Investing is fun, exciting, at times frustrating, but it should never be fatal for your finances. In order to guarantee that your investment career starts off on the right foot, make sure you have a plan before putting your money to work. Just as everything else in life, successful investing is a journey, and it is you who have a clear map of where you want to travel. Regardless of whether you are investing in stocks, bonds, property, or commodities, ask yourself a few questions before allocating your money to a particular investment.

Another day in investing paradise, or hell? It depends on how you look at it. Volatility in the last few weeks has been absolutely off the charts. Blue chips moving a few percent up, followed by a similar move downwards the next day, just to be repeating the same pattern a few days later. It is those times when you realize that short-term the market is nothing but a casino: bet on red one day and black the next. Does it have any relevance to investing?

An important lesson I learned about reinvesting your dividends in France or anywhere else on this planet: beware of the taxes and social deductions. Don't reinvest dividends unless you know 100% that it is indeed beneficial and will grow your wealth. A few weeks ago I received a message from my broker that Total SA offered the option to be paid dividends in shares rather than euros.

Last night Mrs. CF and I watched a documentary about Bernard Madoff who ran one of the biggest Ponzi schemes the world had ever seen.

While I am writing these lines global markets are plummeting. After a few days of rising prices, market participants right and left have decided that the fears associated with a possible slowdown in China’s economy are back. That, as said, after the short-lived hiatus when the market jumped a few percentage points as if the world economy was blossoming again.

Current oil prices have seen historic lows in the last few months falling to $ 26 per barrel in February 2016. Since then oil prices have recovered and swung between the mid forties and low fifties.

How do you feel when seeing a well dressed lady or a groomed gentleman in their Italian or British luxury car? A moment of admiration mixed with a bit of envy? Darn, that person has scored rich, you might think. They probably inherited a huge sum from a rich uncle, work in investment banking, or won the lottery. They could also be fantastic athletes, managers, or work in some other high paying profession. But there is also a possibility that they made the right saving and investment calls.

Life is all about learning, making sense of everything around you, making memories, and changing for the better. The various facets of life – from private to professional, dating to work, loving oneself to others, succeeding at work and investing – all share common denominators. Particular patterns that determine how we react in different situations are similar if not even the same across these different areas of life. Life is the totality of its components.

The current oil price is a fantastic opportunity. In fact, if you have a car, you can kill two birds with one stone. Well, not really kill, but you the currently low oil price is a win-win situation for most of us. We get richer twice: once through filling up our cars and second through the great middle and long-term investment opportunity the low price is presenting.

A few years ago, just after moving to France, I invested in one of their corporate powerhouses. While I anticipated no great gains from the investments, I made the choice to invest € 10,000 in the company for another reason: dividends. Within only a few months, however, I had lost € 5,600. The company I bought was, and still is, one the biggest global telecommunication companies, France Telecom. Did I anticipate a loss of over 50% of my initial investment? No. Was I bothered about losing all that money? No.