Mofinto announces a new tool

It’s revolutionary way to discover and learn about stocks of public companies to invest in.

 Mofinto collects the data from annual reports and other sources, organizes the important financial and other information in such a way, you can easily search and find companies that satisfy specific criteria you are looking for. Lean how much money company made in the last year, how specific companies manage their cash, are they profitable etc.

Important and relevant information like key people in the company, product line up, industry and sector the company belongs to etc.

 Mofinto also gathers the daily closing price and gives you dates of some key technical trading indicators like Exponential Moving Average(EMA), Stochastic Oscillator Oversold etc. If you don’t know what these mean, simply hover over the link to lean how to use it. Click on the link to lean the informative article in Wikipedia about the particular property (in this case technical indicator).

 Mofinto also gives you Year over year change in some key fundamental financial values so that you can also search companies for specific growths.

Of course, if you don’t find what you are looking for use the keywords to narrow down your search. Mofinto hopes you never need to use vague keywords to search, when you can use specific knowledge presented at your finger tips.

To start all you need to do is click on the stock search button. Every time you click on the stock search button, it will show a random stock.

Then you use these buttons   next to the properties to start and narrow down your search.

With only a few clicks you can narrow down to the one or two stocks that you want to learn about. Discovering stocks is never easier.

Give it a try.

Join Mofinto to to see for yourself and if you are already a member, welcome back. Mofinto is free so it costs you only a few minutes of your time. Of course, Mofinto is interested in knowing your thoughts and feedback on the service? Please leave a comment or send mail to info@mofinto.com

Mofino Insights gives you advice based on your plan performance

In the spirit of beta, Mofinto launches Mofinto Insights – hints and suggestions to improve the performance of your plan. Mofinto analyzes your plan over its life and now gives very specific and useful advice on what to add to or change in your plan to make it meet your financial goals better.
Depending on the plan details and how it performs, there could be one or more insights. These insights are displayed when you check the performance or cash flow details of your plan. It shows as a list of insights that can be controlled using VCR style buttons.

Insights listed and can be controlled using the VCR style buttons.

Also when you normally view the plan using the ‘Home’ button that looks like this.

Home Button

you will now get what you can add to your plan to complete it. While these are not like insights, they may still be useful for financial education and also ways in which Mofinto can help you plan.
Join Mofinto to see for yourself and if you are already a member, check your plan performance again. Mofinto is free so it costs you only a few minutes of your time. Do you think you get the value for your time and effort? Let us know. Please leave a comment or send mail to info@mofinto.com

Changes in college financing rules

President Obama worked with Congress to approve changes to the Stafford loan rates. As I noted earlier, due to the delay in this deal being worked out, the college rate loans have doubled from 3.4% last year to 6.8% this year. However, due to the deal now reached with congress, college financing became affordable again.
Luckily the new student loan fixes the issue once and for all as this bill has no expiration date. However, it has become more complex than before.
The interest rate is now pegged to the 10 year treasury. This means as the US economy does well, the treasury interest rates will raise and so will the interest rates charged on student loans. However, there is cap on the increase. Here are the details:
Undergrad, subsidized loans – 3.86%
Graduate, subsidized loans – 5.4%
Parent direct PLUS loans – 6.4%

The interest rates will be adjusted 1st day of month of June every year with max cap of
8.5% for undergrad, 9.5% for grad and 10.5% for PLUS loans. The details of how the rates are determined, the caps etc. are in this bill.

Do you have the audacity to think you can understand and plan your finances? LetMofinto help you.

Can I afford to get married at this time?

This is not a very uncommon question. Dating, going steady and even living together may have all been fun. Getting married is a big step. There a lot of questions that you get that are unrelated to finance. But if you wonder if you make enough to support another person, or your combined income is enough, you are not alone. However, the situation is not so bad.

While we don’t have answers to the last minute jitters or cold feet for the wedding etc. Mofinto can help with financial planning.

In general, if both the couple are working, then the incomes can be combined to compensate for the doubling of expenses. There are also additional financial benefits like being able to file tax returns jointly with spouse that will give bigger deductions. This means more money in one’s pocket.

The toughest one to get a handle on is the expenses for the wedding and post wedding. Start by making a list of wedding expenses followed by post marriage living expenses.

Remember marriage is in a way the beginning of life for the two of you. It’s every bit exciting. You just need to plan well.

Mofinto makes it easy to do this. Simply create a new plan in Mofinto. Then pick “Get Married” from goal types, pick the target year and target amount for the goal.

Mofinto walks you through series of questions about your income, your spouses income (you can specify not only base salary, bonuses but you can also specify expected promotions, stock options and/or stock awards etc.), your expected wedding and post marriage expenses. You will even be able to itemize these expenses which helps most people.

