Daily Money Tip: Investment club hosts daylong seminar in Willow Grove

BetterInvesting Philadelphia, the local chapter of the national investment-education club, is hosting a daylong seminar Saturday in Willow Grove.

You can learn how to invest in a way that doesn't involve a sales pitch or a too-aggressive broker. Just bring your brain and 20 bucks.

It's called Philadelphia Area Spring Investors Day, and it's a great way to learn about investing while not betting your entire net worth.

BetterInvesting chapter members contribute an amount each month toward the club's assets, which are used to buy stocks for the club's portfolio. The monthly amount can range from $10 to $100, at each member's discretion.

If you decide to join, BetterInvesting Philadelphia holds regular meetings the second Saturday of every month. Meetings consist of a club business session, an education component, and the investing activities.

But this Saturday is a special event from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., open to the public and featuring educational speakers, including Michael Novakovic, an attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission's Philadelphia office. He will be instructing how to navigate the agency's database, a staple of research into public companies.

Then Bruce Kennedy, president of the BetterInvesting Central Pennsylvania chapter, will explain how BetterInvesting clubs nationwide analyze public companies.

The founders of BetterInvesting wanted to select stocks for their portfolios that sought 15 percent return on gross revenues, versus the S&P 500's average of 10 percent return on gross revenues annually, said Gloria Mankonen, director of the Philadelphia chapter of BetterInvesting.

BetterInvesting New York director Abraham "Avi" Horwitz will host a three- to four-hour session on how to use a company's annual report to boost returns on your investments. The session is for more advanced members of the chapters.

To attend, you can register with Mankonen at 215-796-1214.

BetterInvesting events are normally free, but this Saturday is an all-day event and includes lunch, so there is the $20 cost.

The event will be held in Willow Grove, on the second level of the community center at the Super Giant Food Store, 315 York Rd., Willow Grove.

I'll be attending, as well, so see you there.

For more information, visit the nationwide organization website (http://betterinvesting.org).

215-854-2808