Although no one knows when equipment leasing first began, archeological evidence suggests it has been around for at least four millennia. The evidence also closely ties equipment leasing’s origin to early agricultural development. Archeologists uncovered some of the first tangible signs of personal property leasing in the ruins of Ur, an ancient Sumerian city (in ancient Iraq). Clay tablets discovered by archeologists indicate that around 2000 B.C., Sumerian priests leased farm implements, land, water rights, and livestock to farmers.

Apparently, leasing was also used by the Babylonians in the fertile valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Ancient Babylonian kingdoms authorized farmers to lease farm equipment, oxen and land. Archeological finds reveal the importance of leasing to the most prominent Babylonian king, Hammurabi, who codified leasing regulations during his rule (around 1750 B.C.).

Around 450 B.C., just south of Babylon, the wealthy Murashu family started a bank and leasing house that helped Persian farmers acquire land and farm equipment. Their firm became one of the best known financial services providers to Persian farmers and land holders at the time.

In other ancient civilizations, leasing proved viable for acquiring the tools, land, and livestock to support agricultural pursuits. There are indications that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans employed leasing for this purpose.

In addition to its role in advancing agriculture during ancient times, leasing played a significant role in sea transportation and military endeavors. The ancient Phoenicians, known for their prowess and expertise in shipping and trade, employed ship charters that bear close resemblance to the modern lease. Many short-term charters that conveyed the use of ships and their crews resembled the operating leases used today. Some long-term charters were written for periods covering the estimated economic life of the vessels. These contracts often conveyed the use, benefits, and obligations associated with ship ownership. In many cases, these arrangements presented some of the same negotiating issues that face modern day lessees and lease providers.

Several important military campaigns illustrate the early military uses of equipment leasing. For example, the Norwegians and Normans used forms of lease financing to secure the ships, equipment and crews necessary to launched their invasion of England in 1066 A.D. During a later period, knights leased their armor for battle. In 1248, Bonfils Manganella of Gaeta leased a suit of armor used during the Seventh Crusade, paying a rental that was close to 25% of the armor’s original value.

For centuries, personal property leasing was not recognized in England under their common law. As a result of the rising popularity of equipment leasing, personal property leasing regulations were included in the Statute of Wales of 1284. Over time, a few Englishmen began to use leasing as a means to secretly acquire property — with the intent of defrauding creditors. At the time, many creditors based their credit decisions on the value of property in the borrowers’ possession. In 1571, England passed an act that prohibited such fraudulent property transfers while preserving the ability to use leasing for legitimate purposes and for reasonable consideration.

By the early 1800s, both the amount and variety of equipment being leased in the United Kingdom had increased. The expansion of agriculture, manufacturing and transportation led to more widespread use of this form of financing. In particular, the expansion of railroads accelerated equipment leasing’s growth. Many early railroad companies struggled financially to construct their tracks, relying on tolls for track use to generate income. This development presented an opportunity for enterprising entrepreneurs to separately acquire and lease railcars to the rail companies and independent shippers.

Equipment leasing continued to play an important role in England and other parts of Europe as the agricultural, manufacturing and transportation industries expanded. It also began to take root in the U.S. as these same industries grew. Although the first equipment leasing transactions in the U.S. involved horses, buggies, and wagons, leasing also gained popularity with the expansion of U.S. railroads. As the rail companies expanded and equipment leasing began to branch out into the manufacturing segments, the U.S. started its transition into the modern era of leasing.

Posted in Finance | No Comments »

Using your Roth IRA for real estate purposes allows you to take advantage of compounding interest in a tax-free environment. If you are already investing in real estate, you should know that you can increase your profits by thousands of dollars, simply by using the funds in your Roth IRA for real estate investments, rather than using your other personal assets. Here’s a look at how it works.

First, let’s look at a few basic facts. In a standard savings account, you earn simple interest. You make deposits. The bank pays you interest at whatever rate they are currently offering. If you leave the interest that you earned in the bank, the interest earns interest. This is called compounding interest.

