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Masterworks Review: A Way To Invest In Fine Art

Updated: 09/02/2022 by Financial Samurai 30 Comments

You may not know this, but I create original artworks with the interior paint I use for each house I’ve bought since 2003. Not only is art fun, but maybe one day, these original pieces will sell for megabucks! So when Masterworks approached me to do a sponsored post about investing in fine art, I welcomed them with open arms.

Masterworks, founded in 2017, is an investment platform that helps non-accredited investors buy shares of fine art. The fine art market has been booming due a surge in wealth by the investor class. Further, with the growth of countries like China, there is more capital chasing fine art than ever before.



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RealtyMogul Overview 2022: Investing In Gateway Cities

Updated: 07/12/2022 by Financial Samurai 15 Comments

Before the pandemic, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Jilliene Helman, CEO and co-founder of RealtyMogul in San Francisco. During the lunch, I was impressed with Jilliene’s focus on long-term profitability. Instead of chasing the most number of deals to boost revenue, Jilliene said she and her team focused on quality over quantity.

What I also liked about her business philosophy was her desire to build a legacy that would hopefully last for years to come. As someone who wants to keep Financial Samurai going for at least another decade, I could relate. 

Given it’s been a while since we last connected, I thought it would be good to provide an update.



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Yieldstreet Overview And The Broader Alternative Investing Landscape

Updated: 08/09/2021 by Financial Samurai 8 Comments

Back in 2019, I spoke to representatives at Yieldstreet at the LendIt conference in San Francisco to learn more about their platform. Ah, I miss those in-person conferences. What intrigued me about Yieldstreet was their investment offerings in legal, art, marine, and supply chain finance, which I knew very little about.

Two years later, I’m pleased to highlight an overview of Yieldstreet’s platform and investment philosophy. It’s been great to see them grow since we first spoke. They just announced they raised $100 million in a Series C offering.

Further, with stock valuations near record-highs, I’ve been de-risking and looking for alternative investments with my proceeds.



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The Mainstreaming Of Alternative Investments And Farmland Investing

Updated: 08/05/2021 by Financial Samurai 6 Comments

The following is a guest post by FarmTogether, a leading online marketplace that provides accredited investors with direct access to institutional-grade farmland. FarmTogether is a long-time supporter of Financial Samurai.

The mainstreaming of alternative investments and farmland investing is picking up steam. For example, FarmTogether recently closed on the largest single-asset crowdfunded farmland investment to date: a 201-acre organic redevelopment in Franklin County, Washington (Galaxy Organic Apple Orchard)  – a $22.28M deal.

Meanwhile, on February 8, 2021, Tesla announced that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. Tesla also said it would start accepting the currency as payment. This news helped send the price of Bitcoin up from just under $39,000 to now roughly $58,000 today. Several companies have already jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon and added the cryptocurrency to their balance sheets. More companies may soon follow.  

This is but one example of a wider trend of increasing mainstream acceptance of alternative investments as an essential component of a portfolio. Institutional investors have been increasing their allocation to alternatives in search of diversification and potentially higher returns.

Thanks to a range of technology-enabled platforms, more and more alternative assets are accessible to individual investors as well. Read on to find out why alternative investments are so popular and how you can add them to your portfolio. 



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Get Affordable Life Insurance And Free Quotes Online

Updated: 11/03/2022 by Financial Samurai 14 Comments

Want affordable life insurance? Life insurance is very affordable if you know the right way to compare life insurance policies and where to shop. We’ll show you how to get free quotes securely online for cheap life insurance with the best companies today.

In addition, in this article you will learn about the importance of affordable life insurance, when to get affordable life insurance, how long to have it, how much to have, where to get affordable life insurance, and how to buy it.

Now that you’re dying to know the best way to get affordable life insurance, we’ll tell you. It’s with Policygenius, a leading online life insurance marketplace! Policygenius has licensed, unbiased experts who help you get the best, most affordable life insurance policy that most appropriately suits your needs.

Utilize Technology To Get Affordable Life Insurance

Policygenius has the technology and know-how to locate the best policies and prices with dozens of top carriers for your needs. And they do this all for free! You can get all the details in our extensive Policygenius review. We’ve also summarized the key points below.

How To Get Affordable Life Insurance With Policygenius

It’s both efficient and safe to search for affordable life insurance on Policygenius. The nation’s top carriers compete for your business all in one place. And your personal information is safe and secure when you use Policygenius to shop for insurance.

Policygenius property vets all of the life insurance carriers they feature to make sure they are the most reputable and financially stable carriers today so you don’t have to.

The company was founded in 2014 by Francois de Lame and his partner Jennifer Fitzgerald, ex-Mckinsey Consulting professional who went to Harvard Business School. I’ve met them both, and they are great.

The Importance Of Affordable Life Insurance

Life insurance is extremely important if you have debt and dependents. It’s helpful to know the many benefits of life insurance when you are searching for an affordable policy.

Now let’s go through the below questions and we’ll further explain the best way to get cheap life insurance.

  • When should you get life insurance?
  • How long of a life insurance term should you get?
  • How much life insurance should you get?
  • What’s the best way to compare costs of life insurance policies with different amounts and terms?
  • Where is the best place to get affordable life insurance?


