If you’re a do it yourself investor, you probably know a thing or two about stock selection but might not have given much thought to the tax implications of your investment actions. You should never pick investment products with the tax advantage as your primary reason. A quality investment product trumps tax advantages any day of the week but part of making money as an investor is to position it in the best way possible to keep the IRS’ hands off of it.

If all of your investment capital is kept in a single brokerage account there are likely better ways to make your money work harder for you. You may want to consider setting up a Roth IRA but let’s assume that you set up a traditional IRA that allows you to forego paying taxes on that money until you retire. Knowing that, we want to keep our realized gainers in or IRA and our unrealized gainers in our brokerage account. Here’s how to use it to keep more money out of the hands of Uncle Sam and in your account.

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Exchange traded funds or ETFs are to the investment market what the IPhone may be to the cell phone market. It’s one of the fastest growing, game changing products to hit the investment markets since the 401(k). There is an ETF for just about everything and what makes them so popular is their relative low cost. Never before could you invest in mutual fund like products at a fraction of the mutual fund cost.

For most retail investors, they know of some of the more popular ETFs like the SPDR S&P 500 or the SPDR Gold Shares with the really cool vault full of Gold in an undisclosed location in the UK. What they don’t know about is the less flashy but equally important bond ETFs. Fixed income may not be exciting to watch but a large portion of the gains in a long term portfolio come from fixed income products or dividend paying stocks. Here’s how to add Bond ETFs to your portfolio.

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Take a quick peek at the best CD rates and you’ll know that they’re abysmal right now. 1% for a 1 year CD? No more than 2% for a 5 year CD? Those are terrible yields.

Consider this – you can buy shares of blue chip companies with yields greater than 1-2%. You can start by looking at the dividend aristocrats but ultimately you can easily find safe companies who have stable cash flows capable of supporting dividend yields much greater than 1-2% (and you’re taxed at a much lower rate!).

In the end, both are financial tools that serve a specific purpose. Knowing which to use can be crucial in getting a little more out of your money.

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In 2011 there were 330 IPOs that came to market, down 30% from 2010. Technology IPOs led the way with 24 offerings but still down from 1999 when a record 212 companies issued stock for the first time. 2012 may bring the IPO market to center stage because of one very well-known company expected to become public this year. That company is Facebook.

Facebook is more than the place you go to meet up with old friends; it’s a $25 billion company, twice as large as the much hyped IPO of 2011, Groupon. Wall Street investors are anxiously awaiting the emergence of Facebook in to the investing markets but when the hype gets even stronger, should you invest in the IPO?

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For dividend investors, tax time means that it’s time to figure out whether or not they are dealing with qualified dividends. This is an important distinction because you have the opportunity to pay much lower taxes on qualified dividends. Right now, and until the end of 2012 (unless Congress changes things), qualified dividends are taxed at the current capital gains rate, which is capped at 15%. If you are in a higher tax bracket, being able to pay a capital gains rate on your dividend income can potentially save you hundreds — or even thousands — of dollars in taxes.

So how do you know if what you’re getting is a qualified dividend or an ordinary one?

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It’s rare that your collectibles will bring in thousands of dollars, much less millions. However, there are some items that, due to their rarity and/or history, are valued at several millions of dollars. Some of the most interesting collectibles are coins.

While your run of the mill coins aren’t going to bring you a great deal of riches, there are some collector’s items that are worth more than their face value. One example is pennies that were minted prior to 1983. These pennies are mostly copper — instead of being mostly zinc like pennies minted in more recent years. However, even those pennies can’t compare with some of the most interesting and rare coins in history.

Wikipedia has a list of the 10 most expensive coins sold. These coins have an interesting history, and one of them even sold quite recently:
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Every year around the middle of December, the S&P announces the additions and deletions to its list of Dividend Aristocrats. To becomes a member of the Dividend Aristocrats, a company must increase its annual dividend payment every single year for twenty five consecutive years. If you don’t increase it, you fall from the list and you won’t get a chance to get back for twenty five years. It’s a pretty high bar to reach but there are plenty of blue chip household names on that list (and a few you’ve probably seen on the side of trucks rolling around town). It’s a popular list to be on because a lot of people looking for dividend stocks often start there.

The S&P announced a small change to their eligibility rules starting in 2012 (with this list) – only regular dividend payments will be considered for index eligibility purposes. Special dividends will not count and they will no longer count towards eligibility.

With ten additions and only one deletion, the current list has fifty-four companies on it.

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The other day, I was walking our beagle Tobey when I spotted something shiny a few feet away. We wandered over and discovered it was a quarter. As I typically do with any free money on the ground, I picked it up and saw it was your typical twenty-five cent piece minted in 1957. As I looked a little closer, it looked whiter than your regular quarter so I made a mental note to check it out when I got home. When I checked online I discovered that the Mint changed the composition of quarters in 1964, removing most of its silver. From 1932 to 1964, quarters were 90% silver and 10% copper. The metal value of the quarter is around $4.80 – I picked up a five dollar bill (it was over $5 when I physically picked it up).

Numismatics, or the study and collection of currency, always seemed fun but I never got into it. In the past, I’d read about people collecting other coins for their melt value but the prospect of collecting per-1982 pennies because they’re currently worth two cents didn’t interest me. While I don’t really have much interest in searching through a pile of quarters, I do think that it’s fun reading about it.

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As always, the end of the year represents a time to reflect on the past — and to prepare for the future. While you consider your next move, don’t forget to review your investment strategy. While you don’t want to panic and change your strategy as a reaction to the short-term whims of the market, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t tweak your plan every now and then, or make adjustments as the situation requires.

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I’ve long touted TradeKing as a great discount broker because they have low commissions ($4.95 a trade) and no account minimums. Unfortunately, there’s been a change and they will now be assessing an annual $50 inactivity fee on accounts that have a “combined household account value of less than $2,500″ or have not made a single trade in an entire year. An account is part of a household if it has the same mailing address and/or tax ID and if you are assessed an inactivity charge, you will only be charged once.

At first you might think that this is unfair, to spring an inactivity charge, but the requirements to avoid this are fairly low. If you have more than $2,500 in your accounts, you won’t be assessed the fee. If you don’t have that much, just make one trade. If you make just one trade, you won’t be assessed the fee. Paying $4.95 (or $9.90 round trip) is better than $50.

In my mind, if you have less than $2,500 and aren’t making any trades, your money is better off somewhere else (like a high yield savings account) anyway until you’ve accumulated more savings.