With a standard savings account, you pay income taxes on your earned interest. If you make good investments throughout the year, you pay capital gains taxes on your profits. The more you earn, the more you pay. It can be really frustrating at tax time.

But, if you use funds from your Roth IRA for real estate or other investments, you do not pay capital gains taxes. The interest earned is non-taxable. You paid income taxes on the amount that you originally contributed and that’s all the taxes that you will ever pay. What follows are a few real world examples of how much this can mean to you.

Let’s say that for thirty years, you put $2000 per year into a Roth IRA. With an annual return of 10%, your account balance would be $400,275. If instead, you put that money in your standard savings account, you balance would be around $227,000, because of federal, state and local income taxes.

But, you probably already understand the tax advantages of the IRA. You are more interested in the advantages of using your Roth IRA for real estate purposes. Read on.

An investor from the DC area decided to use his Roth IRA for rehabbing. He found a property that he was able to purchase for $24,000. He instructed his account custodian to purchase the property on behalf of his IRA. The funds needed for repairs and remodeling were paid out of the IRA.

The rental income and eventually the profits from reselling flowed directly back into his Roth account. When all was said and done, the account profited $93,500, in a little less than two years. If he had used personal funds, rather than his Roth IRA for real estate purposes in this deal, he would have paid capital gains and state taxes that would have left him with less than $72,000, a difference of over $20,000…just in taxes!

Now, there are several things that you will need in order to use your Roth IRA for real estate purposes. First, your account must be self-directed. Most people understand that. In accounts that are not self-directed, the trustee makes safe traditional investments, stock markets, mutual funds, CDs, etc. on behalf of the account holder. At this time, no one will do deals with an account that is not self-directed. It’s too complicated and too risky, if you don’t know what you are doing.

Then, you will have to find a custodian that allows you to use your self-directed Roth IRA for real estate investments. You might find that kind of shocking. If an account is self-directed, you should be able to make any kind of investment that you want…right? Even custodians of self-directed accounts rarely offer their clients the option of investing in real estate.

Equity Trust is a good company that allows you to use your Roth IRA for real estate purposes. They can’t help you find the right deals, but there are experienced investors that can. If you get a little help from the right people, you will have the money that you need for the retirement that you want and probably in less time than you thought possible.

Posted in Finance | No Comments »

Prepare to be shocked.

When you discover the biggest stock market secret of all, it could undermine everything you believe about trading in stocks. It could also completely turn your trading around by removing the “gambling” element almost entirely, and turning your losses into profits overnight.

Whether you’re currently an active investor or not, you’ll know the basics of how most people play the stock market. It can be summed up in two words.

Buy. Pray.

You might laugh, but you know it’s true!

They get a ‘hot tip’ from a newspaper, a tip sheet, a guy in a bar, wherever, and they go ahead and buy the stock. Then, they wait and hope and pray that it goes up, and IF it does, they sell and collect a profit.

It’s not exactly what you’d call a strategy, now is it?

There are, of course, a lot of traders out there who are using much cleverer strategies than “Buy and Pray”. They might use charts and technical analysis and work their trades on moving averages, Fibonacci lines, Bollinger bands and so on. They might go short occasionally to profit from an expected downward move, but the “gambling” element is still there - decide which direction the stock is likely to move in, and take a position on that basis.

If you’re right, fantastic! If you’re wrong, it’s more of your trading capital down the tubes, and back to the drawing board for the next trade.

Why do people trade this way?

Well, I’ve done quite an in-depth study of this, and here’s what I’ve found. Most people trade a direction because they think they’re right (of course!) and because they don’t know any other way of trading.

Even more fundamentally, though, there is an underlying belief that says,

“There are people in the world who can accurately and consistently predict the direction of any given stock or market. If I work at it hard enough, I’ll eventually become one of them.”

(And the nagging question here, of course, is whether “eventually” will come around before the trading capital runs out!)

