So apparently there's a 1024 character limit when - type to my blog from my phone. I just wasted another 80 characters explaining that, and another 85 explaining the explanation.
Back to my life as a financial planner. I've gotten quotes from local newspapers as to the cost of advertising in one of their newspapers. The newspaper companies reply a lot faster when you're willing to pay. The general price right now for a one day spread around half a page in length is my unborn son. The Metro newspaper has some really nice people working there, they called me up to give me different strategies I could use like the use of an 'earlug.' Whatever you think an earlug is, it's not.
I'm going to see if I can pay the newspaper companies in financial advice, or car washes. Look for my ad in the near future, it'll be the black and white one in the section that no one reads, you'll probably have to squint because I can't afford a full page, but it'll be there, and it'll be worth every penny.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
I've decided to start posting my life as a financial planner, to keep myself on track and because I'm bored.
Some background information: I started working at Manulife Financials the first week of July. Since then I have written and passed the life and accident licensing exam. I recently wrote the CFP exam in November, but the council is taking their sweet time marking the exam and the results won't be available till December the 21st. Apparently it takes a while to feed the scantron into the machine.
After writing the CFP exam, I've been blue skied to start doing my business. Business has been slow though. I've started off with some friends, although not everyone is buying into this financial business thing I'm doing. Being labelled as a 'sales person' isn't helping my reputation.
I've sent out e-mails to local newspapes offering to write financial articles for free. Only one of them has since replied back and they pretty much spoke for everyone, he has financial articles up to his neck.
Some background information: I started working at Manulife Financials the first week of July. Since then I have written and passed the life and accident licensing exam. I recently wrote the CFP exam in November, but the council is taking their sweet time marking the exam and the results won't be available till December the 21st. Apparently it takes a while to feed the scantron into the machine.
After writing the CFP exam, I've been blue skied to start doing my business. Business has been slow though. I've started off with some friends, although not everyone is buying into this financial business thing I'm doing. Being labelled as a 'sales person' isn't helping my reputation.
I've sent out e-mails to local newspapes offering to write financial articles for free. Only one of them has since replied back and they pretty much spoke for everyone, he has financial articles up to his neck.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Why Diversify?
Why diversfiy? If there's a hot investment, why not pour everything into it and ride with it? The reason is that most of the time you can't spot a winner until it's too late.
This is a picture from the Transamerica website, showing how different investments have performed over a 10 year span.
Click for larger view
You can follow International investments, Small Capital investments, even Growth investments, and you will see that they aren't consistently the best performers year after year. Bonds gave the best returns from 2000 to 2002, but have yielded less return since then.
Through diversifying investments a portfolio will have winners and losers, and although the portfolio may not give the best performance, as long as it is properly diversified chances are it won't yield the worse returns either.
This is a picture from the Transamerica website, showing how different investments have performed over a 10 year span.
Click for larger view
You can follow International investments, Small Capital investments, even Growth investments, and you will see that they aren't consistently the best performers year after year. Bonds gave the best returns from 2000 to 2002, but have yielded less return since then.
Through diversifying investments a portfolio will have winners and losers, and although the portfolio may not give the best performance, as long as it is properly diversified chances are it won't yield the worse returns either.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Finacial Plan
This is a financial plan that was made from a case that was assigned to us in our Financial Planning course. Pat and Sherry Thompson are a typical family who wants to purchase a house, save up for their children's education, and retire early. Here is the plan my group has come up for them.
The full Financial Plan in document format
*The document is 17MB large because it's over 60 pages of data with charts and tables.
Special thanks to Breath Evans, Iwona Nawisielska, Masoud Arbabi, and Ray Darts my group members who had as much to do with this plan as I did.
Finacial Plan
This is a financial plan that was made from a case that was assigned to us in our Financial Planning course. Pat and Sherry Thompson are a typical family who wants to purchase a house, save up for their children's education, and retire early. Here is the plan my group has come up for them.
The full Financial Plan in document format
*The document is 17MB large because it's over 60 pages of data with charts and tables.
Special thanks to Breath Evans, Iwona Nawisielska, Masoud Arbabi, and Ray Darts my group members who had as much to do with this plan as I did.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Hedging
Hedging is basically a strategy that is used to cover losses or cut losses.
There are various ways to hedge, but I'll focus on Options. The reason why I chose to focus on Options is because I'm being tested on it plus with Options you can not only cut your losses, but you can also make money.
Basically options are contracts to either buy or sell. The purchaser of an option pays a premium to the person writing the option. They purchase a contract to buy something in the future (Call Option) or to sell something in the future (Put Option). The Option has an Exercise price (the price to buy / sell at) as well as an Expiration date.