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Reddit Investors Shake Up Wall Street: Why Portfolio Diversification Is Key

Updated: 08/05/2021 by Financial Samurai 7 Comments

In the never-ending desire to get rich quick, Reddit investors are the new kings and queens of day trading.

Back in college, I was a degenerate day trader who bet on stocks between classes, partially based on what I read on message forums. More than 25 years later, it is fascinating to see forum-based trading explode again, but with much more firepower.

The following is a guest post from FarmTogether, a leading farm investing platform and Financial Samurai sponsor. With FarmTogether, you can diversify your portfolio and increase your passive income in a less volatile manner.



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Robinhood Alternatives 2023: Better Online Brokerages

Updated: 01/27/2023 by Financial Samurai 50 Comments

Looking for Robinhood alternatives? You’ve come to the right place as a DIY investor.

Robinhood is an online brokerage house that steals from the poor (retail investors) and gives to the rich (hedge funds). Robinhood doesn’t charge its users a fee. But it sells its order flow to hedge funds and other institutional investors.

When Robinhood decided to arbitrarily shut down the trading of 13 names on January 28, 2021, it caused thousands of investors to lose billions of dollars. As a result, you would be nuts to continue trading on the Robinhood platform. During the next high-volume trading issue, you could get trapped again.

Now that Robinhood went public on July 29, 2021, it will be one of the greatest ironies if the Robinhood platform and other trading platforms had to suspend trading of HOOD stock. Since IPO, Robinhood’s stock has performed poorly.

Features you want from an online brokerage:

  • Reliability – You can log in without the website crashing. The online brokerage stays up during trading hours. There are few or no bugs.
  • Fairness – You should be able to buy and sell and trade whatever securities you want without artificial interference from the brokerage. In other words, the brokerage won’t randomly shut down the ability to trade certain names out of the blue or lock you out of their platform.
  • Real-Time Quotes – In order to trade effectively, you need real-time quotes, not delayed quotes. Securities move too quickly for you to be waiting on a 10 or 15 minute lag.
  • Robust Research – The best online brokerage houses will have robust proprietary research and data on various stocks and bonds. The research is important to get an idea of what the street is thinking and to help you make better investment decisions.


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NewRetirement Review: An Excellent Retirement Tool

Updated: 08/16/2022 by Financial Samurai 37 Comments

If there’s one thing I love to do, it’s plan for retirement before retirement and during retirement. The more you can plan for retirement, the more retirement success you will likely have.

In the old days, I would write everything out on a spreadsheet and update each line item every month. Fortunately, more fintech companies are taking the guesswork out of retirement planning.

One such firm that’s making headway in the space is NewRetirement. This is my NewRetirement review for all of you looking for a great retirement planning tool. Both my wife and I sat down and reviewed the product together.



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Streitwise Review 2021: A Secondary Market Real Estate Platform

Updated: 01/05/2023 by Financial Samurai 28 Comments

One of my goals in thew new decade is to learn about as many passive real estate investment opportunities available. I have over $500,000 of capital that should be returned over the next two years. The capital will be reinvested in various real estate opportunities to sustain and grow my passive income portfolio. This article is a comprehensive Streitwise review.

Because I want to diversify my real estate exposure to non-coastal markets, I thought it would be good to do some research on Streitwise, a real estate platform which is focused on secondary non-gateway markets that have the potential to generate higher dividends.

Streitwise approached me last year to do a review but I was too busy at the time. Now, with another year of operating experience under its belt and the economy gradually opening up, let’s see how they are doing and what their plans are going forward.



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Otis: A Fun Way To Invest In Cultural Assets And Collectibles

Updated: 08/15/2021 by Financial Samurai 11 Comments

This is a detailed review of Otis, a collectibles investing platform.

Ever since I was young, I’ve been a collector with the little money I had. As an adult, it’s so fun to be able to buy things I couldn’t afford as a kid. Some of my favorite memorabilia include retro-Jordans and He-man figures from the 1980s.

I still remember paying a couple bucks in high school to buy a pack of Topps baseball cards. My hope was to land a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.

Although I never got one, it was always such a fun moment of anticipation before tearing open the pack. Today, a PSA-10-graded version of Ken Griffey Jr.’s 1989 Upper Deck rookie card now routinely sells on eBay for about $1,500. That’s roughly 20 times what it would have fetched 25 years ago.

One day in 1993, I found a treasure in my grandparent’s garage in Honolulu, Hawaii. I stumbled upon half of my father’s 1956 and 1957 Topps and Bowman baseball card collection. It was just sitting in an old cupboard in the garage. There were silverfish and cockroaches everywhere when I found the boxes.

Luckily, almost all the cards were in good condition. I made sure they stayed in good condition by outfitting each one with plastic sleeves and protective plastic shields.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find many of my father’s American league baseball cards, which included several Ted Williams cards based on his recollection. Sadly, my grandparents must have thrown them away.

After a slow period in the mid-1990s and early-2000s, it appears that the sports card market is now booming. As a result, I was excited to be approached by Otis to sponsor a guest post on Financial Samurai and share its value proposition.

[Maybe my Sandy Koufax rookie card is worth something]


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Top Product Reviews

  • Fundrise review (real estate investing)
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  • CIT Bank review (high interest savings and CDs)
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