Turkey’s stock market sits on top so far this year. From December 31, 2021 through September 14, 2022, Turkey’s Borsa Istanbul was up more than 85%. Compare that to a lacklustre -1.5% for the UK, -7% for Canada, -9% for Australia, and the downright dismal -17% in the U.S.

The increase in Turkey’s stock market has been underpinned by a 7.6% increase in GDP year-over-year for the second quarter.

Ready to invest?

Maybe not. Unemployment in Turkey sits at 10.6%, double or triple that of most developed-world economies. Consumer prices have soared more than 80% over the past year. And the country is pinned under the dictatorial control of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who, at a bare minimum, has some extremely misguided economic ideas.

Indeed, Erdoğan demonstrates some of the worst qualities of a leader, be it the head of a country, or the CEO of a company.

Notably, he’s…

Often treated the country as his personal piggy bank. Rather than a servant of the state, Erdoğan seems to see the situation, at least at times, the other way around. This includes the construction of the Presidential Complex in Turkey, a 1,100-room palace that, depending on the estimate you go with, cost anywhere from US$350 million to US$1.2 billion. When the building was unveiled, The Washington Post wrote that “The White House would be a tiny wing”.

Making big bets on ideas that are ludicrous. The raging inflation in Turkey has been stoked by the highly-misguided idea from the President that lower interest rates, rather than higher, would be best to fight rising prices. Economic orthodoxy is the opposite. When interest rates are increased, it slows the flow of money and dampens economic activity, putting pressure on rising prices. And while there are good reasons to doubt some areas of economic orthodoxy, this is not one of them. Erdoğan’s oddball idea has taken containable inflation in the country and turned it into a major problem.

Doubling down, rather than admitting an error. Most everyone with even a basic understanding of economics felt Erdoğan’s approach was wrong-headed before day 1. But with inflation closing fast on triple digits, the mistake should now be fairly obvious. Instead of changing course, though, he introduced a policy that would backstop Turkish depositors, and therefore the currency, via the country’s treasury. This continued the misguided economic approach, while additionally shifting risk onto the Turkish taxpayer.

And still, the Turkish stock market is the best performing major market this year.

This isn’t an anomaly. There are many instances where inadvisable actions lead to positive results. Lotteries are mostly ways to set your money on fire. But somebody wins. Drunk driving is among the dumbest things a person can do. Yet intoxicated drivers do make it home without injury to themselves or others. And smoking and eating mostly red meat is not the ticket to good health. Yet there are lifelong smokers who eat steak at every breakfast who live to a ripe old age.

You don’t have to take wise actions to get to a good outcome. That’s how statistics work. Unless something is an absolute law of physics, there will be a range of outcomes. “Bad” actions can end up with “good” outcomes. And vice versa.

But if you want to reach ideal ends more often than not, focus on process: consistently take the actions that are most likely to lead to the outcome you want.

If you want to keep more of your money, don’t play the lotto. You can get to your ends of increasing wealth much more reliably by doing boring things like saving money.

If you want to stay alive and out of jail, don’t drive drunk. With just a little planning and coordination, you can have the fun you want without endangering anyone.

If you want to live long, don’t smoke and eat a well-balanced diet. Strike a balance in your diet and you may find that you enjoy your occasional steak even more. (The smoking I’d suggest simply avoiding).

If you want to be a successful investor, diversify and invest for the long term. Don’t put all of your money into one stock in hopes that it’ll make you rich in 12 months. Investing that verges on gambling may lead to the occasional win, and a good cocktail-party story to tell. But it’s a low-probability path to growing your portfolio.

And whatever you do, don’t expect economic success from the leader who hasn’t grasped Econ 101.

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I love coffee.

I also love saving money.

This means that worlds could collide when deciding whether to trust a professional barista to make my daily coffee or make it at home.

For a long time, the cliche of all cliches in the world of personal finance has been that you can save a bundle of money by switching your Costa or Starbucks habit for the home-brewed version.

Is that true? Well, yes, it is – but it won’t be right for everyone.

Why you shouldn’t make coffee at home to save money

MyWalletHero is a site dedicated to helping you live your best financial life. In many cases, that means pointing out where you can save money.

But unless you’re struggling under high levels of debt, living your best financial life doesn’t mean cutting spending to the bone in every aspect of your life. There’s nothing ‘best’ about that.

It does mean being smart about where you spend your money though, and it does mean making sure you’re not making outlays on products or services that aren’t that important to you.

With that in mind, consider not worrying about buying coffee out of the home, if either of the following is true:

• Coffee is a priority in your life, the prepared coffee you buy is much better than that you could hope to make yourself* and drinking prepared coffee every day brings you consistent joy.
• Buying prepared coffee out of the home saves you so much time* that you’re essentially trading the coffee money for time – which can be a very valuable resource.

* Ensure you are convinced on these points, as it’s possible to make excellent coffee at home and to make coffee quickly at home. Read on to learn more about both. (Though I will readily admit that making excellent coffee quickly at home is more challenging!)

How much can you save by making coffee at home?

The short answer? Quite a bit of money.

The longer answer? It really depends. Let’s take a look at why.

It depends on where you regularly buy your coffee out of the home and what type of coffee and coffee preparation technique you would use at home.

But for argument’s sake, imagine you were using a relatively basic Russell Hobbs filter coffee machine (£35 at the time of writing), along with an 80-pack of Melitta coffee filter papers (£2.49 at the time of writing) and Costa Coffee Signature Blend (pre-ground, £18.75 per 1kg at the time of writing).

A coffee maker can last quite a while, but let’s make the assumption that this one will last us two years. And let’s further assume that we’re making an average of two cups per day, every day of the year. With the £35 price tag on the coffee maker, we’re looking at roughly £0.02 per cup. Then add £0.03 per coffee filter and £0.30 for the coffee (assuming 16g coffee per cup).

Which brings us to a grand total of £0.35 per cup. That’s quite a savings from the £2 to £2.50 you might pay at Costa or Starbucks.

And that’s just one cup. Multiply that over the two cups per day over a year and you could save up to nearly £1,600 annually. That’s real money.

Naturally, this is a very simple comparison. If you’re in the habit of drinking flat whites or cappuccinos, or your spot is a third wave coffee house serving pour-over of single-origin beans, then the maths is a bit different. But in almost every case, you can expect to save a reasonable amount of money.

