While it’s always been possible to participate in the gold market by purchasing mining company shares, until recently there were only two ways to get direct access to a rising gold market. One was to visit a dealer and buy physical gold, such as gold coins, and store it somewhere safe. The other was to trade futures and options on gold bullion. If you short on money you might want to get a payday advance.

You can still use these tools to invest in gold. But there are some potential drawbacks …

* A thief could break into your house and find the gold you hid – and your homeowner’s insurance might not cover the loss.

* The high leverage of futures trading is tempting but enormously risky. Read those account documents carefully. You are, quite literally, putting your entire net worth at risk with every trade.

* And although options trading can be wildly profitable, your timing has to be nearly perfect.

Now, however, you have an additional, much simpler way to invest in gold: Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, that are designed to track gold’s price. That’s right. You can get in on the gold market just as easily as you can buy a stock!

GLD: The First Gold ETF

State Street Global Advisors launched the first gold-based ETF in 2004. Now called SPDR Gold Shares, the fund has the easily-recalled ticker symbol GLD.

GLD was revolutionary. Structured as a trust, each share of GLD is equal to 1/10 of an ounce of gold. State Street had the shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and GLD turned into an instant success.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And GLD didn’t have the market to itself for long. In 2005, iShares introduced a very similar product, the iShares COMEX Gold Trust, ticker symbol IAU. (If you remember high school chemistry, you know AU is the symbol for gold on the periodic table.)

There are some minor technical differences between these two ETFs. But GLD and IAU offer essentially the same thing: An easily-traded security that tracks the price of gold bullion almost perfectly.

As with other ETFs, GLD and IAU allow institutional investors to "create" and "redeem" shares in exchange for the underlying portfolio, which in this case is gold bullion. This creates an arbitrage opportunity. If the share price of GLD drifts too far above or below the actual gold price, professional traders push it back into line very quickly.

Which ETF should you consider buying? It’s really a personal preference. Both are huge and very liquid, though GLD is much larger than IAU. Just remember that every ten shares you buy gives you the equivalent of one ounce of gold. And you don’t have to store it under your bed.

Leveraged Gold!

I mentioned earlier that futures trading involves leverage and risk. I don’t recommend it for most people. However, if you want to use a little bit of leverage to trade gold, there are less-risky ways to do it …

PowerShares DB Gold Double Long ETN (DGP), launched in early 2008, is a quick and easy way to leverage gold’s price movements without the risk of a futures or an options account. DGP tracks an index of gold futures and is designed to return twice the change in the index.

Just as GLD drew competition from other ETF sponsors, DGP has a near-twin in ProShares Ultra Gold (UGL), which also moves two times the daily price change of gold bullion.

These leveraged funds are structured differently from normal ETFs. DGP is actually not an ETF. Instead it’s an ETN: An exchange-traded note. What’s the difference? Functionally speaking, ETFs and ETNs look very similar, but the actual structure is quite different …

An ETN is a debt obligation of a bank, in DGP’s case it’s Deutsche Bank. That means you’re taking credit risk when you buy an ETN. If Deutsche Bank should fail or go bankrupt, you could lose money even if gold goes up. (See my February 6, 2009, Money and Markets column to learn why ETNs may be riskier than they look.)

Meanwhile, UGL is a "commodity pool" rather than an "investment company" like most ETFs. ProShares uses gold futures to get the necessary leverage, but the pool structure insulates investors from margin calls.

Does this mean you should avoid DGP and UGL? No, not at all. It means that with the added leverage, they are different types of funds with different risk factors that you should consider.

Investing is all about risk. The smart thing is to know the risks and use them to your advantage. And when using leverage, understand that if the underlying index or the price of gold goes down, your fund’s share price can fall twice as fast.

DGP and UGL are both good ways to speculate in gold if you are in a position to watch the trade closely and can afford the added risks. But if you want more of a long-term core position in gold, GLD and IAU are probably better choices.

