Everyone does it, yes indeed it is the time of the year for New Year’s resolutions. For many people it can be something such as weight loss or exercise, but for many others it may well be related to personal finance. My strong suggestion to readers this year is to make a resolution to work hard at keeping part of your paycheck back to help pay for unsuspected bills and expenses. This can be thought of as an emergency fund if you’d like or it can simply be thought of as a savings account to help you keep more money in your name over the long run.

No matter how good you are at controlling your spending you are far more likely to spend money that you have as cash or in a checking account than you are when you have the money stashed away in something like a savings account or an investment vehicle such as a Certificate of Deposit. Money market or savings accounts are generally more useful if you want to use this as an emergency fund since this money is available to you at all times with no penalty, where CD’s are not so easy to get into without incurring a fee.

Depending on your personal financial situation you should set a continuing amount of your paycheck to hold back, whether it be 10% or even 5%. Even if it seems like a small amount at the time you would be surprised how quickly that will start to add up if you stick with the plan over the long haul. In difficult times it may seem next to impossible to hold back any of that hard earned cash, but you can make a way by reducing expenses little by little in each area. The benefits of building up some cash in a savings account are well worth the short-term pain it may cause! Make this one of your personal finance resolutions this year!

So 2009 went down in the books as a very good year for the stock market as the S&P 500 gained more than 20%, but as almost anyone will tell you, Wall Street looks at the future and the past means very little. What will the stock market look to for direction in 2010? Can the stock market make it two winning years in a row?

2010 is shaping up to be a decisive year for both the stock market and the overall economy. 2008 started the deep recession and it continued into early 2009, but the end of 2009 brought high hopes that maybe the economy and the market had turned the corner. 2010 will be the year where we find whether things actually get better on the bottom line or if the recent gains were just because of false optimism.

What kind of things will be tracked most closely to determine whether the turnaround is real? First and foremost is the jobs market. The notion of a “jobless recovery” is silly to me, because I simply don’t believe we can have a real recovery without the jobs market firming up. In addition to this we will need consumers to feel more comfortable, but really I think consumer confidence and retail spending are quite closely tied to the job market and how confident consumers are about their situation or their job prospects. Since the consumer accounts for 70% of the GDP in America, we clearly need a healthy consumer.

The stock market outlook for 2010 is quite unclear and stock market predictions are all over the map. Some analysts are expecting a V shaped recovery and a continued huge run up in stocks, while others are looking for a return to the bottom that was hit in early 2009. In my opinion this year will be a year of digestion for the stock market. The market needs to digest last year’s big gains and figure out whether they were built on a solid foundation or not. Expect economic data to take on increased importance this year as investors look for signs of where to move their money next.

Happy New Year to all our dear readers!

2010 is going to produce decent profits for all investors. Second half of this year may be challenging, but first half will produce decent returns.

Commodities are one of the few attractive investments. Barclays Capital has estimated that inflows into commodity investments during 2009 will be a record $60 billion, topping $51 billion from 2006, said analyst Amrita Sen. The figure includes retail and institutional flows into commodity indexes, exchange-traded products and structured notes. Weaker dollar will contribute more profits to commodities investments. If Fed tightens interest rates or if the dollar rate falls, the returns in commodities investments will fall too.

Fed will increase the interest rates sometime this year. If the economy stabilizes, Fed must increase the interest rate to prevent any inflation. But, interest rate increase will induce a fear in traders that the party is over. Many traders are afraid that interest rate increase will slow down the economy especially U.S. real estate market even worse. On the other hand, Fed can’t afford to keep the interest rates low for long time without causing damage to inflation.

“We’re probably still only in the early stages of a potentially big economic recovery but I think it’s probably not until well into next year that investors begin to broadly recognize it,” says Thomas Lee, U.S. equity strategist at J.P. Morgan Chase.

Investing in Technology and energy stocks may possibly yield attractive returns. Selective Financial stocks may also yield attractive profits if the economy turns around by end of 2010.