How to make great coffee at home

If coffee is mostly a vehicle for caffeine for you, then you may not be concerned about a drop in taste by making it at home (though you may be more concerned about how much time it’ll take – if so, see below!).

But for many reading this, saving money on coffee may not mean much if the cheaper coffee tastes lousy. Fret not, because home-made coffee can be quite good.

Personally, I’ve found that the best balance between convenience and a great-tasting cup of coffee is a filter machine. Crazy, right? Not really.

Many consider the gold-standard of coffee making to be the pour-over method (more on that in a moment). A filter coffee machine is essentially the same extraction mechanism – hot water is poured over the ground coffee over time and allowed to filter through the grounds and a paper coffee filter into the carafe.

There are quite a few things that can be done to make coffee from a filter machine quite bad. But, likewise, quite a few things that can be done to make the coffee very good. Here are a few:

• After about 30 seconds, open the top of the machine and stir the grounds: Well-brewed coffee revolves around evenly extracting from the ground coffee. Once the grounds have been doused in water, a good stir ensures that a wonky settling of grounds won’t cause uneven extraction.
• Don’t bother with the permanent filter: Yes, not buying paper filters saves you money – and we’re talking here about saving money – but, as noted above, that’s only about £0.03 per cup, and filter coffee made with a paper filter is far better than what comes from using the permanent filter basket.
• Don’t make 10 cups at once: Most filter coffee machines can make eight or 10 cups at once. Don’t do it! The optimal brewing time for coffee grounds is in the range of three to five minutes. Brewing too much at once throws this off. If you’re having a large crowd, do what you must. But making two to three cups at a time will yield far better coffee.
• Don’t let the coffee sit on the burner: The burner under the carafe that turns on when you’re making your coffee is not your friend. Let the coffee sit too long on that burner after it’s done brewing and your coffee will be ruined. Better still, don’t let the coffee sit there at all. Either brew enough that the coffee is all being enjoyed fresh (best option). Or preheat a thermos (I use a Stanley similar to this one) with some boiling water, empty it, and then pour your coffee in there for later use.
• Use quality coffee: Using good-quality ground coffee (or whole bean) is important for obvious reasons. I can assure you that the most expensive coffee isn’t always the best, but I can say that getting too cheap on your coffee will not get you a good result.
• Grind your beans fresh for every cup: This isn’t an absolute must, as it does an amount of time (grinding) and cost (the grinder) to the process versus using pre-ground coffee. However, freshly ground beans produce a much better cup than beans that have been pre-ground. If you are going to bother grinding your own though, invest in a burr grinder to make it worth your while (something like the Melitta Molino).

Even better coffee, though less convenient

If you’re less concerned about convenience and more about approaching the hallowed perfect cup, then you are well advised to consider pour-over coffee.

While it’s beyond the scope of this article to cover all of the ins and outs of making pour-over coffee (there is, after all, an annual competition devoted to making the ultimate pour-over), we can look at some of the basics to get you started with this brewing method.

From the money-saving angle, pour-over coffee may end up an even cheaper method for you than filter coffee. As it’s likely that you already have a kettle in your kitchen, all you really need is the coffee, a pour-over dripper (I suggest a classic Hario V60), and some pour-over filters. You can even get a start-up set that includes all the pieces in a kit.

Of course, we’re talking about maximum taste now. So the Hario V60 dripper and filters will serve you well. But for the best results, you’ll also want a burr coffee grinder to make sure you have freshly-ground coffee for every cup (the Melitta Molino mentioned above, or something similar, would work well).

And since a lot of the magic of pour-over coffee is the control you have over the brewing process, you’ll want to make sure you have a proper gooseneck kettle. Hario’s kettle is a good choice if you are happy to boil on the stovetop, though there are also electric kettle options. I’ve been known to boil water in my non-gooseneck electric kettle and then pour it into my stovetop pour-over kettle.

If you do maximally equip yourself for pour-over coffee, it can indeed start to add up – dripper, filters, burr grinder, gooseneck kettle. But as compared to even a filter coffee maker – let alone a more complex push-button setup – most of these elements are likely to last you a very long time. This means that from a cost-per-use standpoint, the price tag is still quite low compared to coffee purchased out of the home.

I won’t get into the specifics of the coffee itself here, but naturally, if you’re focused on taste, you’ll want to seek out great coffee beans. You’ll typically want to look for single-origin beans and get something that’s been roasted very recently.

The coffee itself will constitute most of the cost of each cup of coffee you prepare at home. But if you’re aiming for great taste, this isn’t a good place to skimp. Besides, even after you spend more on good beans, if you do the maths and compare to coffee purchased at a fancy third wave shop, you’re still almost certainly spending a lot less.

How to make coffee quickly at home

The other reason many people buy coffee out of the home is convenience. With many of us rushing around more than ever, taking the time for a filter pot to brew can be a luxury. Standing over a pour-over setup is downright laughable.

Luckily, there are solutions for this as well, and just like the solutions mentioned above, they can save you money versus buying coffee out of the home.

I will put in a quick plug here for the filter pot. Though it does take a bit of time to brew, as mentioned above, I do think this approach provides the best balance for making great-tasting coffee quickly. If time is an issue – and often that’s especially true in the morning – you can get your filter and coffee set up in the machine the night before.

Many filter machines have a scheduling function to allow you to set the time so a pot of coffee is ready when you need it. But even if you buy a machine that’s so simplistic that it doesn’t have its own timer function, you can get a smart plug like this and schedule your coffee through your mobile.

Ok, but what about Nespresso? My colleague Diana Bocco has previously written about whether Nespresso is worth the money. And I largely agree with her conclusions.

The plusses are that the Nespresso is fast, so it definitely meets the need for convenience. And it’s also cheaper than out-of-home alternatives. If we go for the Nespresso Essenza Mini (£89 at the time of writing) and assume it will last two years, making two cups per day, then the machine will cost roughly £0.06 per cup.

The Nespresso pods do generally cost more than ground or whole bean coffee, but prices can vary wildly. On Nespresso’s website, a single Peru Organic pod costs £0.50 (at the time of writing). Yet on Amazon, you can buy 100 Solimo Nespresso Ristretto Capsules for £10.49 (at the time of writing), which works out to a bit more than £0.10 per capsule.

