The stock market is finally showing hope instead of despair, making investing your family savings more appealing than it has in years. If you are looking for a financial advisor, follow these tips to make the process easier.

Avoid Using Friends

When it comes to advice, it’s hard to take your friend’s recommendations outright. Their recommendations might not fit your ideals or goals. If you have a friend who works in family investing and they offer up their services, proceed with caution; if things don’t work out, you might have to fire them, which won’t be easy. The same holds true for family.

Take Time When Choosing

You should expect the interview process for a financial advisor to be a long one. This is an important decision and rushing into it won’t make you feel any more at ease. Going on a recommendation can be misguiding – someone who is a good match for someone else may not be a good match for you, but it’s a good place to start. Family investing is a big risk and can produce great rewards, so sit down with a few advisors before choosing which is right for you.

Some criteria to look for, according to Douglas Black of SpringReef Partners, will set you in the right direction in making your decision:

• At least seven years minimum experience
• High quality compliance and regulatory record
• Client-aligned personal values
• Employment stability
• Transparency regarding potential conflicts, pricing and risk
• Focus on and experience with similar clients

No Right Choice

Even the best advisors get things wrong from time to time, but the difference can be whether they can rebound with you or leave you out to dry. Family investing can be more about the relationship with your advisor than the return on investment, although the latter is not something to dismiss.

How To Tell If You’re Doing Well

A good way to measure performance is comparing what is promised versus what is returned. Investing your family income for a profit down the road is a long process, and giving a few advisors some cash to invest and seeing how they do after a short period of time won’t give you a very good outlook on that relationship. Having a good, working relationship with your advisor, especially in hard times, will make family investing less stressful and increase the amount of trust you can build with the advisor your choose.

Winning the Family Investing Game

There will always be rough patches with investing, but if your advisor stays honest about his return, your ideals are aligned with their way of business and in the long run, you maintain a healthy portfolio, consider yourself a winner in family investing.

Unfortunately, the housing market cannot always be as nice to us as we’d like to be to it. Some states like Florida have been in a real estate slump for the past few years, and nothing seems to be changing in 2011.

The following covers where home values are projected to increase the most in the coming year followed by a list of states whose home values are going to continue to decrease.

The following are the metropolitan areas where data compiled by the Local Market Monitor found to be the most advantageous in the coming year, as well as the most depleted home markets.

Home values will rise in 2011 the most in:

1. San Jose, California (forecasted 3% increase)
2. Santa Ana, California (forecasted 3% increase)
3. Bethesda, Maryland (forecasted 2% increased)
4. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (forecasted 2% increase)
5. San Diego, California (forecasted2% increase)

Home values will fall in 2011 the most in:

1. Daytona Beach, Florida (11% decrease)
2. Lakeland, Florida (7% decrease)
3. Orlando, Florida (6% decrease)
4. Boise City, Idaho (7% decrease)
5. Las Vegas, Nevada (5% decrease)

Lilla Roberts, a 73-year-old living in New York went to court after her many attempts of finding a mortgage modification ended in her house being foreclosed upon and given to Sallie Mae. Roberts was having trouble paying her mortgage after her tenant stopped paying rent. She went through forbearance agreements, different servicers and foreclosure law firms before she decided she would fight fire with fire and sue Bank of America.

This was not the first time Bank of America was sued by homeowners. In 2010 a sea of homeowners slammed the hammer down on Bank of America for allegedly not keeping its promise to troubled mortgage owners simply so the bank could make a buck.

The Countrwide Financial unit of Bank of America was most recently accused of “massive fraud” by investors claiming they were misled about the security of their mortgages. Over a dozen companies filed suit against the banking giant, including New York Life Insurance Co. and Dexia Holdings Inc.

Where does this lead the future of the bank? What do you think? Have you ever come across problems with your  mortgage?

Murry had dealt with brain cancer for 2 years, and about six months ago was told a new tumor had formed. He refused treatment and decided to turn his knowledge he had learned on Wall Street into a tool to help people with the family investments and family expenses.

Murry and financial adviser Dan Goldie self-published the relatively small book of investment advice, in which they covered five points about how ordinary investors can avoid some common pitfalls. The book turned out to be very popular and was reviewed in the New York Times, giving it a worldwide audience, and eventually, its own publisher.

The book hit a chord with people, who related not only to the sadness of Murry’s story, but could relate to his writing and opened their households to his investment advice.

