Buying a Car!

So its time to buy a car. You've driven your mom's car, your brother's car... So you want your own now, but you've heard a few different words for "buy". "Used", "Buy", "Lease", they all apply for cars, but which one means "Affordable" to you? Of course, there's a difference. A Used car means that someone else had the car before you. If you're OK with cleaning it up a bit or something being missing or broken (Not very likely, but some people are destructive, unfortunately.). Since someone else has owned it before you, it's going to be pretty cheap. Maybe about 10%, 20% off the previous price. Used cars are either sold back to the dealership, or they were leased and given back. Leasing only applies to new cars. It's basically renting the car for 3 years, paying a small amount of money, but you have to give it back after the 3 years, and there's a limit to how much you can drive. Once you go past the miles you're only allowed to drive, they start charging for every Mile you drive. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it really adds up depending on how much you use your car. Buying, well... You get to own the car through 1 type or payment or another. You can pay up front, hard cash (Or through a card), or pay it off over a period of time, like... a couple of years. What I would do is buy a used car, because normally, they're not that expensive, and if it was leased, it should still be in good condition.

Compound Interest and the Rule of 72

Compound Interest is an odd thing to figure out. It requires constant surveillance and calculations. Let's say you save $100 in a bank, that offers 10% interest a month. It's an absurd number, but just play along for a bit. Simple Interest would give you 10% of $100 a month, until the percent changes. So every month, you would get $10, which brings you up to $110, $120, $130... Just adding $10 every month. Compound Interest works per month at 10%, just for the example, going up to $110. Then It would take 10% of $110, which gives $11 that month, bringing you up to $121. It would continue to take 10% of the new number, which gives a little bit more than simple interest.

My Investment Strategy

My method of picking stocks to buy is pretty simple. I first check the history of the company, see how well they've been doing. If the stocks have been down for some time after a high point, it's about time they did something great. If it just went down, something just happened, so why would you buy from it, unless you want a $0.20 increase? If it's going up, buy one quick and sell it when you think it peaks (unless it's the peak, then LOL, sorry.). Of course, it's a little risky, but so is stock exchange.

Intro. to the Stock Market

• What exactly is a stock and why do companies sell stock in the first place?
• What is the difference between a public and a private company?
• What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average?
• What is a blue chip stock?
• What is the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ?
• What is a mutual fund?
• What are some of the biggest companies on the stock market, how much is their stock?
• What is the PE ratio of a stock?
• What is a stock dividend?