Yesterday we shared a recent post by The Weakonomist (you can subscribe to his RSS feed here).  Today we want to share a few more links to his recent articles.

Bad Stock Market Performance Raises Your Insurance Premium : Do you know what your insurance company likely does with the money you pay on your premiums?  Did you know that the stock market has an affect on your premiums as a result?  Check out this recent post to find out how this works.

Recession Psychology : What is the Greatest Loss? : This article shares a little bit of information about a recent post over at Consumerism Commentary.  Check out both here and here.

Weakonomics Web Junction : Earth Day : Find out what The Weakonomist thinks about Earth day now compared to when was younger.

By MainStreet.com Staff Writers

Young people often think they don’t know enough about the market to jump in and start investing. But fear of the unknown and the misguided belief that retirement planning can wait can cost you big in the long run. There are numerous advantages to getting into investing while you’re young, but the single biggest advantage is time. 

When you start investing in your 20s, you get way more returns for you money. With compounding interest, your money grows significantly over time, and a little more time can make a big difference. Additionally, the more time you have to invest before retirement, the more ability you will have to recover from any market losses.

Here are some essential points for young people to remember when they start investing:

Start now no matter how much money you have to invest.

You don’t need a large sum of money to start investing in the market. There are 180 mutual funds that have minimum investments of $250 or less, according to Morningstar. Mutual funds are ideal for young investors because they allow you to own a bunch of company stocks without putting up a bunch of money. The earlier you start investing, the less you will have to put in the market to meet your goals. For example, if you wanted to have $1,000,000 saved for retirement at 65 years old and assumed a 10% rate of return, you would only have to contribute $179 per month if you started investing at 25 years old. That’s a total of $85,920 over 40 years. If, however, you waited 20 years to start contributing at 45 years old, you would have to put out $1,381 per month. That’s a total of $331,440 over 20 years. It will have cost you $245,520 by waiting to invest.

Keep Your Eye on the Long-Term Horizon.

When investing in equities, you can’t let the day-to-day trials and tribulations of the market scare you off. Both new and old investors are often spooked out of the market by short-term losses, but if you try to time the market, you can lose more than you save. In the current market cycle, stock prices have fallen sharply, but that does not mean you shouldn’t still invest in some equities. In fact now is probably a good time for young investors to buy in because you can get more shares for your dollars. If and when stock prices rise again, you’ll enjoy even larger gains.

Don’t Forget Debt and Savings.

As important as investing is, you can’t neglect to pay off your debt and build a healthy emergency savings fund. Getting out of debt will save you in interest payments and improve your credit score. If you have a credit card with an 18% interest rate, paying it off is almost like getting a return of 18% on your money.

The current economic crisis has shown the true importance of having liquid savings on hand. Financial advisors have long advised people to have 3 to 6 months of expenses in emergency savings, but lately that recommendation has been revised up to 6 to 12 months. Your savings should be kept in a short-term vehicle like a certificate of deposit (CD), or money market account, so that it’s easily accessible if you lose your job or have to cover for emergency expenses like car repairs or medical bills. When starting out, it’s important to allocate your money to paying off debt, building savings and investing. When your debt and savings obligations are met, then you can focus primarily on investing.

Saving for the future is more important than ever before. With many people losing a great deal of their savings with the sudden downturn in the economy, people are definitely feeling the pinch. Many people e struggling to start re-building their nest egg, but there is no better time than the present!

Why not today? – One reason that you really should start to re-build your nest egg today is that you do not really have a bad reason not to. Unless you have lost your job and are struggling to get by and can’t set aside money for savings, you should really try to start saving again towards retirement. The money you put away for your future is extremely important. If you do not want to work forever, it is really important to start thinking about the future.

Can’t Live In Fear of Losing – Many people who just lost a lot of their retirement savings with the downturn in the economy are finding it hard to start saving again. However, the truth is, if you do not start to trust that the economy will turn around, when it does you will not have put any money into savings and will have missed out on a great deal of time that you could have been saving.

Great Time to Invest – Stocks are selling at a really low price right now. If you have some money that you can set aside and take a little ‘risk’ in the stock market, maybe this choice is for you. Putting some money into stocks is a great way to get some money back ones the economy decides to turn around. How about investing in companies you believe in? If you believe in the company and so do others, hopefully it will not be going out of business!

High Interest Savings Account – Opening a high interest savings account is not as risky as investing, but you are still doing something with your savings. High interest savings account reward you for keeping your money in their account by giving you monthly interest on your money. Unlike regular savings accounts where you get a few cents each month, high interest accounts can amount to a decent amount of money each month which will add up quickly throughout the year.

You want to be prepared when the time comes to retire and start your life after work. However, unless you begin to re-build your nest egg you will not have enough money saved when the time comes to retire. During a time when the economy is so tough, it best to learn lessons from the depression.

— By Hannah Waters, Geezeo.com

Photo by: moogoo

You’ve heard “buy low, sell high”. Right now the market is low — a perfect opportunity to buy, buy, buy!

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Jim Cramer says not to be fooled by any rally, bank stocks are not the place to be in this market and use any rally to sell. Real Money TV viewers get Cramer’s videos first and commercial free!

Debra Borchardt says forget the good/bad nationalization debate — it’s already happened.

Sure, you’d like to be financially well-off. Maybe even rich! But how does that square with your desire to “do good”?

For years socially-responsible investing has gained momentum. Finally, we’re at a tipping point where investors can feel confident enough to invest with their heads and their hearts. So how do you begin?

First, determine what SR (socially responsible) criteria is most important to you. For example, do you care most about the environment? Social justice issues? Equality? Or something else? It is difficult to compare apples to oranges when it comes to investments. So, the first step is to determine what SR investing means to you personally. Which issue is closest to your heart?

Secondly, decide how strictly you want your investments to follow your selected SR objective. For example, some environmental funds will not invest in a company with green initiatives if that company also suffers from human rights, fair wage, or other social issues. You can find the philosophy of a particular fund in its prospectus or website. Make sure your level of commitment is in alignment with the fund’s manager. (If buying an individual stock, read up on the CEO’s commitment to particular initiatives).

Thirdly, evaluate if you want to invest in a fund or a specific stock. You will make this decision based on your time horizons and available funds earmarked for investment. There are advantages to both. With a fund you can spread your investment dollars across a spectrum of companies committed to a particular goal. Owning a specific stock allows you to directly reward a company whose policies you admire, and gives you direct voting rights to future policies (as opposed to voting rights only a mutual fund’s decisions).

Evaluating investments based on socially responsible criteria only adds a little more time to the evaluation process. But by participating you can literally change the world — and your wallet at the same time. Care to share any of your investments and why you selected them?