Stepcase Lifehack

A Few Tools to Help You Invest

2008-11-19T15:49:19Z

Online tools make just about everything easier, including investing. No matter how far you’ve gotten in your investing efforts, there’s a tool or two that can help you out. I’ve listed out a few of the tools I’ve come to rely on below — and I hope you’ll add any you use in the comments.

Google Finance

I rely on Google Finance for quite a few aspects of investing. I’m a big believer in checking out any hot stock tip myself, and Google Finance is one of the easiest ways to do just that. It’s got all the standard information about a stock, as well as one of the more up-to-date news streams for each stock. I particularly like the ability to save multiple portfolios — not only do I use Google Finance to track my own portfolio every day, I use it to keep an eye on a couple of other stocks that I either need a reminder not to buy (a lot of those hot stock tips wind up in that category) or a few investments I’m planning to make in the near future.

TreasuryDirect

Treasury securities, including bonds, have become incredibly easy to buy online. The U.S. Treasury maintains its own site — TreasuryDirect — where you can set up an account, link it to the bank account of your choice and pick up treasury bills, notes and bonds with a simple click. Even better, the interest you receive from these treasury securities is automatically deposited right back into the same bank account you used for your initial purchase. The site even includes calculators and other resources for investing in treasury securities, generally considered one of the most stable investments available.

Sharebuilder

Sharebuilder allows you to buy stocks in fractional amounts, making it much easier to invest. It’s not exactly a new concept — Direct Purchase Plans and Direct Reinvestment Plans (known as DRIPs) provide the opportunity to buy smaller portions of a company than a single share. However, most DRIPs have certain requirements that can make them harder to use: you often already need to own a certain amount of stock in a company to get started. With Sharebuilder, as long as you have money, you can buy as much — or as little — stock as you want.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

I consider the SEC’s website to be an advanced investment tool. Personally, I don’t use it all that often — but there is an amazing amount of information available if you’re willing to sift through it. All publicly traded companies are required to file a number of different documents with the SEC and almost all of those filings are available online. The system has a bit of a learning curve, but you can get annual reports, information on a company’s securities and far more without a filter of news reporting or public relations spin.

Tip’d

Tip’d is a site that recently left beta: I’ve been keeping an eye on it and, as far as keeping track of information that could affect your investments, it’s fairly useful. It’s a social media site and you can vote stories up or down. There’s a pretty wide variety of stories included on the site, but if you’re trying learn as much as you can about the market before making an investment, Tip’d is a good starting point.

Inner8

Another site that adds social elements to investing is Inner8. It’s still in beta, but this site has quite a few useful tools for investors. Site members have the opportunity to recommend specific stocks — as well as recommend against particular stock picks. You can also keep close track of any fellow investor that you feel has a particularly good grasp on investments: you can see how accurate a person’s predictions are and receive updates as soon as they make a new prediction. Inner8 also provides the standard information on specific stocks, like forecasts, trading information and news updates. This site was built by members of the team that established E*TRADE and the two sites work well together. I don’t recommend one online brokerage over another, but E*TRADE has one of the longest histories of such companies and is worth looking at when you consider such options. Ameritrade is another well-known option for trading online.

Getting Started With Investments

Between these tools and this week’s introduction to various types of investments (part 1 and part 2), you’ve got the basic information to start researching investments. While I won’t offer up any investment advice — the right investment for me may be completely wrong for you — I would say that there are plenty of opportunities out there, even though the stock market and other investments have taken a beating lately. In fact, there are a few deals out there because of the current economic crunch. Much of this information could be used to maximize your 401(k)’s or IRA’s potential, if you’ve already set up a plan for retirement savings.

You’ve got several options as far as next steps go. In general, knowing as much as you can about an investment before you actually risk your money is a good idea. However, if you aren’t interested or able to learn as much as you’d like before investing, you can always consult a professional. There are brokerages everywhere and all of them are happy to help you invest your money.

Thursday Bram is a freelance journalist of over five years experience. She studied Communications at the University of Tulsa and is currently working on her MA in Communication Design. Her work has focused primarily on entrepreneurial topics. More information about Thursday is available at thursdaybram.com.

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10 More Investments You Should Know

2008-11-17T22:21:51Z

On Tuesday, we discussed the first ten of the twenty investments everyone should have at least a passing familiarity with. We still have another ten to go, so let’s get started.

1. Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS)

While I wouldn’t recommend buying an MBS these days, it’s still an investment worth knowing. In order to be able to afford to offer mortgages, most small banks package their mortgages and sell them through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. As the housing industry works through the toxic mortgages it’s offered over the past couple of years, it’s best to avoid investing in an MBS or a collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) — the cheaper version of an MBS.

2. Municipal Bonds

Municipal bonds, often called ‘munis,’ are bonds issued by states, counties, or municipalities for capital expenditures. When you purchase a municipal bond, you’re essentially offering a loan to the local government. At first glance, most municipal bonds seem to have very low returns; however, most are exempt from federal taxes and can be exempt from state and local taxes as well. When you factor in the improved tax situations, the return on municipal bonds is significantly better.

3. Mutual Funds

Members of mutual funds lump their money together and have a mutual fund manager buy stocks. The mutual fund manager is responsible for researching stocks, making sure the fund is diversified and all the details that can make investing in stocks worrisome for first time investors. Most funds have a set goal, along with strategies for risk and return. Mutual funds are particularly popular because you can easily make monthly purchases.

4. Options (Stocks)

Options are not actually securities, unlike many investments. Instead, options are the privilege to buy or sell a particular security at a set price within a certain period of time. If, for instance, you were to buy an option to buy a stock, you would hope the share price will rise significantly; you then purchase the stock and immediately resell it — or you can resell the option. Stock options are a particularly risky investment and most brokers will require you to receive approval to trade options — the added step is an attempt to limit the number of traders with no experience or knowledge.

5. Preferred Stock

Preferred stock represents your ownership in a company, just like common stock, but most preferred shares do not confer any voting rights, unlike common stock. For most preferred stock, dividends are also often different than common stocks: you would normally receive a fixed dividend indefinitely with preferred stock. Preferred stock is treated more like a combination of stocks and bond than straight stock. The main benefit of this approach is that, in the event of a company going bankrupt, its preferred stockholders will be repaid before common stockholders.