There you have it: Four easy ways to profit from gold with minimum hassle. You can buy GLD, IAU, DGP or UGL from any stock broker, either a traditional firm or an online discount brokerage.

I’ll be back next week with more ETF ideas for you. Good luck!

Best wishes,

Ron Rowland

This investment news is brought to you by Money and Markets. Money and Markets is a free daily investment newsletter from Martin D. Weiss and Weiss Research analysts offering the latest investing news and financial insights for the stock market, including tips and advice on investing in gold, energy and oil. Dr. Weiss is a leader in the fields of investing, interest rates, financial safety and economic forecasting. To view archives or subscribe, visit http://www.moneyandmarkets.com.

This guest post is by ‘mortgagespecialist’,

a member of www.mortgagefit.com,

the world’s largest mortgage community.

In the last week of October, 2008, the demand for mortgage application dropped to an eight-year low. According to a trade group, this has been propelled by an approximately 30% decline in demand for mortgage refinancing because the borrowing expenses have gone up.

The seasonally adjusted mortgage application index of The Mortgage Banker’s Association that comprises both home buying and home refinance loans, skidded 20.3% to 379.9 for the week ending 31st October, 2008. This has been labeled as the most pathetic showing since the month of December 2000.

From early September 2008, a drastic swing has been noticed in the application requests for home purchase and mortgage refinancing while global financial markets were facing turmoil.

A number of government interventions targeted at cutting down mortgage expenses still have not been able to control the situation.

Average 30-year fixed mortgage rates went up by 0.21% to 6.47% in the last week of October 2008 and this corresponded to the level of the week ending 10th October, 2008.

As per that trade group, the interest rate for fixed rate mortgage loans is inching closer to the highest rate of 6.59% of this year that was attained in the summer. Moreover, this is much higher than the 2008 low of 5.49% in the month of January, 2008.

According to the analysts’ opinion, there is no basis to anticipate that there would be a turnaround in the housing industry when 30-year fixed mortgage rates are on the upper limits for a period of six years, unemployment is at a 5-year high and still soaring, as well as an additional supply of houses that have not been sold is forcing prices to go down further.

Growing concerns about probable job cuts have lowered the confidence of the consumers and this has also stirred up a panic about an intensifying recession and led to reducing demand for home buys.

In October 2008, planned job cuts or retrenchments at U.S. based firms soared to an approximately 5-year high and this was an increase of 19% since September 2008. As per the report of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm, this resulted from the problems stemming from banking and housing industries that impacted the wider economy.

Home prices in the U.S. have gone down higher than 20% off the ceiling that was fixed in the summer of 2006 on the basis of the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index. The prices are usually expected to lose another 10%.

The Mortgage Banker’s Association stated that its seasonally adjusted purchase index slumped 13.9% to 260.9 in the last week of October 2008, the minimum since the month of December 2000. At the same time, in the last week of October 2008, its refinancing applications index dipped 27.8% to 1,075.4.

In the summer of 2008, the number of mortgage refinancing applications had decreased because mortgage rates escalated during this period, resulting in the index to drop to a significant low till late August, 2008.

Consumer confidence is a difficult thing to measure, but the latest Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) from Nationwide Building Society, which is based on a survey of consumer opinion, rates consumer confidence at its lowest in at least four years (the index did not exist before 2004).

The evidence is there: budget supermarkets are boasting their highest profits in years, sales of new cars have fallen 21% in a year, and more established High Street chains such as John Lewis and BHS have announced significant falls in profits. It would seem that consumers are becoming increasingly eager to save money where possible.

Consumer confidence and loan availabity

Traditionally, consumer confidence has primarily been a concern for providers of consumer goods and services. Banks and building societies, meanwhile, can sometimes benefit from reduced consumer confidence: when customers do not spend their money, it stays in their bank accounts, which provides funds for financial institutions to do business with. It also encourages taking out loans to finance more expensive purchases, which earns the lender interest.

