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Health-related jobs are in high demand today. While there may be many reasons why one will take up a health-related course, one of the most common of them is financial. Jobs in health care industry are lucrative and highly rewarding. There are many ways how to acquire a health degree but the most convenient is taking online health courses.Online courses are helpful in many ways depending on the need of the student. For some, taking courses online can be a complementary education; others would consider taking them because of the need for continuing education; and some may take them to get a degree under the comfort of their home.One of the most lucrative online degrees is Psychotherapy Degree. This advanced course is only available for practicing psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and registered nurses with psychiatric experience. Jobs available for psychotherapists include working in hospitals, schools, research labs and other psychology-related fields. Graduates of psychotherapy can also practice privately. There are also specializations in this field. One can be an adult psychotherapist, an adolescent psychotherapist, a child psychotherapist, or even marriage or family counselor.Another excellent online health course is Online Anatomy Courses. As one of the required courses in any form of health courses, Human Anatomy Course is also notoriously difficult if taken together with other courses in a normal medical school setting. But taken alone, this subject is easy and enjoyable. The most important thing before taking an online Human Anatomy Course is making sure that the school is accredited so that time and money spent are not wasted. If one plans to study in a normal medical school in some future, be sure to ask the school first if credits one can get online will be accepted.Craniosacral Therapy Training is another useful and practical online course only for health professionals like doctors, chiropractors, and physical therapists. This course can facilitate doctors and health practitioners understand better the causes of stress and the negative results of stress. Craniosacral Therapy can alleviate numerous health problems such as ear infections, headaches, strokes, etc. Basically, this therapy works by manipulating the muscles and bones in the face, head, vertebral column and the general area around the skull.High demand for nurses today gave birth to Online Nursing Courses. Although one of the most lucrative jobs in the health industry, the United States is still acutely in need of high numbers of nurses. A regular registered nurse can easily make between $70,000-$80,000 annually. Online Nursing Courses can be taken even if one is holding a regular job or raising a family. A degree in Nursing Course can easily land a graduate in many rewarding jobs like hospitals, schools, military, and many other medical settings.With many online courses today, one can forget about traditional school setting. Grab success through Online Health Courses!

Planning for the year ahead is never an easy task. Lack of resources (people, time, budget), keeping up to date on what’s going on in your market, obtaining quality leads and improving brand awareness and reputation have become increasingly difficult for all organizations – for profit companies as well as nonprofits. This has become especially true among US CEO’s who are concerned with not just domestic but also international uncertainties.Developing A Marketing And Marketing Communications Strategy Is CriticalThis should be your priority. Without a strategy for a plan there are way too many opportunities to get off track and chew up your investment. Your ROI will suffer. Consider the following to focus your efforts when developing your strategy and plan:1. Determining, understanding and verifying your target customers and prospects should be at the top of your agenda. To improve profitability and ROI you must know what your audience wants and needs, how they perceive your brand and how it stands up to competition.Be sure to avoid industry and company “myths” and internal “opinions”. Employ primary and secondary research to understand your audience. With so much information available about companies and brands, it is truly the Age Of The Consumer and will be for a very long time.2. Additionally, as part of your knowledge of your audience, determine the size and scope of various sub-segments that exist today and will tomorrow. For example, does your audience include women, or Asians, or Hispanics? If so, look at the dramatic growth of these segments of the populations and determine if your brand needs to pay particular attention to them.Also, recognize that millennials (23% of the US population) are not a homogenous group. At the younger end (20 – 28 years), 40 percent t are currently living rent free with family, while at the older end (29 – 35 years), 43 percent have already purchased a home. With that in mind, how should your strategy differ if you’re targeting adults 