6. Real Estate and Property

For most people, purchasing a home is the largest single investment they will ever make in their lives. Of course, real estate investments can go far beyond houses: commercial properties, undeveloped land, condos and other opportunities are all included in this category. While real estate has developed something of a bad reputation lately, it can still be a very worthwhile investment. However, it is important to remember that real estate can be one of the more expensive investments to hold, between maintenance, property taxes and related expenses.

7. Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)

If you’re interested in investing in real estate, but feel like it’s too expensive, you can still invest in REITs. These investments are traded like stocks on most major stock exchanges — they are directly invested in properties or mortgages. Compared to traditional real estate investments, REITs are far more liquid, have better tax advantages and have high yields. REITs are usually less volatile than the rest of the stock market, although lately they’ve been riskier than usual.

8. Treasury Securities

Treasury securities actually include a number of different investments, including treasury bills (short-term investments), treasury notes (medium-term) and treasury bonds (long-term). All treasury securities are considered low risk; they are loans made to the national government which is assumed to be unlikely to default. Because of the risk factor, the return on treasury securities is fairly low.

9. Unit Trust (UIT)

UITs are fairly similar to mutual funds in that they hold a portfolio of investments. However, they differ dramatically in the portfolios they each hold: UITs may own common stock, but rely on income-producing securities like municipal bonds, government bonds and corporate bonds. UITs are not actively managed like other investment portfolios might be: because they hold income-producing securities, they allow these investments to mature and pay out. UITs are mostly low-risk investments, although those that hold stocks can be less certainty of a good return.

10. Zero-Coupon Securities

While most bonds pay a return (known as a ‘coupon’) beyond their face value, banks or brokers also offer zero-coupon securities. Essentially, zero-coupon securities are bonds that have had their coupons stripped off: the broker removes the coupons and trades the remaining bond as a zero-coupon security. The benefit of investing in these securities is that you will pay less than face value — significantly less if the bond won’t mature for quite a while. For instance, you might pay $800 today for a $1,000 security that will mature in five years, when you will receive the full face value. Zero-coupon securities have little risk, but they do have a few tax disadvantages.

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Booty Awareness

2008-11-16T23:00:44Z

The Gluteus Maximus. It’s the king of all the skeletal muscles in your body. By sheer volume it takes up more space within your body than any other muscle. This may be apparent in some individuals more than others. But the fact of the matter is, no matter who you are, what you have behind you is big news.

Lately, wherever you look you’ll find fitness experts singing the praises of abdominals and the core. They are so forward-focused that they’ve failed to stop and look at the other side of the equation. Literally. You know all too clearly that a strong core is good for health and well being. But how many of you ever really concern yourself with the strength and stability of your glutes? I’m guessing not too many. Sadly, if you can’t see it in the mirror, then it doesn’t seem to exist for you.

So what do your glutes do?

Briefly: they extend your femur at the hip, they tilt your pelvis posteriorly, externally rotate your femur at the hip, and in a full standing position, they support the trunk and pelvis on top of the femur.

More importantly, what does this mean for you?

The glutes are very much a standing muscle. Compared to other primates, ours are the biggest. This is because, unlike other primates, we walk erectly for the better part of our lives. In order to maintain this fully standing and erect posture, we need to rely on the strong thick fibers of our gluteus maximus to hold us upright.

Unfortunately, I have some bad news for you. Your glutes are not living up to their potential. At this moment, you’re probably sitting down. While in this seated position, your glutes have been stretched. They have lost their elasticity. You sit in this position for days at a time.

It’s not your fault. It’s society. In the past few decades we have become so seated and forward-posture dominant that our bodies are being forced to adapt unnaturally. As a result, knee and back pain is becoming more prevalent among the typical office worker. You see, after all the abuse, your glutes have given up. They have accepted the weak demands you have placed on to them. Now when you stand and walk, your body must rely on smaller, weaker, and less efficient muscles to pick up the slack.

These new and inefficient movement patterns begin to manifest themselves as clicking in the hip. Tightness in the lower back. Maybe even a slight ache around the outside of your knee. The rest is all downhill. The real issue (weak glutes) is never addressed. You’ll just accept the fact that old age, wear and tear have gotten to you, and you’ll begin to look to other methods of dealing with pain. Typically that means surgery. Then what happens? You go under the knife, come out pain free, take a day or two off, and then go back to work where you return to the behavior that caused all this trouble in the first place.

The good news is, it doesn’t have to be this way. If you’re working out, which you should be, try and incorporate a lot of butt-friendly exercises along with stretches for your hip flexors and quadriceps. Try to avoid just working on the muscles you can see in the mirror. Make it a point to stand up more often and move around throughout the day, and you can avoid some of these very serious issues. At the very least, set a timer on your desktop and stand up every 20 minutes.

Remember, we live in a fast-paced world, where our society and knowledge is growing at an exponential rate. Sometimes our old primitive bodies have trouble keeping up with the demands we now place on them on a day-to-day basis.

Jamie Nischan owns and runs a successful fitness coaching business in Stamford CT. Through the use of posture correction and exercise he treats pain often associated with excessive use of computers. More about Jamie can be found at www.thebuffgeek.com.

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10 Great Free Apps for Blackberry

2008-11-19T06:51:21Z

Blackberries may have been overshadowed lately by the success of the iPhone, but they still offer and incredibly powerful platform.Plus, since the Blackberry operating system is build on Java and has always been open, there are a slew of useful and mature applications, many of which are free. Since I’m a cheapskate when it comes to software, I’ve loaded up my Blackberry Curve with a boatload of free programs. Here are the ones I use the most:

1. Google Mobile

Google Mobile is an all-in-one package combining Google’s excellent mobile apps (Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Sync) with links to Google’s mobile-optimized web services (search, Picasa, Reader, Docs, Google Notebook, etc.). Although Blackberry’s already handle email fairly well, I find the Gmail application a much more comfortable way to access email. The Maps application does everything you can do with Google Maps on your PC (search, get directions, switch to satellite view, and so on), plus it will use either the nearest cell tower or, if you have a GPS-enabled phone, GPS to pinpoint your location. The Sync app lets you do a two-way synchronization between the calendar on your Blackberry and Google Calendar. The rest of the links open services in Blackberry’s integrated web browser, although in some cases with limited functions compared to their PC-based equivalents (Google Docs, for example, are read-only). All in all, this is an incredible piece of productivity software, one I use probably a dozen times a day.

