Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is gaining a lot of popularity. The practice involves trying to maximize financial return while investing in companies that are deemed socially good. Such companies tend to favor policies of environmental friendliness, workplace diversity, fair treatment of workers, etc. Many socially responsible investors also avoid companies involved with alcohol, tobacco, and gambling as well as big oil or military contractors.

Whether or not such a strategy is “worth it” to you probably depends on how you define worth. If your goal is to make as much money as possible, then socially responsible investing

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The Rule of 72 is well known: Divide 72 by a rate of return to get the number of years for your money to double. Example: at 4.5% return it will take 72/4.5= 16 years to double your money

Here are a few more quick calculations:

Cost Before Taxes
Multiply an item’s cost by 1.4 to figure out what you need to earn before taxes to afford it
Example: A $250 Nintendo Wii will require 250*1.4= $350 in pre-tax earnings

Hourly Rate to Yearly Salary
Double your hourly rate and add three zeros to get approximate yearly salary
Example: at $20/hour, you make about 20*2 = 40 –> $40,000 per year

Yearly Salary to Hourly Rate
Opposite of above: Remove three zeros from your yearly salary and cut in half to get an approximate hourly rate
Example: at $60,000 per year you make about 60,000 –> 60/2 = $30/hour

Current Spending Versus Nest Egg Worth
Add a zero to the cost
Example: Using $2,000 for a new computer today would have been worth 2,000 –> $20,000 in a retirement account 30 years from now.

Calculations assume a 40 hour work week, 8% investment return, and 28% tax bracket.

As a regular contributor to the Lending Club blog, I’ve seen a lot of the reasons why it’s so successful. The bottom line is that borrowers and lenders can benefit by using Lending Club. Anyone with good credit can get a great rate on an unsecured P2P loan at Lending Club. Loan rates start as low as 7.62% for people with excellent credit.

As a lender, the great rates continue. You’d be hard pressed to find an alternative way to invest your money for similar returns despite the relatively low risk. The amount of risk you take on depends on how you set up your portfolio. The average portfolio return is currently 12.20%

If you’re interested in signing up for an account with Lending Club, you can use this referral link.

To understand how Lending Club can offer great rates to borrowers and lenders, see my post on the topic.

You can also see a list of my posts here.

Investing in your retirement is a smart thing to do. As defined benefit plans give way to defined contribution plans, the onus of retirement is more and more in our own hands. Gone on the days when being a faithful company man meant that you’d be taken care of in retirement.

Something to remember though, is that there’s more to investing than just retirement. Having a healthy mid-term investment portfolio is also important. If you’re young, it may be even more important than retirement savings. Just like disability insurance is more important than life insurance when you’re young, so too is non-retirement investing.

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Ebay is great for selling things in small quantities, but what do you do when you want to create a real web presence for yourself? There are many options to choose from in creating an online store, but there is only one solution that is super affordable and offers you a ton of services: ProStores.

Packages start at only $29.95 a month. There’s even a 1 month free promotion if you use the link below. Prostores won’t give you a bogus looking location like www.prostores.com/myusername. No, they’ll register a domain, like www.anystorename.com, for free and include all of these other great services:

• Free domain registration
• Unlimited Pages and Categories
• A Shopping Cart and SSL Security
• Integration with Ebay, Paypal, and Major Comparison Shopping Sites

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Forming a business is a great way to add legitimacy to your company. In addition, you’ll likely see many legal tax advantages and limitations of your personal liability.

While the benefits are great, the formation process can seem daunting. Sure, you can cheap out and do it yourself, but you’ll likely be left wondering if things were done properly. To take the guesswork out of the process you can use a formation company. Of the many out there offering this service, BizFilings seems to be the best. Not only have they been doing it for more then a decade, they’ll stand behind you and help you long after the formation is complete. They provide free registered agent service for 6 months with formations.

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