Not only are banks closed on this federal holiday, but the stock market and postal services will not be open as well.

The New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ will be closed, along with all banks, and will be open for business for all family investments on Tuesday morning.

With all the other family expenses one has to deal with, is it logical for you to make the step into buying a home? The first thing one needs to think about is price, but there’s a lot more that goes into buying a home than the price tag.

The following is a check list you and your family need to go over before going through the major family expense of buying a home:

1. Determine what your needs are
2. Determine whether or not owning a home will help meet those needs
3. Determine the responsibilities you want in a home (do you picture yourself mowing the lawn, or running on the beach every Saturday morning)
4. Look at buying a home as a lifestyle investment first, then secondly as a financial investment

Does owning a home coincide with your family budget?

It might be a backwards way of thinking, but owning a home can actually help your family savings. How, you might ask? By forcing you to save! A mortgage lasts anywhere from 15-30 years and forces you to save for those monthly payments. As previously mentioned, your house is a huge investment, probably the biggest you will ever make. Like most investments there is a chance you will lose and a chance you will win.

Another thing to consider when deciding whether or not a house fits into your family budget is thinking long term. Once your mortgage is paid off, it turns your house into a substantial asset in which you can sell and use the profits for a child’s college tuition, retirement, or any other family expense!

How much mortgage can you afford?

Every homeowner has a mortgage to pay, but determining how much your monthly payments are is not entirely based on what you think your family budget can handle. Fannie Mae bases their mortgages on a ratio of two requirements: basic monthly housing costs and your gross monthly income. Basic costs include, but are not limited to:

• Monthly mortgage
• Insurance
• Property taxes

Keep in mind that monthly payments on student loans, installment loans, and credit card balances older than 10 months are added to basic housing costs and then divided by gross income. Your gross monthly income, which means your income before taxes and other deductions are taken out, include, but are not limited to:

• Salary
• Self-employed income
• Pensions
• Child support
• Alimony payments

Prequalification, or arranging your mortgage before actually buying a home, can help you zone in on the families and neighborhoods you can afford before you waste time looking where you can’t afford to live.

What are the ongoing costs of owning a home?

Unfortunately, the mortgage payments and down payment are not the only cash deposits needed when purchasing a home. There are also home inspection costs, closing costs, application fees, appraisal fees, costs for a title search and title insurance, first month’s home owners insurance, recording fees and attorney fees are most of the other expenses, but there will without a doubt be surprise costs along the way.

It might seem like a lot, but the normal percentage of all these costs is 3-8% of the total purchase price. Keep this in mind when figuring out how much of your family expenses you can put towards purchasing a new house.

Stats to keep in mind:

• monthly housing cost should not exceed 28% of your monthly gross income
• total monthly debt payments, including basic housing costs, should not exceed 36%
• 28% to 36% debt ratios assume a 10% down payment when you purchase a home
• Down payments greater than 20% generally buy a better rate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sales of new homes improved last month after the worst summer in nearly five decades, but not enough to lift the struggling economy.

The Commerce Department says new home sales in September grew 6.6 percent from a month earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 307,000. Even with the increase, the past five months have been the worst for new home sales on records dating back to 1963.

Paul Dales, U.S. economist with Capital Economics, called the September home sales encouraging. But he said it doesn’t change the fact that activity remains at extremely low levels.

“That’s unlikely to change for a few years,” Dales said.

The uptick in new home sales wasn’t enough to convince investors that the sector has returned to health.

Most major homebuilder stocks fell after the report’s release. Toll Brothers Inc. fell nearly 2 percent.

“The housing stocks are likely to perform well only if broader indications of economic improvement continue,” said Michael Gaiden, an analyst with Morningstar Inc.

New home sales have risen 9 percent from the bottom in May but are still down 78 percent from their peak sales pace of nearly 1.4 million homes in July 2005.

It will likely take about there years for the industry to get back to a healthy annual rate of about 600,000 homes sold, said Brad Hunter, chief economist with Metrostudy, a real estate research and consulting firm.

Allegations that banks cut corners when filing legal documents to foreclose on homeowners could actually benefit homebuilders, Hunter said. Consumers might start to favor new homes over previously owned homes, worried that the purchase of a foreclosure could be contested or canceled if the previous owner claims the foreclosure was invalid.
Builders are competing with millions of foreclosures and other distressed properties that show no signs of abating. They are unlikely to ramp up construction until those are cleared away and demand picks up.