2. iSkoot

iSkoot puts the power of Skype on your mobile phone. You can send and receive voice calls to and from other Skype users or using SkypeIn and SkypeOut services, and believe it or not the sound quality is pretty good, even on AT&T’s slow 2G network. iSkoot gets all your contacts from Skype, making it a breeze to use. Of course, you can also IM with text. Calls received are handled by the Blackberry exactly like traditional cell calls, using the same controls and the same ringtone, so it’s really indistinguishable from using your mobile phone normally. I have a SkypeIn phone number for my professional life; iSkoot lets me stay connected even when I’m away from my computer.

3. Viigo

Although I generally use Google Reader for my RSS feeds, Viigo is a nice alternative – and adds several nice options Google Reader (and most other RSS readers) don’t. The new beta lets you set up weather, sports, finance, and travel alerts, get updates from local Kijiji classifieds (if it serves your area), even get free book feeds from DailyLit. And there’s even a space – inactive for now – for podcast feeds, which developers promise will be enabled soon, letting you download your favorite audio podcasts over the air. All this in a beautiful and very easy-to-use interface – what more could you ask for?

4. BeeTag

This is a new addition to my Blackberry and, I admit, one that I haven’t found much use for yet – but it’s only a matter of time. The app is called BeeTag, and it is a 2-D barcode reader that uses your Blackberry’s camera to scan those square-shaped codes (like the one next to this paragraph) that are popping up on more and more products, as well as in ads and other places. Already huge in Japan, these 2-D codes can contain a URL, product information, or other material; BeeTag reads the code and sends you to the website indicated or displays the text. Even though you have to get quite close to fill the frame enough for BeeTag to read it – which means a blurry image – BeeTag could read everything I threw at it, including codes captured from my laptop’s screen.

5. Vlingo

Voice-enable your Blackberry with Vlingo, which goes beyond voice-dialing to voice-texting and even voice-emailing. Vlingo takes over one of your Blackberry’s application keys (my Curve has two, one on each side; I’ve assigned it to the one on the right, the one that controls the camera by default). Hold the key down, say a command, and Vlingo goes to work. For example, I say “Send email to Bob Smith subject You’re an idiot Message You forgot to take the coffee off your car’s roof as you drove away” and Vlingo creates an email reading “You forgot to take the coffee off your car’s roof as you drove away” with the subject line “You’re an idiot” and the email address from Bob Smith from my Blackberry’s address book. You can search the web, update your Facebook status, create tasks and memos, even open built-in applications and a handful of third-party Vlingo-enabled apps, all using your voice.

6. WebMessenger

You can IM through Skype using iSkoot, but if your contacts aren’t mainly on Skype, WebMessenger allows you to chat on just about any major IM network: AOL, Google, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Skype, and Yahoo. Contact lists are imported from the appropriate service, and just like a full chat client, you can see who’s online, set your status, and of course chat all you want. You’ll need to set up a master login account with WebMessenger; after that, it will stay logged in and run in the background.

7. Mobipocket Reader

Blackberry screens aren’t the best for e-book reading – that’s one thing I miss about my old Palm Zire 72, with its great big color screen – but Mobipocket Reader makes the best of what it has to work with, providing a decent if not brilliant reading experience. The .mobi file format is becoming the de facto e-book standard for mobile devices, so there are lots of titles available for purchase, as well as the normal range of classic texts available for free. Or you can convert PDFs or Word files on your PC and transfer them over. The program is easy to use and fairly easy to read, though not many lines fit on the Blackberry’s screen at once. You can also add annotations, although strangely you can’t add bookmarks to return easily to important passages. Still, Mobipocket lets me keep a couple of e-books available for those times when I get caught with time to kill and nothing to do, and for that I’m grateful.

8. Twitterberry

Blackberry’s are great for sending text messages, so of course they’re great for sending tweets on Twitter. Twitterberry makes it easy, letting you access your friend’s timelines – collectively or individually – as well as all your replies and direct messages. Of course, sending messages is a piece of cake, too. My only complaint is that messages are previewed, with only the first 40 characters or so visible in each timeline screen, so you have to click them individually to read them in their entirety. Even with that, though, Twitterberry is still a far better experience than using the Twitter site through the Blackberry’s slow browser.

9. Poynt

Poynt is a slick local search app now in beta for the Blackberry. Poynt does local yellow page searches so you can find businesses near you, and has an excellent movie listings feature that lets you find movies near you, theaters near you, or browse by genre or review the current top 10. You can enter your location manually or, if your phone has GPS, let Poynt pinpoint your location automatically. Poynt also integrates with Blackberry Maps to provide directions – alas, AT&T, in its infinite wisdom, has determined that I (and the rest of its customers) should not use Blackberry Maps. I’m sure it’s very cool…

Fortunately, Google Mobile includes Google Maps so I can get all the directions I need!

10. Facebook

You like Facebook, right? C’mon, admit it – you want to Facebook all the time. And well you should – you have a Blackberry, after all! The Facebook app makes it easy to send messages, see your updates, and poke poke poke all day long, and that’s pretty darn important, isn’t it?

Your favorites?

Those are the apps I’m getting a lot of use out of – what about you? What are your favorite Blackberry apps, free or paid? Let us know all about it in the comments!

Dustin M. Wax is the project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.

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Home Automation: Evaluating the Options

2008-11-19T11:34:56Z

In Monday’s article, we discussed the various ways home automation can make life easier. Today we’ll look at the primary commercial methods of automating the home—a true and grand lifehack, in that it hacks the primary habitat in your life!

At the end of the day, there are two main methods of home automation. The most popular is probably most popular because it is most affordable, and that’s plug-in automation provided by companies such as X10 (warning: annoying flashing lights if you follow the link) and Insteon. You plug these devices directly into the wall, and they form a network and communicate through the home’s power lines, and/or by radio.

The other solutions are hardwired. You need to build these into your house, whether that involves planning a new house from the ground up to integrate home automation, or doing some extreme retrofitting of your existing house. They provide a more seamless experience, of course—hard to call something seamless when modules sticking out of power outlets dot the landscape. Two companies that provide this sort of system are Crestron and Vantage.

Weighing Up a Plug-in System

Plug-in solutions such as the X10 or Insteon are cheap. They’re not just cheaper to purchase, but cheaper to install, since you just whack them into a power outlet (much of the time, at least). They’re also easier to move around—if you’re renting a house, it should be no problem to take your modules with you.

Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. Plug-in modules have a reputation for being unreliable and doing strange things. You don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to find all the lights around the house flashing on and off! Of course, many enjoy these products or they wouldn’t be so popular in the world of home automation, so it’s hard to say whether the problem is the product or the person using, and installing, the product.