However, with the uncertainty surrounding the financial sector at the moment, this situation could change. With a number of banks merging and others reporting large falls in profits, the old cliché of keeping savings under a mattress might not be such an exaggeration.

However, a spokesperson for Think Money said that savings are still very important – not only for financial security, but for the good of their lenders too. “Consumer confidence is important to lenders, because they too rely on continuous business,” she said. “If lots of customers withdraw their savings in a short period of time, the banks could be left with very little money to do anything with, meaning they would have little money left to fund loans and other forms of credit. In a worst-case scenario, they could even fail.

“Our advice to consumers is not to panic and to try to carry on as normal. Take confidence from the fact that lenders are still offering loans to customers, which they simply wouldn’t do if the money wasn’t there.

“The Government’s £50bn rescue plan, combined with the recent half-point base rate drop, will only serve to improve lenders’ ability to offer loans – it may just take a little longer to find the right deal.”

Free Guest post by loan and mortgage specialists www.ThinkMoney.com

If your looking for bargains, now is a good time to snatch them… I don’t think I need to say anything else.

Documentation
To avoid paying income taxes on money you never received and gift taxes on money you haven’t given away, be sure to document that the money is given as a loan. You will want to include interest rates if applicable, payment terms and collateral (if any) is used to secure the loan. This documentation can easily be done without a lawyer using a document-creation software program.

Establish Interest Rate
While you may not be interested in charging interest, it is recommended you do so. Otherwise it is likely the IRS will do it for you. It might serve you well to learn how this loan may effect your for tax purposes and how the IRS relegates loans or gifts of money between family. This is one situation where interest free does not equal hassle free.

Establish Solvency
To prove that this is a loan and not a gift, document in some way that the borrower was solvent at the time of the loan, which gives you a reasonable expectation for repayment.

Keep Records
Before and during the term of the loan, stay organized and keep records indicating you are loaning the money and not gifting it. Also track all payments made. If at some point the worse happens and you find yourself unable to collect payments, make a written request asking for repayment. If this fails to produce results, you will then be required to claim a “nonbusiness bad-debt deduction”. This is the worst case scenario because if it gets to this point, not only may you be out money, but the relationship might be ruined as well.

Take the time to think through all the possible repercussions, financially and emotionally before lending a friend or family member money. You might in fact be doing them a great favor, with good results on both sides. As long as both parties are aware of how the loan will be viewed by the IRS, and take the steps to protect themselves, loans between family members and friends can be completed safely.

The purpose of USDA loans is to level the playing field a bit. People who live in rural areas are often too far away from economic growth. When you don’t live in a big city, it might be hard to find a high paying job. To prevent people from all moving into the city, the USDA created their loan program. This way, there will still be someone out on the farms to produce agriculture. If you live in a rural area and want to buy a farm, you have a good chance of qualifying for a loan.

These loans are actually quite flexible and they come straight from the government. There’s no middle man like another bank. You’ll be working directly with the USDA. They will allow you to buy preexisting houses that are for sale in rural areas. You don’t have to start a farm from scratch. But if you want to build a house or a farm, you can do that as well. This option requires you to have a contract for the land before you can get the loan. You also have to have a plan in place with a builder to build your house in a timely manner. The government wants to make sure that you’re actually going to build a house with the money they loan you.

One of the great benefits of a USDA loan is that you don’t have to have a down payment. This enables people from low income areas the option of buying a house without any money upfront. Offering 100% financing gives many more people an opportunity to buy. If people in rural areas are just getting by with their rent payment, they probably wouldn’t be able to buy a house otherwise. With a traditional lender, they would have to come up with a 20% down payment. This enables them to get the house they want without having to save up for a down payment.

