business investment loss

3 Factors which determine your investment strategy

You may be wondering what is the right investment strategy for you, but without knowing anything about you, any advice on which investments are right for you may in fact be the wrong ones. There are basically three factors that determine which are the right investments for you, they are:

1. Your age

2. Purpose for the money

3. Your risk profile

Starting with your age. It would be rather silly of you to invest all your money in growth funds if you are aged 65 because if the market takes a dive such as was the case during the 1987 sharemarket crash and to a lesser extent, the Global Financial Crisis during the early 2000s you have less time to recover from these setbacks whereas the young ones have time on their side.

The purpose for the money is the second factor.

Decide whether you require the money in the short-term, medium-term, or long-term.

Short-term would be up to a year.

Medium-term is 1-5 years

Long-term is longer than five years

Short term expenses would be, a bank account for emergencies, a holiday within a year, dental expenses, or t pay for the kids schooling for a year.

Medium-term would be savings for a car.

Long term would be your retirement fund, saving for a house deposit, or saving for the trip of a lifetime.

Your risk profile is a determining factor in where you invest your money. If the thought of the sharemarket taking a dive will give you sleepless nights then investing growth stocks in the sharemarket is not for you. A better option would be managed funds where you will be given a choice between growth, balanced, and conservative funds.

It is important not to get into debt for there is a cost to debt and that is interest. Interest adds to the cost of goods bought with borrowed money, and this adds up to a fortune during a lifetime of borrowing for consumables. This is called bad debt because the value of the item declines over time.

There is such a thing as good debt though and this is your first home because the value of the property increases during the lifetime of the loan but even this is not always a good option for some people if you live a kind of transient lifestyle.

“Everyone is to their own,” so only you know what makes you tick so your personal circumstances are the determining factors which govern where best to invest your savings.

You must do your homework before you invest in anything, whether that is the sharemarket, managed funds, or gold. There is so much information available on just about everything, and that includes finance. It is just a matter of learning the ropes and having a financial strategy which suits your personal circumstances.

The financial crisis has had at least one interesting side effect: the rise of alternative and increasingly creative forms of financing. During the economic recession, and continuing to today, credit and other traditional forms of start up financing became more difficult to obtain. As a result, entrepreneurs began looking to newer, less-traditional forms of raising capital that cut out the financial intermediaries (banks, for instance) that are typically present in the process.

Peer-to-peer (also known as person-to-person or P2P) lending is a process of borrowing directly from individuals; in most instances, the lender and the borrower never meet. There are a variety of ways this happens, but generally, the process is relatively simple: The borrower registers on one of the many peer-to-peer web sites and is then matched up with a number of lenders who are interested in investing based on the borrower and the interest rate, among other things.

The P2P industry has been growing rapidly over the past few years: In 2005, there was $118 million in outstanding P2P loans; by 2011, that number had reached more than $500 million. P2P web sites make a profit by charging the borrowers an interest rate (usually 2 to 5 percent) on top of what the lenders require. The overall success rate of getting a loan through a P2P process is about 10 percent. Microfinancing has become more popular recently because new ventures are requiring less financing than in previous years.

In the same vein, one creative funding source that has evolved in recent years is crowdfunding. Crowdfunding (or crowd financing), like P2P, involves getting individuals to pool their resources to finance a project without a typical financial intermediary. Unlike P2P, however, the lenders (also known as (“crowdfunders”) often do not engage in crowdfunding strictly for financial gain. In fact, the “lenders” often actually act more like donors. In a typical transaction, an entrepreneur can go onto a crowdfunding web site, propose the amount needed for the project, and, if the amount pledged is met crowdfunders, receive the funds. Usually, the crowdfunders receive something in return, like a product from the business (a DVD or CD from the film or album produced, for instance) but not their money back, if the project is funded, so the funds are not donations in the strict sense. In fact, studies show that for the majority of backers, the reward is the main motivator of their monetary pledge. Crowdfunding sites generally make a profit by taking a small percentage (about 5 percent) from the projects funded before the money goes to the entrepreneur.