I’m willing to bet that the reliability of such a system is dependent on the knowledge, skill and care of its owner and operator, if not just for the fact that if these systems were so unreliable that they barely ever worked, they wouldn’t be the most popularly selling systems with dedicated fanbases.

That said, it makes sense that these systems would be less reliable no matter what. Instead of crafting a permanent, carefully planned system in between the walls of your house, you’re running things from power outlets. Simply knocking something as you walk by could put the system out.

Weighing Up a Wired System

Wired solutions are reliable by design. I’m not saying there are never problems with them. They run on electricity and they’re made by humans, so you can expect problems. But by design, they’re sturdy. They’re protected by your walls. They’re well-planned, carefully-installed, and properly-programmed systems that don’t change and aren’t modular. While the lack of modularity can be a nuisance for those perpetual experimenters who don’t have the ability to set it and forget it, it provides reliability.

The downside, of course, is that such systems are expensive. Far more expensive than other systems. And in the case of X10 and Insteon, the changes you need to make to your home’s wiring are minor and depend on what you need to do; even if you rent, the cost is minimal (so long as you get your landlord’s go ahead). When it comes to complicated, built-in wired systems, you need to have your own home. I’m sure the landlord wouldn’t mind if you added that sort of value to the house, but I’m also sure we all agree that’s a stupid way to spend your money unless you’re really fond of the person who takes your rent money.

What Should You Buy?

“Ah, here comes the conclusion,” you say. “I know what he’s going to tell us — that there is no one right decision and that it depends on personal factors.”

Yeah, I know I say that a lot in my articles, but this time I have to say there’s a clear winner. If you have your own home, don’t waste your money on a plug-in system. The extra to wire up permanently will be well worth it.

That said, the decision is dependent on a variety of factors. Money, whether your home is rental or owned, whether you have the electrical skills. Add the factors up and see which is best for you, but I think if it can be helped anyone interested in good, reliable home automation should be prepared to do it properly. There’s no half-assery around these parts of town.

Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers practical advice you can use to be more efficient and effective.

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5 Easy Ways to Shake Off a Bad Mood

2008-11-16T22:49:04Z

Everyone gets into a big ol’ bad mood sometimes. I’m talking about the kind of mood that throws a spanner in the works, has you fuming at every little thing and threatens to ruin a perfectly good day.

Sometimes these moods happen just when you don’t want them to and they can get in the way of doing what you want to do in the way that you want to do it. Here’s how to shake them off quickly so that you can get back your life.

1. Leave the room

Get a change of scene. Right now. Bad moods can be triggered by all kinds of things and often it’s something around you that ticked you off, and if you stay in the same environment it’ll continue to nag at you and play on your mind. Go to a new environment, surround yourself with different things, different people and different sensations and it’s easier for you to leave your bad mood behind you.

2. Give yourself a treat

When you’re in a bad mood it’s easy to look for things to fuel that bad mood or reinforce it. Why? Because you want to feel like your bad mood is valid, so you look for things to validate it and make it right.

Break that habit by doing the opposite, no matter how strange it might feel. Watch a funny movie, play your favourite song, go for a walk in your local park, grab a coffee and a slice of pie in that great coffee shop. Do something that feels good and puts a smile on your face, and your bad mood will be history.

3. Have a BMW

When I’m in a coaching session with someone it’s pretty obvious if they’re in a bad mood. When that happens I say to them, “Right. You have 4 minutes to Bitch, Moan and Whine all you want. When the 4 minutes is up there’s no more moaning, deal?”. Then they let rip for 4 minutes.

Taking just a couple of minutes for a BMW (as I like to call it) can get everything right out there, everything that’s bubbling away. The key is not to pause or think - a BMW session is just getting it all out there. Often you’ll find that you run out of steam before the 4 minutes is up and sometimes you’ll just end up laughing. Either way, when you’re done you’ll feel lighter.

4. Hit the gym

Physical exercise has a direct influence on our mood, and countless studies have shown that exercise releases endorphins and serotonin (the body’s pleasure chemicals) that positively affect your mood. Hitting the gym not only releases those feel-good chemicals, but it’s a great distraction, diverting your attention away from your bad mood and giving you something to do that occupies your body and mind.

5. Let yourself off the hook

Fact of Life # 37 - Bad moods happen. Sometimes, it’s just fine to let the bad mood ride. If things are niggling you and bad moods are a familiar deal to you, then it’s a good bet that something’s not quite right somewhere in your life. Letting the bad mood ride allows you to go to those dark places where you wouldn’t normally go and see what’s there.

You don’t have to wallow in it, but letting it happen can be surprisingly liberating. Your bad moods are just as valid as your good moods and when you come out the other side you might just have learned something about what’s really going on.

Steve Errey almost died at age 9 as he choked on a grape. Today, Steve is still feeling the effects of some extravagant spending but remains remarkably upbeat and positive. As a leading confidence coach with clients right around the world, Steve has a reputation for talking sense and getting results. Read more at The Confidence Guy

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10 Investments You Should Know

2008-11-17T21:26:17Z

It’s impossible to miss the fact that stocks, real estate and bonds all make for decent investments (at least most of the time). But there are so many different investment options, most of which get minimal marketing. If you want to take a look at a wider variety of options, you should be able to at least tell an American Depository Receipt apart from a Convertible Security. There are about twenty investments that any investor should at least be familiar with and the ten listed below are the first half of that list.

1. American Depository Receipt (ADR)

ADRs are traded on U.S. stock markets just like regular stocks, but they actually represent shares in foreign corporations. An ADR is issued by a U.S.-based bank or brokerage, which buys a large number of shares from a company based outside the U.S. Those shares are bundled into groups and then resold; they are usually labeled with a ratio representing how many shares a particular ADR represents. The sponsoring bank collects detailed financial information about any company whose shares it resells. ADRs are a relatively simple way to invest in foreign companies and avoid the administrative and duty costs of international transactions. Other countries besides the U.S. have depository receipt opportunities available.

2. Annuity

Annuities provide set payments at regular intervals to their owners. You can typically purchase an annuity through an insurance company, and you’ll have several options. An annuity can either be immediate or deferred: with a deferred annuity, you will not begin receiving payments for a certain period of time. Deferred annuities are often contracted for life — they’re set up so that as long as you live, the insurance company will send you a check at a regular interval. Annuities are also either fixed (the payments are set) or variable (there is a guaranteed minimum payment, as well as payments based on the performance of an annuity investment portfolio.

