises or pausing for reflection before taking action, ensuring they don’t let fleeting emotions dictate their trading choices.

Cultivating Patience

Another aspect of self-control is developing patience in a fast-paced trading environment. Traders with intelligence understand that not every opportunity requires an immediate response; they patiently wait for optimal moments when the odds are in their favor. This patience helps them avoid making trades and minimizes potential losses.

Establishing and Maintaining Relationships

Building relationships with colleagues and clients in trading goes beyond formality; it forms the basis for personal growth and professional success. Emotional intelligence plays a significant role in assisting traders in understanding perspectives, navigating conflicts, and effectively collaborating. This section encompasses:

Empathy

Empathy is a touted attribute for traders as it facilitates stronger connections with clients and colleagues—an essential element of emotional intelligence. By understanding how others feel and how they perceive things, traders can adjust their communication strategies to build trust.

Resolving Conflicts

Individuals with intelligence excel at resolving conflicts that arise from differing opinions or disagreements on market strategies. They approach conflicts calmly, look for ground, and prioritize professionalism over personal ego. These qualities contribute to fostering partnerships within the prop trading community.

Gaining Market Insight through Emotional Intelligence

Recognizing Biases

Emotional intelligence enables traders to identify biases that may impact rational decision-making processes. Behavioral biases like confirmation or herd mentality can significantly influence market analysis if not recognized and appropriately managed. Traders with intelligence are better equipped to identify these biases and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Understanding Market Sentiment

Investor emotions such as fear or greed drive market sentiment. Traders need to analyze these emotions and consider them when making trading decisions. Emotional intelligence helps prop traders accurately interpret market sentiment, guiding them towards trades while minimizing risks.

Conclusion

While technical skills are crucial for success in prop trading, you should consider emotional intelligence as an essential factor in profitability and long-term sustainability in this field. Professional traders can use their human touch as a competitive edge in the constantly changing financial markets by developing an understanding of emotions, maintaining self-discipline, honing relationship-building skills, and utilizing insights for market analysis.

7 Smart Steps Every New Homeowner Should Take

Shifting from dealing with landlords to owning your first home isn’t a small achievement. You are certainly proud of yourself and in celebratory mode for the huge milestone. But before you get ahead of yourself with excitement, make sure to take smart steps that can guarantee you a lifetime or long-term enjoyment of your new home. The last thing you want is to jeopardize the future of your home or spend more money and effort down the road trying to salvage the situation. Since you are new to this homeowner’s space and probably don’t know where to start, this article lists seven steps that will make you a successful homeowner.

Essential steps checklist for every new homeowner

Taking the following steps at the early stages of owning your home is guaranteed to save you not just money, but also your home.

Ensure safety and security

The comfort of your family comes first. And that starts by knowing that they are safe from burglars or incidences of fire, floods, and other disasters. You also don’t want to lose your valuable items to the said vices. How can you keep your home safe and secure as a new homeowner?

● Change the locks and access codes
● Install a smart security system
● Light up the exterior
● Get a safe for your valuables
● Install fire and CO detectors

Prioritize repairs

What first comes to mind for most new homeowners is to personalize the space and make the home aesthetically appealing. While that is important, a smart step is to first prioritize critical repairs before spending money on décor. Use the home inspection report you obtained while buying the home as a guide. If finances are a bit tight, you can prepare a priority list and start with the most urgent. Areas that can potentially cause problems in the future such as leaky pipes or roofs and damaged drains should be at the top of the list. Making repairs now prevents the situation from getting worse and potentially requiring more money to fix.

Ensure regular maintenance

Immediately you move in, you need to deep clean your home, change air filters and make sure that water, electricity, and security devices are working well. Then ensure routine maintenance routine going forward. Everything from the HVAC system, water heater, security devices, garbage disposal and more should be checked regularly throughout the year. Besides, regular maintenance such as cleaning the furnace not only keeps it working but also saves you money on heating bills. You should ensure that the exterior stays clean from debris, the lawn is mowed, and the gutters are cleaned.

The home maintenance checklist is long and can sometimes get overwhelming. You can bypass the stress by working with property maintenance experts. Professionals ensure that your home stays in top-notch and functions optimally regardless of the season.

Get insurance

Ideally, your lender will require you to purchase homeowners insurance before the house is handed to you. But insurance is equally important even when buying cash. In case of total loss of your home, you want to make sure that you can get enough compensation to replace your property. Besides homeowners insurance, consider also getting life insurance if you have people who depend on you financially. Make sure to name them as beneficiaries. In case you die unexpectedly, this protects them from losing the home if your income was paying the mortgage.