Generally speaking though, you’ll likely pay somewhere in the range of £0.40 per capsule. When combined with the £0.06 machine cost per cup, you’re looking at £0.46 per cup. Which is more than the £0.35 per cup that I worked out for the filter coffee maker, but still quite a bit cheaper than the couple of quid you’ll pay for a coffee at Costa or Starbucks.

Given that the Nespresso is so incredibly fast and easy and saves a lot versus buying prepared coffee, you might wonder why this wouldn’t be my top pick. The answer will be a bit controversial to some: I don’t love the coffee from Nespresso machines. It’s good. I’d even say it’s quite good considering how fast and easy it is. But I still wouldn’t go out of my way for a Nespresso coffee.

For not that much extra effort (and at an even lower cost!), making coffee with a filter machine provides a lot of room for customisation and experimentation. And in the end, again, just in my view, a better cup of coffee.

Conclusion: Yes, you can save money making coffee at home (and do it quickly and easily!)

There’s a lot we haven’t covered here. We’ve only skimmed the surface of espresso (via the Nespresso machine). We haven’t touched at all on coffee/milk drinks. The good news is that while the maths changes a bit, it still comes out in favour of making coffee at home. That is, equipment for making these drinks at home gets a bit more expensive, but the drinks you’d purchase at the coffee shop also get more expensive.

We’ve also stayed with lower-priced machines for our coffee making. I don’t think that massively expensive machines are necessary. But there are some higher-end bean-to-cup machines, like the De’Longhi Magnifica that may be worth the money to some, since they are extremely easy to use and make very good coffee. The upfront cost is more for the machine here (£251.45 for the De’Longhi at the time of writing), but if we use the same maths as above (two cups per day from a machine lasting two years), then the machine will cost roughly £0.17 per cup. Combine that with £0.30 for the coffee and you get to £0.47 per cup, which is still quite a bit cheaper than what you pay at the coffee house.

And we haven’t covered the french press, aeropress, or moka pot – all of which can make a good cup of coffee and save you money. But, in my view, they aren’t as good as pour-over and brewing isn’t nearly as easy as a Nespresso. Though if you like especially strong coffee, these are brewing methods to consider.

No matter how you look at it, it’s clear that there are a variety of ways to make coffee at home that produce a really good cup and are not particularly difficult.

Should you save money by making your coffee at home? This has to be answered by you.

If buying prepared coffee brings you particular joy – you have a favourite barista, you meet friends at the coffee shop, or the coffee is just so good – it may not be worth it to you to make coffee at home.

Good money habits aren’t simply about spending as little money as possible. Instead, they’re about prioritising your spending and making sure that you aren’t spending a lot of money on things that aren’t important to you.

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There’s been plenty already written about the frenzy around GameStop shares, and for good reason. It’s an interesting and somewhat unusual situation.

But rather than rehash all of that here, I’d rather cut out all of the noise and consider three things to learn from this situation that could actually help you.

1. Pigs get slaughtered

This is a cliché amongst investors, but it’s true. Get too greedy and it’s bound to end poorly.

In this case, if you were an investor early to the party, you may have made a phenomenal amount of money (on paper) by punting on GameStop’s shares. At the beginning of the year, shares were close to $17. On 27 January, they closed at nearly $350.

Here’s the problem: as I write this, shares are trading below $100. If you were a late arriver, greedily jumped in because it looked like everyone else was making easy money and paid more than $300 per share, you might be licking wounds right now.

Investing is about making money. But the surest way that I’ve found to make that work in your favour is to do it slowly, over time. Getting greedy and trying to make quick riches is often the way to learn hard lessons in the share market.

2. No, the share market isn’t always rational

You may hear talk of ‘rational markets’, or that the share market ‘prices things in’. The idea here is that with so many investors taking part in the share market, at any given time all information about a company is reflected in its shares.

The further claim is that shares are always at a ‘right’ price because of all of this information reflected in the market.

But riddle me this: how does it make sense that GameStop started the year at $17, swung up to more than $300 and is now below $100?

The answer? It doesn’t make sense. The market isn’t always rational. Sometimes that means that a company’s shares are underappreciated and the share price is too low. At other times, it means that there’s so much excitement about a company that its shares are priced far higher than what that company is really worth.

The bottom line is that you should respect the fact that there are a lot of diverse investors with a lot of diverse information participating in the share market – meaning that shares are often priced rationally.

But that’s not always the case, and when it’s not the case, there may be an opportunity for you (on under-valued shares) or serious risk (on over-valued shares).

3. The investing wave of the future? I think not.

Some might be tempted to think that massive online groups like Reddit’s wallstreetbets are the future of investing. After all, they are showing the power of online communities against multibillion-dollar hedge funds.

Don’t bet on this. It’s an interesting story, and they are indeed giving some hedge funds a run for their money (quite literally). But something that doesn’t change in the midst of all of this is the nature of shares.

Shares represent an ownership piece of a company. All of a company’s shares collectively represent the value of that company. The huge support from wallstreetbets traders doesn’t really change the value of GameStop*, but rather just temporarily pushes up the price of its shares.

Does that sound fishy? Try thinking about it this way: imagine two companies, Boring Plc and The EveryoneLovesMe Company. They both pay all of their company earnings in dividends, and so shareholders receive a £1 per share dividend annually.

At first, both have the same £20 share price, which makes that £1 dividend a 5% dividend. But then, an online community goes crazy for The EveryoneLovesMe Company and pushes shares up to £200. Now new investors can either buy shares in Boring Plc, with its £20 share price and 5% dividend, or they can buy The EveryoneLovesMe Company at £200 per share and a 0.5% dividend.

Think about it: once the initial excitement over the share price spike for The EveryoneLovesMe Company has worn off, new investors are likely to be much more interested in the 5% dividend than the 0.5% dividend.

That’s a drastic simplification, of course, but it generally illustrates how, over time, even wild and crazy shares find their way back to more sensible prices.

*Unless the company sells new shares, which would hurt the traders hoping for the stock to keep flying high, but could put a pile of new cash in GameStop’s bank account. Though even in this case, it wouldn’t change the value of the company nearly as much as the recent share price action suggests!