3. Closed-End Investment Fund

A closed-end fund issues shares that are traded just like stocks but are actually closer to mutual funds in the way the are managed. Closed-end funds hold portfolios of securities — usually securities that meet very specific criteria (i.e. come from particular industries). These fund are actively managed and may hold a few investments in stocks or bonds in order to diversify, but because of their focus on particular sectors, closed-end fund issues are not considered diverse. Some closed-end funds offer dividends.

4. Collectibles

Collectibles can be pretty much any physical asset with a value that increases over time. While most people consider fine art, stamps and similar purchases to be collectibles, there is no strict definition that includes or excludes a particular asset. The greatest drawback to collectibles is the fact that collectibles offer no income, unlike many other investments. However, a collectible’s appreciating value often outpaces inflation.

5. Common Stock

Common stock is what most of us think of when we hear the word stock: a share of ownership in a particular company. It entitles you to a portion of the company’s profits as well as voting rights. The majority of stocks traded today are common stocks. While the benefits associated with owning stock can be great, it is a relatively risky investment. If a company that you own stock in goes bankrupt, as a common shareholder, you won’t receive money until the creditors, bondholders and preferred shareholders have all been paid off.

6. Convertible Security

Convertible securities are either preferred stock convertibles or convertible bonds. While you would purchase a convertible bond just as you would purchase a normal bond, you would have the opportunity to convert it into common stock in the company that issued it. Depending on the terms of the convertible bond, also known as the indenture, the bond could convert into a significant number of shares. Convertible bonds do provide a small amount of income, but the real value is that the bond can be converted into common stock.

7. Corporate Bond

Corporations issue bonds in order to raise money: when you buy a corporate bond, you’re essentially loaning a corporation money for the length of the bond. Not only will the corporation repay you the full face value of the bond (and your loan) but it will also pay you a coupon — a predetermined interest rate paid out every six months. Corporate bonds are more lucrative than government bonds, but they are also riskier.

8. Futures Contract

A futures contract is a commitment to either deliver or receive a specific quantity of a commodity during a specific month at a specific price. Most futures contract are closed out before the expected delivery date and while they can be very risky, futures contracts can also provide for a simple way to manage price risks. They can provide impressive profits, due to their higher risk factors.

9. Life Insurance

While life insurance may not seem like an investment on the surface, it provides a return on your monthly payments. No matter how long you may have been paying for a life insurance polity, its value is set. It’s a relatively low-risk investment because insurance is heavily regulated by the government.

10. The Money Market

Through the money market, you can buy fixed-income securities, primarily short-term securities that last less than a year. Unless you are able to deal in the very high denominations that most money market securities are sold in, you will likely have to purchase these securities through a money market mutual fund or bank account. Returns on money market investments are highly dependent on the current interest rate and are considered low risk.

Check back on Thursday for the other ten investments that you should know.

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Do You Determine Your Beliefs, or Do Your Beliefs Determine You? (Part Two)

2008-11-16T22:42:22Z

Following on from Part One of this three-part series on beliefs. Here is part two:

Catholic Craig

Growing up in a Catholic home which was regularly frequented by nuns and priests (friends of my folks), attending only Catholic schools, being taught about life (God, religion, marriage, relationships, sex, good, bad, right, wrong) exclusively from a Catholic perspective, hanging out with my Catholic friends and only ever seeing the inside of a Catholic church, I was probably never gonna be a Buddhist by my fifteenth birthday. Or even a Baptist or Anglican for that matter. My upbringing, my environment and my education taught me that I was born into the one true church. Whatever that means.

As a teenager, I honestly felt sorry for all those non-Catholics who were going to hell; the ones in the fake churches. Whatever that means. After all, we had the Pope on our team; God’s personal representative on planet earth and a direct successor to good old Saint Peter - the first Pope. Apparently. How could I possibly go wrong?

Fortunately for me, I had somehow stumbled on to the right team. What are the chances? All those religions and I was born into the only one that has a hot-line to God and an old bloke in the Vatican with a big hat and his finger on the eternal pulse. And of course, the only religion that could get me to heaven. Talk about luck. Or Karma. Oops, we don’t mention Karma do we? That’s the other team.

Sister Mary Patricia

Here’s a sentence I was never gonna hear from the nuns in my religious education classes at school; “Okay students, we’ve decided to provide you all with an extensive overview of the core theology, philosophy and teaching of all the major religions of the world, then we’ll leave it up to you to explore the ‘God thing’ in your own way and see where you land; it’s important that you find your own truth, listen to your own heart and develop your own religious and spiritual beliefs and understanding.”

Nope, there was never gonna be a bar mitzvah for me.

No Hat Here

Now, before you think I’m getting my anti-Catholic hat on, I’m not. I don’t have one. I loved (most of) my childhood, my Catholic friends, my education and I was taught and mentored by some fantastic nuns and priests. And of course I love my (very) Catholic parents.

What I am talking about is social, emotional and religious conditioning (in any system, organisation or religion) that tells me what to think, do and believe and doesn’t encourage me or allow me to explore and discover my own truth beyond the walls of that system. In fact, it discourages my exploration and free thinking by being critical of groups and individuals who think, believe and behave differently. And when I start to question the system or parts thereof, I am ridiculed and criticised. Possibly labelled rebellious, misguided and troublesome.

The only reason I’m even talking about my Catholic upbringing is because that’s the only childhood I have. That’s my reference point. My experience. My story. I could just as easily be talking about any system that requires people to think, behave and believe a certain way in order to be a ‘member’. “If you don’t align with our doctrine, theology, thinking and rules then you can’t be part of our group; that is, you must believe what we believe. You won’t develop your own spiritual and religious beliefs, we will tell you what you can and can’t believe.”

It’s in Our DNA

In reality, we are all constantly being programmed (taught, influenced, impacted, shaped) by our world and everything and everyone in it. Our beliefs are always being moulded and manipulated (for better or worse) without us even being aware of it. Most of our beliefs are formed over a long period of time, which is why they become such a firmly entrenched (non-negotiable) part of our DNA. Our mental and emotional DNA anyway. And that lifetime of being taught a certain message and philosophy is what makes it very hard for us to consider another truth. Different beliefs.

