Whenever we flip over the calendar from December to January, the media is full of stories that look back at the previous year or longer. As I was scanning the financial news in the first few days of January, I noticed several stories ballyhooing how the Dow Jones Industrials were up an average of about 10 percent over the last five years. That’s fine, but at Evoque Lending we do that well and better every day for our investors, and there are none of those nasty slides along the way. When an investor holds an index fund, for example, and needs to get out on a...
Wouldn’t it be great if during your yearly physical your doctor would examine you as closely as your bank does when you apply for a mortgage? The actual time our doctors spend examining us can usually be measured in minutes. It takes weeks – if not months – for banks to finish probing all the details of our lives. They want to see every shred of paper we have that relates to our finances. We have to bring in pay stubs, leases, old tax forms – anything that has a dollar sign on it somewhere. They go online and pull reports on us. They leave no stone unturned,...
There aren’t too many endeavors in life where totally opposite strategies can be equally as sound. But consider these two approaches to real estate investing: You can buy your home, live in it for decades, raise your family, and end up with a piece of real estate that has greatly appreciated in value over the years. And during those years when its value is increasing, you’re busy enjoying your life. When the time is right, if you want, you can cash in on that value. In the second approach, you purchase a property that needs a little work. You fix it up and...
If you don’t know who Charles Payne is, you need to check him out. He has a financial advice show each weekday on the Fox Business channel. I like him because he has the ability to clarify finances and the economy in ways that often teach people how they can improve their own situations. Recently he put a few facts in perspective and shared some income information that most of us have probably never heard before. Check out these statistics that reflect income growth over the last 20 years: Income for the lowest 20 percent of earners has gone up 215 percent....