What to do about GameStop shares now

This isn’t an article about whether to buy shares in GameStop now. But if you’re reading this, that question is very likely on your mind. With that in mind, I’ll close with a couple of points related to that question.

First, I’m not buying GameStop shares. You may or may not care about that, but as you’re reading my article, you can be assured that I have no position either way. That is, I neither own shares myself nor have I ‘shorted’ them. I’m staying firmly on the sidelines with a bowl of popcorn.

Second, let’s reiterate the points above:

1. Getting greedy in the share market is often a recipe for losing a lot of money
2. Despite what some academic papers may say, the share market isn’t always rational
3. The Reddit and online communities banding together for trades like this does not alter the fundamental nature of investing.

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So what can we do? Be vigilant and careful, and learn from what’s going on to protect oursselves. If ever you are a victim, the time it takes to resolve identity theft can vary greatly based on how you handle it.

With that in mind, I’ve looked at some of the largest recent data breaches as well as recent identity theft cases to bring together four lessons that could help keep you safe in a world where, let’s face it, this is going to continue to be part of the picture.

Lesson 1: No company is too big to get hacked

If you think that you can protect your data by only providing it to large, reputable companies, think again. That’s not to say that many or most large companies don’t do a great job protecting your data. Many do. But this won’t guarantee that your data is safe.

Earlier this year, EasyJet revealed that around nine million customer email addresses were accessed in a major data breach. The attackers also accessed credit card details for thousands of EasyJet customers.

I don’t have intimate details of EasyJet’s data security procedures. But I’m willing to bet that data at the airline is a lot more secure than your average family-run business website.

The point is, just because you’ve only given your data to large, reputable companies, that does not mean that you can lay off personal data security best practices like using secure passwords, changing your passwords periodically and checking accounts and credit reports regularly for irregularities.

Lesson 2: Older individuals are often at higher risk

Age UK published some eye-opening statistics, showing, among other things, that those aged 55 and older lost more than £4 million to cyber fraud between April 2018 and March 2019.

And though technology has allowed older individuals to keep in better contact with loved ones during the pandemic, the pandemic has equally been providing new opportunities for identity theft and other identity fraud. As Age UK wrote:

The majority of fraud linked to coronavirus involves online purchases for personal protective equipment (PPE), such as face masks, that never arrive. Criminals have also been sending phishing emails and texts claiming to be from the Government, HMRC and health bodies to convince the recipient to open links or attachments and get them to reveal personal or financial information.

If you are 55 or older, that means that you need to be on the lookout. Scammers think you are an easy mark. Prove them wrong!

Be especially wary of entering personal information after following a link directly from an email. If there’s any reason for suspicion, you can go directly to the company or organisation’s website and start from there. You can also call the company or organisation (using a phone number on their website, not one from the email) to confirm that the email is valid.

Rarely will a company call you out of the blue and ask for your account details or passwords – be especially wary if you receive such a call. And of course, use secure passwords for all of your accounts and change them often.

You can read more about some specific examples of credit card fraud and steps you can take to avoid credit card fraud in the UK. There are also ways to check if you’ve been the victim of identity theft if you’re concerned something has already happened.

If you’re younger, this all still applies to you. But you can also help by speaking with your older relatives or friends and making sure they understand personal information security practices.

Lesson 3: No business is too small to get hacked

No business is too big to get hacked. But equally, no business is too small. This is particularly relevant to keep in mind if you are a small business owner.

Yes, larger businesses have more accounts and information for a hacker to steal. But hackers, fraudsters and scammers may see small businesses as easy targets. That’s why we see reports of individual medical offices, small universities and small manufacturers getting hit by cyber attacks. And even smaller businesses than that are absolutely getting attacked, but it simply doesn’t hit the headlines.

Having your customer data leaked to scammers is embarrassing. But it can also have a severe impact on the trust that your current customers and potential future customers have in you. That means that small businesses shouldn’t skimp on their data protection systems.

It also means they need to properly educate their employees. Many of the largest data leaks have been the result not of sophisticated hacking, but of behavioural engineering and scammers using low-tech methods to get employees to hand passwords and access information over to them.

Lesson 4: Identity-theft scammers are not always who you expect

In a recent identity theft case that is as funny as it is anything else, rapper Nuke Bizzle was arrested in Las Vegas in the U.S. after allegedly using stolen identities to falsely apply for pandemic-related unemployment aid. The rapper may have cheated the government out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more than a million.

And the funny part? He was caught, in part, because he rapped about this alleged identity theft in a song that he uploaded to YouTube (complete with video of him showing off envelopes from the California Employment Development Department).

But the lesson here is that if you have an image of an identity scammer as some geeky person in a dark room in front of a computer, you need to think again. That may describe some of these criminals, but there are also people, and full organisations, of scammers that look, sound and behave differently than you might assume.

Remember that just because someone looks or talks a particular way, that’s no reason to automatically trust them!

Protect yourelf from identity theft, then protect your future

Making sure that your identity and accounts are secure is of utmost importance. If they’re not secure, what you’ve worked hard for could be at risk of getting swiped by scammers.

Once you’ve secured your accounts, you can get back to focusing on building those accounts, and ensuring you’re prepared for the future, come what may.

If you have an emergency cash fund already saved and are financially stable, maybe explore investing your money.

With savings interest rates being the lowest they have been for years, it is hard to get any decent type of return on your money at the moment. However, there is the potential to achieve higher growth on your savings pot if you take out a stocks and shares ISA or open a share dealing account.

Investments do carry more risk, but if you are not planning on using that cash in the medium term, you could find yourself making more significant gains than if you just put your money in an instant access savings account.

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The Motley Fool receives compensation from some advertisers who provide products and services that may be covered by our editorial team. It’s one way we make money. But know that our editorial integrity and transparency matters most and our ratings aren’t influenced by compensation. The statements above are The Motley Fool’s alone and have not been provided or endorsed by bank advertisers. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. The Motley Fool UK has recommended Mastercard. The Motley Fool UK has recommended Barclays, Hargreaves Lansdown, HSBC Holdings, Lloyds Banking Group, and Tesco.

Thanks to the coronavirus, it seems like the world has gone upside down. And it’s not clear how long this will last.

If this seems like uncharted territory, that’s because it is. This generation simply hasn’t faced a pandemic like this and its wide-ranging effects on our finances. So what do we do?

