Penny Pot: Money Saving and Financial Advice

Many buyers are operating under the misconception that a home’s buying price needs to be just above its tax assessed value. In other words, they understand that tax assessed is the identical thing as “what a home is appraised.” This is definitely not the case, especially here in Vancouver real estate, but just this month I’ve encountered no less than three potential buyers who refused to offer anything higher than the tax assessment value on homes they truly loved. Due to this error, real estate agents have started to include phrases like “price is below the assessed value” in their listings. As a result of these statements, houses that are priced lower than the assessed value are viewed as bargains. Unluckily, this might not always be accurate. The assessed value of a home is a price that is determined by a tax official (British Columbia utilizes a provincial crown company known as BC Assessment) in order to calculate taxes. As soon as this assessment is made, the entity responsible for taxation, including the City of Vancouver, then sets its tax rates according to the assessment.

Fair market value means the price that an intelligent, free-thinking, and agreeable person would consider paying to the person who owns the property, who is not required to sell the house if he or she does not want to. You can see this calculation at work with any Vancouver condo. Before putting a house up for sale, a real estate representative is going to find several houses that are similar to that of the seller that have sold in the past few months. Factoring in these comparisons, the representative will then advise the owner on what the price of the house should be. When a buyer and seller come to a purchase price, this determines the fair market value of the house. This illustrates the reasons why you want to compare similar houses’ selling prices before letting slip to the owner what you’ll pay. This will ensure you know that the house is priced accurately.

Investing into the stock market can help you to grow your wealth. But how risky is it? How likely is it that you will lose your money when buying and selling stocks?

Well before we look at how risky it is, let us look at what stocks are and how they work. A stock represents a piece of the ownership of a company. Whenever you buy a stock you are buying part of the company. As the company expands and shrinks your stock should reflect that.

A few companies offer dividend paying stocks , these are stocks that will pay their investors relatively consistently many times throughout the year for each stock you own. This is the way that the company shares part of its income with its investors.

So, is it risky to invest into stocks? Well, this is a tough one because it depends on what your defintion of risky is. If you believe that risky means that you can lose money, then yes stocks are risky. You can do all of your research and put all of the odds in your favor, however in the end there is always risk of losing money.

That is why all of the major free stock tips out there like diversify and only invest what you can afford to lose all reflect this and let you lessen the risk. But regardless of how you look at it and what you do there is always going to be some risk.

Now there is a flip side to that. There are always opportunities with risks. Look at something like a bank C.D. they offer no risk, yet they don’t pay that much. A bank CD might only pay you 2 or 3% a year. Most of the time they don’t even match inflation so you are losing buying power all and all.

While stocks are risky, I believe they are worth the risk. If you do your research and be wise about it you can make some nice money off of stocks and negate as much risk as possible. But only you can tell if it is worth it.