The USDA actually bases your loan payments on your household income. They won’t typically allow the payment to be more than 26% of your family’s income. This prevents you from getting in over your head with a big mortgage payment. In addition to these flexible payment terms, they also offer longer mortgages than you can normally find. They offer mortgages with 38 year terms in order to get the payments down to where you can afford them. These types of deals make it possible for a lot of people in rural areas to own their own home or farm.

There is much more information available on USDA loans and rural home loans. If you’d like to find out more about USDA loans, go to USDA loans. If you want to know about rural home loans, go to rural home loans.

I know where Minimum Wage is coming from. I grew up in a household with a far below average income, and while we may have done all right for ourselves, I grew up around people who existed in true poverty. Thankfully, I was able to take advantage of the great opportunities that life offered me – and the great foundation that my parents gave me as a person – and was able to find a better, financially healthy life where I could raise my children without a regular sense of necessity underlying day to day life.

But what can a person do if they’re in Minimum Wage’s situation? Here are the ten things I would do if I found myself only able to earn minimum wage.

1. Go rural.
It is far, far easier to make a living on minimum wage in a rural situation. There are many small towns where you can find a room to rent for $100 a month and a small apartment to rent for $200 a month. Yes, these really exist – I see them fairly regularly when I get out in the more rural areas of Iowa. Even better, these areas often have lots of jobs for minimum wage workers – I see lots of help wanted signs around these towns and notices inside of town halls and gas stations looking for workers.

2. Don’t drive.
A car is a giant money suck. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it, if you’re working minimum wage, your car is killing you. Ditch the car – get whatever cash you can from it. Then choose a place to live where you can get to work by foot or by bicycle. In a small town, it’s pretty easy to reach any other place in the town (and many places in the nearby countryside) on foot or by bicycle, and it’s something that people often do to cut corners.

3. Find the free stuff.
In towns of any size, there are resources available for the impoverished, from free dinners at churches to food giveaways to soup kitchens. The library provides free entertainment in the forms of books, music, and internet access. There are parks, recreational activities, and countless other things even in the smallest of rural towns. Look around for the free stuff and use it – it’s there for everyone to utilize. When you must spend money, be as frugal as possible. Ramen is very cheap, filling, and full of carbs, for example.

4. Don’t be proud.
Pride often keeps people from walking into a soup kitchen. Don’t let it. That kind of pride is an obstacle ground into you by a life in a consumerist society. People who are there to help you want to help you stand on your own two feet – give them that opportunity. Look for every opportunity to help you with your situation, from consulting to WIC to Medicaid to welfare (regardless of my political feelings on it, it’s definitely a resource someone in that position should use). If you don’t know where to start, start off by asking a pastor or a clergyman for help.

5. Minimize your required commitments.
Repaying debts? Call the debtors and explain your situation and ask for an abatement. This won’t get rid of your debt, but it can minimize your requirements for the time being. If you have children that you simply can’t support, look for opportunities to help you with that burden – your family is a great place to start, for example. Don’t saddle yourself with burdens heavier than you can carry or you’ll do nothing but collapse. You don’t become strong by carrying 500 pounds of weight on your back – you become strong by learning how to carry ten pounds, then adding more as you go along.

6. Take every side opportunity you can.
There are all sorts of little opportunities to make more money if you pay attention. Doing things like helping someone shingle a roof for $10 an hour cash is an opportunity you can’t let pass by. Free meals? Take them. Twenty bucks for helping an old man clean out his garage? Do it. Ask around for odd jobs and other small-scale moneymaking opportunities – perhaps even get started on your own “handyman” business.

7. Minimize your possessions.
There are a lot of reasons for doing this. The biggest one is that the more stuff you have, the more money you’ve wasted. Also, fewer possessions mean that you need less room to live. For a while, all of my worldly possessions (clothes included) fit in a single Rubbermaid tub – and that made it extremely easy to actually live in someone’s living room for a while.