So here’s the biggest stock market secret…

NO ONE has the ability to accurately and consistently predict the direction of any given stock or market, and so it doesn’t matter how long you trade for, you’ll NEVER attain this ability!

I did warn you, didn’t I? You might want to re-read that a couple of times, just to let it sink in.

And then you’ll find a question emerging from the gloom - So, now what??

Well, if no one can predict the direction of the market, how to those ‘in the know’ trade? The answer is perhaps the second-biggest stock market secret.

The reality is, the “smart money” does NOT trade the direction of the market. The “smart money” trades only in situations where a big move is likely - and the “smart money” doesn’t care which direction that move takes, because they’re positioned to make a profit whether the stock falls or rises!

Again, may I suggest you re-read that paragraph a couple of times, too? Consistently successful traders trade to profit from big, fast moves, regardless of whether that move is up or down.

Can you learn how to follow in their footsteps? Absolutely!

Can you learn to trade in such a way that the direction of a stock becomes irrelevant, and all you care about is getting in on the Big Moves? Absolutely!

Will it take up a lot of your valuable time? Absolutely not! This form of trading is unique as it’s largely a set-and-forget strategy - and the ’setting’ takes only a few hours a month!

Once you understand this profit-either-way strategy - and I suggest you learn direct from a professional trader who does this for a living - there are only a few steps to take, once a month.

You a) check which stocks are highlighted for you; b) check for the presence of one particular indicator; c) check to see if a highlighted stock with an indicator is a definite trade on a private website; and d) place the trade (with one phone call, or through your online trading platform).

And that’s it!

You then profit if the stock moves up. And you profit if the stock moves down. And can usually bank your profits in a matter of days, as you’ll be trading on volatility here, which means large moves in a short timeframe.

You’ll only lose a little if the stock does nothing at all which, when you understand the strategy, you’ll realize is quite a rare event.

Happy trading!

Posted in Finance | No Comments »

Foreign currency exchange being the biggest financial market in the world opens up wide opportunities for small retailers to make huge profits by investing a small amount of money. Though it is widely accepted that you can earn unimaginable profits with currency exchange, not all retailers are reaping higher profits. Many people were able to generate only little money in return of their investment. While opportunities are available to taste higher profits you must know how to exploit them.

The Foreign Currency Exchange is a steady industry that undergoes changes due to the variations in the currency conversion rates. You have to learn from the experience of others. When you try to learn everything out of your trading you will not really know how others are making profits.

To succeed you have to constantly follow the market. Start and stop your trade based on the market information. Never wait for the value of the currency to increase to your expected value. Just go with the market.

• Follow stop loss condition when you trade. Never start trading when there is liquidity lacks.

• Follow separate trading systems for the up markets and the down markets. Don’t just follow one trading strategy. Device your strategy based on the market conditions.

• Always follow the instructions your mind says. When you feel that something is wrong with the trade don’t make the trade.

• Always have an ear for the rumors in the market. Buy currencies when you hear the rumor and sell currencies when you hear the fact.

• Don’t start trade as and when the market starts. Start trading after the market has opened wide and finish your trade well before the closing of the market.

• When you see that the some currency is overbought then stop your trade. You don’t follow exactly what others are doing. When something goes beyond the limits then it will surely come down. With varying currency conversion rates, nothing is going to be stable.

• When you missed your opportunity of trading at a particular point of time, don’t worry about it. You will always have opportunities in currency exchange. Always have a futuristic approach.

• Don’t be overconfident that all your predictions are 100% correct. The entire foreign currency exchange industry runs on speculation and you cannot always say you will do everything right. Expect the unexpected to happen.

• When you have strong liquidation, be confident to take risks. With the currency exchange, you must be ready to take risks to make huge profits. At the same time be careful with the amount of money you are risking. Don’t risk your entire investment.

• When you are loosing your trades, it is better to take a break for some time and then start another trade. If you face consecutive losses, then it is better to stop the trade for the day. You have opportunities all the time. When you are winning your trades don’t stop, just go on with other trades.