Luckily, most of the good, basic personal finance guidance that we should be following in ‘normal times’ (whatever those are), is the same that we should be following today. Yes, the nature of this episode is new and different. But from a personal finance perspective, what we’d do during any bout of economic uncertainty can apply well.

Let’s take a look at a few specific things to keep in mind.

1. Don’t panic

Panic can take many forms at a time like this.

From a personal finance perspective, panic might involve indiscriminately selling investments. Or indiscriminately buying investments. Or rashly spending gobs of money to ‘stock up’ on home goods. Or it might mean simply ignoring finances altogether and hoping it all works out.

Panic, though, rarely works out well as a strategy. Whether that strategy is intentional, or unintentional. We can relate — these are challenging times. But before you make any big money moves, be sure to step back, take a few deep breaths and make sure you’re not making them in panic mode.

2. Take stock of your reserves

Good personal financial hygiene would have us all have some cash at the ready. Ideally, we’d have a full ’emergency fund’ that provides enough cash for a few months of living expenses.

Whether or not you have a full emergency fund at the ready, now is the time to figure out just what you have available, and where that money lives. The hope is still that you won’t need it. But businesses of all types are reducing hours, reducing services, or closing altogether. So it’s important to know exactly what you have available and where you have your available funds in case the need does arise.

3. Revisit your budget

It’s always a good time to check in on your budget and reduce unnecessary costs. But right now, it could be particularly prudent to do this.

As we don’t know how long or how deep the crisis around the pandemic will last, by reducing expenses where we can, we can make sure that available funds stretch. It’s even better if reducing costs, means we can set aside some extra funds.

Be assured that this doesn’t mean switching every meal to canned beans and rice. Remember what we said about panicking. But if you have an extra streaming movie service that you rarely use, for example, this might be a good time to cancel.

4. Be wary of debt… but also be smart about it

Being smart about budgeting and spending can hopefully help avoid the need to take on debt during this time. And perhaps the government will have programmes to provide additional support. Because just as normal, avoiding taking on debt, especially high-interest debt, is a good idea.

At the same time, if you worry that borrowing may be necessary, it could be wise to think through your options early. This could avoid realizing at the last minute that you need money and end up with high-interest credit-card debt or payday loans.

For those with good credit who are concerned that short-term borrowing may be necessary, one possibility is to consider a 0% purchases credit card. These cards can provide a year or two of interest-free spending, and since they typically don’t have an annual fee, you can take one out ‘just in case’ and not be penalised for not using it. Bear in mind though, that this is truly a ‘just in case’ option, and not a good reason to take on debt. After all, 0% interest or not, the money has to be paid back.

You can also review the credit cards you already have and other current borrowing options, so you know what’s available to you. For your current credit cards, check the APR on the card. In most cases, borrowing on a credit card that doesn’t have a 0% promotional period isn’t a great idea. But some cards do have especially low rates that could be ok for very-short-term borrowing. Alternatively, you could explore where you might be able to turn for a personal loan or to take a home equity loan.

Again, this is advanced planning to be prepared. Your best option is to make prudent use of your current resources and not take on new debt.

5. Use a bad situation to your advantage

When financial markets get panicked, there is often overreaction. That can create an opportunity for investors who are focused on the long term.

Here we want to be sure that any money considered for investments is money that is not needed right now — or in the near future. Markets are going down now, and may continue to for some time. There are no guarantees in financial markets.

But if history serves, with the FTSE 100 index down more than 30% from its 2020 high point, this could be a good time to invest.

What to invest in will certainly mean different things to different people. For many readers, investing in a simple, low-cost index fund — that is, a fund that tracks a major stock-market index like the FTSE 100 — may be the right idea. For others, looking for especially good share bargains could be savvy. Finding these sorts of bargains is exactly what our sister site The Motley Fool focuses on.

Furthermore, with the 2020 deadline for ISAs rapidly approaching, it could be doubly smart to take advantage of the share market declines and the tax advantages of a stocks and shares ISA at the same time.

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MyWalletHero, Fool and The Motley Fool are all trading names of The Motley Fool Ltd. The Motley Fool Ltd is an appointed representative of Richdale Brokers & Financial Services Ltd who are authorised and regulated by the FCA, and we are permitted in this capacity to act as a credit-broker, not a lender, for consumer credit products (our FRN is 422737). The Motley Fool Ltd does not have permissions for, and does not advise on, investment products and services, but may provide information on investment products and services.

The Motley Fool receives compensation from some advertisers who provide products and services that may be covered by our editorial team. It’s one way we make money. But know that our editorial integrity and transparency matters most and our ratings aren’t influenced by compensation. The statements above are The Motley Fool’s alone and have not been provided or endorsed by bank advertisers. The Motley Fool has recommended shares in Lloyds, Tesco and Barclays.

Earlier this summer, Carnival Corporation was ordered to pay a $20 million (£15.7 million) fine after its ships were found to be dumping plastic waste directly into the ocean. It would be bad enough if this were the first time that this had come up, but Carnival has already paid $40 million (£31.4 million) in fines for dumping in the ocean.

You may well know Carnival by the Carnival name, but you may just as well know the company from some of the brands it owns like P&O Cruises, Princess Cruises, and Holland America.

At MyWalletHero, we cover how you can make the most of your money. When it comes to travel, that usually means something like choosing the best travel credit card or how cash compares as a way to spend on holidays. You may also know, though, that at both MyWalletHero and our parent company, The Motley Fool, we are committed in general to helping our readers be ‘smarter, happier and richer’.

How to spend while on holiday or how to pay for your holiday fits that aim rather obviously. But it may not be as clear how the fine-inducing woes of Carnival might apply. But my take is that knowing how your spending affects the world around you can indeed make you richer if it’s helping you make more informed choices. And making spending choices that align with your values undoubtedly can make you happier.

What if you just don’t care?

I get it. There are many people for whom the environment is not a particularly big concern, especially when it comes to planning your holiday. ‘Leave me alone and let me get my relaxing time away.’

But there’s an underlying economic issue at play here. It’s called ‘externalities’, and it refers to the knock-on impacts that an activity has that are not reflected in the costs associated with that action. An example would be somebody that lives in an apartment building and blasts their TV at otherworldly volumes. That high volume may be something they enjoy. It’s likely not something that every other tenant around them enjoys. Yet, the annoyance to their neighbours isn’t a ‘cost’ that the TV-blaster faces. That cost is fully borne by the neighbours.