Once you answer all the questions, Mofinto will simply do all the calculations including taxes, inflation etc. to figure out if you will be able to save the goal amount or not.

You can even get details of inflows and outflows of money (called cash-flow) for every year.

You can add multiple goals – say in couple years if you want to buy a house and later start a family by having  children etc.

Don’t let the words finance or planning scare you. LetMofinto help you.

Is financial planning only for the wealthy?

That’s a good question. If you look at the top financial advisors they charge hefty fees and also only take as clients who are high net worth individuals usually above $1M. However, everyone needs basic planning.

Young graduates who just started making money, but carry college loans, newly weds who have extra expenses to deal with, those that have credit card debt need advice and planning but can’t afford to find it.

It also starts with education and understanding of money management. Also a really good knowledge of risk vs reward dynamics will help avoid pitfalls in investing.

Basic planning involves understanding money flow. Cash you earn is positive cash flow. Cash you spend is negative cash flow. Usually positive cash flow is what you make in your job. If you have investments like stock, fixed deposits, or bonds the interest or dividend they generate year over year also adds to the cash flow.

Most problems arise because we spend more than we earn. This may seem like a simple problem but in reality it’s more complex. What you take home from your pay check is usually much less than what you are paid. This is because of income tax, pay  roll deductions etc. Also if you have credit card debt, car loan or mortgage on the house, all of these need to be considered before you figure out what your take home pay is.

Life is pretty good at throwing curve balls at us. Your car may unexpectedly give up on you and needs attention. In my case, I experienced sudden expense only last week. My son lost his glasses and we had to rush to the eye doctor to get a new pair of glasses. The whole thing with deductibles etc. cost me $250. Something a good plan should expect to have happen from time to time.

Also you work hard for the money and you deserve to have fun. So if you are planning on that vacation to Hawaii or want to take your kids to Disney World, you need to save up for that trip. How much do you expect to spend and when?

If you plan ahead for regular expenses as well as irregular ones, you will realize that it’s easy to get out of debt and/or stay debt free.

If you can afford a financial advisor that’s great for you. If not, use a tool like Mofinto that walks you through your goals, expenses, income, investments etc. Mofinto automatically calculates the taxes etc. so that you have a good idea of your cash flow for several years to come. It will also predict how much of a chance you have of making your goals.
Using a tool like Mofinto, makes you realize planning is not a chore but rather interesting. You can try different scenarios to see which plan works best.
Best of all you can’t beat the price. It’s totally free. Sign up and give it a try.

When do you need financial planning?

The answer should be all the time. We all work very hard for the money. But we keep putting off planning because it’s a chore.
This Forbes article outlines 5 signs that you really need financial planning. However, there are a lot more instances where in life you need financial planning.

• Going to college
• Starting or planning on starting family
• You make less money than you spend
• You have a lot of credit card debt

It’s important that the money you save is invested properly.
You can talk to a financial adviser to let them do it for you. Or you can do it yourself. Use a spreadsheet to pull your finances in one place and assess if it’s meeting your needs. A better option is to use a tool like Mofinto. Mofinto makes it really easy to enter the data and analyse if you are doing well on your goals. It’s also free.
Whether you do it yourself or rely on someone else to help you, it’s important that you starting planning today.

Who needs financial planning?

Do you plan your trips or just hop on plane to a random destination and hope that you will have a good trip? Just as a successful vacation or trip requires knowing ahead of time where you are going, how you will get there, what you will do when you get there and how you are going to return home, good and careful planning helps make the most important journey we all embarked upon, a success.

Irrespective of what you do, you need financial planning. Whether you are a student, just started in a job, mid way through career or about to retire, the most important step is to understand your goals for money and have a plan to achieve these goals.

Goals can be as simple as take a vacation in couple years or important steps like get married or start a family. The first step is to determine what your goals are over the next 1,2, 5, 10, 20 years or longer than that.

Next step is to list out expenses per year, income per year, savings, investments like stocks and bonds. Income and growth on investments and savings will help augment the income from your job. It’s also important to take into consideration credit card debt, car loans, mortgages etc. that all add to the cash outflow.

If cash inflow is greater than cash outflow, you will not end up in debt.

In a very simple plan with the only goal of being debt free, this is all you need to do.

However, as the goals expand so does the complexity of planning but tools like Mofinto can make it really simple.

Also it’s important to update the plan at least once a year or more often so that the plan can be kept up to date and react to changing circumstances.

Mofinto offers an easy to use quick start functionality that makes it easy to start with simple plan and expand as your needs grow. Did I mention that it’s totally free!