• Don’t measure your success from the profit made from one trade. Measure the profit at the end of the day. When you are seriously into currency exchange, you should calculate profit after two or three days.

• Don’t have the goal to win every trade you make. You will face loses. Your ultimate aim should be to make profit and money.

• Keep studying the market. You have to search for facts and other websites to know more about the market trend. Follow the market trend. Keep yourself updated. Don’t ask others’ opinion about your trade. You follow your own strategy but study what others are doing. The secret to success in this currency exchange industry is to work hard s with any business.

Mansi Aggarwal Highly Recommends that you visit http://www.TorFx.Com for more information on Foreign Exchange And Foreign Currency.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mansi_Aggarwal

Posted in Finance | No Comments »

This article will first give you a brief review of the pros and cons of Peter Bain Forex Mentor. Next, I will also share with you 3 tips to make full use of the course so as to get the most benefit out of your investment. This is because I realized that there are a number of people who invested in Forex Mentor but did not really utilize their membership to the fullest.

Pros:

Perhaps, the number one selling point of Forex Mentor is that it is created by Peter Bain, who is a very well known Internet Forex coach and mentor. He is also a very successful trader in his own rights.

As far as the product is concern, it is one of the most comprehensive Forex trading courses available on the internet, with more than 100 hours worth of materials. Next, you will also have continuous training and mentoring for up to 6 months.

Cons:

Sometimes, being too comprehensive may be a disadvantage instead, depending on how you look at it. With tons of material to digest, do not expect to go through all the materials in one seating.

Even though there is a money back guarantee, I personally feel that 30 days is a bit too short, considering the amount of time needed to go through all the materials.

You may also find some part of the course slightly disorganized and rather repetitive. Though the latter may be beneficial as you learn better through repetition.

Another point to take note is that you may see testimonials that say, “Earn back money within 2 weeks”. Do take note that these are special cases. Most people need more time to go through the course in order to master the fundamentals before they really start to generate a consistent profit.

How to make full use of Peter Bain Forex Mentor

1) As there are tons of materials available, you should try to allocate at least one to two hours per day to go through the materials. I know this may seem obvious but the point I want to drive across is, if you don’t allocate a time slot, you are probably not going to study the course.

2) Open a demo account with any platform of your choice. There is no point absorbing so much information without testing them. A demo account allows you to experience real market condition without risking your own cash. You will then be able to test whether the materials work.

3) Ask lots of question. Peter Bain Forex Mentor course comes with a 6 months AM review. Perhaps you thought you have done everything correctly with your demo account, but you still lost your trade. Then you should take this opportunity to ask Peter Bain what has went wrong. Learning from your mistakes will reinforce your understanding. It is surprising that many people who bought the course did not take advantage of this component of the membership.

To read more reviews and get more tips on Forex courses and Forex software, visit http://www.squidoo.com/forex_courses

Darren Tang finds Forex extremely exciting.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Darren_Tang

Posted in Finance | No Comments »

Are you tired of living month to month, paycheck to paycheck? Do all of your financed purchases pale in light of the debt you obtained to acquire them?

How would you like to learn how to go about transforming debt into wealth? It can be done, with discipline, a change in habits, and a solid plan.

First, discipline. You need to decide for sure that this is what you want to do. You don’t want to be a slave to debt any more.

You want to tell your money what to do for you, rather than having your debt tell you where to put your money. Remind yourself of these things, and it will be much easier to maintain your self discipline in eliminating debt and becoming truly wealthy.

Second, habits. This is a biggie. This is where your friends and family and society in general will think you are completely off your rocker.

You have to stop spending money you don’t have. This means no credit card purchases (cut those suckers up!), no financing automobiles, and no personal loans.

You’ll find on your journey of transforming debt into wealth that the truly wealthy don’t use these things.

You can do this, and if you do this for some time, not purchasing anything that isn’t a strict need or specifically allotted for on your budget, in a few short years, you will have the CASH to buy what you want and need, and you will wonder why you ever thought you had to have credit in the first place.