In considering something else (another version, option, way of living, thinking, seeing, believing) we often need to question what we’ve believed for ever and that makes us very uncomfortable. Scared even. I’ve worked with people who get angry when I even question what they believe. And I’m not talking about criticizing their beliefs, I’m talking about asking logical, thoughtful, intelligent questions. They won’t even consider that their beliefs may be wrong; it’s too traumatic, too painful and too uncomfortable. They’ve based an entire life around some of those beliefs, so who (the f***) am I to suggest anything else?! They make it impossible for themselves to learn anything new. And did I mention the anger?

The Pressure to Conform

The pressure to conform (think, talk, act, believe a certain way) exists in all areas of the human experience way beyond the religious arena; schools, homes, workplaces, sporting clubs, political parties, gangs… anywhere that people gather. Even in Cyberspace (on-line).

The Brain Hijacker

Am I saying that our own beliefs shouldn’t align with a larger group? No, absolutely not. What I am saying is that we need to discover our own truth, learn our own lessons and determine our own beliefs and then if our core beliefs happen to align with a group that we want to be a part of, so be it. But don’t let someone else hijack your brain, your potential or your free will because you want acceptance in to their group. To conform is to compromise.

I like the idea of being part of a group where identical beliefs and consensual thinking is not a pre-requisite for membership. Or acceptance. Or respect. That kind of group appeals to me. I think I might start one. Hang on, I have. And you’re part of it. You got that membership card right?

It Ain’t a Cult

By the way, I don’t want conformity in my group; I want thoughtful consideration of what I teach. I want you to consider what I write, explore it for yourself and see if it seems like ‘truth’ for you. Don’t accept what I write because you respect me; I may be wrong. You and I can respect each together without agreeing on every topic. Accept what I write when you know it to be real, valid, meaningful and relevant for you. If what I write feels right for you, it probably is. If it feels wrong for you, it probably is. I can teach you and motivate you (for a minute), but only you should determine your beliefs and only you can change your life. I’m not the answer for anyone; I’m a resource. The answer you’re looking for is in the mirror. Always has been.

Next time, in part three of this very long post I’m going to talk about:

When should we change/question our beliefs.
How we can change our (negative) beliefs.
How our beliefs get in the way of our potential (and what to do about it).

Let me know your thoughts on this topic. You know the drill.

Craig Harper (B.Ex.Sci.) is a qualified exercise scientist, author, columnist, radio presenter, television host, motivational speaker and university lecturer. For the past 25 years he has been a leading presenter, educator, motivator and commentator in the areas of personal and professional development. You can visit Craig's blog at Motivational Speaker.

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Be Heard. Speak Plainly.

2008-11-17T14:00:00Z

Every semester I get a handful of students who have settled on the idea that the more big words they use, the better. Regardless of whether they know what those words mean or not.

So I get papers elucidating the patriarchal configuration of the social arrangement, rather than telling me about male-dominated societies. Or they pontificate on the topic of inadequate provision of pedagogical resources vis-à-vis the particular requirements of participation in the modern form of governance, instead of describing the failure of schools to prepare kids to be good citizens. And so on.

They learn it, of course, from the bad writing that plagues many of the works assigned to them. But it is because we as a society hold such work in high regard that students ape the style of the complicated stuff instead of the more readable work on their reading lists – which is just a s common as the hoity-toity stuff. They thing writing smart must mean using big words and tortured grammar, mistaking difficulty of a work for some measure of its quality.

If you have to work at it, the thinking goes, it must be worth working at.

Of course, this is nonsense. Yes, there are works of exceeding difficulty that are worth reading – in spite of the difficulty, not because of it. And these works – even the best of them – would benefit greatly from a good strong dose of plainspoken-ness. In fact, the ideas in many academic works may even be stronger if they were expressed more clearly.

The same holds true for all kinds of writing and speaking – for communication in general. If it’s important at all, it deserves to be expressed clearly and plainly, so that anyone can understand it. The language that academics use and students love to imitate is not meant to communicate ideas, it’s meant to hide them, to act as a test to see who belongs and who doesn’t. The same is true of the gibberish that many business people write and speak, leveraging their synergistic solution platforms in order to maximize the extraction of secondary revenues in the blah blah blah.

The problem is that this kind of language buries ideas and muddies thinking. Which, of course, is the point a lot of the time – the business can’t come right out and say they killed 400 people with faulty products and the student can’t come out an say she has no idea what the readings were about or that he hasn’t been to class for weeks.

But if the ideas are important – and if you live a life where they aren’t, get out and start over – they deserve to be shared in all their glory, not hidden behind a veil of words. It’s not too hard to speak or write plainly if you follow a few simple rules.

1. Honor the idea.

Speaking plainly starts and ends with the idea. This could be how to bring about world peace or what Pantone color to use on your office’s stationery – put the idea front and center and let it shine. Don’t damage it by trying to make it appear fancy – if it’s a good one, it doesn’t need help and if it’s a bad one, it doesn’t need saying.

Along the same lines, avoid qualifying yourself too much. While it’s fine to express uncertainly when you’re really uncertain, too often people “soften” their ideas by phrasing them as things that they “believe” or “think” or “feel”. They present facts as opinions and opinions as feelings, making it almost impossible to deal with the actual substance of the idea being spoken. Don’t do that – stand behind what you say and take the risk of being wrong.

2. Be yourself.

Usually when people speak un-plainly, it’s because they are trying to appear to be something – or someone – that they’re not: smarter, better educated, most business-like, cooler, or whatever. They’re hiding their real self behind a screen of words that they would never use otherwise. It’s a bit odd, really – if the idea you’re trying to express is yours, why pretend someone else had it?

3. When given a choice, choose the shorter word.

English is a funny language; there are almost always two or more words that mean the same thing. Usually, one will tend to be longer and more vague, like “civilized”, and the other will be shorter and more direct, like “polite” or “nice” or just “good”. As a general rule, people trying to dress up their ideas in showy clothes go for the longer, vaguer words – which is why the idea itself can be weakened. Use indirect language to express yourself long enough, soon even you will not be able to say exactly what it is you mean! When you have a choice, go for the shorter word – if it sounds too blunt or even rude, chances are it’s the clearest way to say what you intend.

4. Cut the description.

There is a place for description of course: when you’re describing something. But too often people attempt to give their ideas a little extra “oomph” by adding a whole bunch of adjectives and adverbs around it, burying the idea itself beneath a mass of irrelevant detail. Cut to the chase and leave the descriptive language for when its needed.

5. Communication is job one.

Sometimes when you’re writing something or speaking, you’ll have the urge to “step up” the language because what you’re saying doesn’t sound pretty enough. This means it’s working. Remember that, unless you’re writing a poem or a ballad, your first priority isn’t to impress people with the beauty of your prose but to communicate an idea to them.