55 years and older (21% of US population)?3. Once you clearly understand your audience, develop your unique brand position. To do this, create a brand positioning statement. The statement is a succinct description of the core target audience to whom the brand is directed and a compelling picture of how you want your audience to view the brand. Sound simple? Take a few minutes and try to answer the four components of your positioning:· The target audience, in very specific detail· The category in which you complete and its relevance to customers· The brand’s benefit and point of difference· A reason for the customer to believe – the most compelling proofAll marketing and marketing communications should flow from this positioning, and it should be fully understood and embraced by all employees, sales reps, partners and management.4. Improving brand awareness is very important but only the first step. You also need to create great customer experiences with each touch point of your brand. And that means creating brand advocacy at all levels of contact. Develop brand champions at every level of purchase and repurchase to improve ROI.Be sure these influencers completely understand, believe and can articulate your brand premise. And provide them with the training and tools to convey their trust-worthiness in a believable manner.Developing A Focused Marketing And Marketing Communications Plan And BudgetAfter the hard work of developing a meaningful strategy, recognize it’s equally important to develop a specific plan and budget. The following should be taken into consideration:1. You must be media neutral and open minded in developing your plan and budget. It is extremely important to understand the difference between “efficiency” and “effectiveness”, and not get caught up with the latest trendy new tactic.Regardless of the specific marketing tactic, or type of digital or traditional media, you’re evaluating, keep in mind that cost efficiency does not necessarily lead to effective results. Also, and most importantly, the best source of marketing communications leverage is the quality of the message, not the marketing tactic.2. The scope and diversity of marketing and marketing communications tactics has grown faster than the ability to measure some of them. Marketers now are actually spending money without knowing how it impacts their profitability and ROI! Consider the variety of ways in which nearly $450 billion is expected to be spent in the US in 2018:· Sales promotion ($83 billion), telemarketing ($60 billion), direct mail (($46 billion) and events ($40 billion) highlight projected 2018 US Marketing Services expenditures;· The internet ($78 billion), television ($68 billion) and the combination of radio, newspapers and magazines ($47 billion) are projected to be at the top of the 2018 US Major Media spending categories.Source: Zenith Total US SpendingAnd while it may surprise you, 90 percent of consumers (and 94 percent of millennials) still use coupons. The coupons come from a variety of on-line and traditional mediums, but mail is most popular. Why do marketers still use coupons? The simple answer is because they’re effective in guiding purchase. In developing your own plan and budget, determine and recognize the effectiveness of all marketing tactics, not just their efficiency.ROI Focused Marketing And Marketing Communications ConsultantsIf you’re like most small and midsized companies, you and your team may not have the expertise or time to develop an ROI focused marketing and marketing communications strategy, plan or budget.Even major global brands are seeking outside advisors. In my May article, I discussed the dramatic growth of management and accounting consulting practices (33% increase in US revenue) at the expense of traditional global advertising agencies (0.3% increase in US revenue). One reason for this 2017 growth of consultants is their focus – not on trends or what’s in the news – but on marketing and marketing communications effectiveness, profitably and ROI.While you may not be able to afford the large global consultants, you should consider hiring a marketing and/or marketing communications consultant. The type of people you should hire should:· Have a focus on ROI, with significant experience across industries, b2b and b2c brands, both large and small, as well as for profit and nonprofit organizations· Be media neutral, apolitical, down to earth, be willing to be part of a team and “tell it like it is” so candor will flourish· Have flexibility to bring in other professional specialists when and as needed so that overhead isn’t an ongoing expense· Have strong convictions to measure what has been done and measure what will be done to improve ROI, perhaps including a marketing communications auditIn today’s challenging environment, a greater focus on strategy, planning and budgeting can go a long way toward leapfrogging competition and improving brand profitability. And the fresh eyes of a consultant can go a long way to building a meaningful future for your brand.