High unemployment, tight credit and uncertainty about home prices have kept people from buying homes. Government tax credits propelled the market earlier in the year, but those expired in April.

The September sales figures were driven by a 61 percent monthly surge in the Midwest. Sales grew about 3 percent in the South and Northeast. They fell by nearly 10 percent in the West.

The median sales price was $223,800. That was up 3.3 percent from a year earlier.

The number of unsold new homes on the market fell to 204,000, the lowest since July 1968. At the current sales pace, it would take about eight months to exhaust that supply, compared with a healthy level of about six months.

The industry is suffering the fallout of a massive building boom, in which many homes were sold to speculators. They then resold the homes, often to borrowers who took out risky loans and defaulted. Those unsustainable boom times aren’t coming back.

Thrive is a website that focuses on family investments and credible financial planning. Launched in 2008 and taken in by a financial leader in online finance in 2009, Thrive.com became a place where families could come to learn information on anything financial.

What exactly is a 401k plan? How do I improve my credit score? What is the best way to track my family expenses? How do I get out of debt? These questions are answered by the energetic (and quirky in their writing) financial planners and writers that make up the team at Thrive.

Working with Thrive is simple. If you’ve worked with online family investment and budgeting tools like Mint.com, the start-up process will seem very familiar. Once signed in you give Thrive your bank account information so they can see the trends and where your family income is going.

Note: Thrive.com cannot access anything the bank shows them. They can see the information but cannot do anything with it.

The Fix Your Finances section of Thrive.com tells families how to:

• Save for goals
• Get out of debt
• Plan for retirement
• Budget your income using online software
• Shows family budgeting tools

Your personal family investment page separates your finances into groups so you can see what you are spending your money on. It then gives you goals and says how much debt you are in and what your financial goals should be.

With these low mortgage rates, what economists and socialists assume will happen is house prices will go up because more people will be able to afford to buy. However, house prices fell in March from February. When you plan your family investments a mortgage is almost always put into the family budget. Making a house into a home does not come cheap, and mortgages help make families of all sizes afford making the transition. The low cost of mortgages should be pulling in families left and right into buying new homes, but due to the economic hardships of the past few years, many people are still reluctant to buy.

Some mortgage companies are so eager for family investments that they’ve dropped their mortgage rates to 4.00% on a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage with no points!

How did this happen? The European loan uncertainty spooked everyone, even the US government and investors. When the US federal government decided to back mortgages; they made them a family investment that is almost guaranteed to pan out for you. Investors in the stock market or other loans did not have that assurance, which made them turn to Treasury bills and other debt guaranteed by the government. With all these people turning to advocate mortgages, their rates went down!

This in turn should make house prices go up, for as economics 101 tells us, the larger the supply, the lesser the demand. However, due to the severity of lower family incomes and uncertainty about family investments, people are still reluctant to buy homes. This has made the house market weak with Detroit and Chicago seeing the largest monthly decline of 4.1 and 2.3%.

Whereas all this sounds like a good thing, it is discouraging for American homeowners who have watched their assets deteriorate significantly over the last couple years. If the home prices dip again, families may have to curb their family budget and make the balance our economy is currently in falter on the side of debt. For families struggling to pay their mortgages, falling home prices makes it even harder to refinance into an affordable home loan.

Along with Dow Jones, Nasdaq also saw a drop of 8.73% and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index dropped 8.49%. The chairman of the personal wealth advisors practice at Eisner LLP said the Euro is only going to continue to lose value as people watch the Greek protests on TV and start to panic. The fear is that the debt problems in Greece will spread to other parts of Europe who use the Euro, which composes of the countries that make up the European Union. If the European Union goes into debt, the entire world will see economic hardships.

The problems with the Greek economy erupted into ciaos when the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou passed a bill that allowed the following:

• yet another tax increase
• severe cuts in public spending
• pay cuts

All in an effort to counterbalance the huge amount of debit the country is in. By passing this legislation, Greece became eligible for a $141.9 billion aid package from the International Monetary Fund and 15 other countries that use the Euro.

It is unclear to many if Greece will in fact be able to rebound its economy even with the austerity measures. Many think the bailout package won’t be enough. What they say about money is true- it makes the world go ‘round, and if the economy is amiss in Greece, the stock market plummets in America.