6. Don’t be afraid of “you” and “me”.

Another way that people use language to hide their ideas in a vain attempt to sound impressive is to write in a distant, impersonal tone. While there are some forms of writing where this is necessary – journalism, for example, or clinical reports – a lot of writing and speech can be made more approachable by embracing the first person. Using “I” and “me” gives your readers or listeners something – someone –to attach the ideas you’re expressing to a real person, making them more concrete and more human.

Likewise, you can engage your audience more fully by speaking directly to and about them, instead of about “one” or even “we”. Instead of putting your examples in the third person, address them directly to your reader or listener by using “you”.

Remember, no matter how good your ideas, if you can’t communicate them clearly you may as well not have them. Speak plainly and be heard!

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Home Automation: What It Can Do for You

2008-11-17T13:26:15Z

Over my next couple of articles, we’re going to take a look at home automation. This is a fascinating area that is, for some, a reality, but for many, something that borders on science fiction. The truth is, there are all sorts of products out there to help you automate elements of your home, ranging from those that the average Joe can afford and implement to those that cost as much as the house itself.

Today, we’re going to find out why home automation is worth bothering with (or not, depending on the conclusions you draw from this article). Automation, in all areas of life, will usually do one of two things for you: save you time you can use productively, or provide you with convenience. It’s up to you to draw those sort of conclusions for yourself in this case.

1. Lighting

Lighting has, by far, been the most popular and common use of home automation since it was a technically and financially viable option. It’s no wonder; the most annoying thing that has ever happened to most people, throughout all the terrible experiences in life, is getting into bed only to realize that a light has been left on.

You can rig up your home to control your lights from a remote control panel inside the home, for when you hop into bed, or remotely, when you get to work only to realize you left everything on. And of course you can just as easily turn them all back on once you get home or before a bunch of guests arrive.

Most lighting automation systems give you control over light dimming. This is no breakthrough in itself, as dimming is a pretty commonplace thing, but combine that fact with the ability to create intricate profiles with different lights set at different levels through the house. You can have a preset for every mood!

Of course, lighting control can’t stop at bulbs. There’s natural light to consider as well, and there are products available to help you control curtains, blinds and shades.

2. Home Theater

If you’ve ever bought one of those programmable, all-in-one remotes, you’ve taken part in a small part of home automation. A lot of home automation hobbyists will have the most intricate remote programmings you’ve seen, and I don’t blame them; it takes a lot of waiting and a fair few clicks for me to get my television on and switched over to the Apple TV or DVD player.

But there’s also multi-zone audio to consider - the ability to select various speakers around the house through which to play audio from any given source, or even the ability to play from them all at once (or any combination thereof). If you’ve used AirTunes at home, you’re familiar with multi-zone audio, and as far as I’ve seen AirTunes provides one of the smoothest integration and operation experiences.

3. Communication

Intercom technology often falls into the home automation field. Hobbyists often like to have an intercom system right through the house, in every room. I remember the first time I spoke to someone via instant messaging when they were in the next room; I imagine the intercom provides a similar feeling of redundancy.

Intercom systems can be made accessible to your PDA or smartphone via wifi, and practically any device via the Internet. They can also assist in transmitting alarms right throughout the house; if you have trouble hearing the smoke alarm from your bedroom, this may just be what you need to keep alive for the rest of the year!

Us productivity types like to have one source to go to for everything - take the old one inbox rule, for instance. If you’re like that, you can have your intercom system routed into your phone so that you only have to speak into the one mouthpiece, safely avoiding the germs Aunty Glenda left on the other cordless last time she was over. I imagine this works best when there’s an intercom at the front gate; there’s not much use for intercom over the phone when it comes to in-house intercom.

4. Air

You’re sitting at work in the air conditioning and you know it’s going to be a hot drive home. The last thing you want to do is get out of the hot car and into a hot house. With home automation you can get your air conditioner and a couple of fans going just as you take off for the day. Of course, the same thing applies to heating and ventilation, too.

Air conditioners are expensive beasts. If you’ve routinely caught someone in your home forgetting to turn the thing off and running up the electricity bill, use an automation system to shut your air conditioner off after a half hour’s use.

5. Security and Surveillance

An automated security system in your home provides a far more protective and much safer experience than traditional methods. With cameras you can view over the Internet, you can ensure nobody is taking off with your HDTV (or even keep an eye on the kids). You can have a motion sensor that sends you a text message if it notices movement when nobody is meant to be home, or if sensors on your windows sense the glass breaking.

If your system includes intercom, you can have alarms played through all those speakers around the house, ensuring that everyone in the house is aware of danger. And remember when we talked about lighting automation so you could have all the bulbs in your house switch off when you leave home? Advanced systems even allow you to lock up all the doors and windows as you’re leaving at the same time.

Of course, there’s the old simulation of presence trick. If you’re going on holidays, get your system to randomly play with your blinds, play music and flick lights on or off; you can sleep a little sounder knowing that your home is a little less likely to be broken into.

And More…

There’s much more to home automation. There are systems for getting your pets fed on time, in case you’ve killed a rat or two due to negligence, and irrigation automation, in case you’re guilty of the same when it comes to plants. You can even have your percolator or espresso machine brewing fifteen minutes before your alarm goes off.

Needless to say, we can all live without this stuff. We have been for thousands of years. But these things can make life easier and more enjoyable, so they’re certainly worth considering if you’ve got the interest and the budget.

Next time, we’ll be coming back to the topic of home automation and looking at how one can get started with their own home, and what sort of equipment is available for various prices.

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Just Listen To Yourself

2008-11-13T15:50:18Z

How often do you have a really strong gut instinct and it proves to be wrong? How often do you override that instinct and then kick yourself later on? My guess would be that if you’re anything like the people that come to me for life coaching the answers are hardly ever and always.

Everybody knows intuitively that they have solid instincts. I have never met anybody either professionally or socially that says. “My gut feeling is terrible, I’m always getting in a mess by listening to myself, what can I do about it?” How weird is that? It seems to me it’s a universal truth.

Although at this point I have to confess I only know a small percentage of people when we look at it from a global perspective. In fact, we are probably talking about 0.000005% of the population; so statistically speaking it’s about as accurate as a blind baseball pitcher with Meniere’s disease.

