Article Recommended By: Janet Schlarbaum

Author: Robin Ogden

A new meaning for “career”?

Crystal ball or not, one thing is for sure – the definition of career is taking on a whole new meaning. Although there are many differences between our generations there is one common thread that brings us together. When it comes to employment, we all compete at the same watering hole called the job market. We all know that most employers are now less interested in “long-term employees” who show up everyday from 9 to 5 and want to hang around for ten for fifteen years, taking the lateral climb. In fact, these days if you’re in the same job for too long you can be viewed as a slacker.

Wondering what’s so different about the world of working today?

Over the past few years employer needs have changed. In order to compete and succeed in today’s global economy employers are now putting a higher value on your ability to be more creative, imaginative and “think differently”, as well as your ability to adapt as needed and/or morph to market conditions, much like Proteus, the Greek Sea Goddess who could change at will, we are now seeing the protean model career.

Sure, employers are still using words like “loyalty”, “generosity”, and “stability”, as a draw, but the forward thinking individual will know that these are merely words and in the end, the company’s bottom line dictates their employment actions. Employers are using globalization to their advantage, as well they should be, and its time for employees to use a form of this in their own career – a “portfolio” career approach.

Why should you take advantage of a “portfolio” career approach?

Well, there are plenty of reasons. For one thing nothing is carved in stone any longer with regard to your future employment with any one particular employer. The forces of supply and demand are strong when it comes to whether you have a job… or not. Sure, the employer “feels” terrible when they need to implement job eliminations, restructuring, layoffs, etc., etc. But, that doesn’t stop them from taking necessary survival steps. Where does that leave you? Knocking on doors – that’s where.

Many of you are ready to get off “auto-pilot” when it comes to your life, as well as your career, and start doing the necessary planning that will afford you to live with security – the security you can provide for yourself through your knowledge and skills. Giving you the ability to differentiate yourself from the pack. To live with joy – the joy you can provide for yourself by knowing where you are strong and what you have to offer in the career market. To find happiness – the happiness you know you deserve and can give yourself through careful career planning and support.

How do you grab onto to a fresh new approach while maintaining an alignment between your needs and the employer’s needs?

Change is constant and rapid. The portfolio approach to your career is the future. You must keep updating and adding to your skills and knowledge and matching your portfolio to the particular employer and their needs at any give time. Establishing and selling yourself in a portfolio manner will enable you to begin to lead the pack and keep you in the forefront of managing your career.

Article Recommended By: Janet Schlarbaum

Author: Cornie Herring

People always say that investment is a money game with the playing rule of “high risk with high return and low risk with low risk”. You may want to invest in an investment portfolio that is able to give a good return and stock market is always the best choice in term of high return. But you aware that investment in the stock market will cause you to lose all your money as well, because the game rule said “high risk is high return and low risk comes with low return”. Hence, stock game might not suit your risk profile; you may want to look for an alternative that can give comparatively good reward but with much lower risk than stock. If you are categorized in this group, then mutual fund can be your game.

Mutual Fund Is A Risk Sharing Game

A mutual fund is simply a financial medium that allow a group of investors to pool their money together with a predetermined investment objective. The pooled money will manage by a fund manager. The fund manager is a person who is widely expert in stock and bond markets. He/she is responsible to invest the pooled money into specific securities, usually stocks and bonds. When you are buying shares of mutual fund, you will become one of the fund’s shareholders. All the gains and losses will be shared among the fund’s shareholders. Hence, mutual fund is a risk sharing game.

Compare to stocks and bonds, mutual funds are one of the cost effective and an easy playing game. You do not need to really expert in stock and bond market because the fund manager will take care of it; and you do not need to crack your head to figure out which stocks or bonds to buy, because you have the expert, the fund manager to make the decision for you.

You do not need a lot of money to get your start the game; you decide the amount of money you plan to invest into the mutual fund. Some mutual funds may even let you start with just $100. The best part is the cost effectiveness. By pooling money together in a mutual fund, investors can purchase stocks or bonds with much lower trading cost. The biggest advantage of mutual funds as compare to stocks or bonds is “diversification”.

Diversification Will Lower The Risk

Investment experts always advise that if you want to invest you money, “Don’t put all your eggs into the same basket; else if the basket fall, all you eggs will break”, some will happen on your money, if you invest in one stock, if the stock perform negative, you loss all you money. Diversify your investment to spread out your money into many different types of investments. When one investment is down, another might perform in up trend.

Hence, with the diversification of your investment, you will reduce your risk tremendously.

You can diversify your investment by purchasing different kinds of stocks and bonds instead of one. But it may take weeks to buy all these investments. In contrary, you can get these done by purchasing a few mutual funds and mutual funds automatically diversify your investment across many stocks and bonds.