If you want to be successful with marketing online, there are many different types of marketing that are important to understand. Each type of marketing requires specialized knowledge and understanding to ensure that it is effective.Here is an overview of the various types of online marketing that you need to know about.1. Search Engine OptimizationOften abbreviated as SEO, this type of marketing covers two types of SEO. First, there is on-page SEO which concerns optimizing each page of your website, social media profiles, blog sites, and so forth with the right terms, navigation, keywords, headlines and so forth.The other type is off-page SEO, which concerns itself with these same things off the pages you control. For example, guest blogging, forum commenting, and anything above board that you can do to get authoritative links back to your website and other online real estate are important for SEO.2. Pay-Per-Click MarketingThis is really an advertising concept but for these purposes we’re including it here. Often abbreviated PPC, this consists of any ads that you purchase that charges you for each click that a potential customer makes on the advertisement. The ad brings the lead to your sales page, or a landing page.3. Email MarketingOne of the most lucrative of all types of online marketing, email marketing is performed by using email marketing software like AWeber.com, or MailChimp.com. The software helps you follow the law when it comes to email marketing.4. Social Media MarketingAny marketing completed on social media networks that brings members, likes and connections into your product funnel is social media marketing. Social media marketing works best when you’re committed to engaging with your audience.Community and Relationship-Building MarketingThanks to forums, message boards, social media groups and more, you can now build an entire online community which enables you to get closer to them and build relationships with them. Relationships are very important when it comes to online marketing. Location MarketingToday, you should also consider marketing in your local location but you don’t even have to book a flight to market in many locations using the right search terms and focused content. If your audience is located in a specific place, you can focus all your marketing online and offline to that location.Affiliate MarketingThis is an effective way to get a legion of fans doing a lot of your marketing for you. An affiliate signs up to use your tools to market your products and/or services to their audience, and for each completed sale they get a percentage. You’ll need affiliate software for this like aMember.com or JVZoo.com.Content MarketingThis type of marketing consists of all forms of content such as videos, blogs, white papers, articles, eBooks, eCourses, email series. Anything that consist of content in all its forms is content marketing.

Newer, faster, shinier – these are all things that every product manager wants their product to be. Our hearts are filled with product lust when we see other products, in our space or not, that have the latest & greatest bells and whistles. Oh if only our product could have that cool new technology also. Hang on a minute, it turns out that our products might actually be more successful if they don’t have that cool new technology…Life Support For Products
If we can get over that new technology lust thing, then perhaps we can talk rationally about this. It turns out that if you really want to help your company’s bottom line, then what your product might really need is incremental innovation, not revolutionary innovation.I’m not a dreamer – I know that VHS tapes, typewriters, and CRT televisions are not going to be making a sudden comeback anytime soon. The harsh, cold reality is that the technology that your product is based on is eventually going to up and die one day. A product manager’s job is to realize this and to attempt to push that day off into the future as far as he / she possibly can.Harvard’s Dr. Mary Tripsas has looked into just how this can be done. She believes that product managers can work to proactively manage the innovation endgame.What this means for your product is that continuing improvements to extend the life of its technology, particularly once you realize just how attractive the profit margins on the old technology are, can be a wise business decision – and not necessarily a reflection of narrow-mindedness of a product manager who is unwilling to see the future.Making The Technology Jump – Or Not
Ultimately a product manger is responsible for the success of his / her product. When it comes to the technology that the product is build using, the product manager’s #1 goal has to be to find ways to extend the life of the product while still continuing to make the maximum amount of profit.As a new technology arrives on the scene, the product manager needs to keep the old product alive long enough that the company can design, develop, and launch new products that contain the new technologies. The key is to finding out HOW to go about doing this.Customers Come First
The secret to knowing how best to time your jump to a new technology is to watch your customers. Our customers come in all shapes and sizes and they all have different levels of tolerance for dealing with the risk that new technologies can bring to the table.What you need to realize as a product manager is that your customers are all going to be moving at different speeds. Sure, some will start asking about a new technology the first time that they read about it in a trade rag; however, the vast majority of your customers are more focused on running their business than what technology your product is built on.Generally, adopting a product that is built using new technology will require a little or a lot of investment on your customer’s part in order to be able to support the new technology. The larger the investment, the longer most of your customers will want to put off making it.How Product Mangers Can Balance Both Worlds
