"And there's the Monet..."

Ready to try your hand as an art investor? This company is making it totally doable [Image] ThePennyHoarder.com July 8th, 2019 Brought to you by: [Image]( After a seemingly slow start, the summer blockbuster lineup is finally filling out (July is giving us “Spiderman: Far From Home” and Disney’s “The Lion King” remake) — and we’re, well, struggling to allocate our “entertainment” budgets. Decisions, decisions… Today, we’re talking about retirement, investing and the differences between shares, stocks and bonds. But first… Dear Penny... “I’m in my mid-20s, and I’ve never had a credit card. Whenever I’m shopping, I get offers for 15% or 20% off if I open a store credit card, but I’ve heard it’s a bad idea to open one. If I pay off the balance each month, is there really any risk…?”  Getting a credit card is a big decision — one that’s best not to make when you’re standing at a cash register. This week, [Dear Penny tells a reader to proceed with caution]( before opening a store credit card. Crack the Code Hospitals are always looking to fill medical coding positions, and the demand is increasing. If you’re interested in getting into the health care field, [here’s what you need to become a medical coder](. The Best Laid Plans Are you still waiting to plan for retirement? Sure, you might be throwing a bit of each paycheck in a savings account, but if that’s the extent of your retirement plan, it’s time to really buckle down and decide what your long-term goals are (and how you’re going to achieve them).  Every financial decision you make now affects your overall lifetime wealth and ability to retire securely. Buying a house, obtaining student loans, having children, buying new cars or saving and investing your income — they can all have huge impacts on what resources you’ll have during retirement.  But hey, if you need a little more convincing, [we’ve got seven good reasons why you should get serious]( (no matter how young you are) and start planning for your retirement today.    [Image] [Image]( “And There’s the Monet…” Ever wanted to walk around your mysterious mansion in your flowing, feather-trimmed robe, pointing out your impressive art collection to your equally mysterious guests?  OK, so maybe the mansion and the robe are overkill, but the art collection doesn’t have to be totally out of reach. With [Masterworks]( you can invest in blue chip art — meaning art created by the 100 top-selling artists of all time — by paying just a fraction of what the pieces are going for at auction. (Sure, the pieces won’t actually end up hanging in your house — but who wants to worry about a Hollywood-movie level heist in their living room, anyway?)  So how does Masterworks work?  This exclusive investment platform for fine art allows you to buy shares of a painting in much the same way you’d purchase shares in a public company. The team over at Masterworks selects art based on a review of sales data for similar works with strong historical appreciation (between 9% and 15%). Then, they work to buy them below market value through relationships with auction houses (and a little strategy). After they purchase a work, they take it public through the Securities and Exchange Commission — which is when investors (like you) are able to buy the shares for $20 a piece.  But why art?  While there are risks to investing in art (art isn’t very liquid, for one), works by important artists tend to increase in value over time (that’s the “historical appreciation” we were talking about). And while stocks and bonds can be affected by everything from corporate strategy to market competition, hard assets (yep, art is considered a “hard asset”) aren’t as easily affected by things like competition. There’s only one Mona Lisa, after all.  Ready to try your hand as an art investor? Readers of The Penny Hoarder can [bypass the waitlist and skip to the front of the line by clicking here](.  [Get Started]( [Image] WORD OF THE DAY Shares (n): Units of a company or financial asset that you can own and that provide investors with profits in the form of dividends. As your share (or stock) increases in value, you can sell it for more than your original purchase price down the line.  The words “shares” and “stocks” are often used interchangeably — and for the most part, they refer to the same thing. But if you want to get a little technical, “stocks” is a more general, all-inclusive term while “shares” refers to the smallest individual pieces of a company’s stock. Usually, it’s a matter of whether you’re talking about individual units of an individual company (shares) or your whole collection of investments spread across many companies (stocks). If you want to get a lot technical, check out [our explainer on the differences between stocks and bonds]( (another term you’ve probably heard mixed in with “stocks” and “shares”).  [The Penny Hoarder] [Facebook]( [Instagram]( [Twitter]( [YouTube]( The Penny Hoarder | 490 1st Ave S, Suite 800 | Saint Petersburg, Florida 33701 | United States  You can [update your mailing preferences here]( or [unsubscribe]( from all email from The Penny Hoarder.  Questions? View our [Privacy Policy]( .  Having trouble reading this email? You can [view it online](