Third, a plan. Your plan is key. Going straight to cash is step number one. (Did you cut up those cards yet?)

Step two is working out a budget. The budget is a comprehensive listing of every single category in which you spend money, spelled out at the beginning of a pay period, before you spend a dime.

You need to tell your money where to go, not the other way around. Pay your bills, and put money in savings to save up for annual expenses like car tags and homeowner’s association dues.

Put all spending money in envelopes, labeled for their purpose. (e.g., groceries and personal care products, gasoline, gifts, eating out, medical, etc.)

And now you’re on your way to transforming debt into wealth. Get rid of the debt, and you’ll have your wealth!

Join our free support community for people who are working to get out of debt and build wealth at Debt Free Weirdos It’s weird to be Debt Free, start being weird today!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brittany_Shawnee

Posted in Finance | No Comments »

Okay, so most of us (that is the middle-class folks) probably won’t retire as filthy rich millionaires. But what if you were told there were easy and simple things you could do now that would enable you to pay off your debts and begin building a sizable savings account? Ways that would allow you to live comfortably with virtually no financial worries or struggles? Yes, no doubt this all sounds like the beginning of a money scheme to many of you, but chances are you have heard of some, if not all, of the following tips that can and will help you reach financial freedom. The question is, do you actually do any of them?

Credit Cards = Flushing Money Down the Toilet
Pay off those credit cards! There is virtually no greater waste of money than the interest paid on credit cards (especially those with rates that exceed 10%). While credit card debt can seem overwhelming, all you need is a little bit of organization and financial discipline to get them paid down. Gather all your cards and find out the current balance and interest rate for each one. Begin paying the one with the highest interest off first. Pay more than the minimum otherwise you’re really only paying interest fees each month. Once you have the first one paid off, begin paying down the card with the next highest interest rate, and then the next, until they are all paid off. If you can, do a balance transfer to a card with lower interest. Avoid putting more money on the card as you are making payments on it; you’ll never pay down the balance.

No More Coffee Stops!
Gasp! Don’t freak out…this is not to say you need to stop drinking coffee but buying a fancy frappuccino every morning is rather excessive. Try brewing your own coffee in the morning or designate only one or two mornings a week when you can buy a cup. Americans spend hundreds of dollars every year on coffee. Cut back on “coffee shop coffee” and you’ll be surprised by how much you can save.

Pay With Cash
If you can’t pay cash for it, don’t buy it! There are relatively few things that you should (and will have to) go into debt for. These include a house, higher education, and a practical car (the Honda, not the pricy Mercedes). But for everything else, primarily “luxury” items, avoid putting on a credit card and financing. The only exception to this is if you are qualified for 0% financing for a designated time period and you can pay off the item within that time.

Mortgages
Although a mortgage is obviously a form of debt you must incur (how many people do you know can pay cash for a home?), there are ways to pay off your mortgage much faster than the intended life of the loan (i.e. 30 years). Paying off your mortgage sooner than expected can save you literally thousands of dollars (especially if you have a high interest rate). Explore your options in terms of an early mortgage payoff plan and see what options are available to you. One such system is the Money Merge Account, which enables homeowners to pay off their mortgage in less than half the time.

Posted in Finance | No Comments »

If you are the owner of a small to medium-sized retail store (or stores), typically 75% of your investment is in inventory. In addition, except for add-on services and custom orders, nearly all sales revenue and profits are generated by your inventory. Most importantly, excess inventory can suck up all your cash, and force you to insolvency and closure.

Therefore, one of your primary goals is to maximize the return on your inventory.

The standard industry measure of how well you are accomplishing that is called “gross margin return on inventory investment,” or GMROI. GMROI is defined as:

(Sales - Cost of Goods Sold) / Average Inventory Value (at cost)

GMROI can be calculated for the whole store, for individual items, for departments, and for any arbitrary group of items.

The higher the GMROI, the more money you make for every dollar you have invested in inventory.