It is the responsibility of the product manager to come up with ways that your customers can gradually move into the future using new technologies on their own schedule.One way to do this is to borrow ideas from the new technology and start to incorporate them into the existing old technology product in order to extend its life. An example of this would be the Toyota Prius. It’s really a gasoline car that has a battery that it can use some of the time. The world is not quite ready for an all electric car and so by adding new technology to the type of car that we already have we will be able to get a little closer to the future.Old products can also be used to create a bridge that will allow customers to travel to the future. These types of products combine elements of both old and new technologies. I own a great example of this type of product: a hybrid VCR / DVD player. As DVD players started to take over the market, I was hesitant to get one because of the enormous investment in children’s movies on VHS tape that I had made. However, the VHS / DVD combo player was the perfect solution for me – I could continue to play my VHS tapes while at the same time I could start to buy DVDs.Final Thoughts
Product Managers don’t have to rush to incorporate every new technology into their products. Instead, understand your customer and learn when THEY need new technologies to be made available to them.In the end, a product manager needs to keep a careful balance between the technologies that his / her product currently uses and the new technologies that are arriving on the scene. Your career and the ultimate success of your company depends on the success of new products, but they have to be funded by making keeping your current products successful.Don’t think of your older products as being so-called “cash cows” that exist to be milked of their profits until they can be discarded. Instead, view them as stepping stones to future products that should be maintained and upgraded for as long as is reasonable in order to maximize profits while at the same time buying the firm time to get products that use the new technology right.Product managers who can balance the arrive of new technology with extending the life of products that use older technology will have have found yet another way that great product managers make their product(s) fantastically successful.

Did you know that 85% of your earning power lies in how you communicate to the business world around you? How true is that, when you think back to your job interview, where you were offered your salary, based on how persuasively you communicated your value to the company that hired you? There is always room for improvement even with the best communicators in the business world. Learn some tips here about communicating to build your long-term earning power.You may be the business face of your organisation – certainly, in the eyes of your clients and other key stakeholders in your business – and as you ascend the career ladder, your communication skills will become even more important to you and the company that invests in you as an employee. You are more than likely going to be standing in front of a team of accountants, Board of Directors or investors, at some point in your job and career, communicating why your ideas should be considered and acted upon for the benefit of your organisation and that all important attentive audience.It is then no longer about how well you can interpret a P&L balance sheet that will drive your success, but your ability to win people over to you way of thinking and have them co-operate with you in achieving the common business goals or take action on what you communicate.Talk to anybody who has left a company of their own volition, you often learn that people don’t leave companies, they leave inflexible – or at worst – poor communicators, who they happen to report to. Consider what you are costing your organisation, if your communication skills are not where they need to be, not to mention what you might be losing in your pocket!What makes great communicators outstanding?A great example of an outstanding communicator is the US President, Barak Obama, who demonstrates a unique ability to get people to respond to his calls to action. Obama shows great presence and charisma in his communication style, which emanates through his powerful and engaging body language. He carries himself with certainty, calmness and purpose in all interactions, which enhances his sense of authority and draws people to him to hear what he has to say.In his voice, we hear clear diction on every word he says. There is plenty of vocal variety and an excellent use of silence and pauses to drive home his ideas into the minds and hearts of others.Obama is eloquent and articulate. He speaks in a language that inspires and includes, and he makes every person feel they are part of his world. This was demonstrated recently in London, when he shook hands with the police man on duty at the door of No. 10 Downing Street. Gordon Brown ignored the policeman! How would you view both leaders based on that micro-communication? Everybody matters in Obama’s eyes and he is about collaboration and inclusion and connection.Another great attribute of Obama is his willingness to take responsibility and admit and he has