Having said that, I’m prepared to bet that you don’t disagree with me. In fact, I’ll go as far to say that if you can honestly say you believe your gut instinct lets you down on a regular basis, drop me an e-mail and I’ll mail you a copy of my book with instructions on how to operate it, because you’re going to need them.

The conscious human mind can only deal with 7 + or – 2 pieces of information at once. Until you read this sentence you almost certainly aren’t aware of your left foot. But hey, presto, now you are! Way to go on shifting your awareness like a Zen Master. If you lost your foot in a freak fairground accident last week I apologize for my lack of tact. I hope you can forgive me and please accept my best wishes for a speedy recovery hoppy.

The fact is, you have to constantly delete information from your conscious mind, otherwise you’d go into sensory overload. Try and do it now if you have any doubt. Place your awareness in your right hand, now your left hand too. Now move to your feet and remain aware of your hands. Easy? Maybe, but that’s still only 4, so try thinking about what your lower back feels like without letting your attention move from your hands. By now you will be starting to struggle, but if you’re not keep going and you soon will be.

Think of your conscious mind as being like the RAM on your computer. It does lots of good stuff and it’s nice to have around and all that, but hey c’mon, it’s no hard drive! That is like the difference between your conscious and unconscious mind.

Your unconscious mind can do lots of stuff easily without you ever having to intervene. I presume your heart is beating, your food is being digested, and you do not have to remember to blink your eyes or maintain your blood pressure, right? If not you maybe dead, so stop reading now and call for an ambulance and/or an undertaker.

What happens when you get a strong gut feeling is that your unconscious mind is trying to tell you what it thinks in the only way it knows how, with feelings. It can’t talk to you because it’s unconscious, hence the rather obvious name. It has done lots of calculations, looked at all the permutations, given it serious consideration and is now shouting “Whoa there big fella, it aint a great idea to poke that skunk with a stick” Of course the ‘shout’ can manifest itself in any number of ways. You may get sweaty palms, a nauseous feeling or just a sense of something not being quite right.

So what do most people do when they get a strong gut feeling?

That’s right, they override it. Because it doesn’t make logical sense on the surface, skunk poking notwithstanding, it tends to get dismissed. A feeling is just that, a feeling, it can be hard to put into words. When we can’t explain logically why we think something is a bad or even for that matter a good idea, we can tend to either ignore it completely or use faulty logic to dismiss it out of hand.

Some people (kinesthetics) find to very easy to tune into their feelings, but truly kinesthetic people account for less than 15% of the population. If you’re not one of the lucky few then you’ll have to pay extra special attention. Tune in to your body more often and start to recognize the patterns an when it’s trying to tell you something.

If your unconscious is saying don’t take that job, go on that date, poke that skunk - take heed. It knows what it’s talking about and it has your best interests at heart. The alternative it to disregard it as some weird nebulous feeling that’s come out of nowhere and almost certainly live to regret it.

Tim Brownson is a UK qualified professional life coach and author. He works one on one with people either in person or via the telephone across the US and UK. Primarily he helps people maximize their potential, be more successful and achieve more out of life.

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How To Ace Graduate School Entrance Exams

2008-11-16T22:32:27Z

Every student’s nightmare: Another life altering standardized test. To make matters worse, it’s increasingly likely college seniors won’t be able to find a job after graduation. You might have heard your friends talking about graduate school. Is everyone doing it? You don’t need to look far to see: Graduate and professional school enrollment is on the rise across America.

The recently unemployed, college seniors, and those looking for a career change are lining up. A high test score may be the only difference between your acceptance into graduate school and a place in the unemployment line.

A major criticism of these exams is that, to perform well, you need to enroll in an expensive test prep course. Thankfully, there are some relatively free steps you can take to rock these entrance exams.

1) Start Hard. Finish Easy.

Dr. Ben Bernstein, owner of Dr. B Performance Coach, suggests, “Don’t wait to study the hard stuff. Determine right away the sections that give you the most trouble. If you avoid the more difficult material and focus only on the easy stuff, you’ll get more and more nervous and sabotage your chances to do well.”

2) Prepare For Material You’re Not Familiar With

For The LSAT:

Professional LSAT Tutor Steve Schwartz offers a tip to ace the hardest part: “Make simple diagrams for the logic games.” “Creating a solid diagram will save you a great deal of time, so make one on the bottom of the page (there is no scrap paper on the LSAT). For each “if” question in the games, draw a small diagram next to that question. I always tell my students to save their work from previous questions, rather than erasing it. This allows them to look back at it later in the game. A few minutes here or there are crucial in allowing you to finish in the allotted 8 minutes and 45 seconds per game.”
For The GRE:

Bara Sapir, Founder and Executive Director of Test Prep New York, provides advice for students who may struggle with the Math section: “The math on the GRE is 7th, 8th and 9th grade math. If you find you¹re getting particular things wrong, any straight math book will do to learn the material.”

Homework Spot’s math section is a great place to start for those of us who need to learn middle school math.

3) Be Ready For Anything:

Law school graduate and Public Relations Director at Brio, Sara Lien, discusses the issue of your test taking environment: ” The best advice I can give is to simulate test-taking conditions. I don’t know about the GRE but the LSAT is VERY time sensitive. Have a clock next to you while you answer each section. Also, if you don’t answer all the questions, it is not such a bad thing because it is based on how many answers you get right and blanks don’t count against you.”

Note: Unlike the LSAT, incorrect answers on the GRE do count against you, so you might want to consider CBAD if you need to guess. CBAD is a trick teachers use to guess on a multiple choice test. The rationale is that the correct answer is less likely to be first or last, so you’re better off guessing in the middle.

4) Don’t Break The Bank

Marist College media professor, Mark Grabowski, Esq., offers this tip on what to purchase to prepare for the tests: “Be wary of the prep books that are sold in bookstores. They often make up their own questions, which may not be indicative of the kind of questions you’ll find on the actual LSAT. Instead, purchase official previous tests by going to the Law SchoolAdmission Council’s website, LSAC.org.”

5) Finally, Relax

Jeanne Perdue, Editor of the award-winning Zeus Technology magazine, says, “I took the GRE to get into the Master’s program in Petroleum Engineering at University of Houston. The thing that works well for all major tests for me is to get a very good night’s sleep the night before (no crammingor all-nighters!) and to do something that relaxes you before the test so you’re not over-nervous.”

Brandon J. Mendelson is a graduate student attending UAlbany and a published American humorist. You can follow him on Twitter or on his blog, The Graduate Student Survival Blog.

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