Spain is Soccer World Cup 2010 Champion. Analysts say that is because of their mental strength, their wily forwards, a strong defence and the hardworking midfield.

Important: Do remember that what the analyst say is on the basis of hindsight of course. Spain was pilloried for losing their first match by the same analysts! This article is about what you can learn from the game of soccer and apply to your own personal finances!

The last date of filing your Income Tax Returns is coming closer - July 31, 2010. A gentle reminder so that You should not be left stranded the eleventh hour to file your returns, trying to find someone who would prepare and file the tax return for you.

A very friendly and upcoming option is e-filing. Now there are very intuitive tax applications which offer you live chats and help/tutorials in helping you to file your taxes online. It also gives you an opportunity to learn a bit of your finances yourself. I mean by doing it by yourself, you learn a lot about your finances and how you can improve upon it.

I am happy to inform that InvestmentYogi's tax application TaxYogi has been specially white labeled for my blog/website readers. Take a look.

Recommended posts and links for the first week of July, 2010.

1. Must Have Equity in your Portfolio: Subramoney quotes Dr. Jeremy Siegel, author of Stocks for the Long Run, who has done a study of the returns of different types of assets over the past 200 years. What he discovered is dramatic. $1 invested in gold in 1802 would have been worth $32.84 at the end of 2006. The same dollar invested in T-Bills, with interest reinvested, would have grown to $5,061. $1 invested in bonds would be worth $18,235. And $1 invested in common stocks with dividends reinvested – drum roll, please – is now worth more than $12.7 million. Even adjusted for the 2008 crash, equities still stand head and shoulders over the other asset classes by a mile. And we are talking passive investing – no Vallabh Bhansali or Ken Fisher to help you get better returns.

This article takes it's motivation from Deepak Shenoy's post on shares, IPOs and stock markets.

Investing in stocks is very rewarding but comes with a caveat. It is not for the faint hearted and you need to have a disciplined and informed approach to stock investing. A friend was boasting about his Stock picks and how he has discovered a whole lot of money making stocks. To be fair to him, he had a good sense of stocks which were selling below their value in the crashes. And he helped himself with those stocks “On Sale”.

But (being a friend), he also admitted that some of his stocks happened to be the “falling knife”. (Falling knife stocks look like undervalued stocks, but continue to go downhill)

The point I want to make is not to laugh at my friend but realize that becoming a self proclaimed stock guru can be easy but dangerous! And we need to beware of a lot of “noise” in the media giving out “hot tips” and “get rich quick” schemes.

That’s why learning all about shares is a good idea before you begin.