Post about "entertainment"

The Value of Lifestyle Funds for Safe Investing

Lifestyle funds or ETFs have been in the forefront in recent years. For some people they have definite value.

The concept behind retirement investing with lifestyle funds is that the fund manager does the work for you to allocate your money. The allocation is based on when you expect to retire.

The principles of the lifestyle funds are based on the age old concept of diversification and allocation of your investments according to your age. This philosophy basically revolves around the concept that when you are young you can take more risks with your money than when you are older.

There are a number of ways this allocation can work, but here are a few simple examples:

For 20 -35 year olds:

 

  • US stocks – 60%
  • Foreign stocks – 20%
  • Bonds – 20%

For 40 – 50 year olds:

 

  • US stocks – 50%
  • Foreign stocks – 20%
  • Bonds – 30%

For 50 – 65 year olds:

 

  • US stocks – 40%
  • Foreign stocks – 15%
  • Bonds – 45%

For 66+ years of age:

 

  • US stocks – 20%
  • Foreign stocks – 10%
  • Bonds – 70%

As you can see from the progression when the allocation changes the money manager puts your money into more stable and conservative choices. These choices are less risky. Even the choices of stocks become more stable, for example from stocks with high gain potential to stocks with some gain potential but ones that also issue dividends.

Lifestyle funds or etfs are offer by different brokers and families with the funds having names designating when they expire or your retire, for example

 

  • Lifestyle 2020
  • Lifestyle 2025
  • Lifestyle 2030

Like any other stock or mutual fund choosing a lifestyle fund (ETF) requires a bit of research. Check out the performance for not just the last year but for a number of years. But check not just the fund for the year based on your projected retirement but also some of the earlier years or even later years. This will give you an idea of how the manager does in producing performance at different times.

And of course you want to compare a few different lifestyle families.

A different use of Lifestyle funds is to use them based on your own objectives, whether they be aggressive or conservative. This concept is based on the philosophy that is going to diversify your money in a manner that works with your risk level and concept of safe investing.

For example, if you want to be an aggressive investor, but don’t want to be watching the market all the time, you could invest in a Lifestyle fund based upon many years until retirement – i.e. 2050 – and every five years switch again to an ETF that is the most years away.

On the other hand if you want to play it super conservative you would pick a Lifestyle investment that is only five years away, something like 2015 or 2020.

If Lifestyle funds or ETFs interest you and you are not sure which ones to choose, you can still use an investment software program to help select and then monitor the performance. In this way you can easily compare one to another and be sure you are in the right one that meets your safe profitable investing objectives and that will produce the retire account you desire.

A Brief History of Home Entertainment

The concept of home entertainment and indoor recreational activities changed when home electronics invaded our lives. One can say that access to numerous electronic products at home has revolutionized the idea of what constitutes a complete home entertainment. Nowadays, anyone can have immediate access to every kind of electronic entertainment via different media within the comforts of their homes. They can have their choice of entertainment which may range from the latest DVD players, radios to the wireless internet connection which offers them the convenience of mobility. Advancement in technology has gifted us with loads of home entertainment options ranging from radio, television, CD, DVD players, home theatre system, games consoles and so on.Music has always been one of the most preferred leisure activities. It found its way into our home through the long playing discs and the gramophone. Of course with the coming of radio a decade later made music a more widespread home entertainment. Before the advent of the CD or DVD player, the radio was the most popular home entertainment system available. Though there were some juke boxes available in the local pubs or salons where one could listen to a song of their choice at home there was only the radio. With radio, the choice of listening was however quite limited as people had to listen to the songs that the radio channels would play, even though some of the stations would at times play the selected numbers based on listeners’ requests. But there were no complaints as there wasn’t anything better for decades to come.Initially, when television had not yet become an everyday part of our lives, the visual entertainment strictly meant those theatres which had large screens to view a movie. Things changed dramatically with the invention of the television in the initial phase of the 1950s. The television was a complete wonder in the days when it was discovered. People did not have to restrict themselves anymore to music as their only entertainment at home. They could actually watch a full length movie in the comfort of their own home.Not only movies, this small wonder box started entertaining people with more and more new ideas, programs and techniques. Television has been considered as one of the pioneers in the history of home visual entertainment. Of course it provided more than just entertainment. With news and special documentaries, TV soon became the most important source of amusement. The long playing discs were also a part of home entertainment which was an early discovery. While radios, LPs and television made a permanent place in everyone’s home, the quality of sound in those times essentially required tremendous development.Good sound systems and speakers stared to develop in the mid 1970s. Various technologies were discovered to enhance the quality of sound. And with the music genres like rock, pop and discos coming into being, there was a specific and urgent requirement for good quality sound systems. Thus the electronic giants did not stop producing recorders and put more emphasis on amplifying and equalizing the sound to give it a new dimension.Good quality sound systems were specially designed and created for homes which produced outstanding music. Woofers and subwoofers along with various amplifiers equalizers and multi channel audio were being used to produce crisp stereophonic sounds.However, this concept took a back seat when CD and DVD players came into existence. During the end of the ’70s and early ’80s some of the electronic giants worked in collaboration to develop the world’s first Compact Disc system. Experts proved that this CD player was quite compact and lightweight with its unique durability. For music lovers it was truly a boon. At the same time this CD system opened a new window in the audio equipment industry.Compact discs were more durable than any other long playing discs or tapes. Thus the CDs removed all other music disc and tapes from the market and held prominent position. The 80s and early 90s saw a vast improvement in the technology of compact disc systems. It became very popular with people because of the crystal clear sound it produced and was affordable. These CDs not only stored music, it was versatile enough to store movies, data, pictures or even software.Along with CDs a much improved device which actually revolutionized and changed the entire system of home entertainment is the DVD or digital versatile discs. These discs are powerful and large enough to hold two movies in one. It stores data digitally and is more durable. The scratch proof technology of the DVD players also makes the DVDs last a long time. Both music and movie buffs felt delighted when the DVD player came into the market. Recent survey statistics reveal that the DVD player is the most successful product of home entertainment. It was introduced in the year 1997 and has reached great heights of success ever since.Nowadays, people can have the same effect of a movie theatre in their homes. With the latest DVD players, LCD screens and the sound systems with woofers, sub woofers and multi channel audio systems, anyone can have a fantastic home entertainment system with high quality sound and spectacular visual effects. The plasma and LCD screens are high resolution televisions which started to develop in the latter half of the 1990s and these sleek televisions enabled the viewers to experience digital sound and vision with fantastic picture quality and various advanced features.With the invention of DVDs and a major development in the visual media such as Plasma and Liquid Crystal Display or LCD in the late 90s gave home entertainment its latest technical dimension. With it, the meaning of home entertainment changed significantly with more and more people installing the home theatre systems with newest gadgets and technologies.