Copyright (c) 2010 Suzy Vanstrusen Consumers are being advised by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to avoid dealing with illegal credit repair companies when it comes to repairing their credit. One way of avoiding fraud and rip-offs is to know the signs if false credit repair agencies. What are these signs? Upfront payment. A legal credit repair or credit counselling agency will never ask for an advanced payment prior to providing service since that is an infringement of the laws and regulations stipulated in the Credit Repair Organizations Act. Advises you to lie or use false information. If your credit counselor recommends that you violate the law, then this is a sure sign that you are dealing with a fake agency. For example, you may be advised to use a different Social Security Number or replace your SSN with your EIN (Employer Identification Number) to switch your credit identity. Keep…

The United States stock market is the largest in the world, but certainly not the only important one. Much of the world’s economic activity, and many of its public companies that pay stock dividends, are traded in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. The greatest growth potential lies in the developing world. If U.S. investors restrict their portfolios to Wall Street they cannot profit from the rest of the world. However, it’s not easy for the average small investor to invest in companies listed in London and Tokyo, let alone Brazil and China. If investors want to receive dividends from companies around the world, it’s difficult just to find the best ones. However, four exchange traded funds (ETFs) now make this simple and easy for U.S. investors. The first is PowerShares International Dividend Achievers Portfolio: PID. PID tracks the Mergent International Dividend Achievers Index. This is…

Municipal bonds are issued by local city and county governments to raise money. They may fund libraries, schools, highway improvements, or sports stadiums. Some municipal bonds are general obligation (GO) bonds. This means that the issuing government is free to use the money as it sees fit, whether to buy a new police cars or pay janitors at the county hospital. Other municipal bonds can be used only for a specific purpose. For instance a county could use the funds to build a toll road. The tolls collected from motorists is used to repay bond owners. Some consider GO bonds safer because the government can pay the required interest out of any money collected, whether taxes or speeding ticket fines. Some consider the other bonds safer. That’s because a municipality’s toll booth may continue to make money even as its property tax base goes downhill. Historically, municipal bonds have low…

One area of the economy is so basic that it’s often overlooked by investors. However, we all use its products every day of our lives. Demand for them slows down during bad economic periods but never stops. Furthermore, they are legal monopolies. And their profit margins are guaranteed by local and state governments. For all those reasons utility stocks have traditionally been considered so safe they’re most appropriate for widows and orphans who have no other source of income. When investors think of “growth,” they never consider utilities. However, the demand for electricity, natural gas and water grows at least as fast as the population. The invention and spread of high tech gadgets from PCs to big screen TVs has fueled a tremendous surge in the use of electricity. Utility companies do have disadvantages for investors. They’re capital-intensive. And the same regulatory agencies that guarantee their profit margins…

Utility companies provide services so basic that we tend to take them for granted: electricity, natural gas, and water. It’s only a slight exaggeration to write that civilization as we know it in the modern world depends on them. People in the developed world outside the United States also need large quantities of energy and clean water. And just as in the U.S., utility companies are making lots of money by providing those services. Demand for them may go down during bad economic times, but it will never stop as long as people remain alive. Many experts believe that in the near future electricity will be a resource more in demand than oil. Building new coal and nuclear power plants is a top priority in China. Now ordinary U.S. investors can simply and easily profit from investing in utility companies outside the United States. The S&P Global Utilities…

Bonds can be set to mature in a wide range of time, from a few months to one hundred years. Bonds that last under one year are short-term bonds. They are safest but, because of that, have the lowest coupon rates. Bonds that mature in longer than ten years are long-term. They pay the highest interest rates but have the greatest risks. Sometime over the next decade, interest rates can go much higher, bringing the bond’s value down. And of course in over ten years there’s a greater risk a company may go from financially successful to bankruptcy. Therefore intermediate-term bonds that mature in one to ten years are generally considered the best possible trade-off between yield and risk. Because corporations have no authority to tax people, corporate bonds are considered riskier than federal and municipal bonds. Therefore they must pay higher interest rates than governments…