If you want to experience financial independence or live the life of your dreams, you are going to have to avoid going into debt. Put simply, when you are in debt, you are working for someone else and, as a result, you can never reach your goal of financial independence... The key, then, is to avoid debt altogether and this post outlines ways to avoid debt so that you can make sure your money is working for you and not working against you.

There are certainly times when you can see that the odds are heavily stacked in your favor and we have one of those potential scenarios right now in gold.

Using beta to build a portfolio is a smart and easy thing to do. All you have to do is make sure you understand your risk tolerance and not build a portfolio that is overweight in one sector of the stock market...

This looks like an excellent point to short the dollar, which is expected to drop and probably accelerate away to the downside. This should provide a boost for the Precious Metals sector which...will increasingly be seen as a safe haven.

...Volatility has now returned to the stock market after a hibernation of several years...[and such] an explosion of volatility is indicative of a change of trend. The recent signals transmitted by this market have been classic and have been telling us that we have entered the final topping process of this extended and stretched economic cycle.

Overall, the market was due for a pullback. It seemed like every trading day in January, the market was only rising so it is only natural that, eventually, the market was going to fall but it’s just that many didn’t think this type of volatility was going to happen so soon. Here are some things to keep in mind.

History tells us we should expect higher stock prices in the next quarter, mid-year, and by the end of 2018. The trillion-dollar question is, “When will this all end?”

The first rule of personal finance is never carry a credit card balance. It’s another one of those simple to understand yet difficult to execute money management concepts for a large swath of the population.

Today’s infographic from StocksToTrade.com highlights the basics around ETFs, including how they work, what type of assets they can track, and the pros and cons associated with investing in them.

In the following infographic we look at 5 occasions when currencies crashed in a big way.