Or, case in point: If you’re a cruise ship and you dump dirty plastic waste in the middle of the ocean, there’s no direct cost for that. In fact, it saves the dumping company money since they don’t have to bear the cost of properly disposing of it.

Awarding a company that’s doing those sorts of things with business is rewarding perverted economics.

Or you could look at it from a simpler perspective and get the economics out of the way. A company that does something like this is ruining exactly the areas that we want to go to in order to get away from it all and enjoy beautiful scenery. The case at hand with Carnival involved dumping into waters near the Bahamas. I’ve yet to travel to the Bahamas, so I definitely say ‘boo’ to that – I’d like garbage-free waters when I finally do get there, thank you very much.

Is there an Earth-friendly cruise?

Giant ships that carry hundreds or thousands of passengers over many miles of ocean are unlikely to ever be particularly friendly to the ecosystem. This is reflected by the ‘Cruise Ship Report Card’ created by US non-profit Friends of the Earth, which rates just one cruise line A- (Disney Cruise Line) and the next highest grade is Norwegian, at C-. They’ve given all Carnival-owned lines an automatic F grade because of the continued polluting.

If Carnival can figure out how to stop flouting dumping rules, there could be some comparably better options from the broader Carnival group for hopping on a cruise for your holiday. Princess would have garnered a C grade had it not been for the automatic F, and Holland America would have been at C-. Not great, but at least ‘middle of the road’ rather than ‘bottom of the barrel’.

And while cruise ships may not be especially eco-friendly in many cases, it is easy to argue that 1,000 holiday makers on one ship is likely better for the environment than 1,000 separate yachts chugging through the ocean. Just as it’s more eco-efficient to cram a bunch of people onto a bus rather than a fleet of individual cars.

Mindful money

When we talk about ‘getting the most out of our money’, that most often means getting as much ‘stuff’ as possible for a given amount of money. And that’s often a good way to think to help make your money stretch further and keep more in your pocket.

But equally rewarding can be taking a mindful approach to what we’re spending that money on. I can readily admit that I used to buy the cheapest pair of shoes that fit what I was generally looking for. But this approach often didn’t work out that well for me. The shoes would often prove uncomfortable over time, or simply start falling apart quite quickly. I’d spent less on my initial purchase, but I had to go back and make another purchase much sooner than I’d hoped.

The same can be true when it comes to spending on holidays. When we travel, the hope is that we’re going to enjoy ourselves and create great memories to look back on. Investing more in the planning and thought of the trip can help make it all the more memorable. And feeling really great about what kind of trip we’re taking – i.e. one that supports companies and travel operators that do things the ‘right’ way (however you want to define that) – can do the same.

So look, I’m not going to tell you how to plan your trip or which company to choose to take you to your fabulous destinations. I won’t even say ‘Stay away from those dodgy folks at Carnival’. But what I do suggest is putting some thought into not only how much you’re spending on your next holiday, but also how you’re spending for your next holiday.

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MyWalletHero, Fool and The Motley Fool are all trading names of The Motley Fool Ltd. The Motley Fool Ltd is an appointed representative of Richdale Brokers & Financial Services Ltd who are authorised and regulated by the FCA, and we are permitted in this capacity to act as a credit-broker, not a lender, for consumer credit products (our FRN is 422737). The Motley Fool Ltd does not have permissions for, and does not advise on, investment products and services, but may provide information on investment products and services.

The Motley Fool receives compensation from some advertisers who provide products and services that may be covered by our editorial team. It’s one way we make money. But know that our editorial integrity and transparency matters most and our ratings aren’t influenced by compensation. The statements above are The Motley Fool’s alone and have not been provided or endorsed by bank advertisers. The Motley Fool has recommended shares in Lloyds, Tesco and Barclays.

Back?

If you expected to see the homepage for the multi-billion dollar electric-car company Tesla, then you were probably surprised, because there’s nothing there.

Well, not quite nothing – there is a message noting that the domain has been “parked,” which means that somebody owns the domain and simply isn’t using it.

(If you’re curious, Elon Musk’s Tesla has its home at TeslaMotors.com)

When I saw that Tesla.com was “parked”, I was curious enough to do some digging. It turns out that Tesla.com is owned by a San Francisco gent named Stu Grossman, who originally registered the domain in 1992.

There’s a long and winding story behind Grossman and Tesla.com that includes a 2005 lawsuit in which a different business named Tesla (a U.S. military contractor called “Tesla Industries”) tried to pry the domain away from Grossman. In short though, the Tesla.com domain is easily worth millions of dollars – a point that doesn’t seem to matter to Grossman or his wife. The website “Tesla 24/7” put in a call to the Grossmans and wrote that “it didn’t interest them that the domain is so valuable.”

The Grossmans are very unusual in that respect.

In fact, there are a heck of a lot of people out there that spend a lot of time, money, and effort buying and selling domain names, hoping to make a profit. There’s a name for this pursuit (“domaining”) and international conferences where domain buyers, sellers, and service providers to get together.

No such thing as a free lunch

With the right domain, the payoff can be huge. Consider these domain name sales over the past few years (data according to Business Insider):

• Medicare.com ($4.8 million, May 2014)
• IG.com ($4.7 million, September 2013)
• MI.com ($3.6 million, April 2014)
• Whisky.com ($3.1 million, March 2014)
• Sex.xxx ($3 million, June 2014)

Some folks don’t even bother selling their domains, they just “park” them and put Google ads on them. That way, the traffic that ends up on that page can lead to advertising revenue. You can imagine how lucrative that could be on a domain like Whiskey.com (though I’d still happily take the $3.1 million).

So clearly it’s possible to make money with domaining. But like so many other ways to make money, it offers no free lunch. If you want to actually make money domaining, then you have to invest time and effort in finding the right domains, figuring out the “right” price to pay for those domains, remarketing them… and then hoping that somebody will come along and be willing to pay you a big premium for that domain.

By the time you’ve gone through all of that, you may wonder whether you’re talking about an investment or a second job.