8. Make a steely commitment to succeed.
Even after you’ve done all of this, it still takes some serious commitment to make all of this work. You can get yourself in a position where you’re not spending more than you make, but it takes commitment to stay there. Remind yourself every day that you’re not going to waste money and that you’re going to spend less than you earn this week – and this month – and this year. That’s the one way you can get ahead.

9. Save automatically.
So what do you do when you are making more than you’re spending? Take that extra money and put it into a savings account. But just doing that every once in a while won’t cut it. Keep most of your money in a checking account, then go to the library and use the internet access there to set up an online savings account with a big bank, like ING or HSBC. Set up an automatic savings plan there to withdraw $10 a week from your main checking – or maybe even more. Then walk away and forget about it. What will happen? After a year, you’ll have $530 or so in the account. If you’ve put in more weekly, you’ll have even more.

10. Educate yourself.
While you’re putting yourself in a better financial place, spend your spare time educating yourself. Take classes at the nearest community college and work towards some kind of degree. If you need to, transfer to a state university – if you’ve been working on minimum wage for a long time and are actually making strong progress towards a degree, they will help you big time with paying for it. The key is getting started – see what your local community college has to offer.

One final tip: don’t give up the dream.
If you’re working a minimum wage job, either you’re very young, very lazy, or very unlucky. All of these can be overcome, but they take time and commitment and a lot of hard work. It’s very easy to give up the dream of a better life when you’re doing this. Don’t. You can succeed and you will succeed if you spend every day taking steps in the right direction. Surround yourself with people who are also fighting to go in the right direction. Don’t be resentful of people in a better situation than you – instead, use them as inspiration and realize that if you keep on the path, you’ll get there too.

Thanks to thesimpledollar.com

A lot of hard working people, dream of owning a family home but simply don’t qualify for the loan or can’t afford the purchase with a conventional bank loan. The FHA is helpful because it caters to people who cannot afford a conventional bank down payment or otherwise do not qualify for PMI insurance. Through an FHA home purchase, the down payment may be as low as just 3% of the total purchase price. Plus most of the closing costs and fees can be included in the FHA backed loan.

The FHA does not extend the actual loan, but rather it insures the loan. Your local private bank may be the actual lender, but that loan if further backed by the FHA, which allows the bank to offer more advantageous terms. Since the rate and terms are set by the actual lender and not the FHA, comparison shopping for the loan is very important.

Some of the more beneficial features of an FHA Loan are the terms which allow a single or multi-parent household to purchase a home. The FHA Loan can also provide options for fixing up your existing home such as remodelling, home repairs or energy-efficient improvements and including the additional renovation costs in the loan. The FHA has provided some excellent avenues middle income or low income Americans.

Traditionally, FHA loans have gone to lower income Americans and have enabled many families to purchase a home they would not otherwise have been able to afford. After all, this program did originate during the time of the great depression when foreclosures were common, and cash was scarce.

Today, the FHA is a part of HUD U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. FHA loans typically offer low down payments, low closing costs and easy credit qualifying.

Important to the mortgage lending process, the potential lender assesses the prospective home buyer for risk. That analysis of the home buyer’s debt to income ratio enables the buyer to know what priced home they can afford. Other factors, such as payment history on existing debts, are considered and used to make decisions regarding eligibility and terms for a loan.

The FHA even offers a Reverse Mortgage. If you are at least 62 years old and live in your home which is paid off then the FHA Reverse Mortgage might be right for you. An FHA Reverse Mortgage allows you to take equity out of your home. It allows the home owner to turn his equity into monthly cash for living. In August of 2007, the FHA even added a new refinancing program to help borrowers hurt by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis. That refinancing program is called FHA-Secure.

Want to experience the joy of home ownership but need a loan? The Federal Housing Administration has been helping people fulfill their dreams of owning a home since 1934. For more information on the this topic you can visit FHA Mortgage Limits page. This page allows you to look up the FHA mortgage limits for your area or several areas, and then list them by state, county, or Metropolitan Statistical Area. You can also learn more at FHA Loan Refinancing.