If you have 1,000 shares of Company A worth $100 today, but you don't want to sell it until one year from now, you can buy a Put Option to hedge the shares so that even if the price goes down you can still sell at $100 per share.
How this works is you go to the market and buy a Put Option to sell 1,000 shares of Company A at $100. The Put Option will cost you a premium (let's say $1,000). After one year, if the share price of Company A falls to $80, you're covered because the Option that you purchased guarantees that whoever you bought the Option from will buy your shares for $100 per share. Instead of losing out on $20 per share ($20 x 1,000 = $20,000) you only lose what you paid for in the premium ($1,000).
If the price of Company A rises to $120 per share, you just let the Put Option expire (it doesn't make sense to go through with the contract and sell for $100 when you can sell it to the market for $120).
As a general rule if you want to hedge a Long Position asset you buy a Short Position option, and vice versa.
There are various ways to hedge, but I'll focus on Options. The reason why I chose to focus on Options is because I'm being tested on it plus with Options you can not only cut your losses, but you can also make money.
Basically options are contracts to either buy or sell. The purchaser of an option pays a premium to the person writing the option. They purchase a contract to buy something in the future (Call Option) or to sell something in the future (Put Option). The Option has an Exercise price (the price to buy / sell at) as well as an Expiration date.
If you have 1,000 shares of Company A worth $100 today, but you don't want to sell it until one year from now, you can buy a Put Option to hedge the shares so that even if the price goes down you can still sell at $100 per share.
How this works is you go to the market and buy a Put Option to sell 1,000 shares of Company A at $100. The Put Option will cost you a premium (let's say $1,000). After one year, if the share price of Company A falls to $80, you're covered because the Option that you purchased guarantees that whoever you bought the Option from will buy your shares for $100 per share. Instead of losing out on $20 per share ($20 x 1,000 = $20,000) you only lose what you paid for in the premium ($1,000).
If the price of Company A rises to $120 per share, you just let the Put Option expire (it doesn't make sense to go through with the contract and sell for $100 when you can sell it to the market for $120).
As a general rule if you want to hedge a Long Position asset you buy a Short Position option, and vice versa.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Firefox Extensions
One reason why I use FireFox instead of IE is because it's more customizable, here are a few extensions that I use for my FireFox.
FireFTP (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/684/)
If you upload or download files using FTP's such as the school's (ftp://share.bcit.ca) then this extension adds FTP to the browser. This allows you to login quickly and it's faster then accessing files from websites.
MediaWrap (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1879/)
Some video extensions aren't supported by FireFox (Wmplayer, Rmplayer, QtPlayer and FlashPlayer), but MediaWrap let's you watch most videos on the browser.
VideoDownloader (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/)
Some sites don't let you download the videos you're watching, like YouTube or Google Video, you can use this extension to download it.
TabEffect (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4258/)
This one's really for looks, whenever you switch tabs the screen rotates around like a cube.
FireFTP (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/684/)
If you upload or download files using FTP's such as the school's (ftp://share.bcit.ca) then this extension adds FTP to the browser. This allows you to login quickly and it's faster then accessing files from websites.
MediaWrap (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1879/)
Some video extensions aren't supported by FireFox (Wmplayer, Rmplayer, QtPlayer and FlashPlayer), but MediaWrap let's you watch most videos on the browser.VideoDownloader (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/)
Some sites don't let you download the videos you're watching, like YouTube or Google Video, you can use this extension to download it.
TabEffect (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/4258/)
This one's really for looks, whenever you switch tabs the screen rotates around like a cube.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Google Docs & Spreadsheets
Google's new Docs & Spreadsheet (http://docs.google.com/) is pretty impressive.
It does pretty much everything that Microsoft's Word and Excel does, you can even export your files so that they're compatible with Office.
Google Documents does everything word does except the extras like Table of contents. There's an auto spell check, options to insert objects, and word counts. There's also an option to edit the document in HTML mode for web site users.
Google Documents does not have a thesaurus though, and it also doesn't have an option for footers so you can't really label page numbers.
The formulas in the Spreadsheet program include the basics from sum to average, and even includes the financial formulas like NPV and Nominal. The spreadsheet can merge cells and it can add additional sheets.
One drawback is when you type in a formula you can't navigate with the arrow keys after, you basically have to select either with the mouse or typing. You can navigate around with the arrow keys when you're not in the middle of the formula though. Also there is no option to create a pivot table, but who uses pivot tables? One big problem I saw was that I couldn't find a charts option, or maybe I just don't see the option.