made a mistake – a sign of high emotional intelligence. He takes it on the chin and moves on. He can say “I made a mistake, it won’t happen again” and people seem to respect him more for that strength. After 100 days in office, there seem to be good rather than bad reports on his performance and the calibre of relationships he is building inside and outside his organisation and around the world.How do poor Communicators stand out?Unlike Obama, his predecessor, George W. Bush, displayed a high degree of focus on his own interests, and even when he did communicate, he left us all wondering what exactly did he say? His language and speech patterns were often poorly delivered and incoherent. They certainly didn’t display the rhetoric and standing of a statesman, but a poverty of language, with his notorious “Bush-isms” and his inability to communicate to his electorate and the international community.How would you rate your own communication skills?You may not have aspirations to reach the heights of great politician, but where there are people around, the same rules of engagement apply; if you want to enrich the working world of those you work with and increase your earning power, take a hard look at how people respond to you, and it should give you some indication of the calibre of your communication skills. Here are some additional pointers to help you become a great communicator.Great Communicators are aware of the impact they have on others.What do you think people see, hear and feel from you? People interpret your communication in your body-language (55%) and the tone of your voice (38%).Words and content only account for 7%. So, does you body language need opening up, smoothing out, calming down? Does your tone of voice need more inflection or clarity, diction, softness or authority? Do people move towards or away from you? It may be time to get some honest feedback in your work place and from yourself on how you measure up.Great communicators build great networks across their business contacts.There are multiple channels of influence you can build now, no matter what stage you are at in your career. Begin with your immediate accounting peers, the key influencers in your organisation, the Sales, Marketing, Operations team, and your most important clients. Make sure they know who you are and how you work. Create links with your industry peers, through the CPA organisation and use the powerful social networking tools, like Inquisix, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter to build an on-line network.It’s important to build your contacts wide and deep, and build a sphere of influence that will serve you as build your financial career. Your ability to reach out across a sphere of Influence, as you advance in your career will determine your future success. As is often said “It is not what you know, it’s who you know that counts, the higher up you go.”Great communicators invest in themselves. Jim Rohn, an expert in the personal development field always told his clients to “Work harder on yourself, than you do on your business.” That involves taking a deeper look at how you communicate in your spoken and written skills.The most valuable skill you can develop is deep listening skills and awareness skills. Pay attention to the type of language you use. Is it appropriate to the environment? Are you making the obvious faux pas, using language that does not match your audience, too technical, too casual, i.e. with text message language in your emails?Do some research and find the right professional development vehicle that will help you on an on-going basis. Toastmasters International (not-for-profit) has an excellent programme for individuals who want to explore their communication and leadership skills.Great communicators adapt to other people’s styles of communicating.In the study of communication, experts speak of the “map not being the territory”, where your version of reality is very different from those around, so consider the reality of others and how they communicate. There may be grain of truth in their views, and seeing different viewpoint, you will always learn something and maybe discover your blind spots. We all have them.The work world is split between tasks and people, and some are more comfortable with one over the other. The real skill of a great communicator is to smoothly move between both the numbers and the people and build great relationships in the process.Great communicators have a reputation for being flexible, open and approachable.The more open and approachable you are, the better your communication skills and rapport you will have. This can be summarised as a sense of empathy, understanding and flexibility with others.Like Obama, you can make mistakes, but if you take responsibility for them, respect from others increases. When you have conversations with other, develop a reputation as somebody who talks about possibility and progress rather than what’s broken or impossible. Your language should be peppered with statements like “I am open to hearing your suggestions, I am going to give it some thought. How can we do this, change this, improve this? What do we need to do to make this happen? How can we take ownership of this?”Develop a reputation for being approachable and you create opportunities for support when times are tough or when you do become the boss. The big one is, let go of the need to control others and work on building trust. It’s far more powerful.And finally, take some time to study Obama’s style of communication. You can find plenty of video footage on YouTube. Read his books, if you want understand the man behind this outstanding communicator.

