Definitions

Moving forward in our definitions series, we once again look at a stock definition: return on assets. This measurement, found in your stock of choice's financial ratios page, tells you a lot about the profit of the company. Let's look at this ratio a little closer.

Return on Assets Overview

If you're in the market for a home, you might have a few questions about the ins and outs of the mortgage world. Here at MomVesting, we've covered some basic mortgage topics already, but we have not yet tackled the second mortgage. So let's take a look at this sometimes integral portion of the home-buying process.

Open-Ended and Closed-End Loans

A while back, we started to give banking and bankruptcy the MomVesting "simple does it" treatment. That is, we started to look at banking and its terms in a pared down, basic light. Today, we continue what we started, this time focusing on secured and unsecured debts. Without further adieu, here is what you'll want to know about these important banking terms.

Secured Debts

Bankruptcy. Just seeing the word might induce a shudder at its implications. It's a topic that might not be on the top of your list to discuss, but it makes up a significant part of our financial culture. In an effort to keep financial terms in a simple, easy-to-digest format, we'll give bankruptcy and all of its connected points the "simple does it" treatment.

Debtor and Creditor

As we move forward in our financial definitions series, we are presented with Unit Investment Trusts, also known as UITs. This type of investment is similar to the mutual fund and the closed-end fund because all three are types of investment companies. Whoa, you say? What is an investment company? Well, let’s take a look at both investment companies and UITs.

Investment Companies

What better time is there to ponder taxes than now, when tax season is upon us and in full swing? While some of us are still deciding between employing Turbo Tax, H & R Block or our college buddy who kinda dabbled in accounting, here's a bit of tax-related reading dedicated to marginal taxes.

My mom really enjoys the televisions show "Leverage." Hedge fund managers on the other hand tend to enjoy the financial type of leverage. You've probably heard of terms like "Leveraged Buyouts" on TV, but most of us haven't really though about what leverage means in that context. So, when talking about finance, what is leverage and is it good?

Leveraging Things

In finance we hear the term "principal" quite a bit -- but we all know we're not talking about our favorite education professional. So when talking personal finance, what is principal?

For many people a mutual fund presents one of the easiest ways to get involved in the stock market. Rather than buy specific stocks, mutual funds allow you to pool your money with a bunch of other investors and buy a collection of stocks together. This pooling of money also makes it possible for the group to hire a money manager to choose the stocks, which can yield better returns than if we were to all choose stocks on our own. So let's take a closer look at mutual funds and their advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

You may have never heard of "Market Capitalization," but there's a good chance that you've heard of "large cap" or "small cap" stocks before. As usual the financial world goes out of their way to make something fairly simple sound pretty complicated. In its simplest sense, market capitalization is simply a measure of the company's total worth.

We calculate that by multiplying the number of shares in circulation times the price per share. In other words, the market capitalization of a stock is how much money it would take to buy all the shares of the stock.