Purchase a home warranty

In addition to insurance, another smart step is to purchase a home warranty. This covers your home appliances and systems as well as normal wear and tear of your home. As a new homeowner, you will be at peace knowing that you don’t have to deal with a broken refrigerator or dishwasher. Your home warranty can help you keep your expensive appliances working properly or replace them if need be without costing you extra money.

Hire an accountant for your tax return

Owning a home can potentially change your tax return in terms of deductions that you can claim. But getting a hang of it can be quite daunting if you aren’t conversant with tax matters. You are in a better position working with a professional. An accountant helps to make sure that your tax return is done correctly and the deductions claimed are right. An accountant can also help you keep receipts for home improvements to help reduce your taxable income in case you sell your home in the future.

Budget wisely

Now that you have bid paying rent a bye-bye, you’re not off the hook yet. In fact, you are now introduced to new expenses that you didn’t have before. Besides paying the mortgage, home maintenance and repairs, insurance, and property taxes are now part of you. This is not forgetting that utility bills are likely to go up. Creating a budget helps you track expenses, which helps you understand your home spending. This also helps you identify areas where you can cut spending to save more.

Conclusion

Owning a home is certainly exciting, but it comes with its share of responsibilities. Protecting your investment is paramount, which calls for critical steps to secure and insure your home. Routine maintenance is key to achieving an optimally functioning home at all times. In addition, hire an accountant to take care of your homeowner taxes and budget wisely to live comfortably financially.

How Can Investing Help Your Business Grow?

Growth is on the mind of every business owner, no matter the size of their company or how long they’ve been in business. And while most of them will actively and carefully consider different ways to improve their operations, they may omit to consider investing as a way to grow.

Let’s examine how investing can help your business grow and what you need to keep in mind if this is the route you decide to take.

The Benefits of Investing in Stocks 

Investing in stocks can be very beneficial to your business in several different ways:

1. The average stock market return is around 10% per year, and it has been this high for nearly a century. This is higher than what you can expect from most other forms of investment.
2. The annual inflation rate stands at around 3% per year. When you compare it to the above-mentioned 10% in returns, you’ll notice that investing in stocks can help you protect yourself from inflation to a certain degree.
3. Dividends are also a great way to earn a passive income. While it may not be exceptionally high, it is still money you don’t have to work to earn, which you can further invest in your business.
4. Stocks are a liquid investment, and you can buy and sell them very easily. If you ever need a cash influx, you can obtain it by selling some of your stocks.
5. Investing can also help you connect with other people in your industry, as well as people who run other companies you can learn from or partner up with.
6. You can start small and work your way up. You don’t have to have a huge capital available, and you can get the ball rolling with as little as a couple of hundred dollars, or even less.

This is why a lot of individuals and businesses choose to invest in stocks. If they choose the right stocks, they get to see a steady income without having to spend a lot of time managing them.

The Risks of Investing in Stocks 

Investing in stocks does come with some risks as well. Here’s what you should know before you consider it:

● The stock market is volatile. It declines 10% from its high every 11 months, around 20% every four years, and over 30% at least once in a decade. This means that you may end up losing money, if the crash occurs at a time when you’re actively investing.
● If you have a lot of debt to pay off, focus on that rather than on investing in stocks, as early repayment can have a higher return.
● You always need to have an emergency fund that will cover any unplanned expenses your business may face. This should not involve selling your stock.
● You will need to invest some time in researching stocks that are worth your attention. While blue chip stocks are often considered the best investment to make, you can also choose others that have a decent return and that are issued by credible companies. If you don’t have the time or can achieve more by investing it in your business, reconsider your stock market investments.

The risks of investing in stocks are usually outweighed by the benefits. As long as you can afford to lose some of your investment and you’re able to do your research, you can find the funds to grow your business.

Where to Find the Money to Invest 

The question that naturally arises is where you will find the money to invest. Since this is a business investment (and not your personal one), you can (and should) consider taking the money out of the business, in a way.

You can, for example, choose to pay yourself a smaller salary or skip a couple of payments that you will use as an investment. Of course, this is only feasible if you can cover your personal expenses from what you’ve already earned or if there’s another family member who can take on the household expenses for a month or more.

You can also choose to lower your operating expenses. This may not always be an option, but you may be able to save some money in several ways. Letting people go is not the only way to do it, though, so don’t immediately start considering making a personnel cut.