“It is best not to put all of one’s eggs into one basket!” This is most likely a statement that you may have heard many times throughout your life and when it comes to investing, this statement is a reality. Diversifying one’s investments is the main factor in making a success when it comes to investing. All of the people who have made great returns from their monies have been seen to develop investment portfolios that operate in different market sectors and we advise that you should do the same too!Developing a varied investment portfolio might include purchasing various shares and stocks that come from companies that operate in different business sectors. Methods used to achieve the desired objective may consist of buying government bonds, putting funds in money market accounts or maybe even into property i.e. buy to lets, houses of multiple occupancy [HMOs] and also the standard buying and renting out homes. The key is to invest in different market sectors.Over time all of the data shows that those who savvy investors who take the time to develop investment portfolios that are well diversified on average experience more stable & consistent returns on their investments this is when compared to those investors who happen to put their monies in one investment vehicle. By investing in those companies that operate in different market sectors [industrial, retail, consumer, business to business etc, etc] will mean that your risk factor is lower too.For example if you have invested all of your money in one company and that company’s shares goes down, you will lose some, a lot or all worst case all of your funds. Looking at this from another perspective if you happen to have invested in say shares from ten different companies and nine are doing well while one plunges averages say that you will still make some money or your losses will be minimized..A good investment diversification portfolio will include a number of fundamentals e.g. they will include stocks & shares, bonds, property and of course cash!! It may take time to develop a fully diversified investment portfolio. Depending on how much you have to invest at the outset you may have to start small say only investing in cash and then go onto invest in maybe property over times.This methodology may prove to be fine – however if you can split the investments that you make at the start – it will be a fact that your risk of losing your money will be much lower and as time passes you will see increasingly more attractive returns from your monies.The finance experts also say that you should spread your investment monies evenly among your chosen investments targets. Put another way – if you happen to start with an investment fund of £100000 & invest £25000 in stocks and shares, £25000 in property, £25000 in bonds & then decide to invest the other £25000 in a savings account that pays a decent amount of interest.This is the foundation to building a long term diversified investment portfolio and we see property to be one of the most tried to tested methods for delivering outstanding returns on ones investment funds.

While offices and factories are important for any business, purchase or construction of these premises will divert the ever-important capital from regular business expenses. If you are thinking of extending the lease period of your property then wait. Rental of leased properties put a much higher cost on the business. Even after years of paying the lease, you continue to be the leaseholder. In this article, the author has tried to show how commercial mortgages offer a middle path.While the entrepreneur becomes a property owner with the help of commercial mortgages, the sum that he has to expend every month or quarter will be equal or sometimes lesser than what is being offered on lease, thanks to the low commercial mortgage rates.Those who are conversant with the residential mortgages will not find commercial mortgages very different. The only difference lies in the fact that commercial mortgages are designed for the businesspersons. Nowadays, businesses are readily making use of commercial mortgages to not only purchase property, but also raise finance for other business purposes.Commercial mortgage rates may generally take two forms. The first is when the market forces are given a free hand, and the commercial mortgage attracts interest at the commercial mortgage rate prevailing in the market at that point of time. Though this method has been used conventionally, the regular ups and downs in the figure is seen as a drawback. The second form of commercial mortgage rate is the result of this drawback. In this method, the commercial mortgage rate is locked to a rate for a particular period or for the entire life of the mortgage. Keeping the commercial mortgage rate locked for a particular period may cost the borrower some extra points or fees for the lock period. The fees will be welcome as long as it insures against rising commercial mortgage rates.A point that further goes in favour of commercial mortgage is that the interest paid is tax deductible. Moreover, any proceeds received from the commercial mortgages are not included while calculating the taxable income. Nevertheless, before you assure yourselves regarding the fact, it will be safe to confer with a tax consultant, if the purposes to which the proceeds have been used come under the purview of business purposes under commercial mortgages.Like in any mortgage, the lender has a lien over the property of the entrepreneur that he exchanges for commercial mortgage. This lien is to be exercised only in the event of non-payment of the due amount. In all other cases, the borrowing enterprise gets the property rights back after the last of monthly repayments have been made. Property serving as collateral does not interfere in the enterprise’s right to continue its operations in the property.Early redemption charges are a thing of the past now. Many lenders used to include this clause in order to prevent borrowers from switching over to other mortgage lenders by refinancing commercial mortgages. The early redemption charge used to be either for the whole term or for a certain number of years. The idea was to compensate the lender for the commercial mortgage rate that he lost through premature settlement. Even today, some lenders would have this clause included in fine print. It will be prudent to carefully read for this and several other clauses that can trigger problems in the future. The early redemption charge can be brought down through proper negotiation.Lenders will recommend a different method of using commercial mortgages, when the purpose is different from buying business property. Refinancing an existing mortgage and including the sum needed by the enterprise in the new commercial mortgage is one of the methods. In an equally popular method, the lender would open a line of credit in favour of the businessperson. The amount that is credited is the difference between the present market value of the business property and the unpaid amount over the commercial mortgage.As compared to the process of searching and deciding several issues involved in a commercial mortgage, the application process is simple. It will not require more than a minute to fill in the details of the mortgage on the application form given in the loan providers website, that almost every bank and financial institution has nowadays. Online processing of commercial mortgages has added to the speed with which these are approved.

