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| Free From Broke Offers Personal Finance Information for Regular Folks - YAHOO! Posted: 27 Sep 2010 08:45 AM PDT Free From Broke is the place to go to read up on personal finance information. (PRWEB) September 27, 2010 -- Free From Broke offers up personal finance advice for the masses. Need to know about online savings accounts? This is the place to go! Want to learn some basics about investing or retirement? Free From Broke has it. Confused about a piece of legislation such as the CARD Act of 2009? Free From Broke can help you understand it. Free From Broke was founded in late 2007 as a means of discussing what worked in personal finance for the creator of the site, Craig Brokowski. Being in debt himself, he looked and researched to find what he was doing wrong and how he can fix it so that he could live a better life, free from the stress of debt. He's been passing on that information since. Craig's writing has been featured in such places as ING Direct and Perkstreet's banking blogs as well as investing site InvestorGuide. Free From Broke has recently gone to a five-day-a-week publishing schedule to make sure the topics that readers need to know about are covered. The goal is to help people understand their finances and keep themselves...wait for it...Free From Broke! So if you want to find out how you can better your personal finances or you want to find out about a new financial product, make sure you make Free From Broke - http://freefrombroke.com/ - one of the first stops for information. # # # Free From Broke This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Personal Finance: Dividends will deliver a payoff - Philadelphia Daily News Posted: 27 Sep 2010 12:02 AM PDT Posted on Sun, Sep. 26, 2010 As investors shy away from stocks, financial advisers are trying to give them courage by extolling the virtues of dividend-paying shares. The story line: Dividends pay you while you wait for the stock market to cooperate. Your stock might not climb in value for some time. It may plunge with the rest of the market if the economy dips back into a recession, investors panic about something, or flash crashes play their dastardly deeds. But if you have a solid company with a record of paying dividends for years, you can take advantage of a dividend yield comparable to current bond interest. And when this horrible stock market phase ends, your stock, if solid, should climb and provide larger gains than bonds. The challenge of finding that stock is not always easy. What can investors do if they like the promise of dividends but cannot trust themselves to pick one or a handful of these seemingly reliable moneymakers? Consider a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund focused on dividend-paying stocks. But be aware that all are not created equal.
Trade-offInvestors who seek high yields might veer toward the iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index. But realize the trade-off: The fund gets high yields, said Morningstar Inc. analyst Michael Rawson, by finding the highest-yielding stocks. Those often are companies that have been in an unpopular industry or had operating or financial problems. So the stock price has fallen, causing yields to pop up. The iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index underperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 and many other dividend funds after 2007 because it was heavily invested in financial stocks, which often pay a high dividend, Rawson noted. It has switched from financials, and the portfolio recently contained 28.5 percent utilities and 12 percent financials. If you are worried about financials, you might like this. But Rawson said that with the popularity of utilities lately, financial companies have more upside. If you cannot stomach financials, consider the WisdomTree Dividend ex-Financials Fund. Guessing sectors is tough. With time, unpopular sectors climb, and the most popular decline. Since getting the timing right is tough, financial advisers often want diverse exposure.
No guessingFor the person who does not want to guess on sectors, there is the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation fund. It is heavily reliant on such stalwarts as Procter & Gamble Co., McDonald's Corp., and Exxon Mobil Corp. When you hear people talking about blue-chip dividend payers, they are here. That, of course, means lower yields, but perhaps more predictability. Another approach comes from the SPDR Dividend fund. It picks smaller companies, too, but to add assurance, Rawson said, it screens for companies that have consistently raised dividends, delivered growth, and been resilient in rough cycles. Still, investors must realize that even stellar companies fall in downturns. Despite Vanguard Dividend's relatively solid performance, the fund lost 26.6 percent in 2008 - much better than the 38 percent market decline, but a loss nonetheless. This year the fund is up 2.5 percent, while the stock market is up less than a half-percent. For the near future, dividend-paying stocks could be vulnerable if tax laws change. The key for investors worried about the effect of higher taxes: Put dividend-paying stocks and funds in IRAs, not taxable accounts. To get a diversified portfolio, investors could focus on solid U.S. dividend-paying stocks and also an international fund such as the WisdomTree International LargeCap Dividend. Another way: Pick a fund manager who will eye stocks constantly. Some worthy of consideration, Morningstar research director Russell Kinnel says: First Eagle Overseas, Vanguard Equity-Income, American Century Equity Income, Vanguard Dividend Growth, Vanguard Global Equity, and Artisan Global Value Fund.
Gail MarksJarvis is a personal-finance columnist for the Chicago Tribune. E-mail her at gmarksjarvis@tribune.com.
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