All in all Google Docs & Spreadsheets is great program, it does everything I need it to do and then some. Great alternative to the costly Microsoft Office, and as long as you have internet access, you can use it anywhere.
It does pretty much everything that Microsoft's Word and Excel does, you can even export your files so that they're compatible with Office.
Google Documents does everything word does except the extras like Table of contents. There's an auto spell check, options to insert objects, and word counts. There's also an option to edit the document in HTML mode for web site users.
Google Documents does not have a thesaurus though, and it also doesn't have an option for footers so you can't really label page numbers.The formulas in the Spreadsheet program include the basics from sum to average, and even includes the financial formulas like NPV and Nominal. The spreadsheet can merge cells and it can add additional sheets.
One drawback is when you type in a formula you can't navigate with the arrow keys after, you basically have to select either with the mouse or typing. You can navigate around with the arrow keys when you're not in the middle of the formula though. Also there is no option to create a pivot table, but who uses pivot tables? One big problem I saw was that I couldn't find a charts option, or maybe I just don't see the option.All in all Google Docs & Spreadsheets is great program, it does everything I need it to do and then some. Great alternative to the costly Microsoft Office, and as long as you have internet access, you can use it anywhere.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Sample Cash Flow
This is a sample cash flow I made for my Financial Planning class, it's not quite finished yet. I tried not to hard code anything, but it couldn't be helped without getting complicated. Some of the numbers used were ball park estimates (Hydro and Sewage) while others were researched numbers based on the information given (mortgage).
This cash flow shows the cash inflows and outflows of a couple who plan to purchase their first house, have two children, pay for their education, and retire all in the next 15 years.
The cash flow isn't done yet, it's just the bare bones right now. The expenses and investments will have to be changed in order to meet their goals.
This is part of the financial planning project that will be presented on May 2nd at BCIT.
Any feedback is appreciated.
This cash flow shows the cash inflows and outflows of a couple who plan to purchase their first house, have two children, pay for their education, and retire all in the next 15 years.
The cash flow isn't done yet, it's just the bare bones right now. The expenses and investments will have to be changed in order to meet their goals.
This is part of the financial planning project that will be presented on May 2nd at BCIT.
Any feedback is appreciated.
Roller Hockey Team Needed
Looking to play in the Vancouver Inline Hockey League (http://www.vihl.net/index.php).
Haven't played hockey in a year and haven't played competitive roller hockey before, so I'm looking to join the "Bronze League." I'll play any position. I'm a defensive minded forward, I can play stay at home defense, or I can jump in on the play. I have an above average wrist shot, decent speed, and good hockey sense.
I'm like Martin Gelinas or Cliff Ronning, I'll even sit on my stick and slide around like Ronning (can't find picture).
Haven't played hockey in a year and haven't played competitive roller hockey before, so I'm looking to join the "Bronze League." I'll play any position. I'm a defensive minded forward, I can play stay at home defense, or I can jump in on the play. I have an above average wrist shot, decent speed, and good hockey sense.
I'm like Martin Gelinas or Cliff Ronning, I'll even sit on my stick and slide around like Ronning (can't find picture).
Bond Loop
Issuing and purchasing bonds to make an infinite amount of money
Hypothetical numbers
Issue: 3% coupon, $1,000,000 face value, 20 year bond (annual payments)
Purchase: 5% coupon, $1,000,000 face value, 20 year bond
Annual Interest Expense on issue = 1,000,000 x 3% = $30,000
Annual Interest Receivable = 1,000,000 x 5% = $50,000
Profit = $50,000 - $30,000 = $20,000
Highly leveraged, but if you choose higher rated bonds, the default risk would be low.
Hypothetical numbers
Issue: 3% coupon, $1,000,000 face value, 20 year bond (annual payments)
Purchase: 5% coupon, $1,000,000 face value, 20 year bond
Annual Interest Expense on issue = 1,000,000 x 3% = $30,000
Annual Interest Receivable = 1,000,000 x 5% = $50,000
Profit = $50,000 - $30,000 = $20,000
Highly leveraged, but if you choose higher rated bonds, the default risk would be low.
Using Gmail to store files
If you have a Gmail account (www.gmail.com) then you have ~2.8GB of storage space free. Here's how to use it:
1) Download the Gmail drive extension (http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm), this creates another drive on your computer
2) Drag and drop the files you want to store into the Gmail drive
3) You'll get an email to yourself with the file attached
1) Download the Gmail drive extension (http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm), this creates another drive on your computer
2) Drag and drop the files you want to store into the Gmail drive
3) You'll get an email to yourself with the file attached
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