Stock investing is the growth engine of your investment portfolio, but in 2014 and beyond your best investment strategy could be to cut your investment exposure in stocks (also called equities) and stock funds (also called equity funds). Face it: equities and some stock funds have run up 150% in the past four to five years and this run could be about over. Why invest money here (more money) now?Stock investing has been very profitable in the past few years. The truth of the matter is that stocks and stock funds have been the best investment for the average investor for questionable reasons. In this extremely low interest rate environment, who wants to invest money in bonds, bond funds or any other interest-paying investment vehicle? In the world of stock investing, investors want to see a growing economy, rising corporate profits and growth in corporate sales. In recent years corporate profits have been a product of cost cutting vs. increasing sales. Corporate America has been reluctant to hire employees.Our government has, by design, kept interest rates artificially low to stimulate the economy and bring unemployment down. They’ve done this by BUYING longer-term debt securities, like their own Treasury securities… to the tune of $85 billion a month in 2013. This made stock investing the best investment game in town, and kept interest rates low. In 2014, many economists expect that this will unwind and interest rates are likely to increase. At that point stock investing could be a whole new ball game. Equities might not be your best investment.Invest money in stocks or stock funds if you believe that our government’s efforts will create a new wave of growth in the economy, in jobs, and in corporate sales. Do not rush out to invest money (more money) if you think higher interest rates will follow and choke economic growth. Remember, higher interest rates can hurt sales as purchases bought on credit (cars, homes, credit card purchases in general) decline. Higher rates can also hurt corporate profits because they increase the cost of borrowing money. Corporations borrow a LOT of money.That’s one view of stocks for 2014 and beyond, based on a fundamental view of stock investing. The other approach is the technical viewpoint. With the stock market on a four to five year roll, near all-time highs and up 150%… it could be due for a correction. If you invest money in stocks or stock funds now, you could be arriving at the party late. This is not rocket science, but consider 2000-2002, and 2007-2009. These were brutal bear markets that handed investors losses in the neighborhood of 50%. Only after these bear markets ended were stock funds the best investment for the average investor (for about 5 years).Well, it’s been about 5 years now since the recession (financial crisis) was officially put to bed. High unemployment is still with us and economic activity and growth is nothing to write home about. The real dilemma for investors in 2014 and beyond is that there appears to be few (if any) good or best investment prospects on the horizon. The only cheap asset class around is CASH. To earn even 1% on a CD you must shop around. Why invest money in a money market fund when they pay virtually nothing in return?When investors look at the apparent lack of investment opportunities out there and see equities going up they tend to want to jump on the band wagon and invest money in stocks and equity funds. History tells us that stock investing in an inflated market can be dangerous to your financial health. Sometimes your best investment is a safe and boring one like a short-term CD, savings account or money market fund. In 2014 your best investment strategy may be to cut back on stock investing and opt for more safety.