You can change suppliers too, for example. Take a good long look at your expenses and figure out if there is any room to cut costs. If not, don’t worry; you can also take the profits and use them as an investment. This means you will again have to take away from what you may otherwise have taken home or refrain from investing the money back into the business, but it can be a viable option.

Understanding What You Want to Get out of It 

Before you start investing, you should also carefully consider why you are doing it. Since the goal is to grow your business, set yourself a specific figure to make sure that you’re on track and that the investment is bringing you closer to your goals.

Make sure that the goal is not a very important one or one that you want to achieve in the next year. Investments take time to pay off. If you want to earn money to increase your ad spend for the next quarter, you will need to find the money elsewhere.

Maybe you want to find the fund to refurbish the office or branch out? Aim to set yourself a “nice to have” investment goal, one that you don’t need to achieve immediately to grow your business. As your stock portfolio grows, you can invest more, earn more, and ensure that some of your short-term goals are met as well.

Wrapping Up 

Investing in stocks can be a great way to help your business grow. However, you’ll need to be prepared for a potential loss. Also, make sure to take stock market volatility into account when making the choice to generate additional funds for your company this way.

About The Author

Sarah is a life enjoyer, positivity seeker, and a curiosity enthusiast. She is passionate about an eco-friendly lifestyle and adores her cats. She is an avid reader who loves to travel when time allows.

Reasons Why You Should Be Investing

Many of us want to start the process of investing, but we’re not sure how to go about it or even why we should be investing. We’d rather invest our money in our best online casino and leave things there.

Today, we take a look at why you should be investing, give a few tips and tricks, and look into a few different avenues you should look into investing in.

 

What does it mean to invest?

To invest in something means that you are putting something away in the hopes that it will bring you a greater return. When something brings you a return, it is called a return on investment or an ROI. You can invest in things such as cryptocurrency, shares, property, financial schemes, and so on.

 

Why should I be investing?

There are many reasons why you should be investing in your future. Below, we look at some of the reasons you should be investing.

 

Investing for your future

Investing for your future is the main goal many of us have when we start investing. We all come up with a financial plan and a few goals we have set up for what we want to achieve using the money we’ve saved up.

 

This is an amazing reason to start investing. Having financial goals will keep you on track and keep you investing however it’s always best to start small. Starting small can assist you because the more you set goals and reach them the more motivated and disciplined you will become. You get your mind used to saving while also getting used to receiving the rewards.

 

Investing for your future can come in different forms, such as buying your home, buying a car, saving up for your education, saving money for your retirement, or anything of that nature. You can also decide to invest in your children’s education. It doesn’t always have to be about you.

 

Investing allows you to enjoy future and present security by growing your wealth. It’s always important to check if you will be receiving simple or compound interest. Compound interest is one of the best forms of interest. Speaking of interest, you can also, depending on your investment, have an investment that has inflation-beating returns.

 

Always remember to invest within your affordability bracket. Remember investing is not meant to leave you broke and unhappy, but it is a way to keep yourself disciplined and maintain a good relationship with money.

 

Outperforming inflation

For this part, it’s important to look into the different types of investments and look at the inflation within your country. When you compare the two, you may find that your money isn’t growing as exponentially as you had initially planned. For this part, you need to do your research and find out who’s who in the jungle. You can find yourself a mentor who has the experience and is willing to share information with you.

 

To outperform inflation means that you are beating the inflation rate. You can do with investing in stocks, funds, and many more. So many investment plans or investments can help you beat the inflation rate. Always make sure that you do the math before investing.

 

Creating passive income

Creating passive income is always a good idea, and by doing so, you are supplementing your current income. This can also come in handy if you are looking toward quitting your job or just want another way to earn money.

 

Passive income is money that you regularly get that you are not putting in a lot of effort to make. Passive income can come in different ways; however, the most common is through rental property.

 

You can do many things with a rental property, such as listing your property on Airbnb; however, this income is not promised. You can rent it out for month-to-month or yearly lease agreements for a more stable income.

Millennials Guide to Financial Independence

The 2020s bring myself and other Millennials well into adulthood. Many of us are still struggling to gain financial independence, even though we feel it should have fallen into our laps already. There are a handful of complex (and some not-so-complex) reasons that women in their 20s and 30s continue to depend on others for financial security. We’re relying on our parents, our partners, or lines of credit to help make ends meet.

 

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to break free and gain financial independence. I’ve been working hard to curb unnecessary spending and make smart choices for my future. Here’s my guide on how Millennial women can take hold of their finances and become independent.

 

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