Posts by ssolares

Here’s a little story. It’s a story of two seemingly different brothers who share a common job. Cornelius was a rather astute and precocious child. He was a hard worker. Very analytical and Type A. He had to be right, so he spent hours and hours in his room researching and learning. He got a…

Imagine you are an apple farmer, and you have a bunch of acres and thousands of apple trees. Side note, have you had a Honeycrisp apple?! These things are amazing. I should know; I’m from Washington State, the land of angst-filled musicians, rain, and apples. In your apple orchard, you have different types of apple…

You may hear news commentators say, “The action on Wall Street today was strong, blah, blah, blah.” What do they mean by Wall Street? Wall Street refers to the financial and investment community. In fact, there was a movie way back in the 1980s called Wall Street, and it was about the stock market (side…

Okay, so what in the world are they talking about when they call the stock market a bull or a bear? Bulls and bears? You’ll hear this a lot, so you should know what it means. A bull market is a stock market going up in value, and not just for the day, but over…

What Do They Mean When They Say “The Market Was Up Today”? You might hear it on the radio, in a news broadcast, or read it online. The stock market used to be this esoteric industry that only a few people were a part of and even fewer knew anything about. But then, as more…

Are you familiar with the dating app Tinder? It lets you view photos of people and slide their photo left or right, depending on if you like them or not. So how is the stock market like Tinder? For both, you have a large group of people coming together and they are all evaluating a…

Your Get Money Smart education would not be complete if we didn’t talk briefly about this next type of investment. Good news! In the last lesson, you learned not only about mutual funds, but you also learned about exchange traded funds, or ETFs, as they are called. ETFs are a little different from mutual funds,…

You will hear about different types of investments, things like individual stocks or bonds, mutual funds, exchange traded funds, REITs, and even limited partnerships. They are all a slightly different, so it makes sense to have a little understanding of what these are and how they work. Let’s start at the beginning. What’s an individual…

Let’s think about stocks and bonds in terms of a relationship. Stocks are like your boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse. You are connected with them. Their success is your success. If they get a promotion, you celebrate and reap the rewards. If they come home and tell you they’ve been fired, that has real repercussions for you.…

What are better, stocks or bonds? It’s kind of like asking, “What’s better, chocolate or vanilla ice cream?” Both are great for different reasons. First, why stocks? Well, stocks are ownership. This means if the company sells a lot of stuff, expands into different countries, and makes a lot of money, you get to go…