And there are no guarantees that buyers will appear. Here’s an excerpt from an article about a domain-name auction on Forbes (“After The Gold Rush: Domain Names Have Lost Their Glitter”):

By the time Ostrofsky’s domain, mutualfunds.com, came up for sale precisely midway through the auction, to put it most diplomatically, things weren’t going so well. Out of 32 domains offered for sale up to that point, 19 had gone unsold. Mutualfunds.com brought the count to 20. Ostrofsky shook his head as it went by, stood up and put on his coat as if getting ready to leave, then sat back down and stayed to watch 23 more domains go unsold. The investment-oriented domains that found buyers fetched nothing like the money he was hoping for: SellShort.com ($6,000) and ActiveStocks.com ($850).

Investing in stocks, of course, takes work as well. There are some investing approaches – like investing in low-cost index funds – that require much less work. But anyone that tries to tell you that you can make big money in stocks without doing any work is only telling you half of the story.

Stock investing offers far, far better opportunities

The difference with stock investing though, is that you’re buying a piece of an operating business that is making money day after day, year after year, for you and its other shareholders. You have to do some work to find and invest in that company, but after you buy it, it’s the company that starts working for you.

A little over 20 years ago, Stu Grossman bought the domain Tesla.com. At the time, nobody cared because nobody cared much about domain names. As the legal filing for Tesla Industries, Inc. v. Stu Grossman put it, Grossman registered the Tesla domain name “at a time when the World Wide Web, and websites themselves, did not exist, domain names were primarily used for email, gopher, ftp, telnet, and other services.”

If we stretch the timeline in the other direction, twenty years from now the way we interact with the internet could be dramatically different and multi-million dollar addresses like Tesla.com could be essentially worthless.

On the other hand, when we think about the longevity of companies like Daimler, Siemens, and Coca-Cola, we can eagerly look forward to many years, if not decades, of compounding profits working in our favour as investors.

In other words, there are a lot of ways out there to make money. But I’ve seen few that offer the long-term rewards that stock investing does.

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BERLIN — If you’re a euro wage-earner and saver, here’s hoping you didn’t plan a winter getaway to California or, worse, a ski trip to Switzerland. Because both vacations just got dramatically more expensive.

Need proof? Look no further than this 3-year chart of the Euro versus the U.S. dollar and Swiss franc:

How’s that for some steep downhill skiing?

The recent dramatic move in the Swiss franc was the result of the Swiss National Bank’s sudden and unexpected move to unhinge the Swiss franc from the euro. The central bank had been buying euros aggressively in order to keep the franc cheap – and therefore its economy competitive – amidst strong demand for the franc. The moment they stopped defending the franc, the Swiss currency soared against the euro, making that Swiss ski chalet rental instantly about 20% more expensive for euro holders. Bummer.

However, the sharp decline in the euro against the dollar (and many foreign currencies) in recent months is due to a combination of a number of factors:

• Many countries in the Eurozone have been teetering on the edge of recession. That curbs financial inflows to the Eurozone because investors and lenders aren’t willing to invest because of the greater fear of poor returns.
• The European Central Bank recently announced new stimulus measures, including a massive new bond-buying program which is likely to flood the market with euros.
• Meanwhile, both of the above have sent yields for most sovereign Eurozone to historically low levels. The average Euro-area bond yield recently hit 0.68%. And the yield on the German 5-year bond recently went negative. European investors have become so risk-averse, they’re actually paying Germany just to hold their money!

All of this has conspired to send the euro down to an 11-year low against the U.S. dollar. Perhaps it’s time to rethink those travel plans.

Who loses when the euro crashes?

Okay, besides the European traveller and saver, who is also hurt by the recent euro crash? Well, for starters, any company that generates most of (or even a significant proportion of) its sales in euros is going to feel some pain. Think about your average German company. Relative to other currencies, the average German, euro-reporting company is now generating significantly less revenue per product or service.

Multinational companies can be hit especially hard. In its most recent earnings press release, software giant Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT.US) said a “strong dollar” would negatively impact its revenue growth in the current quarter. It was the same story for global industrial conglomerates 3M (NYSE: MMM.US) and United Technologies (NYSE: UTX.US). Both companies reduced their 2015 earnings expectations as a result of swings in foreign exchange rates as each derives a significant amount of its revenue from foreign markets, including the Eurozone.

Who wins? Maybe these three companies

But of course, there are those who stand to gain from a suddenly weak euro currency. Here are three companies who could benefit. Investing in them may just give you the currency hedge your euro-based investment portfolio is looking for.

Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN.US)
As you lament your suddenly-more-expensive trip to the United States, here’s a company that helps travellers coming in the opposite direction. Priceline owns Booking.com, the world’s most popular site for travel accommodations. As of the latest quarter, Booking.com’s platform had 540,000 hotels and other accommodations in 207 countries. That’s up more than 50% year over year. And Priceline itself derives more than 60% of its revenue from Booking.com, which is based in the Netherlands.

With the euro now significantly cheaper vis-à-vis other currencies, including the dollar, expect plenty of U.S. and foreign travelers to be booking vacations in Europe in the coming months. No one is likely to benefit more than Priceline.

Bayerische Motoren Werke
In the long term, a weaker euro can actually be a boon to the Eurozone, particularly a country such as Germany. Remember, . A weaker euro makes Germany’s exports cheaper and, therefore, more competitive in the global marketplace than those from other countries.

BMW is one of the globe’s most popular vehicles brands, deriving a substantial amount of sales from outside the Eurozone. In 2013, BMW generated 19.2% of its sales volume in the U.S. – almost as much as the company sold in Germany, France and Italy combined. A stronger U.S. dollar should give BMW’s sales a major boost in 2015.

Deutsche Annington Immobilien
Looking for a way to play both a weaker euro and historically low interest rates in Germany? Consider buying real estate – or investing in Deutsche Annington Immobilien. Annington is the largest owner of private real estate properties in Germany, presiding over 184,000 residential units. Through the first nine months of 2014, Annington’s adjusted operating earnings climbed more than 25% and the company raised its dividend by more than 11%. It also added 5,000 more residential units to its portfolio, focusing heavily on the popular and fast-growing Berlin metro area.

A cheaper euro and cheaper credit conditions should drive steady demand for residential property, especially from foreign buyers. That should increase the value of Annington’s property holdings. Meanwhile, Annington’s annual dividend yield, now at over 2%, is far more than you can expect from your bank account or German bonds.