Retail consultants typically give the following advice:

• Calculate the GMROI of your inventory items
• Identify the items with the lowest GMROI, and those with the highest GMROI
• Look to replace the items with the lowest GMROI, with items more like those that have the highest GMROI

In principle, the above is very good advice. By focusing on the types of merchandise that yield the greatest profit, a retailer will be able to improve his cash flow and profits.

It therefore seems that all you have to do is to install a POS and inventory-management system that provides that type of information (a caveat - except for the very high end, most POS systems do NOT track average inventory, and therefore cannot compute GMROI or inventory turns at the item level).

In practice, however, the solution is not as easy as the above suggests. This is because an item’s GMROI is greatly affected by the retailer’s own actions. In many cases, to improve GMROI, what the retailer has to do is change his processes, not his merchandise!

Put it another way - no matter what you replace an item with, GMROI will remain low, if the underlying cause of the low GMROI is one of these:

• Excessive stocking of slower-moving items

If you carry the same average inventory of a slow-moving item as a fast-moving one, it will naturally have a lower GMROI. For example, we had a customer that would always purchase more of any item in one department, if his stock was down to 3 dozen of the item. For his top sellers, that represented only 1 week’s sales. But for the slower-moving ones, it would take more than a month to sell 3 dozen. Naturally, the GMROI of the slower-moving items were much less than the GMROI of the faster-selling ones.

If you can reduce your stocking level of a slow-moving item, you will increase its GMROI. That’s because your average investment will be lower. In general, you don’t have to replace merchandise with a low GMROI, if you can reduce its average inventory without reducing its sales.

• Buying overly large lots at a time

You may be buying large quantities of an item because you get a volume discount, or because the vendor convinced you to stock up on it. For example, one of our retailers was tempted by a vendor’s volume discounts. He would purchase quantities large enough to get to the discount level of much larger stores than his. Unfortunately, those orders were so large they would take over 6 months to sell. As a result, his cash flow suffered greatly, and the GMROI of those items was very low.

The good news is that you don’t have to look for replacements for items with this problem. All you need to do is exercise cash-flow discipline, and order smaller quantities more frequently. GMROI will rise proportionately, and you will find yourself with more cash.

• Extreme markdowns

You may be using an item as a “loss-leader” by pricing it at cost, or even lower. Or, the selling season may have been shorter or less pronounced than normal, and you ended up having to offer a drastic clearance sale on the seasonal items. Either one of those will cause the items to have a low measured GMROI.

Again, the good news is that you don’t have to replace the merchandise. Just ignore the apparently low GMROI - the profitability is actually higher than your calculations indicate. If you are using the item as a loss-leader, you should charge the losses to marketing. If you had offered a clearance sale on seasonal items, resolve to be more conservative next time. The point is: if you manage the item’s pricing the same way you do your other items, its GMROI will be higher, and you may not have to replace it, after all.

• Moving items to slow-moving display locations

In any store, the merchandise in some parts of the store move faster simply because of their location. Island displays, eye-level shelves, the front of the store - merchandise in those areas will sell more than the merchandise in other areas. If an item is not in those high-traffic areas, expect its sales to be lower than if the item were displayed in the high-traffic areas. That will bring GMROI lower.

Replacing those items won’t be likely to raise your sales, profits, or GMROI. Any replacement item you place in a low-traffic area will still have lower sales than if it were in the high-traffic areas.

Unfortunately, the high-traffic area of any store is limited. So, you can’t put all of your merchandise in high-traffic areas.

The solution is to keep less stock of the items you place in the low-traffic areas. By lowering average inventory in proportion to the lower sales volume, you will be able to free up cash and raise the GMROI.

As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why GMROI can be lower for some items than others. You should first try to pinpoint why the GMROI is lower, and to try ways to bring it up. Ask how to have your system calculate the “potential GMROI” of an item, which is what it will be after you make all the adjustments suggested above. You should only replace items if their “potential GMROI” is still low.

Posted in Finance, Retail | No Comments »