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Matt Argersinger, the original author of this article, does not own any of the stocks mentioned in this article. 

BERLIN — “Our country must remain innovative.”

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that when talking about the country’s 2015 federal budget. It sure sounds great, but according to the Global Innovation Index 2014 — published by the Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization last September — Germany is actually not among the top 10 in the world.

These are the most innovative countries in the world

The list may surprise you.

Germany doesn’t seem to belong to the crème de la crème when it comes to innovative countries. Even Ireland and Canada were ahead of us. For me, that raised the question of what this ranking is based on. The answer isn’t that simple: It’s based on 81 indicators across the following seven categories:

1. Political, regulatory, and business environment
2. Education, tertiary education, R&D
3. Information & communication technologies, general infrastructure, ecological sustainability
4. Credit, investment, trade & competition
5. Knowledge workers, innovation linkages, knowledge absorption
6. Knowledge-creation, -impact, -diffusion
7. Intangible assets, creative goods & services, online creativity

You can find more details on page 287 in the report linked above, if you are interested. There you find the individual indicators and how each of the 143 nations that were evaluated rank in each of them. Just to give you an idea of what this looked like for Germany, here are the three categories where we stacked up the best.

…and here are the three worst

Particularly interesting for investors: Germany was ranked 81 at “Ease of protecting investors“, along with the Dominican Republic, Kenya, Lesotho, and a few others.

Why Germany isn’t the most innovative country

Now we could closely examine the 81 lists to come up with a theory around what Germany lacks versus Canada and the others who are considered more innovative. But we don’t have to do that, because I believe there are two simple reasons for why there are, and will always be, more innovative countries than Germany.

The main reason is Germans’ tolerance for risk. We are not really well known for taking the highest risks. We have to look no further than the stock market as a contemporary example. Innovative US companies such as Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter have trailblazed new markets and are valued several billions each. Meanwhile, their high-profile counterparts in Germany are Zalando and Rocket Internet.

That’s not meant as a discredit to those two companies. But we know that in both cases their business models are based on copying what has already proven successful in other markets (like the US). And creating the copy of something is the opposite of being innovative.

The second reason is Germany’s economic backbone — the high number of strong small and medium sized companies. Several of those have positioned themselves as market leaders in niches of their industries over many decades. The reason for the success has often been these companies’ exceptional experience and product quality. Many of them don’t have to be innovation leaders in order to defend their market-leading position.

This argument is backed by the latest Innovation Survey of the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW). According to this study, Germany has spent more money on innovation in 2013 than ever before. However, the majority of the spending is at big corporations. The picture looks different if you look at smaller companies:

The ZEW survey also shows that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly retreating from the innovation business.

Why Germany doesn’t have to be the most innovative country in the world

It seems questionable, whether Germany will ever make a major step forward in the Innovation Index. And Angela Merkel seems to be content with Germany’s position (“Our country must remain innovative”).

And I share the opinion that we don’t have to become an innovation powerhouse. “Made in Germany” will remain will remain a sign of quality and, if we continue to rely on our virtues, I believe we will always find industries with German companies as market leaders. Maybe not necessarily in the most innovative industries… at least not right at the start.

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Bernd Schmid, the article's original author, does not own any of the stocks mentioned. 

BERLIN — This isn’t the first or only time that Warren Buffett and his conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A.US) (NYSE: BRK-B.US) have gone shopping in Germany. But I think this latest buy – the full acquisition of motorcycle gear retailer Detlev Louis Motorradvertriebs – is particularly notable for investors.

Here’s why:

1. Bullish on Germany (and Europe)

Buffett is known for going against the grain – and succeeding thanks to this strategy. In 2008, he penned on OpEd in The New York Times titled “Buy American. I Am.”. At the time, the U.S. was reeling from the massive financial crisis. Just a month prior to Buffett’s column, the behemoth investment bank Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy.

Buffett backed his words with actions, loading up Berkshire’s portfolio with U.S. stocks, including U.S. financial companies such as banking giant Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC.US) and investment bank Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS.US). Time has proven Buffett’s bullishness right.

Today, we see Europe still struggling to get growth back on track. The clash between Russia and Ukraine have the continent on edge. And the ongoing financial struggle of Greece have caused headaches for members of the EU – notably the financially-strong Germany.

Reporting on the purchase of Detlev Louis, the Financial Times wrote:

[Buffett] told the Financial Times on Friday that Europe is a natural location for what he calls “elephant hunting” — searching for big acquisitions — and said that the continent’s current economic issues would not dissuade him.

Knowing Buffett’s modus operandi, the continent’s current situation may not only be “not dissuading” him, it may actually be encouraging him to look for deals in Germany and the rest of Europe.

2. This isn’t a new interest in Germany

Also from the FT:

“There is nothing like a deal to get people’s attention,” Mr Buffett said. “This is smaller than something we would normally do, but it is a door opener. I like the fact that we have cracked the code in Germany.”

This suggests that Buffett has been looking for a while for opportunities to buy into the German economy. And that shouldn’t be a surprise. Berkshire’s business base is loaded up with strong companies that produce quality products, and have leadership positions in their industries. Sound familiar? To me, it sounds a lot like Germany’s Mittelstand.

Buffett’s words also suggest that this is just the beginning. He’s got the code cracked now, so we may soon see Berkshire back in Germany for more – and next time it may be much larger.

3. For Berkshire investors: Not much here, but…

Berkshire is paying around 400 million EUR for Detlev Louis. For normal human beings, that’s a lot of money. For Berkshire, it’s peanuts. So for Berkshire investors, it means that there’s not going to be much of an impact on the overall company from this deal.

But as noted above, this may be a test case and a way for Berkshire to “dip its toes” in the German and European marketplace before jumping at bigger deals. And because Berkshire’s acquisition model is to buy companies and then let them operate without much interference, it can be a very attractive option for many owners. That may make this deal a signal to EU business leaders that Buffett has open ears for sellers from across the pond.

One of Buffett’s more famous quotes is “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.” For Berkshire investors, it’s great when Buffett is able to put the company’s cash to work by buying businesses for the Berkshire portfolio. When he can do that in situations where “others are fearful,” it’s that much better.

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Matt Koppenheffer owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs.