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[ "The most likely explanation is that the calls are being bought as a part of a spread trade. It doesn't have to be a super complex trade with a bunch of buys or sells. In fact, I bought a far out of the money option this morning in YHOO as a part of a simple vertical spread. Like you said, it wouldn't make sense and wouldn't be worth it to buy that option by itself." ]

[ "Stop orders and stop limit orders typically do not execute during extended hours after the general market session has closed. Stop orders are market orders and market orders especially are not executed during extended hours. Although there are exceptions because a broker can say one thing and do another thing with the way order types are presented to customers vs what their programming actually does. The regulatory burden is a slap on the wrist, so you need to ask the broker what their practices are. Orders created during normal market hours do not execute in extended sessions, different orders would have to be made during the extended session. Your stop order should execute if the normal market hour price stays below your stop price. So a stop limit would actually be worse here, because a stop limit will create a limit order which may never get hit (since it is above the best bid best ask)", "While you have found a way to possibly gain $1275 in tax free income, you are also risking $1275 if you end up not using the money you contributed. You will have to find a way to have that much in medical expenses by your retirement date or you will leave some money in the Flexible Spending Account. There are risks you take with these accounts (use it or lose it) and risks the company takes (leave with a deficit in the account). Many times we get questions about how to spend all that the employee contributed before the last day of work, or the end of the plan year. You can play it more fair by selecting the maximum amount per check to be taken from your pay check, then waiting until the retirement date to decide how much you will withdraw from the FSA. Your last day of work is your last day to incur a medical expense but you are given a window to submit your claims that extends beyond your last day of work. I have not personally heard of an employer requiring a former employee to pay back the money when there is a deficit in their FSA. Remember people are fired, or laid off with little or no warning trapping their money in a FSA. The fact that you have the ability to plan for this event and considered your options, is a great position to be in.", "As a general rule, you must choose between a mileage deduction or an actual expenses deduction. The idea is that the mileage deduction is supposed to cover all costs of using the car. Exceptions include parking fees and tolls, which can be deducted separately under either method. You explicitly cannot deduct insurance costs if you claim a mileage deduction. Separately, you probably won't be able to deduct the deductible for your car as a casualty loss. You first subtract $100 from the deductible and then divide it by your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) from your tax return. If your deductible is over 10% of your AGI, you can deduct it. Note that even with a $1500 deductible, you won't be able to deduct anything if you made more than $14,000 for the year. For most people, the insurance deductible just isn't large enough relative to income to be tax deductible. Source", "I traded futures for a brief period in school using the BrokersXpress platform (now part of OptionsXpress, which is in turn now part of Charles Schwab). They had a virtual trading platform, and apparently still do, and it was excellent. Since my main account was enabled for futures, this carried over to the virtual account, so I could trade a whole range of futures, options, stocks, etc. I spoke with OptionsXpress, and you don't need to fund your acount to use the virtual trading platform. However, they will cancel your account after an arbitrary period of time if you don't log in every few days. According to their customer service, there is no inactivity fee on your main account if you don't fund it and make no trades. I also used Stock-Trak for a class and despite finding the occasional bug or website performance issue, it provided a good experience. I received a discount because I used it through an educational institution, and customer service was quite good (probably for the same reason), but I don't know if those same benefits would apply to an individual signing up for it. I signed up for top10traders about seven years ago when I was in secondary school, and it's completely free. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and the interface was poorly designed and slow. Furthermore, at that time, there were no restrictions that limited the number of shares you could buy to the number of outstanding shares, so you could buy as many as you could afford, even if you exceeded the number that physically existed. While this isn't an issue for large companies, it meant you could earn a killing trading highly illiquid pink sheet stocks because you could purchase billions of shares of companies with only a few thousand shares actually outstanding. I don't know if these issues have been corrected or not, but at the time, I and several other users took advantage of these oversights to rack up hundreds of trillions of dollars in a matter of days, so if you want a realistic simulation, this isn't it. Investopedia also has a stock simulator that I've heard positive things about, although I haven't used it personally.", "I don't think there is a recession proof investment.Every investment is bound to their ups and downs. If you buy land, a change in law can change the whole situation it may become worthless, same applies for home as well. Gold - dependent on world economy. Stock - dependent on world economy Best way is to stay ever vigilant of world around you and keep shuffling from one investment to another balance out your portfolio. \"The most valuable commodity I know of is information.\" - Wall Street -movie", "You're not crazy, but the banks are. Here's the problem: You're taking 100% LTV on property A - you won't be able to get a second mortgage for more than 80% total (including the current mortgage) LTV. That's actually something I just recently learned from my own experience. If the market is bad, the banks might even lower the LTV limit further. So essentially, at least 20% of your equity in A will remain on the paper. Banks don't like seeing the down-payment coming from anywhere other than your savings. Putting the downpayment from loan proceeds, even if not secured by the property which you're refinancing, will probably scare banks off. How to solve this? Suggest to deal with it as a business, putting both properties under a company/LLC, if possible. It might be hard to change the titles while you have loans on your properties, but even without it - deal with it as if it is a business. Approach your bank for a business loan - either secured by A or unsecured, and another investment loan for B. Describe your strategy to the banker (preferably a small community bank in the area where the properties are), and how you're going to fund the properties. You won't get rates as low as you have on A (3.25% on investment loan? Not a chance, that one is a keeper), but you might be able to get rid of the balloon/variable APR problem.", "First of all, never is too late to develop good habits. So, you know what you want to do and you are going about the how now... First, you should pay off any consumer debt except from mortgage which should be planned for. Prioritize your consumer debt (credit cards, consumer loans, etc) according to the interest rates, starting with the one with the highest interest and going to the one with the lowest one. Because you should make quite the investments to pay off this interest debt and still make a profit. Second, you should start saving some money. The 10% rule of thumb is a good one and for starters having aside the money you need to get by for at least 3 months is quite okay. As they say, cash is king. Now, that you actually realize the amount you can spare each month to start investing (assuming you had to do something of the aforementioned) it's time to see the risk you are comfortable taking. Different risk-taking views lead to different investing routes. So, assuming once again that you are risk averse (having a newborn baby and all) and that you want something more than just a savings account, you can start looking for things that don't require much attention (even more so if you are going on you own about it) such as low risk mutual funds, ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) and index funds to track indexes like FTSE and S&P500 (you could get an average annual return of 10-12%, just google \"top safe etfs\" for example and you could take a quick look at credible sites like forbes etc). Also, you can take a look at fixed income options such as government bonds. Last but not least, you can always get your pick at some value companies stocks (usually big companies that have proven track record, check warren buffet on this). You should look for stocks that pay dividends since you are in for the long run and not just to make a quick buck. I hope I helped a bit and as always be cautious about investing since they have some inherent risks. If you don't feel comfortable with making your own investment choices you should contact a specialist like a financial planner or advisor. No matter what the case may be on this, you should still educate yourself on this... just to get a grasp on this.", "Deposits into NRE account can only be done from funds outside India. So your brother cannot deposit into your NRE account. He can deposit in NRO account or directly wire transfer the funds. Both these require some paper work depending on the amount.", "As you probably know, a credit spread involves buying a call (or put) at one strike and selling another call (or put) at another with the same maturity, so you're dealing with two orders. Your broker will likely have to fill this order themselves, meaning that they'll have to look at the existing bid/asks for the different strikes and wait until the difference matches (or exceeds) your limit order. Obviously they can't place limit orders on the legs individually since they can't guarantee that they will both be executed. They also don't care what the individual prices are; they just care what the difference is. It's possible that they have computer systems that examine existing bids and asks that would fill your order, but it's still done by the broker, not the exchange. The exchange never sees your actual limit order; they will just see the market orders placed by your broker.", "Private Mortgage Insurance. It's money that you pay to an insurance company to make the lender whole in the event that you go into default. It's a real waste of money for you. If you are trying to finance more than 80% of the value of a home, a standard mortage is likely to require that you get PMI. Nowadays there are other options which involve paying substantially more interest." ]

[ "There are quite a few questions as to how you are recording your income and expenses. If you are running the bakery as a Sole Proprietor, with all the income and expense in a business account; then things are easy. You just have to pay tax on the profit [as per the standard tax bracket]. If you running it as individual, you are still only liable to pay tax on profit and not turnover, however you need to keep a proper book of accounts showing income and expense. Get a Accountant to do this for you there are some thing your can claim as expense, some you can't." ]

[ "Bill gates is founder of microsoft along with his friend allen.in microsoft as its vast empire increasing the wealth and enormous property of bill gates is increasing", "well there are many papers on power spot price prediction, for example. It depends on what level of methodology you would like to use. Linear regression is one of the basic steps, then you can continue with more advanced options. I'm a phd student studying modelling the energy price (electricity, gas, oil) as stochastic process. Regarding to your questions: 1. mildly speaking, it's really hard, due to its random nature! (http://www.dataversity.net/is-there-such-a-thing-as-predictive-analytics/) 2. well, i would ask what kind of measure of success you mean? what level of predicted interval one could find successful enough? 3. would you like me to send you some of the math-based papers on? 4. as i know, the method is to fully capture all main characteristics of the price. If it's daily power price, then these are mean-reversion effect, high volatility, spike, seasonality (weekly, monthly, yearly). Would you tell me what kind of method you're using? Maybe we can discuss some shared ideas? Anna", "There is little difference between buying shares in your broker's index fund and shares of their corresponding ETF. In many cases the money invested in an ETF gets essentially stuffed right into the index fund (I believe Vanguard does this, for example). In either case you will be paying a little bit of tax. In the ETF case it will be on the dividends that are paid out. In the index fund case it will additionally be on the capital gains that have been realized within the fund, which are very few for an index fund. Not a ton in either case. The more important tax consideration is between purchase and sale, which is the same in either case. I'd say stick it wherever the lowest fees are.", "The car you dream of might not be available in your local used car market. Or if it is, there might be something wrong with it. Here are some reasons that a person might want to buy a new car. Basically, if you have a picture in your mind of what your next car should look like, it is easier to shop for a new car: New cars are getting better. Here are some reasons that a person might want a newer generation car rather than an older generation car: Cars wear out. Here are some reasons a person shopping for a car might pass on a used car: In other words, there are good reasons to want a car that is either brand new, exactly two years old, or 3 - 5 years old. The brand new car might be better than the old car ever was.", "If money is more expensive (costs more to borrow) then fewer people will be able to qualify to make the payments for a particular size of mortgage. This reduces the number of potential buyers for property at that price. As sellers still want to sell, they will move their prices down to where more people can afford to buy. So rising interest rates create downward pressure on housing prices. But Toronto is the biggest city in Canada. I'd expect part of the high prices there is the location: lots of people want to be close to lots of activities, action, and opportunity. Unless something catastrophic happens, I don't see Toronto losing that advantage. If anything, it's going to get a tad warmer up there in the coming decades.", "My sister had a similar problem and went to an actual lawyer, not a \"credit repair agency\". The lawyers settled her debt for a lot less than she owed, and she also got a bonus: one of the creditors called her repeatedly, even after her lawyers had told them not to. The lawyers ended up getting her an extra $40,000. Combined with the debt settlement, she actually came out ahead. Of course, her credit score went down, but it recovered in a couple of years.", "It seems the age restriction for the Capital One MONEY account has been removed; I just read the entire terms and conditions and there's no minimum age requirement. I just finished opening Capital One MONEY accounts for a child who is <5 and a child <8. Both now have activated debit cards and online access. Their accounts are accessible via their card, but also appear under my online banking login, as they are joint accounts. It is possible to deposit cheques, but no cheques are issued for writing. Debit card access is provided for ATM withdrawals and purchases. And the design on the card is really nice; my son said it looks like the $100 bill.", "The sum of the dividend yield plus capital growth is called total return. In your examples, you get to a total return of 7% through several different (and theoretically equivalent) paths. That is the right way of thinking.", "Non-electronic stock exchanges still exist because they used to exist. There are a lot of people in trading firms who grew up with floor trading and don't want to give it up, either because they feel more comfortable with it or because they might lose their job if they went away from it.", "The experience I have with wire transfers is from Australia to the US. These transfers can take up to 5 business dates (i.e. a whole week including the non-business days of the weekend). I would have thought intra-European transfers would be quicker, given how behind most US (regional) banks are in their electronic transfers. However, I don't think you should be worried just yet." ]

[ "You're going to find a lot of conflicting or vague answers on the internet because there are a lot of plan design elements that are set by the plan sponsor (employer). There are laws that mandate certain elements and dictate certain requirements of plan sponsors, many of these laws are related to record keeping and fiduciary duty. There is a lot of latitude for plan sponsors to allow or restrict employee actions even if there is no law against that activity. There are different rules mandated for employee pre-tax contributions, employee post-tax contributions, and employer contributions. You have more flexibility with regard to the employer contributions and any post tax contributions you may have made; your plan may allow an in-service distribution of those two items before you reach age 59.5. While your HR department (like most -all- HR departments) is not staffed with ERISA attorneys and CPAs it is your HR department and applicable plan documents that will lay out what an employee is permitted to do under the plan." ]

[ "why sell? Because the stock no longer fits your strategy. Or you've lost faith in the company. In our case, it's because we're taking our principal out and buying something else. Our strategy is, basically, to sell (or offer to sell) after the we can sell and get our principal out, after taxes. That includes dividends -- we reduce the sell price a little with every dividend collected.", "Does the Insurance value differ from state to state (for example I've a car in Hawaii and there is another car in Illinois with same model, make and same features), does the Insurance vary for both? Yes, quotes will vary based on where you live for various reasons, (propensity for accidents, value of cars, etc.), and state laws regarding required car insurance can vary. How is the insurance quote calculated? It's likely a proprietary formula that the insurance company will not disclose. If they did, they could be giving away a competitive advantage. However, like all insurance, the goal is to determine the probability of the insured having an accident, and the projected cost of such an accident. That will be based on actuarial tables for each of the risk factors you mention.", "I'm not sure that OP was asking if he/she personally should have more available credit, so I will answer the other interpretation: should that particular card have a higher limit? The answer is \"no.\" The range varies vastly by issuer. Starting limits vary widely from issuer to issuer even with identical credit histories. Some issuers never automatically increase the limit, some periodically conduct account reviews to determine if an increase is warranted. Some like to see higher spending habits each month. Personally, my cards range from $500 to $25000, and the high and low extremes are the same age. You can search for tips on how often to request increases for your particular card, or what kind of spending habits the issuer prefers. An important note: You do not need to carry a balance to make the issuer happy. You never need to pay a cent in credit card interest.", "Sounds like you are a candidate for stock trading simulators. Or just pick stocks and use Yahoo! or Google finance tools to track and see how you do. I wouldn't suggest you put real money into it. You need to learn about research and timing and a bunch of other topics you can learn about here. I personally just stick to life cycle funds that are managed products that offer me a cruise control setting for investing.", "There's a case to be made that companies below a certain market cap have more potential than the higher ones. Consider, Apple cannot grow 100 fold from its current value. At $700B or so in value, that would be a $70T goal, just about the value of all the combined wealth in the entire US. At some point, the laws of large numbers take over, and exponential growth starts to flatten out. On the flip side, Apple may have as good or better chance to rise 10% over the next 6-12 months as a random small cap stock.", "As noted in richardb's comment buried in the comments/debate on the other answer (and all credit for this answer should be due to him): a significant issue with the scheme as originally envisaged in the question (up to £11K pa) is that there is actually a cap on the maintenance part for over 60s: On page 28 of this \"Student finance - how you're assessed and paid\" document it says: If you're 60 or over on the first day of the first academic year of your course you can apply for a Maintenance Loan of up to £3,566, depending on your household income. Your loan will be reduced by £1 for every £5.46 of household income over £25,000, up to £43,675. If your household income is more than this you won't get any Maintenance Loan. I'd consider that to make this route considerably less attractive... and maybe that's the intention of the rule! (Although I might not think that was so true if I was actually on the UK's state pension of £6K a year and desperate. However, I was originally thinking more in terms of comparing the accumulated \"free money\" over the three years with the UK's average - and woefully inadequate - pension pot of £50K, rather than with pensioner income). I'll leave those who found the idea of exploiting government incentives so outrageous to ponder the at least as troubling ethics of discriminating against people based on their age, especially when that government apparently likes the idea of older people retraining. (Just to complicate things: I note that one of the possible criteria for applying for a \"special support grant\" - an alternative to a maintenance loan - is being over 60. That's a grant not a loan and doesn't have to be repaid, but abusing that would seem even to me to be on a par with faking disability to get benefits or similar).", "If you are tax-resident in the US, then you must report income from sources within and without the United States. Your foreign income generally must be reported to the IRS. You will generally be eligible for a credit for foreign income taxes paid, via Form 1116. The question of the stock transfer is more complicated, but revolves around the beneficial owner. If the stocks are yours but held by your brother, it is possible that you are the beneficial owner and you will have to report any income. There is no tax for bringing the money into the US. As a US tax resident, you are already subject to income tax on the gain from the sale in India. However, if the investment is held by a separate entity in India, which is not a US domestic entity or tax resident, then there is a separate analysis. Paying a dividend to you of the sale proceeds (or part of the proceeds) would be taxable. Your sale of the entity containing the investments would be taxable. There are look-through provisions if the entity is insufficiently foreign (de facto US, such as a Subpart-F CFC). There are ways to structure that transaction that are not taxable, such as making it a bona fide loan (which is enforceable and you must pay back on reasonable terms). But if you are holding property directly, not through a foreign separate entity, then the sale triggers US tax; the transfer into the US is not meaningful for your taxes, except for reporting foreign accounts. Please review Publication 519 for general information on taxation of resident aliens.", "TSP.Ninja http://www.tsp.ninja has all the TSP funds with good visualizations that are very similar to Google Finance.", "What about web-hosting fees? Cost of Internet service? Cost of computer equipment to do the work? Amortized cost of development? Time for support calls/email? Phone service used for sales? Advertising/marketing expenses? Look hard--I bet there are some costs.", "(I live in the UK and along with my wife we both drive Volkswagen cars.) A few factors: VW is widely acknowledged as having some of the best diesel car engines. -Now lot of people are questioning if diesel car will be outlawed. VM management has just said they don’t know what their workers are doing! The USA has made it clear they will create pollution law in a way that benefit their own car makers. (E.g. they don’t care about CO2.) If not diesel cars, then it needs hybrid or electric cars to get good MPG – VM is not seen as a leader in these. Hybrid cars tend to be gas as diesel engines cost too much. VW is no longer looking like a nice safe investment! I think VW will recover, but it may get worse for them before it gets better - trying to call the bottom of a stock is high risk." ]

[ "The case you are looking at is rather special, because the Chinese government for the longest time did not allow foreigners to invest in Chinese stocks. The ADRs explained in @DStanley's answer are a way around that restriction; recently there are some limited official ways, In general, it is perfectly normal for a stock to appear on different exchanges, in different currencies, and it's all the \"real\" stock. Because remember: a stock exchange is really nothing more than a fancy place for people to buy and sell stocks. There is absolutely no reason why a specific stock should only be traded in one place. Companies that have decided to be publically tradeable generally want to be traded in as many exchanges as possible, because it makes the stock more liquid, which helps their shareholders. Individual exchanges have different requirements for a stock to be listed for trading there, some may even do it without the company's explicit approval." ]

[ "If it's real, it's illegal. She needs someone to be a middle man who transfers money and doesn't ask questions. The list of possible reasons should be plenty obvious and range anywhere from fraud to terrorism. There are thousands of ways to get already transferred money back from your account. If the source of the money is some kind of fraud that's only detected 2 years later, someone will ask you for the money back in 2 years. If real people who operate within legal and moral boundaries want to pay someone, they do not ask someone on Facebook to do it for them.", "Trying to \"time the market\" is usually a bad idea. People who do this every day for a living have a hard time doing that, and I'm guessing you don't have that kind of time and knowledge. So that leaves you with your first and third options, commonly called lump-sum and dollar cost averaging respectively. Which one to use depends on where your preferences lie on the risk/reward scpectrum. Dollar cost averaging (DCA) has lower risk and lower reward than lump sum investing. In my opinion, I don't like it. DCA only works better than lump sum investing if the price drops. But if you think the price is going to drop, why are you buying the stock in the first place? Example: Your uncle wins the lottery and gives you $50,000. Do you buy $50,000 worth of Apple now, or do you buy $10,000 now and $10,000 a quarter for the next four quarters? If the stock goes up, you will make more with lump-sum(LS) than you will with DCA. If the stock goes down, you will lose more with LS than you will with DCA. If the stock goes up then down, you will lose more with DCA than you will with LS. If the stock goes down then up, you will make more with DCA than you will with LS. So it's a trade-off. But, like I said, the whole point of you buying the stock is that you think it's going to go up, which is especially true with an index fund! So why pick the strategy that performs worse in that scenario?", "$1000 is not that much, and I think the best you can do with them is keeping them in a high-yield savings account (look at the online savings accounts that give 1% and more, not the regular bank savings accounts which are worthless). If you need money all of a sudden (for a school book, or rent, or bills, or some other emergency expense), you don't want to deal with selling stocks or funds (which may be at loss) or breaking into your CD's. It is usually considered a good practice to keep cash that would keep you afloat for 5-6 months in savings or some cash equivalent, as an emergency fund.", "The bond funds should tell you their duration. My 401(k) has similar choices, and right now, I'm at the short maturity, i.e. under 1 year. The current return is awful, but better than the drop the longer term funds will experience as rates come back up. Not quite mathematically correct, but close enough, \"duration\" gives you the time-weighted average maturity in a way that tells you how the value responds to a rate change. If a fund has a 10 year duration, a .1% rate rise will cause the fund value to drop 1.0%.", "IRS Publication 529 is the go-to document. Without being a tax professional, I'd say if the dues and subscriptions help you in the running of your business, then they're deductible. You're on your own if you take my advice (or don't). ;)", "Some builders -- if given the first chance to deal with the problem, instead of being presented with a bill after the fact -- will fix the problem at no charge to the homeowner. Good faith matters. My house was built by such a builder. If I have a problem that I am competent enough to diagnose and fix, I fix it myself, at my cost. If I have a problem that that I cannot diagnose and fix myself, but that I think the builder (or his subcontractor) is competent enough to diagnose and/or fix, I contact the builder (or subcontractor directly). I am willing to pay for the diagnosis and/or fix, especially if it is an aging or wear-and-tear issue, or the logical consequence of a cost-saving measure that I voluntarily chose when the house was being designed. If the problem is a plumbing problem, I contact my preferred plumber for a diagnosis and/or repair. I pay for my preferred plumber's work. On two occasions, my preferred plumber was unable to fix the problem. Both problems turned out to be installation (or testing) errors related to work done specifically for building inspections. In both cases, I paid for my preferred plumber's diagnosis, and the builder (and/or his subcontractor) fixed the problem at no additional cost to me. The diagnosis and repair work that you describe seems like a similar situation to me. (In fact, I had my builder's subcontractor replace a few prematurely damaged shingles on my roof. This repair prevented a roof leak. I noticed the problem while trimming a tree back from the roof. The shingles were damaged because the building permit implied that the tree could not be trimmed back. I'm spotting a pattern with these problems…) In my opinion, the alleged problem with the roof pitch seems like a design flaw that should have been obvious at the time you chose the house design. I expect that any corrections of this design flaw will need to come out of your remodelling budget. In the absence of further details, I doubt that either the builder or the homeowners' insurance company is responsible for it. Some builders make a point of minimizing the warranty work they pay for, regardless of its effect on the builder's reputation. I do not know which kind of builder you have. The lawyer has probably told you whether the relevant statutes of limitations have lapsed. (The statutes of limitations vary from state-to-state, and vary depending on the alleged tort.) Starting a lawsuit is likely to further damage your relationship with your builder. Homeowners' insurance companies now share the number of claims that have been made historically at each property address. Most insurance companies now use this cumulative number of claims when setting rates, even if the claim(s) were made against a different insurance company, or by a different homeowner. I do not know whether any insurance companies ignore claims older than a certain number of years, or ignore the first claim.", "A strategy of rebalancing assumes that the business cycle will continue, that all bull and bear markets end eventually. Imagine that you maintained a 50% split between a US Treasury bond mutual fund (VUSTX) and an S&P 500 stock mutual fund (VFINX) beginning with a $10,000 investment in each on January 1, 2008, then on the first of each year you rebalanced your portfolio on the first of January (we can pretend the markets are open that day). The following table illustrates the values in each of those funds with the rebalancing transactions: This second table shows what that same money would look like without any rebalancing over those years: Obviously this is cherry-picking for the biggest drop we've recently experienced, but even if you skipped 2008 and 2009, the increase for a rebalanced portfolio from 2010-2017 is 85% verses 54% for the portfolio that is not being rebalanced in the same period. This is also a plenty conservative portfolio. You can see that a 100% stock portfolio dropped 40% in 2008, but the combined portfolio only dropped 18%. A 100% stock portfolio has gained 175% since 2009, compared to 105% for the balanced portfolio, but it's common to trade gains for safety as you get closer to retirement. You didn't ask about a 100% stock portfolio in your initial question. These results would be repeated in many other portfolio allocations because some asset classes outperform others one year, then underperform the next. You sell after the years it outperforms, then you buy after years that it underperforms.", "I heard today while listening to an accounting podcast that a balance sheet... can be used to determine if a company has enough money to pay its employees. The \"money\" that you're looking at is specifically cash on the balance sheet. The cash flows document mentioned is just a more-finance-related document that explains how we ended at cash on the balance sheet. ...even looking for a job This is critical, that i don't believe many people look at when searching for a job. Using the ratios listed below can (and many others), one can determine if the business they are applying for will be around in the next five years. Can someone provide me a pair of examples (one good)? My favorite example of a high cash company is Nintendo. Rolling at 570 Billion USD IN CASH ALONE is astonishing. Using the ratios we can see how well they are doing. Can someone provide me a pair of examples (one bad)? Tesla is a good example of the later on being cash poor. Walk me though how to understand such a document? *Note: This question is highly complex and will take months of reading to fully comprehend the components that make up the financial statements. I would recommend that this question be posted completely separate.", "There is no equation. Only data that would help you come to the decision that's right for you. Assuming the 401(k) is invested in a stock fund of one sort or another, the choice is nearly the same as if you had $5K cash to either invest or pay debt. Since stock returns are not fixed, but are a random distribution that somewhat resembles a bell curve, median about 10%, standard deviation about 14%. It's the age old question of \"getting a guaranteed X% (paying the debt) or a shot at 8-10% or so in the market.\" This come up frequently in the decision to pre-pay mortgages at 4-5% versus invest. Many people will take the guaranteed 4% return vs the risk that comes with the market. For your decision, the 401(k) loan, note that the loan is due if you separate from the company for whatever reason. This adds an additional layer of risk and another data point to the mix. For your exact numbers, the savings is barely $50. I'd probably not do it. If the cards were 18%, I'd lean toward the loan, but only if I knew I could raise the cash to pay it back to not default.", "If you're planning to walk away from the house - don't invest any more money in it. Just be aware of the consequences. It may be worth considering a short sale if both the lenders will agree to erase the debt. If you're going to keep the house, then the fact that you're underwater now is irrelevant, and you should do your best to reduce the burden by paying off the higher rate loan. But, I personally think that accumulating enough cash to make you comfortable in case of a job loss for several months is a higher priority." ]

[ "To figure this out, you need to know the price per share then vs the price per share now. Google Finance will show you historical prices. For GOOG, the closing price on January 5, 2015 was $513.87. The price on December 31, 2015 was $758.88. Return on Investment (ROI) is calculated with this formula: ROI = (Proceeds from Investment - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment Using this formula, your return on investment would be 47.7%. Since the time period was one year, this number is already an annualized return. If the time period was different than one year, you would normally convert it to an annualized rate of return in order to compare it to other investments." ]

[ "When you got your original HUD backed mortgage there were three options: monthly, annual and upfront payments. The plan is designed to insure the lender of the mortgage against your default. The plan is not expected to cover the mortgage for 30 years. If you are in the early years of the mortgage, you may be owed a refund for the unused years. HUD has a Fact sheet discussing this, and a page to help you determine if they owe you a refund. If you are refinancing back into a HUD/FHA mortgage they will not give you a refund, but will roll the refund back into your new loan. FHA to FHA Refinances: When an FHA loan is refinanced, the refund from the old premium may be applied toward the up-front premium required for the new loan. Note: Depending on the year of the original loan the government has different lengths they used for coverage and refunds. I suggest you use the webpage to determine if you are due a refund, or a roll over.", "You have actually asked several questions, so I think what I'll do is give you an intuition about risk-neutral pricing to get you started. Then I think the answer to many of your questions will become clear. Physical Probability There is some probability of every event out there actually occurring, including the price of a stock going up. That's what we call the physical probability. It's very intuitive, but not directly useful for finding the price of something because price is not the weighted average of future outcomes. For example, if you have a stock that is highly correlated with the market and has 50% chance of being worth $20 dollars tomorrow and a 50% chance of being worth $10, it's value today is not $15. It will be worth less, because it's a risky stock and must earn a premium. When you are dealing with physical probabilities, if you want to compute value you have to take the probability-weighted average of all the prices it could have tomorrow and then add in some kind of compensation for risk, which may be hard to compute. Risk-Neutral Probability Finance theory has shown that instead of computing values this way, we can embed risk-compensation into our probabilities. That is, we can create a new set up \"probabilities\" by adjusting the probability of good market outcomes downward and increasing the probability of bad market outcomes. This may sound crazy because these probabilities are no longer physical, but it has the desirable property that we then use this set of probabilities to price of every asset out there: all of them (equity, options, bonds, savings accounts, etc.). We call these adjusted probabilities that risk-neutral probabilities. When I say price I mean that you can multiply every outcome by its risk-neutral probability and discount at the risk-free rate to find its correct price. To be clear, we have changed the probability of the market going up and down, not our probability of a particular stock moving independent of the market. Because moves that are independent of the market do not affect prices, we don't have to adjust the probabilities of them happening in order to get risk-neutral probabilities. Anyway, the best way to think of risk-neutral probabilities is as a set of bogus probabilities that consistently give the correct price of every asset in the economy without having to add a risk premium. If we just take the risk-neutral probability-weighted average of all outcomes and discount at the risk-free rate, we get the price. Very handy if you have them. Risk-Neutral Pricing We can't get risk-neutral probabilities from research about how likely a stock is to actually go up or down. That would be the physical probability. Instead, we can figure out the risk-neutral probabilities from prices. If a stock has only two possible prices tomorrow, U and D, and the risk-neutral probability of U is q, then Price = [ Uq + D(1-q) ] / e^(rt) The exponential there is just discounting by the risk-free rate. This is the beginning of the equations you have mentioned. The main thing to remember is that q is not the physical probability, it's the risk-neutral one. I can't emphasize that enough. If you have prespecified what U and D can be, then there is only one unknown in that equation: q. That means you can look at the stock price and solve for the risk neutral probability of the stock going up. The reason this is useful is that you can same risk-neutral probability to price the associated option. In the case of the option you don't know its price today (yet) but you do know how much money it will be worth if the stock moves up or down. Use those values and the risk-neutral probability you computed from the stock to compute the option's price. That's what's going on here. To remember: the same risk-neutral probability measure prices everything out there. That is, if you choose an asset, multiply each possibly outcome by its risk-neutral probability, and discount at the risk-free rate, you get its price. In general we use prices of things we know to infer things about the risk-neutral probability measure in order to get prices we do not know.", "I think the right question you should ask yourself is: Can i work at home? is it possible? do I have a calm, private place at home to work from? what will be the motivation while working from? If you got answers to these questions, you will find if you can get money from home or not, because any place you can do work from will give you money, just work!", "This might sound harsh, but the first thing I would suggest is to stop making excuses. I wasn't able to continue due to pressure from college and family The college I went to was horrible. Employers can very easily hire foreign work-force for very cheap; for example as a citizen if I work $10 an hour, they can get someone from outside to work for $5 per hour There's no guarantee that the project will succeed. I cannot really work and at the same time develop software on my free time. Despite my failures in the past, I was not the main person that's responsible for those failures. Even if all of this is true, it's not helping you move forward and it seems to be getting in the way of creating a good action plan and motivating yourself to succeed. If you believe (based on past experiences) that you are doomed to fail, then you are indeed doomed to fail. You need to take a step back and re-evaluate your current circumstances and what you can do to reach your goals. You have a couple of things working in your favor here. It's great that you are debt free. That already puts you ahead of a lot of your peers. You have the option of living with your parents. Presumably for no rent, or at least much lower rent than you would have to pay if you move out. This is worth literally thousands of $/£/€ for every year you stay. Now, onto your questions: 1) Should I quit regular programming for a normal job because I never monetized programming so I can move out of my parents' home? Are you being paid for this \"regular programming\"? If so, are you being paid more than minimum wage? If not, it's perfectly acceptable to consider alternative ways to spend your time and generate income. However, this doesn't have to be at the expense of living with your parents. Have you thought about getting a new or second job while still living with them? If you absolutely must move out of your parent's home, consider renting a room in a house with other people to keep the rent costs to a minimum. That way, even if your main job is low paying, you should be able to put aside some money each month for future endeavors. 2) Should I monetize programming and gamble with the future? What does this mean? Are you thinking you'll write a mobile app and sell thousands of copies for 99¢ each? That would indeed be a big gamble, but maybe that's not what you meant, so you'll need to clarify. 3) Would it be wise to essentially quit programming for the sake of a minimum wage job? I'm not sure how this is different from question 1. So I'll reiterate what I said there - moving out is going to be expensive. You can still do it, but you're asking on a Personal Finance site where the focus is usually how to minimize living costs and maximize income. Without knowing more about where you live (employment opportunities, cost of living) the default recommendation is usually to save money by staying in your parents house. TLDR: Don't focus on anyone else. They are not preventing you from getting the job you want. Look at your own skills and qualifications (not just programming, consider all of your abilities). What are you good at? Who might need those skills? What is the cost of reaching those people (commute time, moving nearer)? What is the reward? If the reward exceeds the cost, start approaching those people. Show them what you can do.", "Ultimately the question is more about your personality and level of discipline than about money. The rational thing to do is hang on to your cash, invest it somewhere else, and pay off the 0% loan as late as possible without incurring penalties or interest. Logically it's a no-brainer. Problem is, we're humans, so there's a risk you'll slip up somewhere along the way and not pay off the loan in time. How much do you trust yourself?", "I’m going to suggest something your parents may be reluctant to say: \"Grow up and get out.\" A man living in a van down by the river, making minimum wage, with $0 in savings has achieved something you have still failed to achieve: adulthood. This, I believe, is more important than a man’s income or net worth. So please join us adults Bryan. I think you’ll enjoy it. Yes, your savings may take a hit but you will gain the respect that comes with being an adult. I think it is worth it.", "Opportunity cost is the term you're looking for. I.e. (quoting from link) Definition of 'Opportunity Cost' 1. The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action.", "Some historical and mathematical insights as a complement to existing answers. History. I found it astonishing that already in Ancient Roman they investigated the issue of perpetuity of 30'000 (almost). Columella writes in De re rustica (3, 3, 7–11.) in 1-st century AD about a perpetuity of 32480 sesterces principal under 6% p.a. resulting in 1950 sesterces annual payment. And if the husbandman would enter this amount as a debt against his vineyards just as a moneylender does with a debtor, so that the owner may realize the aforementioned six per cent. interest on that total as a perpetual annuity, he should take in 1950 sesterces every year. By this reckoning the return on seven iugerum, even according to the opinion of Graecinus, exceeds the interest on 32'480 sesterces. Math. If we fix a scholarship at 1'000 a year, then it's clear that it could be paid out infinitely if we could achieve 3.33% p.a. on it. On the other side, with 0% we'll spend out the endowment in 30 years. Thus, having the interest rate between 0% and 3.33% p.a. we could vary the life of endowment between 30 years and infinity. Just a few numbers in between: under 1%, it would be ~36 years, under 2% ~46 years, under 3% ~78 years (however, 1000$ in 78 years could be less than 10$ today). Conclusion: to keep it perpetual either the fund's yield must be at the level of scholarship, or re-adjust the amount of scholarship depending on fund achievement, or redefine the notion of perpetuity (like 50 years is approximately infinite for our purpose).", "Bren's comment is right on the mark. The typical solution is to divide all bills by 5, and for special items, the person buying it just marks his name that it's not community food. Your attempt at a granularity level this detailed is admirable, but produces false results. What happens when I claim to be a zero percent milk drinker but when someone gives me cookies, I have a glass of milk? The effort to get true accuracy will cost far more in time spent than the results are worth.", "Excellent question, though any why question can be challenging to answer because it depends on the financial products in question. At least, I haven't seen many target date retirement funds that include a high percent of foreign stocks, so below explains the ones I've seen which are primarily US stocks. The United States (before the last twenty years) has been seen as a country of stability. This is not true anymore, and it's difficult for my generation to understand because we grew up in the U.S.A being challenged (and tend to think that China and India have always been powers), but when we read investors, like Benjamin Graham (who had significant influence with Warren Buffett), we can see this bias - the U.S.A to them is stable, and other countries are \"risky.\" Again, with the national debt and the political game in our current time, it does not feel this way. But that bias is often reflect in financial instruments. The US Dollar is still the reserve currency, though it's influence is declining and I would expect it to decline. Contrary to my view (because I could be wrong here) is Mish, who argues that no one wants to have the reserve currency because having a reserve currency brings disadvantages (see here: Bogus Threats to US Reserve Currency Status: No Country Really Wants It!; I present this to show that my view could be wrong). Finally, there tends to be the \"go with what you know.\" Many of these funds are managed by U.S. citizens, so they tend to have a U.S. bias and feel more comfortable investing their money \"at home\" (in fact a famous mutual fund manager, Peter Lynch, had a similar mentality - buy the company behind the stock and what company do we tend to know best? The ones around us.). One final note, I'm not saying this mentality is correct, just what the attitude is like. I think you may find that younger mutual fund managers tend to include more foreign stocks, as they've seen that different world." ]

[ "A few days ago they launched Fannie Mae Guaranteed Multifamily Structures (link) but who knows? It's a penny stock now. Google Finance is pretty good at marking news right on the chart for a particular stock. That's how I tracked that piece of news down. Can't say that it precipitated a lot of people buying the stock, but Google Finance isn't a bad place to start looking." ]

[ "There are things that are clearly beyond me as well. Cash per share is $12.61 but the debt looks like $30 or so per share. I look at that, and the $22 negative book value and don't see where the shareholders are able to recoup anything.", "It's not enough just to check if your order doesn't exceed 10% of the 20 day average volume. I'll quote from my last answer about NSCC illiquid charges: You may still be assessed a fee for trading OTC stocks even if your account doesn't meet the criteria because these restrictions are applied at the level of the clearing firm, not the individual client. This means that if other investors with your broker, or even at another broker that happens to use the same clearing firm, purchase more than 5 million shares in an individual OTC stock at the same time, all of your accounts may face fees, even though individually, you don't exceed the limits. The NSCC issues a charge to the clearing firm if in aggregate, their orders exceed the limits, and the clearing firm usually passes these charges on to the broker(s) that placed the orders. Your broker may or may not pass the charges through to you; they may simply charge you significantly higher commissions for trading OTC securities and use those to cover the charges. Since checking how the volume of your orders compares to the average past volume, ask your broker about their policies on trading OTC stocks. They may tell you that you won't face illiquid charges because the higher cost of commissions covers these, or they may give you specifics on how to verify that your orders won't incur such charges. Only your broker can answer this with certainty.", "There are a number of choices: I prefer Dilip's response \"Have you tried asking etrade?\" No offense, but questions about how a particular broker handles certain situations are best asked of the broker. Last - one should never enter into any trade (especially options trades) without understanding the process in advance. I hope you are asking this before trading.", "The value of a share depends on the value of the company, which involves a lot more than the value of its assets -- it requires making decisions about what you think will happen to the company in the future. That's inherently not something that can be reduced to a single formula, at least not unless you can figure out how to represent your guesses and your confidence in them in the formula ... and even if you could do all that it would only say what you think the stock is worth; others will be using different numbers and legitimately get different results. Disagreement over value is what the stock market is all about, I'm afraid.", "Is it possible for the card issuing banks to check my score without my permission? As far as I understand these things, that is exactly the whole purpose of these sorts of credit-rating institutions. The banks and other financial businesses are their customers. They exist to serve those customers. Their relationship, if any, with a consumer is probably secondary to that. When you apply for credit, you give that business any permission needed.", "Form 10-K is filed by corporations to SEC. You must be thinking of form 1065 (its schedule K) that a partnership (and multi-member LLC) must file with the IRS. Unless the multi-member LLC is legally dissolved, it must file this form. You're a member, so it is your responsibility, with all the other members, to make sure that the manager files all the forms, and if the manager doesn't - fire the manager and appoint another one (or, if its member managed - chose a different member to manage). If you're a sole member of the LLC - then you don't need to file any forms with the IRS, all the business expenses and credits are done on your Schedule C, as if you were a sole propriator.", "If i am not wrong, any business activities such should be declared on Year End Tax filing. If your friend is going to own that website either it is commercial or nonprofit, he has to declare in the year end taxation.", "I've consulted with 5-6 accountants and people who've had the issue before. The advice I received boils down to: \"If you do not attach your 83b with your personal tax return it is not effective. However you can still correct the requirement to file it along with your tax return, because you are within the 3 year window of when the return was originally due.\" So you can amend your return/file it late within a certain window and things should be OK. The accountants that have confirmed this are Vanessa Kruze, Wray Rives and Augie Rakow - all of them corporate and credible accountants. You also need to keep onto the confirmation the IRS sent you in case of an audit. There is nothing on IRS.gov about attaching your 83b on a filed late or amended return but those accountants are people who say they've seen it happen frequently, have consulted with the IRS for solutions and that's the one they'd advise one to do in such situation. disclaimer: I am not a CPA", "Paying off the high-interest debt is a good first start. Paying interest, or compound interest on debt is like paying somebody to make you poor. As for your 401k, you want to contribute enough to get the full match from your employer. You might also consider checking out the fees associated with your 401k with an online fee analyzer. If it turns out you're getting reamed with fees, you can reduce them by fiddling with your investments. Checking your investment options is always a good idea since jobs frequently change them. Opening an IRA is a good call. If you're eligible for both Roth and Traditional IRAs, consider the following: Most financial institutions (brokers or banks) can help you open an IRA in a matter of minutes. If you shop around, you will find very cheap or even no fee options. Many brokers might try to get your business by giving away something for ‘free.' Just make sure you read the fine print so you understand the conditions of their promotional offer. Whichever IRA you choose, you want to make sure that it's managed properly. Some people might say, ‘go for it, do it yourself’ but I strongly disagree with that approach. Stock picking is a waste of time and market timing rarely works. I'd look into flat fee financial advisors. You have lots of options. Just make sure they hear you out, and can design/execute an investment plan specific to your needs At a minimum, they should: Hope this is helpful.", "If the money comes to you, then it's income. If the money goes out from you, it's an expense. You get to handle the appropriate tax documentation for those business transactions. You may also have the pleasure of filing 1099-MISC forms for all of your blogging buddies if you've paid them more than $600. (Not 100% sure on this one.) I was in a blog network that had some advertising deals, and we tried to keep the payments separate because it was cleaner that way. If I were you, I'd always charge a finder's fee because it is extra work for you to do what you're doing." ]

[ "Interestingly enough, \"strategic default\" seems to be more common than one might think in California and there is actually a lot of information available on it, to include a calculator that breaks down the numbers for you (although affiliated with a law office). Speaking from a purely financial standpoint, walking away only makes sense if it puts you in a better financial position than you were before while you had the mortgage. If you look at the downsides of walking away: The issues with the credit rating are will known but you need to take into account any open lines of credit you currently have as well as any need you might have to open a line of credit in the future. If you currently have credit cards, will the rates go up after the hit? On the housing side of things, you mortgage payment is currently a known quantity that will not change for the duration of the mortgage unless you do something to change it. However, it is fairly rare for rents to not change between years and if you want an apartment or house similar to what you currently have, you might find that the rent will fluctuate quite a bit between years and in the long run the rent might run higher than your current mortgage payment. Likewise, in the shorter term, if the landlord runs a credit check they might adjust what the rent is (or deny you the apartment) on the basis of the black mark on your history for reasons that other have mentioned. Another item to take into account is if you need to get a job in the future. Depending upon what you do for a living this might be a non-issue; however, if you are in a position of trust, walking away from a mortgage payment will reflect negatively upon your character unless you have a very good reason for it. This can lead to a loss of employment opportunities. Next, if you walk away from the mortgage you are walking away from the current value of the home and any future value that the home might have. If you like where you are living and aren't planning on moving to another part of the country, you are gambling that the market will not recover or that you would reach parity with what you owe by the time you need to sell the house. If you do plan on staying where you are and the house is in good repair, then in the long run you might be giving up quite a bit of money by walking away. These are a lot of factors to take into account though so its really hard to say one way or another if a strategic default is a good idea. In the long run you might come out ahead but knowing when that date is can be difficult to calculate. Likewise, in the long run it might adversely affect you and you might come to regret the decision. If the payments themselves are a bit too high, perhaps you can refinance or negotiate with the bank for a lower payment? If you get a better rate but keep your monthly payments the same then you might reach parity with the mortgage much faster which would also be to your advantage." ]

[ "If by being a millionaire you mean dollar millionaire then I doubt that it is really that easy in Pakistani context. At present the exchange rate is 107 Pakistani rupees per US dollar so even with this exchange rate, to have a million US dollars means having 107 million rupees of wealth. Now with this maths in mind you can very well calculate how much possible it is for an average 25 years old Pakistani to have that much wealth. And by the time you have 107 million Pakistani rupees of wealth the exchange rate against the US dollar would have only gone up against Pakistani currency. That article which you have mentioned makes calculations in US context and dollar terms. However if you talk only in terms of your country's context then being a millionaire means having 1 million rupees of wealth and that is something which is quite achievable with your salary and within very short span of time.", "Is it equity, or debt? Understanding the exact nature of one's investment (equity vs. debt) is critical. When one invests money in a company (presumably incorporated or limited) by buying some or all of it — as opposed to lending money to the company — then one ends up owning equity (shares or stock) in the company. In such a situation, one is a shareholder — not a creditor. As a shareholder, one is not generally owed a money debt just by having acquired an ownership stake in the company. Shareholders with company equity generally don't get to treat money received from the company as repayment of a loan — unless they also made a loan to the company and the payment is designated by the company as a loan repayment. Rather, shareholders can receive cash from a company through one of the following sources: \"Loan repayment\" isn't one of those options; it's only an option if one made a loan in the first place. Anyway, each of those ways of receiving money based on one's shares in a company has distinct tax implications, not just for the shareholder but for the company as well. You should consult with a tax professional about the most effective way for you to repatriate money from your investment. Considering the company is established overseas, you may want to find somebody with the appropriate expertise.", "The answer to this question is given by the fact that many public companies have people who are opposed to the company's aims or practices and who own their stock, often a single share, for the purposes of turning up to shareholder meetings and haranguing directors/asking awkward questions/disrupting proceedings, etc. If public companies could stop these campaigning shareholders from owning stock they would.", "I can't say I know everything about the underlying details, but from what I understand, your limit buy adds to the bid side of open orders, and one possibility is that someone placed a market order to sell when the bid price for the stock fell to $10 which was matched to your open limit order. So using your terminology, I would say the spot bid price is what fell to $10, even if for a brief moment. Whether or not it is possible for your order to be filled when the limit buy price is deeper than the current bid price is beyond me. It may have something to do with lot sizes.", "I'd suggest looking at something like the Dummies series of books for this. Something like: Sometimes the books are combined into one big book. This would be the best bet. It's were I started. Every time I wondered something I just looked it up and learned. They are perfectly fine for the novice. Hope this helps.", "Passive implies following an index. Your question seems to ask about a hypothetical fund that starts, say, as an S&P fund, but as the index is adjusted, the old stocks stay in the fund. Sounds simple enough, but over time, the fund's performance will diverge from the index. The slight potential gain from lack of cap gains will be offset by the fund being unable to market itself. Keep in mind, the gains distributed each year are almost exclusively long term, taxed at a favorable rate.", "Just to clarify, In wikipedia when it says It is defined as a market in which money is provided for periods longer than a year They are referring to the company which is asking for money. So for example the stock market provides money to the issuing company of an IPO, indefinitely. Meaning the company that just went public is provided with money for a period longer than a year. The definition in Investopedia basically says the same thing Wikipedia does it is just phrased slightly different and leaves out the \"for periods longer than a year\". For example Wikipedia uses the term \"business enterprises\" and \"governments\" while Investopedia uses the term private sector and public sector, in this context \"business enterprise\" is \"private sector\" and \"governments\" is \"public sector\" So in the sense of the length debt is issued yes, money market would be the opposite of a capital market but both markets still offer a place for governments and companies to raise money and both are classified as financial markets.", "With new cars it's usually the other way around: finance at a low APR or get cash back when you buy it outright. With used cars you usually don't know how much they have invested in the car, so it's more difficult to know how low they're willing to go. Regardless, I do think it's odd that they would knock 2K off the price if you finance with them, but not if you pay cash. The only reason they would do that is if they intend to make at least 2K in interest over the life of the loan, but they have no way of guaranteeing you won't refi. Therefore, I suspect they are bluffing and would probably close the deal if you wrote them a check (or put the cash on the table) for 2K less. However, if they won't budge and will only knock off 2K if you finance, you could finance and pay it off in full a week later. Just make sure they don't have any hidden origination fees or pay-off-early fees.", "Most bank bill pay services will work for this purpose. Generally you can pay any person or business that has a valid address. As an added Paypal will no longer take ~3% of the money.", "To calculate you take the Price and divide it by the Earnings, or by the Sales, or by the Free Cash Flow. Most of these calculations are done for you on a lot of finance sites if the data is available. Such sites as Yahoo Finance and Google Finance as well as my personal favorite: Morningstar" ]

[ "Now, to buy in full (and essentially have zero savings), buy in part (£10000 deposit, followed by a loan of £4000) or PCP/HP more of the value? So, you are assessing if the car is worth having with either none or only 4,000 in savings. This is the most critical information you have provided. My outright opinion is to always buy a mildly used car as I hate the idea of loans and interest. With the amount of money that you currently possess, I believe the \"Buy-in-part\" option is best as it reduces your interest liability; but, I don't believe you should do it currently. 4,000 is a rather small cash fund for if something were to go boom in the night. As for your question of interest: This is completely dependent on the amount you are able to pay per period and the total interest you are willing to spend, rows four and seven respectively. This is your money, and no one can tell you what's best to do with it than yourself. Keep looking for good leasing deals or if you think you can survive financial strife with 4,000 then follow your heart. \"Depreciation\" fluctuates to the buyer, so never assume what the car may lose in the next 2-3 years. Hope it all goes well my friend." ]

[ "I use a spreadsheet for that. I provide house value, land value, closing/fix-up costs, mortgage rate and years, tax bracket, city tax rate, insurance cost, and rental income. Sections of the spreadsheet compute (in obvious ways) the values used for the following tables: First I look at monthly cash flow (earnings/costs) and here are the columns: Next section looks at changes in taxable reported income caused by the house, And this too is monthly, even though it'll be x12 when you write your 1040. The third table is shows the monthly cash flow, forgetting about maintenance and assuming you adjust your quarterlies or paycheck exemptions to come out even: Maintenance is so much of a wildcard that I don't attempt to include it. My last table looks at paper (non-cash) equity gains: I was asked how I compute some of those intermediate values. My user inputs (adjusted for each property) are: My intermediate values are:", "Any investment company or online brokerage makes investing in their products easy. The hard part is choosing which fund(s) will earn you 12% and up.", "The 1 for 1 split could be the case where a company is being split into two parts. The new part may be spun off, or sold to another company. Any time a company splits into two parts, the ratio of the resulting companies needs to be determined.", "Generally all the countries have similar arrangement regarding Income Tax, if you live in the UK for more than you stay in India for a given year then the Indian authorities won't be able to tax you but you might come under the UK Tax Law.", "Right, wrong or indifferent I see account gains of nearly 50% so far this year; now being January 23, 2016. That is mostly staying on the short side. I am not adverse to long positions at all; only hop to the other side when the tide turns. I will probably end up castrating myself on the fence at some point.", "I have used TradeKing for a couple of years now and love it. It really is a great site. They hold an IRA trading account for me and have been helpful in rolling money into that account, and with answering the occasional question. Previously I have used Scottrade and found that TradeKing is a much better value.", "Limit books are managed by exchanges. If an order is not immediately filled, it is sent to the book. From there, orders are generally executed on price-time-priority. The one major exception is the precedence hide-not-slide orders have over earlier placed visible slidden limit orders since unslidden orders are treated like a modification/cancellation. To an exchange, a modification is the same as a cancellation since it charges no fees for placing or canceling orders, only for trades. The timestamp is reset, and price-time-priority is applied in the same way, so if a modified order isn't immediately filled, it is sent back to the book to be filled in order of price-time-priority.", "Consider that the bank of course makes money on the money in your escrow. It is nothing but a free loan you give the bank, and the official reasons why they want it are mostly BS - they want your free loan, nothing else. As a consequence, to let you out of it, they want the money they now cannot make on your money upfront, in form of a 'fee'. That explains the amount; it is right their expected loss by letting you out. Unfortunately, knowing this doesn't change your options. Either way, you will have to pay that money; either as a one-time fee, or as a continuing loss of interest. As others mentioned, you cannot calculate with 29 years, as chances are the mortgage will end earlier - by refinancing or sale. Then you are back to square one with another mandatory escrow; so paying the fee is probably not a good idea. If you are an interesting borrower for other banks, you might be able to refinance with no escrow; you can always try to negotiate this and make it a part of the contract. If they want your business, they might agree to that.", "Generally, yes. Rather than ask, \"why are these guys so cheap?\", you should be asking why the big names are so expensive. :) Marketing spend plays a big role there. Getting babies to shill for your company during the super bowl requires a heck of a lot of commissions. Due to the difficulties involved in setting up a brokerage, it's unlikely that you'll see a scam. A brokerage might go bankrupt for random reasons, but that's what investor insurance is for. \"Safeness\" is mostly the likelihood that you'll be able to get access to your funds on deposit with the broker. Investment funds are insured by SIPC for up to $500,000, with a lower limit on cash. The specific limits vary by broker, with some offering greater protection paid for on their own dime. Check with the broker -- it's usually on their web pages under \"Security\". Funds in \"cash\" might be swept into an interest-earning investment vehicle for which insurance is different, and that depends on the broker, too. A few Forex brokers went bankrupt last year, although that's a new market with fewer regulatory protections for traders. I heard that one bankruptcy in the space resulted in a 7% loss for traders with accounts there, and that there was a Ponzi-ish scam company as well. Luckily, the more stringent regulation of stock brokerages makes that space much safer for investors. If you want to assess the reliability of an online broker, I suggest the following: It's tempting to look at when the brokerage was founded. Fly-by-night scams, by definition, won't be around very long -- and usually that means under a few months. Any company with a significant online interface will have to have been around long enough to develop that client interface, their backend databases, and the interface with the markets and their clearing house. The two brokerages you mentioned have been around for 7+ years, so that lends strength to the supposition of a strong business model. That said, there could well be a new company that offers services or prices that fit your investment need, and in that case definitely look into their registrations and third-party reviews. Finally, note that the smaller, independent brokerages will probably have stiffer margin rules. If you're playing a complex, novel, and/or high-risk strategy that can't handle the volatility of a market crash, even a short excursion such as the 2010 flash crash, stiff margin rules might have consequences that a novice investor would rather pretend didn't exist.", "First is storage which is a big and a detrimental headache. Security is another big headache. Investing in precious metal has always been an investment opportunity in the countries in the east i.e. India and China because of cultural reason and due to absence of investment opportunities for the less fortunate ones. It isn't the case so in the West. Secondly what is the right an opportune moment is open to question. When the worlwide economy is up and running, that is probably the time to buy i.e. people would like to put money in use rather than store. The saying goes the other way when the economy is stagnating. Then there is also the case of waiting out the bad periods to sell your gold and silver. If you do want to buy precious metals then use a service like BullionVault, rather than doing those yourself. It takes care of the 2 big headaches, I mentioned earlier." ]

[ "When I went on vacation to London a few years ago, I looked around at banks with ATM deals with UK banks. I found that B of A had a deal with a UK bank that you could use their ATMs to take out money from your US account for practically no fees. So the week or so before I left, I opened an account at B of A, put a bunch of money in it, and used the B of A debit card during my trip as much as possible." ]

[ "I think this varies considerably depending on your situation. I've heard people say 6 month's living expenses, and I know Suze Orman recommended bumping that to 8 months in our current economy. My husband and I have no children, lots of student loan debts, but we pay off our credit cards in full each month and are working to save up for a house. We've talked through a few different what-if scenarios. If one of us were to lose our job, we have savings to cover the difference between our reduced income and paying the bills for 6 or 8 months while the other person regained employment. If both of us were to lose our jobs simultaneously, our savings wouldn't hold us over for more than 3 or 4 months, but if that were to happen, we would likely take advantage of the opportunity to relocate closer to our families, and possibly even move in to my parent's house for a short time. With no children and no mortgage, our commitments are few, so I don't feel the need to have a very large emergency cash fund, especially with student loans to pay off. Think through a few scenarios for your life and see what you would need. Take into consideration expenses to break a rental lease, cell phone contract, or other commitments. Then, start saving toward your goal. Also see answers to a similar question here.", "Disregarding the particular example and focusing on the actual questions: YES, definitely, the whole concept of \"pump and dump scheme\" refers to the many cases when this was intentionally done; Everything has a limit, but the limit can be quite high, especially if starting from a low value (a penny stock) and if the stock is low volume, then inflating ten or hundred times over a real value may be possible; and any value might be infinitely times overvalued for a company that turns out to have a value of zero. Yes, unless it's done very blatantly, you should expect that the \"inflator\" has much more experience in hiding the signs of inflation than the skill of average investor to notice them.", "You are only 33, with plenty of time to generate long-term returns. A correction is an opportunity for you to buy more at a lower price. My advice: invest about half in an index fund (S&P 500, for example) and half in a target fund (pick your retirement age), keep saving regularly, and in 30 years you'll be very happy you did. 5-10K a month is fine until all of the money is invested. (You said this is a retirement account, so invest the entire amount. Keep a rainy day fund in your non-retirement savings.) You can fiddle around with how you invest the money and I'm sure you'll get variations on my answer. My above suggestions may not be the absolute best option, but they are certainly not the worst option. Given that you are very risk-averse, keep in mind that you are in this for the long term and should be investing in something where you can safely ignore short-term downswings.", "Forex. I will employ my skill for \"suspension of disbelief\" and answer with no visceral reaction to Bitcoin itself. The Euro is not an 'investment.' It's a currency. People trade currencies in order to capture relative movements between pairs of currencies. Unlike stocks, that have an underlying business and potential for growth (or failure, of course) a currency trade is a zero sum game, two people on opposite sides of a bet. Bitcoin has no underlying asset either, no stock, no commodity. It trades, de facto, like a currency, and for purposes of objective classification, it would be considered a currency, and held similar to any Forex position.", "Those who say a person should invest in riskier assets when young are those who equate higher returns with higher risk. I would argue that any investment you do not understand is risky and allows you to lose money at a more rapid rate than someone who understands the investment. The way to reduce risk is to learn about what you want to invest in before you invest in it. Learning afterward can be a very expensive proposition, possibly costing you your retirement. Warren Buffet told the story on Bloomberg Radio in late 2013 of how he read everything in his local library on investing as a teenager and when his family moved to Washington he realized he had the entire Library of Congress at his disposal. One of Mr. Buffett's famous quotes when asked why he doesn't invest in the tech sector was: \"I don't invest in what I do not understand.\". There are several major asset classes: Paper (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, currency), Commodities (silver, gold, oil), Businesses (creation, purchase or partnership as opposed to common stock ownership) and Real Estate (rental properties, flips, land development). Pick one that interests you and learn everything about it that you can before investing. This will allow you to minimize and mitigate risks while increasing the rewards.", "Put them in Cds. Better than a savings account, you won't lose capital unlike the stock market.", "With the scenario that you laid out (ie. 5% and 10% loans), it makes no sense at all. The problem is, when you're in trouble the rates are never 5% or 10%. Getting behind on credit cards sucks and is really hard to recover from. The problem with multiple accounts is that as the banks tack on fees and raise your interest rate to the default rate (usually 30%) when you give them any excuse (late payment, over the limit, etc). The banks will also cut your credit lines as you make payments, making it more likely that you will bump over the limit and be back in \"default\" status. One payment, even at a slightly higher rate is preferable when you're deep in the hole because you can actually pay enough to hit principal. If you have assets like a house, you'll get a much better rate as well. In a scenario where you're paying 22-25% interest, your minimum payment will be $150-200 a month, and that is mostly interest and penalty. \"One big loan\" will usually result in a smaller payment, and you don't end up in a situation where the banks are jockeying for position so they get paid first. The danger of consolidation is that you'll stop triggering defaults and keep making your payments, so your credit score will improve. Then the vultures will start circling and offering you more credit cards. EDIT: Mea Culpa. I wrote this based on experiences of close friends whom I've helped out over the years, not realizing how the law changed in 2009. Back around 2004, a single late payment would trigger universal default on most cards, jacking all rates up to 30% and slashing credit lines, resulting in over the limit and other fees. Credit card banks generally apply payments (in order, to interest on penalties, penalties, interest on principal, principal) in a way that makes it very difficult to pay down principal for people deep in debt. They would also offer \"payment plans\" to entice you to pay Bank B vs. Bank A, which would trigger overlimit fees from Bank A. Another change is that minimum payments were generally 2% of statement balance, which often didn't cover the monthly finance charge. The new law changed that, resulting in a payment of 1% of balance + accrued interest. Under the old regime, consolidation made it less likely that various circumstances would trigger default, and gave the struggling debtor one throat to choke. With the new rules, there are definitely a smaller number of scenarios where consolidation actually makes sense.", "The two are closely related. A budget is a detailed plan for how to spend. Expense tracking is a tool to analyze your previous spending performance. Creating a plan for how to spend your money without any record of your previous spending--is an empty promise to yourself that you will never follow up on. Did I stay within my budget? Doesn't matter, I didn't track the spending anyway. Even if you do plan to track your performance, if you have not previously done so, you won't have a good basis for how much to expect in each category. Most people have a general idea of how much they have spent and many budgets are formed based on that general intuition, but they are often surprised when they track how every penny is spent and look at the totals from month to month and over years. By actually seeing how much has been spent it's easier to pick the big financial drains and target them for reduction, if your desire is more savings, for example. I know people who keep a close eye on what they spend each month, but they don't allocate money in categories for the next month. They don't perform as well on reducing spending, but they often don't care. They feel like they make enough and they save enough, so why worry? I also know people who create an unrealistic budget each month because they haven't done a good job tracking their previous spending. They know what the monthly bills are, but they don't account well for variable or cyclical expenses like repairs, Christmas, etc. Both tools are essential for maximizing your own personal finance.", "Historically they were conceived as a way to cut losses when the market turned against you. You would tell your broker something like \"buy me 100 shares of Anaconda and stop me if it goes below $110\" You can read references to this in old books like Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, the ABC of Options pricing, or the Day Trader's Bible.", "TL;DR: No, it doesn't count against the Roth IRA basis. You can find out by looking at Form 8606 Part III, which is the part for distributions from Roth IRA. Line 19 is the sum of nonqualified distributions, plus qualified first-time homebuyer distributions. You would put $10000 here. Then you would subtract $10000 on line 20 (qualified first-time homebuyer expenses) to get $0 on line 21. You enter your basis on line 22, but since line 21 was 0, you stop. You do not subtract anything from your basis. If you take out more than $10000, then it's only the part over $10000 that is subtracted from your basis." ]

[ "For Mac it's definitely iFinance." ]

[ "No, you can not cheat the IRS. This question is also based on the assumption that the stock will return to $1 which isn't always a safe assumption and that it will continue to cycle like that repeatedly which is also likely a false assumption.", "Similarly to buying property on your own, REITs cannot get to good returns without leveraging. If you buy an investment property 100% cash only - chances are that 10% ROI is a very very optimistic scenario. If you use leveraging (i.e.: take out a mortgage) - you're susceptible to interest rate changes. REITs invest in properties all around all the time. They invest in mortgages themselves as well (In the US, that's the only security REITs can hold without being disqualified). You can't expect all that to be cash-only, there have to be loans and financing involved. When rates go up - financing costs go up. That brings net income down. Simple math. In the US, there's an additional benefit to investing in REIT vs directly holding real estate: taxes. REITs pay dividends, which have preferential (if qualified) taxation. You'll pay capital gains taxes on the dividends if you hold the fund long enough. If you own a rental property directly, your income after all the expenses is taxed at ordinary rates, which would usually be higher. Also, as you mentioned, you can use them as margin, and they're much much more liquid than holding real estate directly. Not to mention you don't need to deal with tenants or periods where you don't have any, or if local real-estate market tanks (while REITs are usually quite diversified in kinds of real estate they hold and areas). On the other hand, if you own real estate, you can leverage it at lower rates than margin (with HELOCs etc), and it provides some safety net in case of a stock market crash (which REITs are somewhat susceptible to). You can also live in your property, if needed, which is something that's hard to do with REITs....", "Ultimately, you are the one that is responsible for your tax filings and your payments (It's all linked to your SSN, after all). If this fee/interest is the result of a filing error, and you went through a preparing company which assumes liability for their own errors, then you should speak to them. They will likely correct this and pay the fees. On the other hand, if this is the result of not making quarterly payments, then you are responsible for it. (Source: Comptroller of Maryland Site) If you [...] do not have Maryland income taxes withheld by an employer, you can make quarterly estimated tax payments as part of a pay-as-you-go plan. If your employer does withhold Maryland taxes from your pay, you may still be required to make quarterly estimated income tax payments if you develop a tax liability that exceeds the amount withheld by your employer by more than $500. From this watered-down public-facing resource, it seems like you'll get hit with fees for not making quarterly payments if your tax liability exceeds $500 beyond what is withheld (currently: $0).", "You're off to a great start. Here are the steps I would take: 1.) Pay off any high-interest debt. 2.) Keep six to twelve months in a highly liquid emergency fund. If the banks aren't safe, also consider having one or two months of cash or cash-equivalents on the premises. 3.) Rent a larger apartment, if possible, until you've saved more. The cost of the land and construction will consume a very large portion of your net worth. Given the historical political instability in that region, mentioned by the previous comments, I would hesitate to put such a large percentage of your wealth in to real estate. 4.) Get a brokerage account that's insured and well known. If you're willing to take the five percent hit to move assets offshore, then consider Vanguard. I'm not sure if they'll give you an account but they're generally acknowledged as an amazing broker in the US with low fees and amazing funds. Five percent (12,500) is worth it in my opinion. As you accumulate more wealth, you can stop moving cash overseas and keep a larger mix domestically. 5.) Invest in your business and yourself even more. As far as finding new investment opportunities, I would go through the list of all the typical major asset classes and consider the pros and cons: fixed-income, stocks, currencies, real estate / REITs, own a small business, commodities etc.,", "You will hear a lot about diversifying your portfolio, which typically means having a good mix of investment types, areas of investments, etc. I'd like to suggest that you should also diversify your sources. Sad to say but the defined benefit pension is not a rock solid, sure fire source of security in your retirement planning. Companies go bankrupt, government agencies are reorganized, and those hitherto-untouchable assets are destroyed overnight. So, treat your new investment strategy as if you were starting over, and invest accordingly, for example, aggressively for a few years, then progressively safer as you get older. There are other strategies too, depending on factors like your taste for risk: you might prefer to be conservative until you reach some safety threshold to reach \"certain safety\" and then start making riskier investments. You may also consider different investment vehicles and techniques such as index funds, dollar cost averaging, and so on.", "Let me start by giving you a snippet of a report that will floor you. Beat the market? Investors lag the market by so much that many call the industry a scam. This is the 2015 year end data from a report titled Quantitive Analysis of Investor Behavior by a firm, Dalbar. It boggles the mind that the disparity could be this bad. A mix of stocks and bonds over 30 years should average 8.5% or so. Take out fees, and even 7.5% would be the result I expect. The average investor return was less than half of this. Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, and considered the father of the index fund, was ridiculed. A pamphlet I got from Vanguard decades ago quoted fund managers as saying that \"indexing is a path to mediocrity.\" Fortunately, I was a numbers guy, read all I could that Jack wrote and got most of that 10.35%, less .05, down to .02% over the years. To answer the question: psychology. People are easily scammed as they want to believe they can beat the market. Or that they'll somehow find a fund that does it for them. I'm tempted to say ignorance or some other hint at lack of intelligence, but that would be unfair to the professionals, all of which were scammed by Madoff. Individual funds may not be scams, but investors are partly to blame, buy high, sell low, and you get the results above, I dare say, an investor claiming to use index funds might not fare much better than the 3.66% 30 year return above, if they follow that path, buying high, selling low. Edit - I am adding this line to be clear - My conclusion, if any, is that the huge disparity cannot be attributed to management, a 6.7% lag from the S&P return to what the average investor sees likely comes from bad trading. To the comments by Dave, we have a manager that consistently beats the market over any 2-3 year period. You have been with him 30 years and are clearly smiling about your relationship and investing decision. Yet, he still has flows in and out. People buy at the top when reading how good he is, and selling right after a 30% drop even when he actually beat by dropping just 22%. By getting in and out, he has a set of clients with a 30 year record of 6% returns, while you have just over 11%. This paragraph speaks to the behavior of the investor, not managed vs indexed.", "Is it true you have to file papers with the government in the US to withdraw large sums of cash at your local bank branch? It's true that a currency transaction report (CTR) gets filed with FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) when you make a cash transaction in excess of $10,000. Banks have systems that do this automatically, so you don't have to really do anything other than provide some tax info if not already on file with the bank. The teller can flag your CTR if they think the transaction is suspicious, but there shouldn't be a delay on the withdrawal unless the bank has to make arrangements to have enough cash on hand. Some people don't like the idea of CTR's being filed and therefore make multiple smaller withdrawals, but that can be considered illegal structuring, and can result in confiscated money.", "Here are the main ways of doing this that I've encountered. I've met advocates of each. You might be interested in this set of articles: http://www.slate.com/id/2281885/ which looks at some different ways of doing this and the financial - and other - effects.", "Mining is income at the value at time of earning, I would use an index like XBX to determine price. Asset appreciation is capital gains. These aspects of crypto-assets are not a gray area in the US financial sector, and have been addressed for almost half a decade now.", "TL;DR: No, it doesn't count against the Roth IRA basis. You can find out by looking at Form 8606 Part III, which is the part for distributions from Roth IRA. Line 19 is the sum of nonqualified distributions, plus qualified first-time homebuyer distributions. You would put $10000 here. Then you would subtract $10000 on line 20 (qualified first-time homebuyer expenses) to get $0 on line 21. You enter your basis on line 22, but since line 21 was 0, you stop. You do not subtract anything from your basis. If you take out more than $10000, then it's only the part over $10000 that is subtracted from your basis." ]

[ "Many reasons mentioned already. The reason why I have multiple is missing: I have a personal card for my private use and a company card for company use." ]

[ "how much taxes would I pay on my income from the rent they would pay me? The same as on any other income. California doesn't have any special taxes for rental/passive income. Bothe CA and the Federal tax laws do have special treatment, but it is for losses from rental. Income is considered unearned regular income and is taxed at regular brackets. Would I be able to deduct the cost of the mortgage from the rental income? The cost of mortgage, yes. I.e.: the interest you pay. Similarly you can deduct any other expense needed to maintain the property. This is assuming you're renting it out at FMV. If not, would I pay the ordinary income tax on that income? In particular, would I pay CA income tax on it, even though the property would be in WA? Yes. Don't know how WA taxes rental income, but since you are a California tax resident - you will definitely be taxed by California on this, as part of your worldwide income.", "Is your name on the title at all? You may have (slightly) more leverage in that case, but co-signing any loans is not a good idea, even for a friend or relative. As this article notes: Generally, co-signing refers to financing, not ownership. If the primary accountholder fails to make payments on the loan or the retail installment sales contract (a type of auto financing dealers sell), the co-signer is responsible for those payments, or their credit will suffer. Even if the co-signer makes the payments, they’re still not the owner if their name isn’t on the title. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) notes: If you co-sign a loan, you are legally obligated to repay the loan in full. Co-signing a loan does not mean serving as a character reference for someone else. When you co-sign, you promise to pay the loan yourself. It means that you risk having to repay any missed payments immediately. If the borrower defaults on the loan, the creditor can use the same collection methods against you that can be used against the borrower such as demanding that you repay the entire loan yourself, suing you, and garnishing your wages or bank accounts after a judgment. Your credit score(s) may be impacted by any late payments or defaults. Co-signing an auto loan does not mean you have any right to the vehicle, it just means that you have agreed to become obligated to repay the amount of the loan. So make sure you can afford to pay this debt if the borrower cannot. Per this article and this loan.com article, options to remove your name from co-signing include: If you're name isn't on the title, you'll have to convince your ex-boyfriend and the bank to have you removed as the co-signer, but from your brief description above, it doesn't seem that your ex is going to be cooperative. Unfortunately, as the co-signer and guarantor of the loan, you're legally responsible for making the payments if he doesn't. Not making the payments could ruin your credit as well. One final option to consider is bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is a drastic option, and you'll have to weigh whether the disruption to your credit and financial life will be worth it versus repaying the balance of that auto loan. Per this post: Another not so pretty option is bankruptcy. This is an extreme route, and in some instances may not even guarantee a name-removal from the loan. Your best bet is to contact a lawyer or other source of legal help to review your options on how to proceed with this issue.", "You need to contact the trading company and ask them what's going on. If it's simply a matter of needing to add more cash because you are now classified as a day trader, then call them, ask them what you need to do to not be considered a day trader, and do that. It would likely consist of not trading for a week and then trading less than you were going forward to avoid getting classified as a day trader again. That would be the easy problem to solve, so I hope that's right.", "Any deductable expense will reduce your taxable income not your tax payable. Your Example 1 above is correct and gives you 100% deduction. It is like having a business where your sales are $100,000 and your expenses in making the sales is $40,000. The expenses are your tax deductions and reduce your profits on which you pay tax on to $60,000. If your Example 2 was correct then the situation above would change that you would pay say $30,000 tax on $100,000 sales, then apply your deductions (or expenses) of $40,000 so that you would pay no tax at all and in fact get $10,000 back in your return. In this case the government would not be collecting any taxes but paying out returns to everyone. Your Example 2 is absolutly incorrect.", "It sounds like your current loan is in your name. As such, you are responsible for paying it. Not your family, you. It also sounds like the loan payments are regularly late. That'll likely drastically affect your credit rating. Given what you've said, it doesn't surprise me that you were declined for a credit card. With the information on your credit report, you are a poor risk. Assuming your family is unable to pay loan on time (and assuming you aren't willing to do so), you desperately need to get your name off the loan. This may mean selling the property and closing out the loan. This won't be enough to fix your credit, though. All that will do is stop making your credit worse. It'll take a few years (five years in Canada, not sure how many years in India) until this loan stops showing up on your credit report. That's why it is important to do this immediately. Now, can a bank give you a loan or a credit card despite bad credit? Yes, absolutely. It all depends on how bad your credit is. If the bank is willing to do so, they'll most likely charge a higher interest rate. But the bank may well decide not to give you a loan. After all, your credit report shows you don't make your loan payments on time. You may also want to request your own copy of your credit report. You may have to pay for this, especially if you want to see your score. This could be valuable information if you are looking to fix your finances, and may be worth the cost. If you are sure it's just this one loan, it may not be necessary. Good luck! Edit: In India CIBIL is the authority that maintains records. Getting to know you exact score will help. CIBIL offers it via TransUnion. The non-payment will keep appearing on your record for 3 years. As you don't have any loans, get a credit card from a Bank where you have Fixed Deposits / PPF Account as it would be easier to get one. It can then help you build the credit.", "According to page 107 of the instructions for schedule A for form 1040 : Include taxes (state, local, or foreign) paid on real estate you own that was not used for business. ... If you want to make a business out of her property and be her agent in the management, you might be able to work with an accountant on this, but it won't be a valid personal deduction.", "Interest is calculated daily. Doing the math: Between 6-17 and 7-25 are 38 days, 200.29 / 38 = 5.27 interest per day. Between 7-25 and 8-17 are 23 days. 120.02 / 23 = 5.22 interest per day. The minimal difference is because the principal has already gone down a little bit. So you should expect ~5.20 x number of days for the next interest number coming up; slowly decreasing as the remaining principal debt decreases. Note that this is equivalent of an annual interest rate of over 20 %, which is beyond acceptable. In the current economy, this is ridiculously high. I recommend trying to get a refinancing with another provider; you should be able to get it for a third of that.", "4) Finally, do all companies reduce their stock price when they pay a dividend? Are they required to? There seems to be confusion behind this question. A company does not set the price for their stock, so they can't \"reduce\" it either. In fact, nobody sets \"the price\" for a stock. The price you see reported is simply the last price that the stock was traded at. That trade was just one particular trade in a whole sequence of trades. The price used for the trade is simply the price which the particular buyer and particular seller agreed to for that particular trade. (No agreement, well then, no trade.) There's no authority for the price other than the collection of all buyers and sellers. So what happens when Nokia declares a 55 cent dividend? When they declare there is to be a dividend, they state the record date, which is the date which determines who will get the dividend: the owners of the shares on that date are the people who get the dividend payment. The stock exchanges need to account for the payment so that investors know who gets it and who doesn't, so they set the ex dividend date, which is the date on which trades of the stock will first trade without the right to receive the dividend payment. (Ex-dividend is usually about 2 days before record date.) These dates are established well before they occur so all market participants can know exactly when this change in value will occur. When trading on ex dividend day begins, there is no authority to set a \"different\" price than the previous day's closing price. What happens is that all (knowledgeable) market participants know that today Nokia is trading without the payment 55 cents that buyers the previous day get. So what do they do? They take that into consideration when they make an offer to buy stock, and probably end up offering a price that is about 55 cents less than they would have otherwise. Similarly, sellers know they will be getting that 55 cents, so when they choose a price to offer their stock at, it will likely be about that much less than they would have asked for otherwise.", "Does he need to file a tax return in this situation? Will the IRS be concerned that he did not file even if he received a 1099? No. However, if you don't file the IRS may come back asking why, or \"make up\" a return for you assuming that the whole amount on the 1099-MISC is your net earnings. So in the end, I suspect you'll end up filing even though you don't have to, just to prove that you don't have to. Bottom line - if you have 1099 income (or any other income reported to the IRS that brings you over the filing threshold), file a return.", "There are some uniquely American issues in this question (and answer), but some general principles as well. Regarding the comment that you quoted, the context (some of which you excluded) needs some clarification." ]

[ "The $10,400 is in the question, in two pieces. His employer withheld $8000, and her employer withheld $2400. Thus they paid together $10,400 in income taxes, which are deductible if you itemize deductions and choose income taxes over sales taxes (you can deduct one or the other). There's nothing \"standard\" about the amount, though it is standard to take the income tax deduction (almost always higher than sales tax)." ]

[ "The standard approach is to reach an agreement and put it in writing. What you agree upon is up to you, but in the US if you want to avoid gift taxes larger loans need to be properly documented and must charge at least a certain minimal interest rate. (Or at least you must declare and be taxed upon that minimal income even if you don't actually charge it. Last I looked, the federal requirement was somewhere under 0.3%, so this isn't usually an issue. There may also be state rules.) When doing business with friends, treat it as business first, friendship second. Otherwise you risk losing both money and friendship. Regarding what rate to charge: That is something you two have to negotiate, based on how much the borrower needs the money, how much lending the money puts the lender at risk, how generous each is feeling, etc. Sorry, but there is no one-size-fits-all answer here. What I charge (or insist on paying to) my brother might be different from what I charge my cousin, or a co-worker, or best friend, or... If both parties think it's fair, it's fair. If you can't reach an agreement, of course, the loan doesn't happen.", "The day trader in the article was engaging in short selling. Short selling is a technique used to profit when a stock goes down. The investor borrows shares of a stock from someone else and sells them. After the stock price goes down, the investor buys the shares back and returns them, pocketing the difference. As the day trader in the article found out, it is a dangerous practice, because there is no limit to the amount of money you can lose. The stock was trading at $2, and the day trader thought the stock was going to go down to $1. He borrowed and sold 8,400 shares at $2. He hoped to buy them back at $1 and earn $8,400 profit. Instead, the stock went up a lot, and he was forced to buy back the shares at $18.50 per share, or about $155,400. He had had $37,000 with E-Trade, which they took, and he is now over $100,000 in debt.", "In an open corporation scenario a stock holder may well be found liable. It's a very narrow and uncommon bunch of scenarios but it's well worth sharing. See the paragraph on open corporations in the following document: http://nationalparalegal.edu/public_documents/courseware_asp_files/businessLaw/RightsOfShareholders/LiabilityOfShareholders.asp", "First, there are MLM businesses that are legitimate and are not Ponzi schemes; I actually work with one (I will not name it lest I give the impression of trying to sell here). One thing I learned was how to respond when a prospect raises objections related to the actual scams, which are abundant; the answer being to point out, and you mentioned this yourself, that in an illegitimate scheme, there is no actual product being offered - the only thing money is ever spent on is the expectation of a future profit. Ask your friend, \"Would you buy the product this company sells, at the price they ask, if there were not a financial opportunity attached to it?\" If not, \"How can you expect anyone else to buy it from you?\" There are only 3 ways he can respond to this question: he can realize that you're right and get out now; he can change the subject to the concept of making money by climbing the ranks and earning off of a salesforce, in which case it's time to educate him on Ponzi; or he can claim to be able to sell something he doesn't believe in, in which case you should run fat, far away. If he does indicate that he would be a customer even without the chance to sell the product, then offer him the chance to prove it, by giving you one sales pitch on the condition that he is not allowed to breathe a word about joining the business. Do him the courtesy of listening with an open mind, and decide for yourself whether you could ever be a customer. If the possibility exists, even if not today, he has found one of the few legitimate MLM companies, and you should not try to stop him. If not, you'll have to determine whether it's because the product just isn't for you, or because it's inherently worthless, and whether you should encourage or discourage your friend going forward.", "I don't believe from reading the responses above that Questrade is doing anything 'original' or 'different' much less 'bad'. In RRSPs you are not allowed to go into debt. So the costs of all trades must be covered. If there is not enough USD to pay the bill then enough CAD is converted to do so. What else would anyone expect? How margin accounts work depends on whether the broker sets up different accounts for different currencies. Some do, some don't. The whole point of using 'margin' is to buy securities when you don't have the cash to cover the cost. The result is a 'short' position in the cash. Short positions accrue interest expense which is added to the balance once a month. Every broker does this. If you buy a US stock in a USD account without the cash to cover it, you will end up with USD margin debt. If you buy US stock in an account that co-mingles both USD and CAD assets and cash, then there will be options during the trade asking if you want to settle in USD or CAD. If you settle in CAD then obviously the broker will convert the necessary CAD funds to pay for it. If you settle in US funds, but there is no USD cash in the account, then again, you have created a short position in USD.", "It's done by Opening Auction (http://www.advfn.com/Help/the-opening-auction-68.html): The Opening Auction Between 07.50 and a random time between 08.00 and 08.00.30, there will be called an auction period during which time, limit and market orders are entered and deleted on the order book. No order execution takes place during this period so it is possible that the order book will become crossed. This means that some buy and sell orders may be at the same price and some buy orders may be at higher prices than some sell orders. At the end of the random start period, the order book is frozen temporarily and an order matching algorithm is run. This calculates the price at which the maximum volume of shares in each security can be traded. All orders that can be executed at this price will be filled automatically, subject to price and priorities. No additional orders can be added or deleted until the auction matching process has been completed. The opening price for each stock will be either a 'UT' price or, in the event that there are no transactions resulting form the auction, then the first 'AT' trade will be used.", "My view is from the Netherlands, a EU country. Con: Credit cards are more risky. If someone finds your card, they can use it for online purchases without knowing any PIN, just by entering the card number, expiration date, and security code on the back. Worse, sometimes that information is stored in databases, and those get stolen by hackers! Also, you can have agreed to do periodic payments on some website and forgot about them, stopped using the service, and be surprised about the charge later. Debit cards usually need some kind of device that requires your PIN to do online payments (the ones I have in the Netherlands do, anyway), and automated periodic payments are authorized at your bank where you can get an overview of the currently active ones. Con: Banks get a percentage of each credit card payment. Unlike debit cards where companies usually pay a tiny fixed fee for each transaction (of, say, half a cent), credit card payments usually cost them a percentage and it comes to much more, a significant part of the profit margin. I feel this is just wrong. Con: automatic monthly payment can come at an unexpected moment With debit cards, the amount is withdrawn immediately and if the money isn't there, you get an error message allowing you to pay some other way (credit card after all, other bank account, cash, etc). When a recent monthly payment from my credit card was due to be charged from my bank account recently, someone else had been paid from it earlier that day and the money wasn't there. So I had to pay interest, on something I bought weeks ago... Pro: Credit cards apparently have some kind of insurance. I've never used this and don't know how it works, but apparently you can get your money back easily after fraudulent charges. Pro: Credit cards can be more easily used internationally for online purchases I don't know how it is with Visa or MC-issued debit cards, but many US sites accept only cards that have number/expiration date/security code and thus my normal bank account debit card isn't useable. Conclusion: definitely have one, but only use it when absolutely necessary.", "The risk is that everything could go wrong in any phase at any time or they could run out of cash and go bankrupt waiting for results. Then there is the FDA that might take forever in approving their drug, or not approve it at all. Human trials could go horribly wrong. The company may be incompetent in bringing a product to market (after FDA rubberstamping), there might not be a market for their particular METHOD of treatment (is it a pill, or is it a torture device you have to strap yourself into for 5 hours a day). And maybe they are never able to make a profit with all the debt they have taken to stay afloat.", "It was not taxed in the previous years because it wasn't in profit. The amount for 2010 is more due to accounting treatment, on account of \"Deferred Domestic Income Tax\". The figures are at http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/DANG/tab/7.2 You can search for a better understanding of Deferred Domestic Income Tax, a brief explanation is at http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deferredincometax.asp", "The SCHUFA explicitly says on their website that their scoring system is a secret. However, if your goal is to be credit-worthy for example to get financing for a house or a car or whatever, just pay any loans and your credit card back on time and you'll be fine. There is no need to build a credit history. I just got a mortgage on a new house without any real credit history. I have one credit card which I only use on vacations because some countries don't take my debit card, and I always put money on it before I use it, so I've technically never borrowed money from a bank at all. My banker looked at my SCHUFA with me and we saw that there was nothing in there except for the credit card, which has a 500€ limit and if I maxed it out, the monthly interest would be 6,80€ so he added that 6,80€ to my expenses calculation and that was it. If you're having trouble getting a loan and you don't know why, you can ask the SCHUFA for the data they have on you and you can correct any mistakes they might have made. Sometimes, especially when you have the same full name and birth date as somebody else, the SCHUFA does get things mixed up and you have to sort it out." ]

[ "Your best bet is to talk with a banker about your specific plans. One of the causes of the housing crash was an 80/20 loan. There you would get a first for 80% of the value of a home and 20% on a HELOC for the rest. This would help the buyer avoid PMI. Editorially, the reason this was popular was because the buyer could not afford the home with the PMI and did not have a down payment. They were simply cutting things too close. Could you find a banker willing to do something like this, I bet you could. In your case it seems like you are attempting to increase the value of your home by using money to do an improvement so the situation is better. However, sizable improvements rarely return 100% or more on investments. Typically, I would think, the bank would want you to have some money invested too. So if you wanted to put in a pool, a smart banker would have you put in about 60% of the costs as pools typically have a 40% ROI. However, I bet you can find a banker that would loan you 100%. You don't seem to be looking for advice on making a smart money decision, and it is difficult to render a verdict as very little detail is supplied about your specific situation. However, while certain decisions might look very profitable on paper, they rarely take into consideration risk." ]

[ "You can execute block trades on the options market and get exercised for shares to create a very large position in Energy Transfer Partners LP without moving the stock market. You can then place limit sell orders, after selling directly into the market and keep an overhang of low priced shares (the technical analysis traders won't know what you specifically are doing, and will call this 'resistance'). If you hit nice even numbers (multiples of 5, multiples of 10) with your sell orders, you can exacerbate selling as many market participants will have their own stop loss orders at those numbers, causing other people to sell at lower and lower prices automatically, and simultaneously keep your massive ask in effect. If your position is bigger than the demand then you can keep a stock lower. The secondary market doesn't inherently affect a company in any way. But many companies have borrowed against the price of their shares, and if you get the share price low enough they can get suddenly margin called and be unable to service their existing debt. You will also lose a lot of money doing this, so you can also buy puts along the way or attempt to execute a collar to lower your own losses. The collar strategy is nice because it is unlikely that other traders and analysts will notice what you are doing, since there are calls, puts and share orders involved in creating it. One person may notice the block trade for the calls initially, but nobody will notice it is part of a larger strategy with multiple legs. With the share position, you may also be able to vote on some things, but that solely depends on the conditions of the shares.", "I got notice from Charles Schwab that the forms weren't being mailed out until the middle of February because, for some reason, the forms were likely to change and rather than mail them out twice, they mailed them out once. Perhaps some state tax laws took effect (such as two Oregon bills regarding tax rates for higher incomes) and they waited on that. While I haven't gotten my forms mailed to me yet, I did go online and get the electronic copies that allowed me to finish my taxes already.", "buy a cashiers check with the cash (a CRT will be nec if over 10 K) and deposit the cashiers check", "Some people have this notion that withdrawing dividends from savings is somehow okay but withdrawing principal is not. Note, this notion. Would someone please explain the \"mistake\" on P214 and why it's a mistake? Because there may be times where withdrawing principal may be a good idea as one could sell off something that has gained enough that in re-balancing the portfolio there are capital gains that could be used for withdrawing in retirement. How and why does the sale of financial instrument equate to the receipt of dividends? In either case, one has cash equivalents that could be withdrawn. If you take the dividends in cash or sell a security to raise cash, you have cash. Thus, it doesn't matter what origin it has. If I sell a financial instrument that later appreciates in value, then this profit opportunity is lost. In the case of a dividend, I'd still possess the financial security and benefit from the stock's appreciation? One could argue that the in the case of a dividend, by not buying more of the instrument you are missing out on a profit opportunity as well. Thus, are you out to make the maximum profit overall or do you have reason for taking the cash instead of increasing your holding?", "I interpret that to mean \"vice\" stocks and necessities. \"Cake\" may just be a nicer way of saying \"sin\" (see The Virtues of Vice Stocks) and includes \"lesser sins\" like sweets and soda in the group. \"Underwear\" likely means things that people are going to buy regardless of the economy - daily staples, which are generally safer stocks.", "I'm going to assume that you want to be invested all the time and each trade consists in selling a security and buying another one (similar to your example). How much commissions you are willing to pay depends on several factors, but one way to think about it is as follows. You have a position in stock A and you want to switch to stock B because you think it will perform better. If you think there's a good chance (>50%) that B will outperform A by more than x% then you can happily pay up to x/2% commissions and still make money over a long time horizon. If you like formulae, one way to express it is: Where: Example: if you tend to be right 51% of the time (hit rate), and gain 110% more than you lose on average (win loss ratio), you can see that your expected profit is: 5.1% - commissions, so you could pay 2.5% commissions on entering and closing the position and still make money*. Unfortunately, common sense, statistics and numerous studies tell us a sad truth: on average, people have a hit rate of 50% and a win/loss ratio of 100%. Which means that their expected profit per trade is 0% - commission. Based on that crude observation - unless you can prove to yourself that you are better than average - you should aim at reducing commissions paid to your broker as much as possible through: * 51% and 110% are not random numbers, they correspond to the results of the top 15% (professional) managers in a research paper using a sample of 215 funds managing $150bn.", "For XOM if you were lucky enough to purchase on 20 Jan 16, at 73.18/share and sold on 15 July at 94.95 you would achieve a 29% return in six months. Awesome. You'd also get a dividend payment or two adding another percentage point per to your returns. The one year chart for FB shows it increasing from ~95/share to ~129. Yet no dividend was paid. However, the 35.7% YTD for 2016 should make anyone happy. Both of these require excellent timing, and those kind of returns are unsustainable over the long haul. Many people simply hold stocks. Having the dividend is a nice bonus to some growth. Why to people buy stocks? For profit. Sometimes dividend payers offer the best option, sometimes not.", "A company doesn't offer up 100% of its shares to the market. There's a float amount of varying significance, maybe 30% of the shares are put up for public offer. Generally some amount of current shareholders will pledge some or all of their shares for offer to the public. This may be how the venture capital, private equity or other current investors cash out their initial investment. The company may issue new shares in order to raise money for some initiative. It may be a combination of existing shares and new. Additionally, a company may hold some \"treasury shares\" on its balance sheet. In this instance fluctuations in the share price directly affect the health of the balance sheet. As far as incentive goes, stock options to management and C-Suite employees keep everyone interested in an increasing stock price.", "The use of an old address would make me suspect that your data was stolen from some database you had registered to long ago with the old address. I would think that contacting your credit rating firm and the credit card company is urgent.", "Contractors regularly deposit checks like this; if the income is legitimate don't worry. Report it to the IRS as income whether or not the customer issues you a 1099. With deposits like this you should be making quarterly payments to the IRS for your projected income." ]

[ "Per-diem is not taxable, if all the conditions are met. Conditions include: You can find this and more in this IRS FAQ document re the per-diem." ]

[ "While the Vanguard paper is good, it doesn't do a very good job of explaining precisely why each level of stocks or bonds was optimal. If you'd like to read a transparent and quantitative explanation of when and why a a glide path is optimal, I'd suggest the following paper: https://www.betterment.com/resources/how-we-construct-portfolio-allocation-advice/ (Full disclosure - I'm the author). The answer is that the optimal risk level for any given holding period depends upon a combination of: Using these two factors, you construct a risk-averse decision model which chooses the risk level with the best expected average outcome, where it looks only at the median and lower percentile outcomes. This produces an average which is specifically robust to downside risk. The result will look something like this: The exact results will depend on the expected risk and return of the portfolio, and the degree of risk aversion specified. The result is specifically valid for the case where you liquidate all of the portfolio at a specific point in time. For retirement, the glide path needs to be extended to take into account the fact that the portfolio will be liquidated gradually over time, and dynamically take into account the longevity risk of the individual. I can't say precisely why Vanguard's path is how it is.", "I agree with some of the points of the other answers but why not avoid all the guesswork? I highly recommend you not charge him now. Wait until the end of the year when you have much more information about both of your companies and then you can run the numbers both ways and decide if it would benefit you (collectively). If either of your businesses runs on a cash basis and you decide to invoice, just make sure the check is deposited before Dec 31. Update: If you want to do this for 2016, at least your husband's business would have to be using an accrual basis (since it's too late to take the deduction on a cash basis). Simply run the numbers both ways and see if it helps you. If it doesn't help enough to warrant it for 2016 you could rerun the numbers near the end of 2017 to see if it helps then. Diclaimer: I think it's OK to do this type of manipulation for the scenario you described since you have done (or are doing) the work and you are charging a reasonable fee, but realize that you shouldn't manipulate the amount of the invoice, or fabricate invoices. For example, you shouldn't ever think about such things as: \"If I invoice $50K instead of $3K, will that help us?\"", "I'll read between the lines: you're (justifiably) feeling smart about how you manage your money: debt-free, smart about your spending, saving for retirement, etc. But you're looking at all those fancy cars and feeling a little left out. And Americans especially have a love for automobiles -- it's not just transportation, a car is a status symbol. Yes, some of those people afford their cars just fine. But a lot of people out there are AWFUL about saving and spend recklessly. Americans are notoriously bad at saving for retirement, for example. So if they aren't saving, where does that money go? They buy stuff they don't need. They live paycheck-to-paycheck. They run up debt. They buy cars. Overspending on cars is so easy to do: leases have low payments, or you can get a 6 year loan. There are many financial tricks for people that think only in terms of monthly payments. So instead of lamenting that the grass is greener as all those BMWs whiz by, smile deeply and enjoy that feeling of sleeping well at night instead of stressing out about the next credit card bill and car payment waiting for you in the mailbox. (And at the same time, if you really want a luxury car and want that to be a priority, you can make it happen and not go broke. Get a late model year certified pre-owned vehicle just out of lease, for example. Saves a ton of money, is still under warranty, and satisfies the lust for luxury.)", "Now assume these shares are vested, held for at least 1 year, and are then sold for $5 each. Everything I've read implies that the grantee now owes long-term capital gains taxes on the difference, which would be 10k * ($5 - $1). No. That's exactly what the SO is NQ for. Read more on the differences between ISO and NQSO here. Now assume these shares are vested, held for at least 1 year, and are then sold for $5 each. Everything I've read implies that the grantee now owes long-term capital gains taxes on the difference, which would be 10k * ($5 - $1). At this point you no longer have NQSO, you have RSU. If you filed 83(b) when you exercised, then you pay capital gains tax when they vest. If you didn't - its ordinary income to you. NQSO is a red herring here since once exercised they no longer exist. If you didn't file 83(b), then when the stock vests the difference between the FMV at vest and the money you spent on it when exercising (if any) is considered wages and taxed as ordinary income (+FICA etc). From that point the RSU becomes a regular stock investment and the capital gains clock starts ticking.", "I don't think either of these answers are accurate. A beta of 0 means that your stock/portfolio does not change accordingly or with the market, rather it acts independent. A beta above 0 means the stock follows what the market does. Which means if the market goes up the stock goes up, if the market goes down, the stock goes down. If the stock's beta is more than 1 the stock will go up more if the market goes up, or go down more if the market goes down. Inversely if the stock is less than 0 the stock will follow the market inversely. So if the market goes up, the stock goes down. If the market goes down, the stock goes up. Again a greater negative beta, the more this relationship will be exaggerated.", "Checks are awesome things in that, even if it gets lost the money doesn't change hands until the check is cashed. I would highly recommend NOT signing a check over and putting it in the mail though. Essentially putting your signature on it is saying yes, pay to whomever. Theoretically acceptable, rarely a good idea. Call the insurance company and have them cancel current check to reissue to the correct people. Don't forget to write VOID (in huge letters) on the check before throwing away and/or tearing it up.", "I personally take the zero percent financing plans any day. I have done this with my car and the iphone 6s. The vendors are trying to make it more attractive for you to \"afford\" the product. It could show up on your credit report and impact the amount of money you can borrow in the future (e.g getting a home loan). The other thing I do is make sure the monthly payments are automatically paid from my bank account so I don't miss any payments", "Basically, your CC is (if normal) compounded monthly, based on a yearly APR. To calculate the amount of interest you'd pay on each of these accounts in a year, pull up a spreadsheet like Office Excel. Put in your current balance, then multiply it by the annual interest rate divided by 12, and add that quantity to the balance. Subtract any payment you make, and the result is your new balance. You can project this out for several months to get a good estimate of what you'll pay; in accounting or finance terms, what you're creating is an \"amortization table\". So, with a $10,000 balance, at 13.99% interest and making payments of $200/mo, the amortization table for one year's payments might look like: As you can see, $200 isn't paying down this card very quickly. In one year, you will have paid $2,400, of which $1,332.25 went straight into the bank's pockets in interest charges, reducing your balance by only $1,067.75. Up the payments to $300/mo, and in 1 year you will have paid $3,600, and only been charged $1,252.24 in interest, so you'll have reduced your balance by $2,347.76 to only $7,652.24, which further reduces interest charges down the line. You can track the differences in the Excel sheet and play \"what-ifs\" very easily to see the ramifications of spending your $5,000 in various ways. Understand that although, for instance, 13.99% may be your base interest rate, if the account has become delinquent, or you made any cash advances or balance transfers, higher or lower interest rates may be charged on a portion of the balance or the entire balance, depending on what's going on with your account; a balance transfer may get 0% interest for a year, then 19.99% interest after that if not paid off. Cash advances are ALWAYS charged at exorbitantly high rates, up to 40% APR. Most credit card bills will include what may be called an \"effective APR\", which is a weighted average APR of all the various sub-balances of your account and the interest rates they currently have. Understand that your payment first pays off interest accrued during the past cycle, then pays down the principal on the highest-interest portion of the balance first, so if you have made a balance transfer to another card and are using that card for purchases, the only way to avoid interest on the transfer at the post-incentive rates is to pay off the ENTIRE balance in a year. The minimum payment on a credit card USED to be just the amount of accrued interest or sometimes even less; if you paid only the minimum payment, the balance would never decrease (and may increase). In the wake of the 2008 credit crisis, most banks now enforce a higher minimum payment such that you would pay off the balance in between 3 and 5 years by making only minimum payments. This isn't strictly required AFAIK, but because banks ARE required by the CARD Act to disclose the payoff period at the minimum payment (which would be \"never\" under most previous policies), the higher minimum payments give cardholders hope that as long as they make the minimum payments and don't charge any more to the card, they will get back to zero.", "I agree with the other answers here. You need to pay off your debts first, so that you can take the money you would have been spending on debt payments and make retirement contributions instead. The longer they hang around, the more you pay in interest and the more they are a risk to you. Imagine if you or your spouse were laid off, which is better scenario: having to pay for your necessities plus debts or your necessities alone? Just focus on one goal at a time, and you will do well. And the best way for you and your new spouse is to have the same financial goals and a huge part of that agreeing on a budget each month and being flexible. Don't use it to control your spouse, you each have a vote. I have not used Vangaurd, but have heard good things about them. I would do some research before investing with them or anyone else for that matter. What you want to find when it comes to investing is someone with the heart of a teacher, not a product peddler. If you have someone who is pushing financial products, without explaining (A) how they work, and (B) how they fit your situation, then RUN AWAY and find someone else who will do those two things.", "I spoke to HMRC and they said #1 is not allowable but #2 is. They suggested using either their published exchange rates or I could use another source. I suggested the Bank of England spot rates and that was deemed reasonable and allowable." ]

[ "Sure, it's irresponsible for an executor to take actions which endanger the estate. But what about passivity or inaction? Put it another way. Is it the obligation of the executor to avoid making revenue for the estate? Think about it - what a silly idea! Consider a 12-unit apartment building full of rent paying tenants. A tenant gives notice and leaves. So do 4 more. With only 7/12 tenants, the building stops being a revenue center and becomes a massive money pit. Is that acceptable? Heck no! Realistically this will be managed by a property management company, and of course they'll seek new tenants, not stopping merely because the owner died. This situation is not different; the same fiscal logic applies. The counter-argument is usually along the lines of \"stuff might happen if you rent it out\"... true. But the stuff that happens to abandoned houses is much worse, and much more likely: squatters, teen \"urban explorers\", pot growers, copper thieves, winter pipe freeze flooding and wrecking interiors, etc. Don't take my word on it -- ask your insurer for the cost of insuring an abandoned house vs. a rented one. Renting brings a chunk of cash that comes in from tenants - $12,000/year on a $1000/mo. rental. And that will barely pay the bills if you have a young mortgage on a freshly purchased house at recent market rates. But on an old mortgage, renting is like printing money. That money propagates first to the estate (presumably it is holding back a \"fix the roof\" emergency fund), and then to the beneficiaries. It means getting annual checks from the estate, instead of constantly being dunned for another repair. But I don't care about making revenue (outside of putting back a kitty to replace the roof). Even if it was net zero, it means the maintenance is being done. This being the point. It is keeping the house in good repair, occupied, insured, and professionally managed -- fit and ready for the bequest's purpose: occupancy of an aunt. What's the alternative? Move an aunt into a house that's been 10 years abandoned? Realistically the heirs are going to get tired/bored of maintaining the place at a total cash loss, maintenance will slip, and you'll be moving them into a neglected house with some serious issues. That betrays the bequest, and it's not fair to the aunts. Rental is a very responsible thing to do. The executor shouldn't fail to do it merely out of passivity. If you decide not to do it, there needs to be a viable alternative to funding the home's decent upkeep. (I don't think there is one). Excluding a revenue-producing asset from the economy is an expensive thing to do." ]

[ "This site shows a list of (mostly) industrial uses of gold: http://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml If you ignore the first two uses, jewelry and coinage, there remains aerospace, computers, electronics, dentistry and medicine. It's worth noting that gold comes in the same chemical family as both copper and silver, meaning that gold can serve most of their uses, although not as well.", "Use resources like Consumer Reports and recommendations from like-minded friends to figure out brands which have a reputation for making quality clothes. Then trust, but verify. Ideally have a friend who sews a lot go with you on a clothing expedition if you don't know how to determine quality in clothing. People who sew knew their fabrics, and this could be very helpful to you. Start at places that are known for quality clothing, but make sure the reputation hasn't outlived reality. I'd look for: Once you've identified places that you can trust, wait for sales at those stores. I've found that shopping sales at department stores (or better, places like L. L. Bean) is cheaper than a discount retailer and much easier. Even cheaper, go to a thrift store and look for those brands in timeless styles. Your mileage will vary in terms of the what people throw out in your area. Thrift stores work extremely well in high cost of living areas where people give away nearly new items.", "I know this is broad, but this isn't a scam -- it's a workshop/educational thing about teaching people of investing in the real estate market, and how to profit The scam is that the free or cheap class doesn't give you enough info to make money; so they sell you a more advanced and expensive class that gets you almost enough info; but the goal of the 2nd class is to get you to pay for the specialized seminar and coaching sessions that either fail to materialize or are so basic they aren't worth the money.", "When your options vest, you will have the option to buy your company's stock at a particular price (the strike price). A big part of the value of the option is the difference between the price that your company's stock is trading at, and the strike price of the option. If the price of the company stock in the market is lower than the strike price of the option, they are almost worthless. I say 'almost' because there is still the possibility that the stock price could go up before the options expire. If your company is big enough that their stock is not only listed on an exchange, but there is an active options market in your company's stock, you could get a feel for what they are worth by seeing what the market is willing to buy or sell similar exchange listed options. Once the options have vested, you now have the right to purchase your company's stock at the specified strike price until the options expire. When you use that right, you are exercising the option. You don't have to do that until you think it is worthwhile buying company stock at that price. If the company pays a dividend, it would probably be worth exercising the options sooner, (options don't receive a dividend). Ultimately you are buying your company's stock (albeit at a discount). You need to see if your company's stock is still a good investment. If you think your company has growth prospects, you might want to hold onto the stock. If you think you'd be better off putting your money elsewhere in the market, sell the stock you acquired at a discount and use the money to invest in something else. If there are any additional benefits to holding on to the stock for a period of time (e.g. selling part to fit within your capital gain allowance for that year) you should factor that into your investment decision, but it shouldn't force you to invest in, or remain invested in something you would otherwise view as too risky to invest in. A reminder of that fact is that some employees of Enron invested their entire retirement plans into Enron stock, so when Enron went bankrupt, these employees not only lost their job but their savings for retirement as well...", "It depends what rate mortgage you can get for any extra loans... If you remortgage you are likely to get a rate of 3.5-4%... depending who you go with. With deposit accounts in the UK maying around 1% (yes, you can get more by tying it up for longer but not a huge amount more) clearly you're better off not having a mortgage rather than money in the bank. Does your 8k income allow for tax? If it does, you are getting 6% return on the money tied up in the flat. If you are getting 6% after tax on the invested money, that's way better than you would get on any left over cash paid into an investment. Borrowing money on a mortgage would cost you less than 6%... so you are better off borrowing rather than selling the flat. If you are getting 6% before tax... depending on your tax rate... it probably makes very little difference. You'd need to work out how much an extra 80k mortgage would cost you, how much the 50k on deposit would earn you and how much you make after tax. There is a different route. Set up a mortgage on the rental flat. You can claim the interest payment off the flat's income... reduce your tax bill so the effective mortgage rate on the flat would be less than what you could get with a mortgage on the new house. Use the money from the flat's mortgage to finance the difference in house price. In fact from a tax view, you may be better off having a mortgage free house and maxing out the mortgage on the flat so you can write off as much as possible against your tax bill. All of the above assume ... that the flat is rented all the time. The odd dry spell on the flat could influence the sums a lot. All of the above assume that your cash flow works whichever route you choose. As no-one on stack exchange has all of the numbers for your specific circumstances it may be worth talking to a tax accountant. They could advise you properly, knowing the numbers, which makes the best sense for you in terms of overall cost, cash flow, risk and so on.", "I don't know why stocks in some industries tend to have lower prices per share than others. It doesn't really matter much. Whether a company has 1,000,0000 shares selling for $100 each, or 10,000,000 shares selling for $10 each, either way the total value is the same. Companies generally like to keep the share price relatively low so that if someone wants to buy a small amount, they can. Like if the price was $10,000 per share, than an investor with less than $10,000 to put in that one stock would be priced out of the market. If it's $10, then if someone wants $10 they can buy one share, and if someone wants $10,000 they can buy 1000 shares. As to why energy stocks are volatile, I can think of several reasons. One, in our current world, energy is highly susceptible to politics. A lot of the world's energy comes from the Middle East, which is a notoriously unstable region. Any time there's conflict there, energy supplies from the region become uncertain. Oil-producing countries may embargo countries that they don't like. A war will, at the very least, interfere with transportation and shipping, and may result in oil wells being destroyed. Etc. Two, energy is consumed when you use it, and most consumers have very limited ability to stockpile. So you're constantly buying the energy you need as you need it. So if demand goes down, it is reflected immediately. Compare this to, say, clothing. Most people expect to keep the same clothes for years, wearing them repeatedly. (Hopefully washing them now and then!) So if for some reason you decided today that you only need three red shirts instead of four, this might not have any immediate impact on your buying. It could be months before you would have bought a new red shirt anyway. There is a tendency for the market to react rather slowly to changes in demand for shirts. But with energy, if you decide you only need to burn 3 gallons of gas per week instead of 4, your consumption goes down immediately, within days. Three, really adding to number two, energy is highly perishable, especially some forms of energy. If a solar power station is capable of producing 10 megawatts but today there is only demand for 9 megawatts, you can't save the unused megawatt for some future time when demand is higher. It's gone. (You can charge a battery with it, but that's pretty limited.) You can pile up coal or store natural gas in a tank until you need it, but you can't save the output of a power plant. Note numbers two and three also apply to food, which is why food production is also very volatile.", "A couple of thoughts. Tax benefits are the usual reasons to decide on one residency or another. International tax law is complex, and it's probably best to consult a professional. Certainly without knowing which the other country is I would not want to hazard a guess. If he is really not going to be taxed on the other country, residing there would seem sensible. But... In Canada residency for tax purposes is established for an entire year. If you are resident for more than six months your salary for the year is taxable. Conversely if you are present for less than six months you are not taxable. (This may have changed - it's been twenty years since I did this.) The other issue is healthcare. If you are not resident in Ontario you are not eligible for free healthcare, I believe. He might have to purchase supplemental insurance if he returns occasionally.", "You can invest in a couple of Sharia-conform ETFs which are available in Germany and issued by Deutsche Bank (and other financial institutions). For instance, have a look at these ETFs: DB Sharia ETFs In addition, Kuveyt Turk Bank aims to become Germany's first Islamic bank offering Sharia conform investments (Reuters).", "Well, they don't \"make\" money in the sense of income, but they receive money in exchange for shares of stock (more of the company is owned by the public). The Warrant entitles the holder to purchase stock directly from the company at a fixed price. It is very much like an open-market call option, but instead of the option holder buying stock from a third party (which does not affect the company at all), the holder buys it directly from the company, increasing the number of shares outstanding, and the proceeds go directly to the company. If the holders do not exercise the warrants, the company does not receive any cash, but they also don't issue any new shares.", "Basically, no. Selecting an actively managed fund over a low-fee index fund means paying for the opportunity to possibly outperform the index fund. A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel argues that the best general strategy for the average investor is to select the index fund because the fee savings are certain. Assuming a random walk means that any mutual fund may outperform the index in some years, but this is not an indication that it will overall. Unless you have special information about the effectiveness of the bank fund management (it's run by the next Warren Buffett), you are better off in the index fund. And even Warren Buffett suggests you are probably better off in the index fund: This year, regarding Wall Street, Buffett wrote: \"When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients. Both large and small investors should stick with low-cost index funds.\"" ]

[ "From the letter you link: Our performance, relatively, is likely to be better in a bear market than in a bull market so that deductions made from the above results should be tempered by the fact that it was the type of year when we should have done relatively well. In a year when the general market had a substantial advance I would be well satisfied to match the advance of the Averages. Putting those two sentences together, the word relatively means that his funds perform better than the market in bear markets and perform about the same as the overall market in bull markets. It does not mean that absolute performance is better in bear markets than bull markets. Later on he states This policy should lead to superior results in bear markets and average performance in bull markets." ]

[ "I wouldn't put too much stock in the guidance generically... it's more a measure of confidence in the company. When you listen to the earnings calls and start following a particular analyst, you'll understand where they come from when they kick out a number.", "Many businesses will request that you get a bank-issued check for large amounts of money. The exception is often in cases where you're not going anywhere: you can write a 50,000 check for a deposit on a new house, and you'll never have a problem, but a car dealer will probably request a counter check for the same sum.", "For a job doing that kind of stuff, what is PREFERRED is 4 year undergrad at ivy league school + 2 year MBA at ivy league school, and then several more years of experience, which you can sort of get by interning while in school this will of course saddle you with debt, which is counterintuitive to your plans basically, the easy way up is percentage based compensation. without knowing the right people, you will get a piss poor salary regardless of what you do, in the beginning. so portfolio managers earn money by percentage based fees, and can manage millions and billions. real estate agents can earn money by percentage based commissions if they close a property and other business venture/owners can do the same thing. the problem with \"how to trade\" books is that they are outdated by the time they are published. so you should just stick with literature that teaches a fundamental knowledge of the products you want to trade/make money from. ultimately regardless of how you get/earn your initial capital, you will still need to be an individual investor to grow your own capital. this has nothing to do with being a portfolio manager, even highly paid individuals on wall street are in debt to lavish expenditures and have zero capital for their own investments. hope this helps, you really need to be thinking in a certain way to just quickly deduce good ideas from bad ideas", "DRiPs come to mind as something that may be worth examining. If you take the Microsoft example, consider what would happen if you bought additional shares each year by re-investing the dividends and the stock also went up over the years. A combination of capital appreciation in the share price plus the additional shares purchased over time can produce a good income stream over time. The key is to consider how long are you contributing, how much are you contributing and what end result are you expecting as some companies can have larger dividends if you look at REITs for example.", "If you are looking to transfer money to another person in the US, you can do do with no tax consequence. The current annual gift limit is $14k per year per person, so for example, my wife and I can gift $56k to another couple with no tax and no forms. For larger amounts, there is a lifetime exclusion that taps into your $5M+ estate tax. It requires submitting a form 709, but just paperwork, no tax would be due. This is the simplest way to gift a large sum and not have any convoluted tracking or structured loan with annual forgiveness. One form and done. (If the sum is well over $5M you should consider a professional to guide you, not a Q&A board)", "If all of the relocation expenses are paid by your employer to the moving companies, then you should not have any tax liability for those payments. Relocation expenses should be treated as normal business expenses by your employer. Note I emphasize \"should\" because it's possible that your employer \"could\" consider it income to you, but companies generally do not go out of their way to classify normal business expenses as income since it costs both them and you more money in taxes. As a side note, the reason your company is paying these expenses directly is probably to lessen the likelihood of these expenses being questioned in an audit (in comparison to if they cut you a reimbursement check which could get more scrutiny).", "I have had a couple of businesses do this to me. I simply ask them to come over to talk about the bill. Sometimes this ends it. If they come over then I call the cops to file a report on fraud. A lot of times the police will do nothing unless they have had a load of complaints but it certainly gets the company off your back. And if they are truly unscrupulous it doesn't hurt to get a picture of them talking with the police and their van, and then post the whole situation online - you will see others come forward really quick after doing something like this.", "Your first home can be up to £450,000 today. But that figure is unlikely to stay the same over 40 years. The government would need to raise it in line with inflation otherwise in 40 years you won't be able to buy quite so much with it. If inflation averages 2% over your 40 year investment period say, £450,000 would buy you roughly what £200,000 would today. Higher rates of inflation will reduce your purchasing power even faster. You pay stamp duty on a house. For a house worth £450,000 that would be around £12,500. There are also estate agent's fees (typically 1-2% of the purchase price, although you might be able to do better) and legal fees. If you sell quickly you'd only be able to access the balance of the money less all those taxes and fees. That's quite a bit of your bonus lost so why did you tie your money up in a LISA for all those years instead of investing in the stock market directly? One other thing to note is that you buy a LISA from your post tax income. You pay into a pension using your pre-tax income so if you're investing for your retirement then a pension will start with a 20% bonus if you're a lower rate taxpayer and a whopping 40% bonus if you're a higher rate taxpayer. If you're a higher rate taxpayer a pension is much better value.", "The original question was aimed at early payment on a student loan at 6%. Let's look at some numbers. Note, the actual numbers were much lower, I've increased the debt to a level that's more typical, as well as more likely to keep the borrower worried, and \"up at night.\" On a $50K loan, we see 2 potential payoffs. A 6 year accelerated payoff which requires $273.54 extra per month, and the original payoff, with a payment of $555.10. Next, I show the 6 year balance on the original loan terms, $23,636.44 which we would need to exceed in the 401(k) to consider we made the right choice. The last section reflects the 401(k) balance with different rates of return. I purposely offer a wide range of returns. Even if we had another 'lost decade' averaging -1%/yr, the 401(k) balance is more than 50% higher than the current loan debt. At a more reasonable 6% average, it's double. (Note: The $273.54 deposit should really be adjusted, adding 33% if one is in the 25% bracket, or 17.6% if 15% bracket. That opens the can of worms at withdrawal. But let me add, I coerced my sister to deposit to the match, while married and a 25%er. Divorced, and disabled, her withdrawals are penalty free, and $10K is tax free due to STD deduction and exemption.) Note: The chart and text above have been edited at the request of a member comment. What about an 18% credit card? Glad you asked - The same $50K debt. It's tough to imagine a worse situation. You budgeted and can afford $901, because that's the number for a 10 year payoff. Your spouse says she can grab a extra shift and add $239/mo to the plan, because that' the number to get to a 6 year payoff. The balance after 6 years if we stick to the 10 year plan? $30,669.82. The 401(k) balances at varying rates of return again appear above. A bit less dramatic, as that 18% is tough, but even at a negative return the 401(k) is still ahead. You are welcome to run the numbers, adjust deposits for your tax rate and same for withdrawals. You'll see -1% is still about break-even. To be fair, there are a number of variables, debt owed, original time for loan to be paid, rate of loan, rate of return assumed on the 401(k), amount of potential extra payment, and the 2 tax rates, going in, coming out. Combine a horrific loan rate (the 18%) with a longer payback (15+ years) and you can contrive a scenario where, in fact, even the matched funds have trouble keeping up. I'm not judging, but I believe it's fair to say that if one can't find a budget that allows them to pay their 18% debt over a 10 year period, they need more help that we can offer here. I'm only offering the math that shows the power of the matched deposit. From a comment below, the one warning I'd offer is regarding vesting. The matched funds may not be yours immediately. Companies are allowed to have a vesting schedule which means your right to this money may be tiered, at say, 20%/year from year 2-6, for example. It's a good idea to check how your plan handles this. On further reflection, the comments of David Wallace need to be understood. At zero return, the matched money will lag the 18% payment after 4 years. The reason my chart doesn't reflect that is the match from the deposits younger than 4 years is still making up for that potential loss. I'd maintain my advice, to grab the match regardless, as there are other factors involved, the more likely return of ~8%, the tax differential should one lose their job, and the hope that one would get their act together and pay the debt off faster.", "You'll have to take cash from your Credit Card account and use that to trade. I doubt any brokerage house will take credit cards as it's trading without any collateral (since credit cards are an unsecured credit)" ]

[ "There are two fundamental flaws to your plan: Supposing that you can get a loan with an interest rate that is less than the profit you are likely to get from an investment. Historically, the U.S. stock market goes up by 6 to 7% per year. I just did a quick check and found rates for unsecured loans of 10 to 15%. Of course interest rates vary depending on your credit rating and all sorts of other factors, but that's probably a reasonable ball park. Borrowing money at 15% so you can invest it at 6% is not a good plan. Of course you could invest in things that promise higher returns, but such investments have higher risks. If there was a super safe investment that was virtually guaranteed to give 20% profit, the bank wouldn't loan you money at 10 or 15%: they'd put their money in this 20% investment. I don't know what your income is, but unless it's substantial, no one is going to give you an unsecured loan for $250,000. In your question you say you'll use $2,000 of your profits to make payments on the loan. That's less than 0.8% of the loan amount. If you really know a bank that will loan money at 0.8%, I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it. That would be an awesome rate for a fully secured loan, never mind for a signature loan. $250,000 for 10 years at 10% would mean payments of $3,300 per MONTH, and that's about the most optimistic terms I can imagine for a signature loan. You say you plan to lie to the bank. What are you going to tell them? A person doesn't get to be a bank loan officer with authority to make $250,000 loans if he's a complete idiot. They're going to want to know what you intend to do with the money and how you plan to pay it back. If you're making a million dollars a year, sure, they'll probably loan you that kind of money. But if you were making a million dollars a year I doubt you'd be considering this scheme. As TripeHound said in the comments, if it was really possible to get bigger returns on an investment than you would have to pay in interest on an unsecured loan, then everybody would be doing it all the time. Sorry, if you want to be rich, the realistic choices are, (a) arrange to be born to rich parents; (b) win the lottery; (c) get a good job and work hard." ]

[ "You are assuming the price increase will continue. The people selling are assuming that the price increase will not continue. Ultimately that's what a share transaction is: one person would rather have the cash at a particular price / time, and one person would rather have the share.", "One reason for this is that many people don't simply allow their houses to rot and decay. If you're talking about a house built in 1980 and left vacant and unmaintained for 35 years, it probably will be in pretty poor shape. But a homeowner generally wants to preserve their house and maintain it in good condition, so they invest in things like new roofs, siding, gutters, windows, paint, exterminators, new furnaces, hot water heaters, air conditioners, etc... All this stuff costs money (and for tax purposes, can often be factored into the cost basis of the house when it is sold), but it maintains the value of the property. A small hole in the roof may be fairly cheap to fix, but if left unrepaired, it could eventually cause much of the building to rot, making the structure near worthless. If a car slams into your living room, you don't generally leave it there; most people repair the damage. It's not uncommon in some areas to have 100 year old houses (or 300+ year old houses in some countries) that were built well in the first place and have been well maintained in the interim. People also renovate their homes, ripping out outdated construction and appliances and sometimes building new additions, decks, porches, etc... This also serves to make the property more attractive and increases its value.", "Depending on your perspective of it, I can see reasons for and against this idea. Only with the benefit of hindsight can one say how wise or unwise it is to do so. Earlier in my career, I invested and lost it all. Understand if you do buy when would you be able to sell, do you have to have an account with the underwriter, what fees may there be in having such an account, and would there be restrictions on when you could sell.", "Since then I wanted to move out of this house because the property taxes are so high and the mortgage payment is a killer. As I understand this is a property jointly owned by your parents and you. As they are not living staying in the house, you have taken over the mortgage payments for this house along with any other maintenance. If you move out of this house; the rent is expected to cover the cost of maintenance and mortgage payments. Are we better of staying in Jersey where our family and friends are? This is an individual decision. It is not just family and friends, but also schooling of kids, penitentially if you change jobs would it also entail changing residence as the workplace would be more near from current home than the new home. I want to convince my wife to make this move because it will save us at least 800 month, but she fails to see how buying a second home is financially sound because we have to lose our savings and we have to pay interest on our second home. There are quite a few posts on first-time-home-buyer Some question like this one and this one and this one are good reads. There are historically times when the Mortgage EMI becomes equal or less than Rent paid. In such times it is good to buy home, than pay rent. Otherwise quite a few invest advisor's mention that fools buy house and wise live in it. There are advantages to buying as well advantages to renting. There is no simple answer and it depends on multitude of factors.", "Publication 590a covers this in a fairly specific manner. Page 11, section \"Are You Covered by an Employer Plan?\", specifies: The Form W-2 you receive from your employer has a box used to indicate whether you were covered for the year. The \"Retirement Plan\" box should be checked if you were covered. So, by default, if that's checked, you're covered. 590 does go into more detail, though. Assuming you're covered under a Defined Contribution plan (a 401k for example): Defined contribution plan. Generally, you are covered by a defined contribution plan for a tax year if amounts are contributed or allocated to your account for the plan year that ends with or within that tax year. Tax Year: Tax year. Your tax year is the annual accounting period you use to keep records and report income and expenses on your income tax return. For almost all people, the tax year is the calendar year. Further, they cover issues related to an employee leaving Dec. 31 very specifically: A special rule applies to certain plans in which it is not possible to determine if an amount will be contributed to your account for a given plan year. If, for a plan year, no amounts have been allocated to your account that are attributable to employer contributions, employee contributions, or forfeitures, by the last day of the plan year, and contributions are discretionary for the plan year, you are not covered for the tax year in which the plan year ends. If, after the plan year ends, the employer makes a contribution for that plan year, you are covered for the tax year in which the contribution is made. Example: Example. Mickey was covered by a profit-sharing plan and left the company on December 31, 2014. The plan year runs from July 1 to June 30. Under the terms of the plan, employer contributions do not have to be made, but if they are made, they are contributed to the plan before the due date for filing the company's tax return. Such contributions are allocated as of the last day of the plan year, and allocations are made to the accounts of individuals who have any service during the plan year. As of June 30, 2015, no contributions were made that were allocated to the June 30, 2015, plan year, and no forfeitures had been allocated within the plan year. In addition, as of that date, the company was not obligated to make a contribution for such plan year and it was impossible to determine whether or not a contribution would be made for the plan year. On December 31, 2015, the company decided to contribute to the plan for the plan year ending June 30, 2015. That contribution was made on February 15, 2016. Mickey is an active participant in the plan for his 2016 tax year but not for his 2015 tax year. Mickey is in a similar (but different) circumstance, and it's clear from the IRS's treatment of his circumstance that you would be in the same boat (just a year less off) - but be aware given Mickey's situation that it's theoretically possible for them to make another contribution next year, as Mickey had, depending on when their plan year/etc. ends. So - from the IRS's point of view, everything you said the company did is correct. They paid you in January, contributed to your 401k as a result of that paycheck, and thus you were officially considered covered for 2015.", "When we 'delta-hedge', we make the value of a portfolio 0. No - you make the risk relative to some underlying 0. The portfolio does have a value, but if whatever underlying you're hedging against changes slightly the value of your portfolio should not change. But, what is the derivative of a portfolio? It's the instantaneous rate of change of the portfolio) relative to some underlying phenomenon. With a portfolio of many stocks, there's not one single factor that drives the value of your portfolio. You have sensitivity to each underlying stock (price and volatility), interest rates, the market as a whole, etc. For simplicity, we might imagine a portfolio that has holdings in .... a call .... a stock .... and a bank account (to borrow and lend money). You will have a delta relative to the stock and a delta relative to the underlying instrument on the option, etc. Those can only be aggregated for each factor (e.g. if the call is an option on the same stock) Theta is the only one you can calculate for the portfolio as a whole - it will be the aggregate theta of all of your positions (since change in time is constant across all investments). All of the others are not aggregatable since they are measuring sensitivities to different phenomena.", "If you are looking to go long (buy) you would use bid prices as this is what you will be matched against for your order to be executed and a trade to go through. If you are looking to go short (sell) you would use the ask prices as this is what you will be matched against for your order to be executed and a trade go through. In your analysis you could use either this convention or the midpoint of the two prices. As FX is very liquid the bid and ask prices would be quite close to each other, so the easiest way to do your analysis is to use the convention I listed above.", "It looks like the HST will be in effect in Ontario on July 1st, 2010. As to whether it will replace GST with HST for all services, it looks like some sectors may get special treatment: Ontario may exempt mutual funds from HST (National Post). But it doesn't look final yet. However, I would suggest that most service-based businesses in Ontario need to prepare to start charging 13% HST instead of 5% GST. It will be the law. On the \"goods\" side of the new harmonized tax, it looks like certain goods will still be exempt from the provincial portion. Here's a quote from the Ontario Budget 2009 News Release: \"Books, diapers, children's clothing and footwear, children's car seats and car booster seats, and feminine hygiene products would be exempt from the provincial portion of the single sales tax.\" Here's some additional information on the introduction of the HST, from the province: General Transitional Rules for Ontario HST. And finally, another interesting article from the Ottawa Business Journal: Preparing For Ontario Sales Tax Harmonization – It's Not Too Early UPDATE: I just received an insert from Canada Revenue Agency included with my quarterly GST statement. Titled \"Harmonization of the Sales Tax in Ontario and British Columbia\", it contains a section titled \"What this means for you\" (as in, you the business owner). Here's an excerpt: [...] All Ontario and B.C. registrants would need to update their accounting and point-of-sale systems to accomodate the change in rate and new point-of-sale rebates for the implementation date of July 1, 2010. The harmonization of the sales tax in Ontario and B.C. may affect the filing requirements of registrants outside of these two provinces. Registrants will report their HST according to their current GST filing frequency. As a result of the harmonization, there will be changes to the rebates for housing and public service bodies. More information will be released as it becomes available. Visit the CRA web site often, at www.cra.gc.ca/harmonization, for the most up-to-date information on the harmonization of the sales tax and how it may affect you. [...] Last, I found some very detailed information on the HST here: NOTICE247 - Harmonized Sales Tax for Ontario and British Columbia - Questions and Answers on General Transitional Rules for Personal Property and Services. Chances are anything you want to know is in there.", "Brokerage firms must settle funds promptly, but there's no explicit definition for this in U.S. federal law. See for example, this article on settling trades in three days. Wikipedia also has a good write-up on T+3. It is common practice, however. It takes approximately three days for the funds to be available to me, in my Canadian brokerage account. That said, the software itself prevents me from using funds which are not available, and I'm rather surprised yours does not. You want to be careful not to be labelled a pattern day trader, if that is not your intention. Others can better fill you in on the consequences of this. I believe it will not apply to you unless you are using a margin account. All but certainly, the terms of service that you agreed to with this brokerage will specify the conditions under which they can lock you out of your account, and when they can charge interest. If they are selling your stock at times you have not authorised (via explicit instruction or via a stop-loss order), you should file a complaint with the S.E.C. and with sufficient documentation. You will need to ensure your cancel-stop-loss order actually went through, though, and the stock was sold anyway. It could simply be that it takes a full business day to cancel such an order.", "You can't short a stock unless there is someone willing and able to \"lend\" shares to you. And there are several reasons why that might not be the case. First, BSFT is a \"new\" stock, which means that NO ONE has held it very long. It's much easier to short IBM or Exxon Mobil, where there are some long-term holders who would like to earn a little extra money lending you THEIR shares. But if \"everyone\" involved is busy buying or selling the stock, there won't be many people to lend it. That's not manipulation, that's just the market. Another reason may be a large \"short\" interest. That is many OTHERS have shorted it before you. That's dangerous for you, because if some lenders want to pull their shares off the market, they can cause a \"short squeeze\" that will drive the price much higher. And stock shortages can be orchestrated by the company or large investors to artificially drive the price higher. Unless you have a lot of experience, don't try shorting small cap stocks. Try to gain some experience with large caps like IBM or Exxon Mobil first. Those are stocks that people at least can't \"play games\" with. YOu will win or lose based on the market itself." ]

[ "Since you're 20-30 years out of retirement, you should be 90% to 100% in stocks, and in one or two broad stock market funds likely. I'm not sure about the minimums at TD Ameritrade, but at Vanguard even $3k will get you into the basic funds. One option is the Targeted Retirement Year funds, which automatically rebalance as you get closer to retirement. They're a bit higher expense usually than a basic stock market fund, but they're often not too bad. (Look for expenses under 0.5% annually, and preferably much lower - I pay 0.05% on mine for example.) Otherwise, I'd just put everything into something simple - an S&P500 tracker for example (SPY or VOO are two examples) that has very low management fees. Then when your 401(k) gets up and running, that may have fewer options and thus you may end up in something more conservative - don't feel like you have to balance each account separately when they're just starting, think of them as one whole balancing act for the first year or two. Once they're each over $10k or so, then you can balance them individually (which you do want to do, to allow you to get better returns)." ]

[ "You can keep the cash in your account as long as you want, but you have to pay a tax on what's called capital gains. To quote from Wikipedia: A capital gain is a profit that results from investments into a capital asset, such as stocks, bonds or real estate, which exceeds the purchase price. It is the difference between a higher selling price and a lower purchase price, resulting in a financial gain for the investor.[1] Conversely, a capital loss arises if the proceeds from the sale of a capital asset are less than the purchase price. Thus, buying/selling stock counts as investment income which would be a capital gain/loss. When you are filing taxes, you have to report net capital gain/loss. So you don't pay taxes on an individual stock sale or purchase - you pay tax on the sum of all your transactions. Note: You do not pay any tax if you have a net capital loss. Taxes are only on capital gains. The amount you are taxed depends on your tax bracket and your holding period. A short term capital gain is gain on an investment held for less than one year. These gains are taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. A long term capital gain is gain on an investment held for more than one year. These gains are taxed at a special rate: If your income tax rate is 10 or 15%, then long term gains are taxed at 0% i.e. no tax, otherwise the tax rate is 15%. So you're not taxed on specific stock sales - you're taxed on your total gain. There is no tax for a capital loss, and investors sometimes take profits from good investments and take losses from bad investments to lower their total capital gain so they won't be taxed as much. The tax rate is expected to change in 2013, but the current ratios could be extended. Until then, however, the rate is as is. Of course, this all applies if you live in the United States. Other countries have different measures. Hope it helps! Wikipedia has a great chart to refer to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United_States.", "Your question contains a faulty assumption: During crashes and corrections the amount of sellers is of course higher than the amount of buyers, making it difficult to sell stocks. This simply isn't true. Every trade has two sides; thus, by definition, for every seller there is buyer and vice versa. Even if we broaden the definition of \"buyers\" and \"sellers\" to mean \"people willing to buy (or sell) at some price\", the assumption still isn't true. When a stock is falling it is generally not because potential buyers are exiting the market; it is because they are revising the prices they are willing to buy at downward. For example, say there are a bunch of orders to buy Frobnitz Consolidated (DUMB) at $5. Suppose DUMB announces a downward revision to its earnings guidance. Those people might not be willing to buy at $50 anymore, so they'll probably cancel their $50 buy orders. However, just because DUMB isn't worth as much as they thought it was, that doesn't mean it's completely worthless. So, those prospective buyers will likely enter new orders at some lower value, say, $45. With that, the value of DUMB has just dropped by $5, a 10% correction. However, there are still plenty of buyers, and you can still sell your DUMB holdings, if you're willing to take $45 for them. In other words, the value of a security is not determined by the relative numbers of buyers and sellers. It is determined by the prices those buyers and sellers are willing to pay to buy or accept to sell. Except for cases of massive IT disruptions, such as we saw in the \"flash crash\", there is always somebody willing to buy or sell at some price.", "The market prices for futures and depository ETFs like GLD and IAU are pretty consistent. Prices for physical gold at retail can vary dramatically. At a coin store that I was at a few weeks ago, there was a very wide buy/sell spread on commonly available gold coins.", "A bridge loan (or bridging loan) is designed for exactly this circumstance. They're short-term loans (6 months is common) designed to help home-buyers to bridge the gap between buying and selling. MoneySupermarket defines them like this: Bridging loans are designed to help people complete the purchase of a property before selling their existing home by offering them short-term access to money at a high-rate of interest. As well as helping home-movers when there is a gap between the sale and completion dates in a chain, this type of loan can also help someone planning to sell-on quickly after renovating a home, or help someone buying at auction. Interest rates are very high, and there are likely to be fees, because you'll only need the loan for a short period. Here are some links to Canadian websites that explain more.", "One of the reasons is also general distrust to the government. Another one is that there exist special interest group which profits from the complicated scheme, keep adding special cases, and has stronger financial situation that the opponents of such complex scheme. People do not trust government, or companies, to act in their best interests. So they (we) waste huge amount of time and/or money to comply with byzantine income laws. In 2004 Democratic presidential primary, presidential candidate Wes Clark (who beyond being 4-star general has also master degree in economics from Oxford, and taught economics in West point) proposed similar scheme: for people with income under 50K, employer would do all the (simple) paperwork, if desired, and get return. In the noise of the campaign, idea how to simplify taxes for half of the population was lost. Funny how the only candidate in recent history who was both professor of economics (not MBA, which is about business and profits) and distinguished military hero, could not get any traction in Democratic party.", "Thats a very open question, Depends on the risk you are willing to take with the money, or the length of time you are willing sit on it, or if you have a specific goal like buying a house. Some banks offer high(ish) rate savings accounts http://www.bankaccountsavings.co.uk/calculator with a switching bonus that could be a good start. (combining the nationwide flexdirect and regular saver) if you want something more long term - safe option is bonds, medium risk option is Index funds (kind of covers all 3 risks really), risky option is Stocks & shares. For these probably a S&S ISA for a tax efficient option. Also LISA or HtB ISA are worth considering if you want to buy a house in the future.", "Central banks don't generally post exchange rates with other currencies, as they are not determined by central banks but by the currency markets. You need a source for live exchange rate data (for example www.xe.com), and you need to calculate the prices in other currencies dynamically as they are displayed -- they will be changing continually, from minute to minute.", "You seem to really have your financial act together. Your combination of assets, and ongoing savings makes you the ideal candidate for paying it off. One way to look at it is that your mortgage offers you a place to 'invest' at a fixed 2-7/8% rate. \"I'd really like to not have a house payment\" is all I need to hear. The flip side is the lecture that talks about long term market returns, the fact that the combination of your deductible mortgage, but 15% cap gain rate means you need 2.5% return to break even, and odds are pretty high that will occur over the next 15 years. \"pretty high\" does not equal \"guaranteed\". And I won't debate the value of sleeping soundly vs an excess 5-8% return on this money that you'd maybe achieve. You haven't missed anything. In fact, though I advocate saving first, you are already doing that. This is above and beyond. Good work.", "If you are going to live in the house for awhile, you can probably use a regular mortgage. Shop around and look for a mortgage program that works. Look at local banks/credit unions, particularly those with community development programs. Usually an investment mortgage is higher rate, higher payment and has higher underwriting standards.", "Your plan isn't bad, but it probably isn't worth the cost for the small amount of credit building it will achieve. If you do decide to continue with it though, you'll save in interest if you make the big payment now rather than in 6 months. In other words, you can take the minimum payment, multiply it by 5, subtract that amount from the total you owe and pay the difference immediately. This way you'll still get the 6 months of reporting to the credit bureaus, but you'll pay less interest since you'll have less principle each month. I would recommend applying for the credit card right now. I believe you'll probably get approved now. If you do, then pay off the car loan without thinking about it. (If you don't get approved, think about it, then probably still pay it off.) Regarding the full coverage insurance, even after the loan is paid off and you aren't required to have it, you may still want to keep it. Even if you're the best driver on earth, if someone hits you and doesn't have insurance, or they have insurance and drive off, or a deer runs in front of you, etc, you'll lose your car and won't be reimbursed. Also, as Russell pointed out in the comments below, without collision coverage your insurance company has no incentive to work on your behalf when someone else hits you, so even if it's not your fault you may still not get reimbursed. So, I wouldn't pass on the full coverage unless your car isn't worth very much or you can stomach losing it if something happens. Good luck, and congrats on being able to pay for a car in full at 19 years old." ]

[ "I don't think the method falls short, it's the premise that is wrong. If the dividend stream really did grow faster than the cost of capital indefinitely, eventually the company behind the share would become larger than the entire economy. Logically, at some point, the growth must slow down." ]

[ "It will usually take a week or two for changes to your withholding to take effect in payroll. However 0 deductions will withhold more per check than 3. So if at 0 deductions you are having to pay in April then I would suggest not changing your W2 to 3 deductions. Instead in the section for extra with holding add $25 per week. This should leave you with a more manageable return in April.", "This depends on the country(ies) involved. US citizen/resident giving gifts is required to pay a gift tax. The recipient of the gift, however, pays nothing. The value of the gift at the time of the gift-giving is used to determine the tax, and an exclusion of $14000 per person per year (as of 2013) is available to allow smaller gifts to be given without too much of a red tape. There's also a lifetime exemption which is shared between the gift tax and the estate tax. This exemption is $5.25M in 2013. The reason the gift tax exists in the US is because the US tax code is very aggressive. This is basically double taxation, similarly to estate tax. Gifts/estates are after-tax money, i.e.: income tax has been paid on them, yet the government taxes them again. Why? The excuse is to disallow shifting of income: if one person has high income tax brackets, he may give some of his income-producing property to another person with lesser brackets who would then pay less income taxes (for example, parents would transfer property to children). Similarly capital gains could be shifted. Generation-skipping tax is yet another complication to disallow people use gifts to avoid estate taxes: a grandparent would gift stuff to grandchildren, thus skipping a level of estate taxes (the parents in between). In other countries the tax codes may be less aggressive, and not tax gifts/inheritance as this money has been taxed before. This is a more fair situation, IMHO, yet it means that wealth moves from generation to generation without the \"general public\" benefiting from it. So if you're a US person and considering giving or receiving a gift - you need to consult with a tax adviser about the consequences. Similarly with other countries, if you are subject to their tax laws.", "I use MoneyStrands (formerly called Expensr), but mostly just to track expenses and look at reports on my spending habits. It has some really pretty charts, with the ability to drill down into categories and sub-categories, or graph monthly spending for any custom date range. It does a half-decent job of auto-categorizing the imported bank transactions, and you can set up additional rules for common vendors, but I still have to do some manual work after each import. It does a good job of integrating my credit cards, bank accounts, and I can even manually add cash transactions. It has some basic budgeting capabilities, but they're not very useful for someone who needs to carefully budget thier monthly spending. Another one I've heard about is mint.com, but it only supports American banks (last I heard, anyway).", "Businesses do not pay income tax on money that they pay out as salary to their employees. Businesses generally only pay income tax on profit. Profit is the money that comes in (revenue) minus the business expenses. Payroll to the employees is a deductible business expense.", "There are books like, \"The Millionaire Mind\" that could be of interest when it comes to basics like living below your means, investing what you save, etc. that while it is common sense, it is uncommonly done in the world. Something to consider is how actively do you want your money management to be? Is it something to spend hours on each week or a few hours a year tops? You have lots of choices and decisions to make. I would suggest keeping part of your savings as an emergency fund just in case something happens. As for another part, this is where you could invest in a few different options and see what happens. There would be a couple of different methods I could see for breaking into finance that I'd imagine: IT of a finance company - In this case you'd likely be working on customizations for what the bank, insurance or other kind of financial firm requires. This could be somewhat boring as you are basically a part of the backbone that keeps the company going but not really able to take much of the glory when the company makes a lot of money. Brains of a hedge fund - In this case, you may have to know some trading algorithms and handle updating the code so that the trading activities can be done by a computer with lightning speed. Harder to crack into since these would be the secretive people to find and join in a way.", "Your assumption that funds sold in GBP trade in GBP is incorrect. In general funds purchase their constituent stocks in the fund currency which may be different to the subscription currency. Where the subscription currency is different from the fund currency subscriptions are converted into the fund currency before the extra money is used to increase holdings. An ETF, on the other hand, does not take subscriptions directly but by creation (and redemption) of shares. The principle is the same however; monies received from creation of ETF shares are converted into the fund currency and then used to buy stock. This ensures that only one currency transaction is done. In your specific example the fund currency will be USD so your purchase of the shares (assuming there are no sellers and creation occurs) will be converted from GBP to USD and held in that currency in the fund. The fund then trades entirely in USD to avoid currency risk. When you want to sell your exposure (supposing redemption occurs) enough holdings required to redeem your money are sold to get cash in USD and then converted to GBP before paying you. This means that trading activity where there is no need to convert to GBP (or any other currency) does not incur currency conversion costs. In practice funds will always have some cash (or cash equivalents) on hand to pay out redemptions and will have an idea of the number and size of redemptions each calendar period so will use futures and swaps to mitigate FX risk. Where the same firm has two funds traded in different currencies with the same objectives it is likely that one is a wrapper for the other such that one simply converts the currency and buys the other currency denominated ETF. As these are exchange traded funds with a price in GBP the amount you pay for the ETF or gain on selling it is the price given and you will not have to consider currency exchange as that should be done internally as explained above. However, there can be a (temporary) arbitrage opportunity if the price in GBP does not reflect the price in USD and the exchange rate put together.", "Assuming that you have capital gains, you can expect to have to pay taxes on them. It might be short term, or long term capital gains. If you specify exactly which shares to sell, it is possible to sell mostly losers, thus reducing or eliminating capital gains. There are separate rules for 401K and other retirement programs regarding down payments for a house. This leads to many other issues such as the hit your retirement will take.", "I have done this last year. Just open an account with an online brocker and buy a couple of Apple shares (6 I think, for 190$ each or something like that :) ). If this is just to test how stock exchange works, I think this is a good idea. I am also in Europe (France), and you'r right the charge to buy on NasDaq are quite expensive but still reasonnable. Hope this helps.", "FHA insured loans must 'go hand in hand' with PMI, because the FHA element is the insurance itself. The FHA isn't actually giving you a loan, that's coming from a lender; instead, the FHA is insuring the loan, at some cost to you - but allowing a loan to folks who may not be able to afford it normally (lower down payment requirements and a somewhat cheaper PMI). FHA-insured loans may be lower rates in some cases than non-FHA insured loans because of this backing; that's because they make it easier for people of poorer credit histories with smaller down payments to get a house in the first place. Those people would tend to have a harder time getting a loan, and be charged sometimes usurious rates to get it. Low down payment and mediocre credit history (think 580-620) mean higher risk, even beyond the risk directly coming from the poor loan to value ratio. Comparing this table of Freddie Mac rates to this table of FHA-backed loan rates, the loan rates seem comparable (though somewhat lagging in changes in some cases). FHA loans are not nearly the size or complexity of loan population as Freddie Mac, so be wary of making direct comparisons. Looking into this in more detail, pre-collapse (before 12/07), FHA rates were a bit lower - average rate was about .5 points lower - but starting with 12/07, FHA average rates were usually higher than Freddie Mac rates for 30 year fixed loans: in 1/2009 for example they were almost a point higher. As of the last data I see (5/13) the rates were within 0.1 points most months. This may be in part because Freddie Mac had looser requirements to get a loan pre-collapse, then tightened significantly, then started to loosen some (also around June 2013, rates climbed significantly due to some signals from the Fed, although they're almost back to their lows thanks to the Fed again). These are averages across all loans, so you get some noise as a result. Loan interest rates are very personal, in general: they depend on your credit, your house and down payment, and your bank (which varies by your location). The best thing to do is to shop around yourself and just see what you get, and ask your lender any questions you have: if you pick a local lender with a good service history and who is willing to talk to you in person (ie, has a direct phone number), you'll have no trouble getting answers.", "The real answer why the government is \"allowed\" to do something is because they are the government and they make the rules. There are lots of laws that I think make no sense. I ran into a similar situation to yours. I bought a house during a time when the market in my area was way down. The previous owner had paid $140,000 but I got it for only $80,000. The government appraised it for, I forget the exact number, but over $100,000. I appealed, and the argument I made to the appeal board was that the law says it is supposed to be appraised for \"fair market value\". The definition of \"fair market value\" is the amount that a willing buyer would pay to a willing seller, absent special conditions like a sweetheart sale to a relative. The house had been advertised for a higher price and the seller had to drop the price several times before getting an offer, and finally accepting mine. This is pretty much the definition of \"fair market value\". The appeals board replied that it was not FMV because the market was bad at this particular time and so I got a good deal. I said that that's the definition of market value: it goes up and down as market conditions change. If the market happened to be up when someone bought a house and they had to pay a high price, would the government assess the house at a lower value because that was an unusually high price? I doubt it. They ended up reducing the assessed value, but not to what I actually paid. All that said, arguably a foreclosure sale might be considered special conditions. Prices at a foreclosure sale tend to be lower than \"ordinary\" sales. In a foreclosure, the bank is usually trying to get rid of the property quickly because they don't want to be in the property-management business, they want to be in the money lending and management business. Of course you could say that sort of thing about conditions surrounding many sales. Maybe the price is low because the seller needed cash now to start a business. Maybe the price is high because the buyer was too lazy to shop around. Maybe the price is low because the buyer is a very skilled negotiator. Etc etc. My watch just broke and while I was shopping for a new one I found two listings for the exact same watch, I mean exact same manufacturer and model number, identical picture, on the same web site, one giving the price as $24 and the other as $99. What is the market value of that watch? I presume anyone who saw both listings would pick the $24 one, but I presume some number of people pay the higher price because they never see the lower price. In real life there isn't really one, exact, fair market value. That's an abstraction." ]

[ "There are API libraries available to various banks in various programming languages. For example, in Perl there are many libraries in the Finance::Bank:: namespace. Some of these use screen-scraping libraries and talk to the GUI underneath, so they are vulnerable to any changes the bank makes to their interface, but some of the better banks do seem to provide back-end interfaces, which can then be used directly. In either case, you should still be sure that the transactions are secure. Some bank sites have appallingly bad security. :( A good place to start is to call your bank and ask if they offer any programming APIs for accessing their back end." ]

[ "Tell your employer during your initial contract Terms of Service discussions. Ordinarily, this is boilerplate but you should ask for a rider in your contract which says - in some form - I already have IP, I will continue to work on this IP in my own time, and any benefit or opportunity derived from this IP will continue to be entirely mine. I requested exactly such a rider when I took up a new job just over a year ago and my employer was extremely accommodating. That I already had a company in which that IP could reside actually made the process easier. As @JohnFX has already mentioned, not telling your employer is both unethical as well as storing up potential legal hassles for you in the futre.", "Others have pointed out that many benefits offered by employers \"for free\" are actually taxed; the employee must pay taxes on the value of what they're receiving (usually services of some kind). This is called imputed income. Also pointed out was that healthcare is an exception; a specifically protected class of benefits that aren't taxed. But sometimes they are. Many companies now offer domestic partner health coverage as well, regardless of whether the couple is in any kind of civil union or other arrangement. The costs to the employee vary, but it's often that they simply pay double of what their individual coverage contribution would be. Independent of the employee's direct contribution for their domestic partner, they must also pay taxes on the value of the employer's cost of the coverage. This can be significant, as typically the employer is paying the lion's share of the healthcare cost.", "You might have to pay a premium for the stocks on the dividend tax–free exchanges. For example, HSBC on the NYSE yields 4.71% versus HSBC on the LSE which yields only 4.56%. Assuming the shares are truly identical, the only reason for this (aside from market fluctuations) is if the taxes are more favorable in the UK versus the US, thus increasing demand for HSBC on the LSE, raising the price, and reducing the yield. A difference of 0.15% in yield is pretty insignificant relative to a 30% versus 0% dividend tax. But a key question is, does your country have a foreign tax credit like the US does? If so you (usually) end up getting that 30% back, just delayed until you get your tax return, and the question of which exchange to buy on becomes not so clear cut. If your country doesn't have such a tax credit, then yes, you'll want to buy on an exchange where you won't get hit with the dividend tax. Note that I got this information from a great article I read several months back (site requires free registration to see it all unfortunately). They discuss the case of UN versus UL--both on the NYSE but ADRs for Unilever in the Netherlands and the UK, respectively. The logic is very similar to your situation.", "A bid is an offer to buy something on an order book, so for example you may post an offer to buy one share, at $5. An ask is an offer to sell something on an order book, at a set price. For example you may post an offer to sell shares at $6. A trade happens when there are bids/asks that overlap each other, or are at the same price, so there is always a spread of at least one of the smallest currency unit the exchange allows. Betting that the price of an asset will go down, traditionally by borrowing some of that asset and then selling it, hoping to buy it back at a lower price and pocket the difference (minus interest). So, let's say as per your example you borrow 100 shares of company 'X', expecting the price of them to go down. You take your shares to the market and sell them - you make a market sell order (a market 'ask'). This matches against a bid and you receive a price of $5 per share. Now, let's pretend that you change your mind and you think the price is going to go up, you instantly regret your decision. In order to pay back the shares, you now need to buy back your shares as $6 - which is the price off the ask offers on the order book. Because of this spread, you have lost money. You sold at a low price and bought at a high price, meaning it costs you more money to repay your borrowed shares. So, when you are shorting you need the spread to be as tight as possible.", "If this is something you plan to continue doing it would make sense to create it as it's own business entity and then to get non-profit status eg: 501c3. Otherwise I'm pretty sure you have to think of it as YOU receiving the money as a sole proprietor - and file a couple more tax forms at the end of the year. I think it's a Schedule C. So essentially if you bring in $10,000, then you spend that $10,000 as legit business expenses for your venture your schedule C would show no profit and wouldn't pay taxes on it. BUT, you do have to file that form. Operating this way could have legal implications should something happen and you get sued. Having the proper business entity setup could help in that situation.", "Try https://sparkprofit.com/ You practice with real market prices, and it's free. Plus you can get real money pay outs if you do well. I earned 1 cent! hahaha I gave up trying to make money from it, but you get an idea of doing trades and how impossible it is to predict what the price will be. It has some tutorials and helpful things too.", "This question is impossible answer for all markets but there are 2 more possibilities in my experience:", "I'm another programmer, I guess we all just like complicated things, or got here via stackoverflow. Obligatory tedious but accurate point: Investing is not personal finance, in fact it's maybe one of the less important parts of it. See this answer: Where to start with personal finance? Obligatory warning for software developer type minds: getting into investing because it's complicated and therefore fun is a really awful idea from a financial perspective. Or see behavioral finance research on how analytical/professional/creative type people are often terrible at investing, while even-tempered practical people are better. The thing with investing is that inaction is better than action, tried and true is better than creative, and simple is better than complicated. So if you're like me and many programmers and like creative, complicated action - not good for the wallet. You've been warned. That said. :-) Stuff I read In general I hate reading too much financial information because I think it makes me take ill-advised actions. The actions I most need to take have to do with my career and my spending patterns. So I try to focus on reading about software development, for example. Or I answer questions on this site, which at least might help someone out, and I enjoy writing. For basic financial news and research, I prefer Morningstar.com, especially if you get the premium version. The writing has more depth, it's often from qualified financial analysts, and with the paid version you get data and analysis on thousands of funds and stocks, instead of a small number as with Motley Fool newsletters. I don't follow Morningstar regularly anymore, instead I use it for research when I need to pick funds in a 401k or whatever. Another caveat on Morningstar is that the \"star ratings\" on funds are dumb. Look at the Analyst Picks and the analyst writeups instead. I just flipped through my RSS reader and I have 20-30 finance-related blogs in there collecting unread posts. It looks like the only one I regularly read is http://alephblog.com/ which is sort of random. But I find David Merkel very thoughtful and interesting. He's also a conservative without being a partisan hack, and posts frequently. I read the weekly market comment at http://hussmanfunds.com/ as well. Most weeks it says the market is overvalued, so that's predictable, but the interesting part is the rationale and the other ideas he talks about. I read a lot of software-related blogs and there's some bleed into finance, especially from the VC world; blogs like http://www.avc.com/ or http://bhorowitz.com/ or whatever. Anyway I spend most of my reading time on career-related stuff and I think this is also the correct decision from a financial perspective. If you were a doctor, you'd be better off reading about doctoring, too. I read finance-related books fairly often, I guess there are other threads listing ideas on that front. I prefer books about principles rather than a barrage of daily financial news and questionable ideas. Other than that, I keep up with headlines, just reading the paper every day including business-related topics is good enough. If there's some big event in the financial markets, it'll show up in the regular paper. Take a class I initially learned about finance by reading a pile of books and alongside that taking the CFP course and the first CFA course. Both are probably equivalent to about a college semester worth of work, but you can plow through them in a couple months each if you focus. You can just do the class (and take the exam if you like), without having to go on and actually get the work experience and the certifications. I didn't go on to do that. This sounds like a crazy thing to do, and it kind of is, but I think it's also sort of crazy to expect to be competent on a topic without taking some courses or otherwise getting pretty deep into the material. If you're a normal person and don't have time to take finance courses, you're likely better off either keeping it super-simple, or else outsourcing if you can find the right advisor: What exactly can a financial advisor do for me, and is it worth the money? When it's inevitably complex (e.g. as you approach retirement) then an advisor is best. My mom is retiring soon and I found her a professional, for example. I like having a lot of knowledge myself, because it's just the only way I could feel comfortable. So for sure I understand other people wanting to have it too. But what I'd share from the other side is that once you have it, the conclusion is that you don't have enough knowledge (or time) to do anything fancy anyway, and that the simple answers are fine. Check out http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Simple-Financial-Strategies-People/dp/0743269942 Investing for fun isn't investing for profit Many people recommend Motley Fool (I see two on this question already!). The site isn't evil, but the problem (in my opinion) is that it promotes an attitude toward and a style of investing that isn't objectively justifiable for practical reasons. Essentially I don't think optimizing for making money and optimizing for having fun coexist very well. If investing is your chosen hobby rather than fishing or knitting, then Motley Fool can be fun with their tone and discussion forums, but other people in forums are just going to make you go wrong money-wise; see behavioral finance research again. Talking to others isn't compatible with ice in your decision-making veins. Also, Motley Fool tends to pervasively make it sound like active investing is easier than it is. There's a reason the Chartered Financial Analyst curriculum is a few reams of paper plus 4 years of work experience, rather than reading blogs. Practical investing (\"just buy the target date fund\") can be super easy, but once you go beyond that, it's not. I don't really agree with the \"anyone can do it and it's not work!\" premise, any more than I think that about lawyering or doctoring or computer programming. After 15 years I'm a programming expert; after some courses and a lot of reading, I'm not someone who could professionally run an actively-managed portfolio. I think most of us need to have the fun part separate from the serious cash part. Maybe literally distinct accounts that you keep at separate brokerages. Or just do something else for fun, besides investing. Morningstar has this problem too, and finance.yahoo.com, and Bloomberg, I mean, they are all interested in making you think about investing a lot more than you ought to. They all have an incentive to convince you that the latest headlines make a difference, when they don't. Bottom line, I don't think personal finance changes very quickly; the details of specific mutual funds change, and there's always some new twist in the tax code, but the big picture is pretty stable. I think going in-depth (say, read the Chartered Financial Analyst curriculum materials) would teach you a lot more than reading blogs frequently. The most important things to work on are income (career) and spending (to maximize income minus spending). That's where time investment will pay off. I know it's annoying to argue the premise of the question rather than answering, but I did try to mention a couple things to read somewhere in there ;-)", "Does allowing family to stay at the rental jeopardize my depreciation? No, accumulated depreciation that hasn't been deducted reduces your basis in the event of sale. That doesn't go anywhere. Accumulating more may not be allowed though. If the property is no longer rental (i.e.: personal use, your family member lives there for free), you cannot claim expenses or depreciation on it. If you still rent it out to your family member, but not at the fair market value, then you can only claim expenses up to the rental income. I.e.: you can only depreciate up to the extent the depreciation (after all the expenses) not being over the income generated. You cannot generate losses in such case, even if disallowed. If you rent to your family member at the market rate (make sure it is properly documented), then the family relationship really doesn't matter. You continue accumulating expenses as usual.", "Fairly straightforward to match the result from the calculator soup link. There is a formula to calculate n from the future value s (using natural logs) In Excel This was derived as shown To calculate n from the inflation-adjusted future value si requires using a solver since an algebraic formula cannot be formulated. As demonstrated Calculations done using Mathematica 7." ]

[ "I agree with the others that the ROTH is probably better. See this list of benefit/cost comparison (as opposed to rule differences)http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_401%28k%29_and_IRA_accounts&oldid=582368417" ]

[ "Some places banks/Credit Unions will allow you to refinance a auto loan. My credit Union only does this if the original loan was with another lender. They will send the money to the old lender, then give you a loan under the new terms. They are trying to get your business, not necessarily looking for a way make less money for themselves. You will have to see how much you will save. Which will be based on the delta of the length of the loan or the change in interest rate, or both. My Credit Union has a calculator to show you the numbers based on keeping the size of the payments the same, or keeping the number of payments the same. Make sure you understand any limitations regarding the refinance based on the age of the car, and if you are underwater.", "If you havent yet maxed out your ISA, then its a no-brainer. You get excellent tax rebates and its silly not to take advantage of these before considering self investing in shares. Note that even if your ISA is maxed out, the economic turbulence means that investing in individual stocks is an intimidating place for beginners right now. The FSA is also looking at revising the average percentages used for pension, from 7% for adventurous investments, down to 5% or 6%, so there is industry wide recognition that on average the stock market is going to be a little less lucrative than it was a few years ago. Thats not to say you cant still make a whopping profit, but the chances of you doing so as a first time investor are remote to say the least. My advice would be to look seriously into some of the social lending sites, where you can still easily get a 7% return with minimal risk. Whilst I do have a portfolio which is performing well overall (I am a very speculative investor), I am moving a lot of funds into Zopa.com, as I am averaging 7% return with a lot less time, effort and risk than the stockmarket. Whatever you decide, I think its time you thought about consulting an IFA. They can help you understand what sort of risk you are willing to tolerate, which is a very important aspect of investing.", "I personally take the zero percent financing plans any day. I have done this with my car and the iphone 6s. The vendors are trying to make it more attractive for you to \"afford\" the product. It could show up on your credit report and impact the amount of money you can borrow in the future (e.g getting a home loan). The other thing I do is make sure the monthly payments are automatically paid from my bank account so I don't miss any payments", "I'd say close them if they have fees, if you're worried about fraud or if you're going to be tempted to use them. It may have an affect on your credit rating, but it shouldn't hurt you seriously. Having too many cards gives you the \"opportunity\" to overspend, which obviously isn't good.", "Is it not that bad? Depends how bad is bad. The problems causes by a government having large debt are similar to those caused by an individual having large debt. The big issue is: More and more of your income goes to paying interest on the debt, and is thus not available for spending on goods and services. If it gets bad enough, you find you cannot make payments, you start defaulting on loans, and then you have to make serious sacrifices, like selling your property to pay the debt. Nations have an advantage over individuals in that they can sometimes repudiate debt, i.e. simply declare that they are not going to pay. Lenders can then refuse to give them more money, but that doesn't get their original loans paid back. In theory other nations could send in troops to seize property to pay the loan, but this is a very extreme solution. Totally aside from any moral considerations, modern warfare is very expensive, it's likely the war would cost you more than you'd recover on the debt. How much debt is too much? It's hard to give a number, any more than one could give a \"maximum acceptable debt\" for an individual. American banks have a rule of thumb that they won't normally loan you money if your total debt payments would be more than 1/3 of your income. I've never come close to that, that seems awfully high to me. But, say, a young person just starting out so he's not making a lot of money, and he lives someplace with high housing prices, might find this painful but acceptable. Etc.", "When you buy a put option, you're buying the right to sell stock at the \"strike\" price. To understand why you have to pay separately for that, consider the other side of the transaction. If I agree to trade stock for money at above market rates, I need to make up the difference somewhere or face bankruptcy. That risk of loss is what the option price is about. You might assume that means the market expects the price of AMD to fall to 8.01 from it's current price of 8.06 by the option expiration date. But that would also mean call options below the market price is worthless. But that's not quite true; people who price options need to factor in volatility, since things change with time. The price MIGHT fall, and traders need to account for that risk. So 1.99 roughly represents the probability of AMD rising to 10. There's probably some technical analysis one can do to the chain, but I don't see any abnormality of AMD here.", "I suggest taking a look at your pay stub or pay statement. Your employer should provide you with one for each time you get paid. This shows your gross income (pay period and year to date or YTD for short) and all stuff that gets deducted and how your actual payment is calculated. In my case there are nine things that get taken off: Other things that might show up there are various life or accident insurances, Child Care flexible spending account, legal & pet insurances, long term disability, etc. Some of those are under your control (through benefit election or contribution choices), others you just have to live with. Still, it's worth spending the time to look at it occasionally.", "Money is a token that you can trade to other people for favors. Debt is a tool that allows you to ask for favors earlier than you might otherwise. What you have currently is: If the very worst were to happen, such as: You would owe $23,000 favors, and your \"salary\" wouldn't make a difference. What is a responsible amount to put toward a car? This is a tricky question to answer. Statistically speaking the very worst isn't worth your consideration. Only the \"very bad\", or \"kinda annoying\" circumstances are worth worrying about. The things that have a >5% chance of actually happening to you. Some of the \"very bad\" things that could happen (10k+ favors): Some of the \"kinda annoying\" things that could happen (~5k favors): So now that these issues are identified, we can settle on a time frame. This is very important. Your $30,000 in favors owed are not due in the next year. If your student loans have a typical 10-year payoff, then your risk management strategy only requires that you keep $3,000 in favors (approx) because that's how many are due in the next year. Except you have more than student loans for favors owed to others. You have rent. You eat food. You need to socialize. You need to meet your various needs. Each of these things will cost a certain number of favors in the next year. Add all of them up. Pretending that this data was correct (it obviously isn't) you'd owe $27,500 in favors if you made no money. Up until this point, I've been treating the data as though there's no income. So how does your income work with all of this? Simple, until you've saved 6-12 months of your expenses (not salary) in an FDIC or NCUSIF insured savings account, you have no free income. If you don't have savings to save yourself when bad things happen, you will start having more stress (what if something breaks? how will I survive till my next paycheck? etc.). Stress reduces your life expectancy. If you have no free income, and you need to buy a car, you need to buy the cheapest car that will meet your most basic needs. Consider carpooling. Consider walking or biking or public transit. You listed your salary at \"$95k\", but that isn't really $95k. It's more like $63k after taxes have been taken out. If you only needed to save ~$35k in favors, and the previous data was accurate (it isn't, do your own math): Per month you owe $2,875 in favors (34,500 / 12) Per month you gain $5,250 in favors (63,000 / 12) You have $7,000 in initial capital--I mean--favors You net $2,375 each month (5,250 - 2,875) To get $34,500 in favors will take you 12 months ( ⌈(34,500 - 7,000) / 2,375⌉ ) After 12 months you will have $2,375 in free income each month. You no longer need to save all of it (Although you may still need to save some of it. Be sure recalculate your expenses regularly to reevaluate if you need additional savings). What you do with your free income is up to you. You've got a safety net in saved earnings to get you through rough times, so if you want to buy a $100,000 sports car, all you have to do is account for it in your savings and expenses in all further calculations as you pay it off. To come up with a reasonable number, decide on how much you want to spend per month on a car. $500 is a nice round number that's less than $2,375. How many years do you want to save for the car? OR How many years do you want to pay off a car loan? 4 is a nice even number. $500 * 12 * 4 = $24,000 Now reduce that number 10% for taxes and fees $24,000 * 0.9 = $21,600 If you're getting a loan, deduct the cost of interest (using 5% as a ballpark here) $21,600 * 0.95 = $20,520 So according to my napkin math you can afford a car that costs ~$20k if you're willing to save/owe $500/month, but only after you've saved enough to be financially secure.", "$260k mortgage is pretty high for $80k salary alone -- if you have expensive tastes, be prepared to tune them down. The make or break for you will be taxes and other recurring fees. If property taxes are trending higher than inflation in your area, you'll have trouble down the line. Decisions like this are really market driven, and I don't know much about Salt Lake City. In general, condo values get punished relative to single-family homes during bad market conditions. So if this is a really nice condo in a good building in a desirable part of the city you're probably going to see the value of the property increase as the general economy improves. If the property is good, go for it.", "A lot depends on whether your mortgage payments are interest only or 'repayment' and what the remaining term is on each of the mortgages. Either way I suspect that the best value for the money you put in will be had by making payments to the larger, newer mortgage. This is because the quicker you reduce the capital owed the less interest you will pay over the whole term of the mortgage and you've already had the older mortgage for sometime (unless you remortgaged) so the benefit you can get from an arbitrary reduction in the capital is inevitably less than you will get from the same reduction in the capital of the newer mortgage. Even if the two mortgages are the same age then the benefit of putting money into the one on the new house is greater due to the greater interest charged on it." ]

[ "If so, are there ways to reduce the amount of taxes owed? Given that it's currently December, I suppose I could sell half of what I want now, and the other half in January and it would split the tax burden over 2 years instead, but beyond that, are there any strategies for tax reduction in this scenario? One possibility is to also sell stocks that have gone down since you bought them. Of course, you would only do this if you have changed your mind about the stock's prospects since you bought it -- that is, it has gone down and you no longer think it will go up enough to be worth holding it. When you sell stocks, any losses you take can offset any gains, so if you sell one stock for a gain of $10,000 and another for a loss of $5,000, you will only be taxed on your net gain of $5,000. Even if you think your down stock could go back up, you could sell it to realize the loss, and then buy it back later at the lower price (as long as you're not worried it will go up in the meantime). However, you need to wait at least 30 days before rebuying the stock to avoid wash sale rules. This practice is known as tax loss harvesting." ]

[ "Regarding \"Interest on idle cash\", brokerage firms must maintain a segregated account on the brokerage firm's books to make sure that the client's money and the firm's money is not intermingled, and clients funds are not used for operational purposes. Source. Thus, brokerage firms do not earn interest on cash that is held unused in client accounts. Regarding \"Exchanges pay firm for liquidity\", I am not aware of any circumstances under which an exchange will pay a brokerage any such fee. In fact, the opposite is the case. Exchanges charge participants to transact business. See : How the NYSE makes money Similarly, market makers do not pay a broker to transact business on their behalf. They charge the broker a commission just like the broker charges their client a commission. Of course, a large broker may also be acting as market maker or deal directly with the exchange, in which case no such commission will be incurred by the broker. In any case, the broker will pay a commission to the clearing house.", "In such cases, it has a EIN, like any business would. Even absent the rent you suggest, the condo should have reserve funds, similar to an individual's emergency account, only more codified as to level and flows. These funds should be earning interest.", "The HST is a sales tax levied on most goods and services. It is important to realize that in both BC and Ontario, the new HST does not (in most cases) result in an increase in sales tax paid. For example, in Ontario the PST is 8% and when combined with the GST the sales tax is 13%. With the HST, the GST and PST are replaced by a single HST of 13% so the tax bill does not change. Some services that were previously not subject to PST (such as mutual fund service fees and labour) will now be subject to the HST. So some things will increase. Over time, this should not have a material impact on the consumer due to the way businesses remit GST/HST.", "An option is a financial instrument instrument that gives you the right, but not the obligation, to do some transaction in the future at a given price. An employee stock option is a kind of \"call option\" -- it gives you the right, but not the obligation, to buy the stock at a certain price (the \"exercise price\", usually set as the price of the stock when the option was granted). The idea is that you would \"exercise\" the option (buy the stock at the given price as provided by the option), if the value of the stock is higher than the exercise price, and not if it is lower. The option is gifted to you. But that does not mean you get any stock. If and when you choose to exercise the option, you would buy the stock with your own money. At what time you can exercise the option (and how many shares you can exercise at a given time) will be specified in the agreement. Usually, you can only exercise a particular share after it has \"vested\" (according to some vesting schedule), and you lose the ability to exercise after you no longer work for the company (plus perhaps a grace period), or after the option expires.", "Note that the quote distinguishes between \"all families\" and \"families with some savings\" - this just means there are so many families with less than 5k that they equal all those with savings above 5k. That might be because they are young and haven't started yet, or because it is just not a priority for them compared to food and rent. Nothing about the quote suggests that anyone believes once you've saved 5k, you're done. In fact since they show savings vs age, you can immediately see many people still have decades to save more. They may have 5k or less now, but they're not retiring now. How do you survive if you get to 65 and have nothing saved? There is some government money (social security) and many people sell their houses or get a reverse mortgage. Having equity in a house is not the same as having savings. And some older people live very frugally - they stop buying clothes, they stop redecorating their houses - while others live in flat out poverty. But you can't tell if that is their future from the fact they only had 5k saved when they were 32.", "Ever since my apartment complex started accepting rent payments online, I've almost never written a check. I use my debit card for everything. And I get paid by direct deposit.", "You have only sold 200 shares for $4.75 from those bought for $3.15. So your profit on those 200 shares is $1.60 per share or $320 or 51%. From that you have 110 shares left that cost you $3.15 and 277 shares that cost you $3.54. So the total cost of your remaining shares is $1,327.08 (110 x $3.15 + 277 x $3.54). So your remaining shares have a average cost of $3.429 per share ($1,327.08/387). We don't know what the current share price is as you haven't provided it, nor do we know what the company is, so lets say that the current price is $5 (or that you sell the remaining 387 shares for $5 per share). Then the profit on these 387 shares would be $1.571 per share or $607.92 or 46%. Your total profit would then be $320 + $ 607.92 = $927.92 or 47% (note that this profit neglects any brokerage or other fees, as you have not provided any). Edit due to new info. provided in question With the current share price at $6.06 then the profit on these 387 shares would be $2.631 per share or $1018.20 or 77%. Your total profit would then be $320 + $1018.20 = $1338.20 or 75% (note that this profit neglects any brokerage or other fees, as you have not provided any).", "www.earnings.com is helpful thinkorswim's thinkDesktop platform has a lot of earnings information tied with flags on their charts they are free.", "Many brokers offer a selection of ETFs with no transaction costs. TD Ameritrade and Schwab both have good offerings. Going this route will maximize diversification while minimizing friction.", "The United States Federal Reserve has decided that interest rates should be low. (They think it may help the economy. The details matter little here though.) It will enforce this low rate by buying Treasury bonds at this very low interest rate. (Bonds are future money, so this means they pay a lot of money up front, for very little interest in the future. The Fed will pay more than anyone who offers less money up front, so they can set the price as long as they're willing to buy.) At the end of the day, Treasury bonds pay nearly no interest. Since there's little money to be made with Treasuries, people who want better-than-zero returns will bid up the current-price of any other bonds or similar loan-like instruments to get what whatever rate of return that they can. There's really no more than one price for money; you can think of the price of those bonds as basically (Treasury rate + some modifier based on the risk) percent. I realize thinking about bond prices is weird and different than other prices (you're measuring future-money using present-money and it's easy to be confused) and assure you it ultimately makes sense :) Anyway. Your savings account money has to compete with everyone else willing to lend money to banks. Everyone-else lends money for peanuts, so you get peanuts on your savings account too. Your banking is probably worth more to your bank on account of your check-card payment processing fees (collected from the merchant) than from the money they make lending out your savings (notice how many places have promotional rates if you make your direct deposits or use your check card to make a purchase N times a month). In Europe, it's similar, except you've got a different central bank. If Europe's bank operated radically differently for an extended period of time, you'd expect to see a difference in the exchange rates which would ultimately make the returns from investing in those currencies pretty similar as well. Such a change may show up domestically as inflation in the country with the loose-money policy, and internationally as weakness against other currencies. There's really only one price for money around the entire world. Any difference boils down to a difference in (perceived) risk." ]

[ "If the firm treats you as an employee then they are treated as having a place of business in the UK and therefore are obliged to operate PAYE on your behalf - this rule has applied to EU States since 2010 and the non-EU EEA members, including Switzerland, since 2012. If you are not an employee then your main options are: An umbrella company would basically bill the client on your behalf and pay you net of taxes and NI. You potentially take home a bit less than you would being 100% independent but it's a lot less hassle and potentially makes sense for a small contract." ]

[ "Fiduciary They are obligated by the rules of the exchanges they are listed with. Furthermore, there is a strong chance that people running the company also have stock, so it personally benefits them to create higher prices. Finally, maybe they don't care about the prices directly, but by being a good company with a good product or service, they are desirable and that is expressed as a higher stock price. Not every action is because it will raise the stock price, but because it is good for business which happens to make the stock more valuable.", "The question is: how do you quantify investment risk? As Michael S says, one approach is to treat investment returns as a random variable. Bill Goetzmann (Yale finance professor) told me that if you accept that markets are efficient or that the price of an asset reflects it's underlying value, then changes in price represent changes in value, so standard deviation naturally becomes the appropriate measure for riskiness of an asset. Essentially, the more volatile an asset, the riskier it is. There is another school of thought that comes from Ben Graham and Warren Buffett, which says that volatility is not inherently risky. Rather, risk should be defined as the permanent loss of capital, so the riskiness of an asset is the probability of a permanent loss of capital invested. This is easy to do in casino games, based on basic probability such as roulette or slots. But what has been done with the various kinds of investment risks? My point is saying that certain bonds are \"low risk\" isn't good enough; I'd like some numbers--or at least a range of numbers--and therefore one could calculate expected payoff (in the statistics sense). Or can it not be done--and if not, why not? Investing is more art than science. In theory, a Triple-A bond rating means the asset is riskless or nearly riskless, but we saw that this was obviously wrong since several of the AAA mortgage backed securities (MBS) went under prior to the recent US recession. More recently, the current threat of default suggests that bond ratings are not entirely accurate, since US Treasuries are considered riskless assets. Investors often use bond ratings to evaluate investments - a bond is considered investment grade if it's BBB- or higher. To adequately price bonds and evaluate risk, there are too many factors to simply refer to a chart because things like the issuer, credit quality, liquidity risk, systematic risk, and unsystematic risk all play a factor. Another factor you have to consider is the overall portfolio. Markowitz showed that adding a riskier asset can actually lower the overall risk of a portfolio because of diversification. This is all under the assumption that risk = variance, which I think is bunk. I'm aware that Wall Street is nothing like roulette, but then again there must be some math and heavy economics behind calculating risk for individual investors. This is, after all, what \"quants\" are paid to do, in part. Is it all voodoo? I suspect some of it is, but not all of it. Quants are often involved in high frequency trading as well, but that's another note. There are complicated risk management products, such as the Aladdin system by BlackRock, which incorporate modern portfolio theory (Markowitz, Fama, Sharpe, Samuelson, etc) and financial formulas to manage risk. Crouhy's Risk Management covers some of the concepts applied. I also tend to think that when people point to the last x number of years of stock market performance, that is of less value than they expect. Even going back to 1900 provides \"only\" 110 years of data, and in my view, complex systems need more data than those 40,500 data points. 10,000 years' worth of data, ok, but not 110. Any books or articles that address these issues, or your own informed views, would be helfpul. I fully agree with you here. A lot of work is done in the Santa Fe Institute to study \"complex adaptive systems,\" and we don't have any big, clear theory as of yet. Conventional risk management is based on the ideas of modern portfolio theory, but a lot of that is seen to be wrong. Behavioral finance is introducing new ideas on how investors behave and why the old models are wrong, which is why I cannot suggest you study risk management and risk models because I and many skilled investors consider them to be largely wrong. There are many good books on investing, the best of which is Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor. Although not a book on risk solely, it provides a different viewpoint on how to invest and covers how to protect investments via a \"Margin of Safety.\" Lastly, I'd recommend Against the Gods by Peter Bernstein, which covers the history of risk and risk analysis. It's not solely a finance book but rather a fascinating historical view of risk, and it helps but many things in context. Hope it helps!", "It depends on where you are in life, and where you want to be at some point in the future, and the taxes, expenses and income at those points in your life. You don't get a mortgage to save on taxes, or keep a mortgage to save on taxes. But if somebody said they want to have the house paid off before they retire, that sounds to me like a great plan. They do need to balance it with saving for retirement, emergency fund, and college costs for themselves or their children. Without having the whole picture it is impossible to say doing X is always a good idea.", "I'm not convinced that cost of living is related to ensuring greater appreciation of assets over time, especially over a 30 year window. The importance of regional differences in cost of living to anyone's decision-making should be weighted by the percentage of their income spent on indexed items. That is, for people who spend 35%, or even 50% of their salary on indexed items, regional variances in cost of living are far more important than for people who spend 10% of their salaries on these items. Essentially, as income goes up, the significance of cost of living goes down. See http://macromon.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/how-u-s-income-groups-get-squeezed-by-food-prices/ for a pretty picture of the relevance of cost of living across income groups (for food & gas, which are often not included in indexes due to volatility). So, if you are wondering whether cost of living is overstated, perhaps it's because you are in an income group that doesn't need to worry about it as much. Whether it's overstated or not will depend on how much one makes and spends.", "My master's thesis was on using genetic algorithms and candle stick method. If you are familiar, the AI was used to answer questions like \"what is a long day\", which is not formally defined in most candle stick texts. So in theory unlimited potential for learning including teaching machines to learn. Wall street pays pretty well for such developers, and if you are young and single man Manhattan is pretty sweet place to be. In practicality your formula for building wealth is the same as everyone else's: get out of debt, build an emergency fund, and invest. Initially invest in growth stock mutual funds through a 401K (assuming US).", "Wealth is not distributed equally in any economy. And, even if it were, differentiation between people would lead to different interests being expressed in different ways. As people either attempt to earn more (to improve their situation) or different people express those interests in different ways (saving money to go on a skiing holiday, or to put a downpayment on a house) people invite new products and services to be created to satisfy those demands. In addition, there is the problem of uncertainty. People save money today to cope with uncertainty tomorrow (healthcare, pensions, education, etc.). Those savings don't remain idle, but are lent to others who believe that they can make a return through investing in new businesses or ideas. The point being that any dynamic economy will experience change in the amount of goods available to the people within that economy. From an economic perspective \"growth\" is just another permutation. From a political perspective, \"growth\" implies that people are getting wealthier. If that growth is asymmetrically distributed (e.g. the poor don't experience it and the middle classes don't feel they get enough of it) then that is a problem for politicians. The emerging markets of the world are trying to raise millions of people out of poverty. Growth is a way of measuring how quickly they are achieving that end. Growth, in and of itself, is meaningless. There are some people who believe that \"we\" (as some proxy of society) have enough stuff and growth is unnecessary but that implies that everyone is satisfied. For as long as some people wish to have more wealth/stuff, and have the means to achieve this, there will be growth. And for as long as there is uncertainty growth will vary.", "The original post's $16 has two errors: Here is the first scenario: . Tax Liability($) on Net . Cash # of Price Paper Realized Value Time: ($) Shares ($/sh) Profits Profits ($) 1. Start with: 100 - n/a - - 100 2. After buy 10@10$/sh: - 10 10 - - 100 3. Before selling: - 10 12 (5) - 115 4. After sell 10@12$/sh: 120 - n/a - (5) 115 5. After buy 12@10$/sh: - 12 10 - (5) 115 6. Before selling: - 12 12 (6) (5) 133 7. After sell 12@12$/sh: 144 - n/a - (11) 133 8. After buy 14@10$/sh: 4 14 10 - (11) 133 9. Before selling: 4 14 12 (7) (11) 154 10.After sell 14@12$/sh: 172 - n/a - (18) 154 At this point, assuming that all of the transactions occurred in the same fiscal year, and the realized profits were subject to a 25% short-term capital gains tax, you would owe $18 in taxes. Yes, this is 25% of $172 - $100.", "Trading volumes are higher at the end of the day as many traders close their open positions. In the morning however, traders incorporate various factors like performance of worldwide markets overnight, any corporate or government announcements, global macro events, etc.", "The SCHUFA in Germany works a bit different from the FICO score in the US. My background: I am a German currently living in the US. The information others want to see from the SCHUFA are a bit different. If you want to example rent a house or an apartment, the landlord often wants to see a SCHUFA statement which only shows that there are no negative entries. This statement you can get easily from online and they don't mention your credit score there. If you apply for a real credit or want to lease a car, they want to look deeper in your SCHUFA profile. However, very important is: They need signed permission to do this. Every participating company can submit entries to your profile where the score is calculated from. For example mobile phone plans, leasing a car, applying for a loan. Some lenders decide on the score itself, some on the overall profile and some also take your income into account. Since there is no hire & fire in Germany you are often asked to show your last 3 paychecks. This, in combination with your SCHUFA score is used for determination if you are eligible for a loan or not. However, they check through every entry which is made there and as long as it is reasonable and fits to your income (car for 800 EUR/month with a 1000 EUR salary does not!) you should not have a problem establishing a good score. The, in my eyes, unfair part about Schufa is that they take your zip code and your neighborhood into account when calculating their score. Also moving often affects the score negatively. To finally answer your question: Credit history is also built by mobile phone plans etc. in Germany. As long as you pay everything on time you should be fine. A bad score can definitely hurt you, but it is not as important to have a score as it is in the US because the banks also determine your creditworthiness based on your monthly income and your spending behavior.", "If someone gains access to these data, he could use social engineering approach to impersonate you - i.e. call the American Express and ask tell he he is you and he lost the access to the account and he needs the access to be reset and sent to certain email, and if they doubt it's you he would send them the statement data, even on company letterhead (which he would be able to fake since he has the data from the statements, and AE has no idea how the authentic letterhead looks like). He could also do the opposite trick - like calling your assistant or even yourself and saying something like \"I'm from American Express, calling about the transaction at this-and-this date and this-and-this time, this amount, please confirm you are {your name} and your address is {your address}, I need to confirm something\" - which would make it appear as he is really from AE since he knows all these details - and then ask you some detail he's missing \"for security\" - like your birth date or last digits of SSID or anything like that - and then use these details to impersonate you to AE. So putting all this info together where it can be accessed by strangers does have risks. It may not work out if both you and AE personnel are vigilant and follow instructions to the letter, but we know it not always so." ]

[ "it seems you have 3 concerns:" ]

[ "There are two umbrellas in investing: active management and passive management. Passive management is based on the idea \"you can't beat the market.\" Passive investors believe in the efficient markets hypothesis: \"the market interprets all information about an asset, so price is equal to underlying value\". Another idea in this field is that there's a minimum risk associated with any given return. You can't increase your expected return without assuming more risk. To see it graphically: As expected return goes up, so does risk. If we stat with a portfolio of 100 bonds, then remove 30 bonds and add 30 stocks, we'll have a portfolio that's 70% bonds/30% stocks. Turns out that this makes expected return increase and lower risk because of diversification. Markowitz showed that you could reduce the overall portfolio risk by adding a riskier, but uncorrelated, asset! Basically, if your entire portfolio is US stocks, then you'll lose money whenever US stocks fall. But, if you have half US stocks, quarter US bonds, and quarter European stocks, then even if the US market tanks, half your portfolio will be unaffected (theoretically). Adding different types of uncorrelated assets can reduce risk and increase returns. Let's tie this all together. We should get a variety of stocks to reduce our risk, and we can't beat the market by security selection. Ideally, we ought to buy nearly every stock in the market so that So what's our solution? Why, the exchange traded fund (ETF) of course! An ETF is basically a bunch of stocks that trade as a single ticker symbol. For example, consider the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY). You can purchase a unit of \"SPY\" and it will move up/down proportional to the S&P 500. This gives us diversification among stocks, to prevent any significant downside while limiting our upside. How do we diversify across asset classes? Luckily, we can purchase ETF's for almost anything: Gold ETF's (commodities), US bond ETF's (domestic bonds), International stock ETFs, Intl. bonds ETFs, etc. So, we can buy ETF's to give us exposure to various asset classes, thus diversifying among asset classes and within each asset class. Determining what % of our portfolio to put in any given asset class is known as asset allocation and some people say up to 90% of portfolio returns can be determined by asset allocation. That pretty much sums up passive management. The idea is to buy ETFs across asset classes and just leave them. You can readjust your portfolio holdings periodically, but otherwise there is no rapid trading. Now the other umbrella is active management. The unifying idea is that you can generate superior returns by stock selection. Active investors reject the idea of efficient markets. A classic and time proven strategy is value investing. After the collapse of 07/08, bank stocks greatly fell, but all the other stocks fell with them. Some stocks worth $100 were selling for $50. Value investors quickly snapped up these stocks because they had a margin of safety. Even if the stock didn't go back to 100, it could go up to $80 or $90 eventually, and investors profit. The main ideas in value investing are: have a big margin of safety, look at a company's fundamentals (earnings, book value, etc), and see if it promises adequate return. Coke has tremendous earnings and it's a great company, but it's so large that you're never going to make 20% profits on it annually, because it just can't grow that fast. Another field of active investing is technical analysis. As opposed to the \"fundamental analysis\" of value investing, technical analysis involves looking at charts for patterns, and looking at stock history to determine future paths. Things like resistance points and trend lines also play a role. Technical analysts believe that stocks are just ticker symbols and that you can use guidelines to predict where they're headed. Another type of active investing is day trading. This basically involves buying and selling stocks every hour or every minute or just at a rapid pace. Day traders don't hold onto investments for very long, and are always trying to predict the market in the short term and take advantage of it. Many individual investors are also day traders. The other question is, how do you choose a strategy? The short answer is: pick whatever works for you. The long answer is: Day trading and technical analysis is a lot of luck. If there are consistent systems for trading , then people are keeping them secret, because there is no book that you can read and become a consistent trader. High frequency trading (HFT) is an area where people basically mint money, but it s more technology and less actual investing, and would not be categorized as day trading. Benjamin Graham once said: In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine. Value investing will work because there's evidence for it throughout history, but you need a certain temperament for it and most people don't have that. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to adequately study stocks, and people with day jobs can't devote that kind of time. So there you have it. This is my opinion and by no means definitive, but I hope you have a starting point to continue your study. I included the theory in the beginning because there are too many monkeys on CNBC and the news who just don't understand fundamental economics and finance, and there's no sense in applying a theory until you can understand why it works and when it doesn't.", "Etiquette doesn't really come into the picture here. The business offers a service and I choose to accept it. Personally, I use my debit card as much as possible. For every transaction, I record it in my checkbook. Then, when I do reconciling, I know exactly how much I paid for various categories of stuff. Good for budgeting. Most often my purchases are over $10 but when they aren't, I have no qualms about using the card.", "With Forex trading - physical currency is not involved. You're playing with the live exchange rates, and it is not designed for purchasing/selling physical currency. Most Forex trading is based on leveraging, thus you're not only buying money that you're not going to physically receive - you're also paying with money that you do not physically have. The \"investment\" is in fact a speculation, and is akin to gambling, which, if I remember correctly, is strictly forbidden under the Islam rules. That said, the positions you have - are yours, and technically you can demand the physical currency to be delivered to you. No broker will allow online trading on these conditions, though, similarly to the stocks - almost no broker allows using physical certificates for stocks trading anymore.", "There's a case to be made that companies below a certain market cap have more potential than the higher ones. Consider, Apple cannot grow 100 fold from its current value. At $700B or so in value, that would be a $70T goal, just about the value of all the combined wealth in the entire US. At some point, the laws of large numbers take over, and exponential growth starts to flatten out. On the flip side, Apple may have as good or better chance to rise 10% over the next 6-12 months as a random small cap stock.", "As I write this, the NASDAQ Composite is at 2790.00, down 6.14 points from yesterday. To calculate the percentage, you take 6.14 and divide by yesterday's close of 2796.14 to yield 0.22%. In your example, if SPY drops from 133.68 to 133.32, you use the difference of -0.36 and divide by the original, i.e. -0.36/133.68 = -0.27%. SPY is an ETF which you can invest in that tracks the S&P 500 index. Ideally, the index would have dropped the same percentage as SPY, but the points would be different (~10x higher). To answer your question about how one qualifies a point, it completely depends on the index being discussed. For example, the S&P 500 is a market-capitalization weighted index of the common stock of 500 large-cap US public companies. It is as if you owned every share of each of the 500 companies, then divide by some large constant to create a number that's easily understood mentally (i.e. 1330). The NASDAQ Composite used the same methodology but includes practically all stocks listed on the NASDAQ. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a price-weighted index of 30 large-cap companies. It's final value is modified using a divisor known as the Dow Divisor, which accounts for stock splits and similar events that have occurred since a stock has joined the index. Thus, points when referring to an index do not typically represent dollars. Rather, they serve as a quantitative measure of how the market is doing based on the performance of the index constituents. ETFs like SPY add a layer of abstraction by creating an investible vehicle that ideally tracks the value of the underlying index directly. Finally, neither price nor index value is related to volume. Volume is a raw measurement of the total number of shares traded for a given stock or the aggregate for a given exchange. Hope this helps!", "In practical terms, it shouldn't. Market cap changes every day (assuming public trading, of course) or even second-by-second, and focusing on investor sentiment toward your company's stock is not the wisest way to make strategic decisions. That being said, company execs do need to be mindful of unusual swings in their company's share prices because it can sometimes be an indicator of news/information of which they're unaware. At the same time, you can't just disregard your shareholders, especially the big institutional players who may have large voting blocks with which to replace you if they feel you're not responsive to events. They are the ones who make strategic decisions based on your company's share price, right? (grin) The issue around swings in market cap is more about public perception than reality, so it is important for companies to have a good public relations strategy ready to go that can address questions/concerns in case of some market event. After all, consumers who hear that a company's share price has suddenly fallen by, say, 30% might be more hesitant to do business with that company because there's a (perhaps irrational) fear the company's not doing well and may not be around much longer. Investors are, by their very nature, emotional rather than rational. Any kind of news can cause a stampede toward or away from a stock for no reason that an investment professional could ever explain. That's why it's impossible to spend any real time focusing on market cap (leave that to your P.R. department to worry about). IF, as a company executive, you focus on doing the right things to make your company successful then any questions/concerns about market cap will resolve themselves. Good luck!", "EFA must be bought and sold in US dollars. XIN allows people to buy and sell EFA in Canadian dollars without exposing their investment to unpredictable swings in the USD/CAD ratio. This is what's known as a currency-hedged instrument. Now, why the chart sums up to over 100% is anyone's guess. Presumably it's the result of a couple hundred rounding errors from all the components. If you view their most recent report, it also sums up to over 100%, but at least the EFA component is (sensibly) under 100%. P.S. I'm not seeing where it says there's only one holding. There's the primary holding, plus over 100 other cash holdings to effect the currency-hedging.", "Suppose I purchase $10,000 worth of a particular share today. If the person(s) I am purchasing the shares from paid $9,000 for those shares, then I replacing their $9,000 investment with my $10,000 investment. This is a net inflow of $1,000 into the market. Similarly, if the person(s) I am purchasing the shares from paid $11,000 for those shares, then their $11,000 investment is being replace by my $10,000 investment. This is a net outflow of $1,000 out of the market. The aggregate of all such inflows and outflows in the net inflow/outflow into the market over a given period of time. (Here we are ignoring the effects of new share issues.)", "You add the wash sale loss to your cost basis for the other transaction so you would have two entries in your schedule d reporting 1.) Listing the $2000 loss as a wash 2.) The cost basis for your second transaction is thus $1000+$2000 = $3000 so when it was sold for $2000 you now have a reportable loss of $1000. For more information see here.... http://www.ehow.com/how_5313540_calculate-wash-sale.html", "According to the US Mint, the Government does still have a gold reserve stored mostly in Fort Knox in Kentucky, but there is some in New York and Colorado too. Some facts from their site: That last point is an interesting one. They are basically saying, yes we have it, and no you can't see it. Some conspiracy buffs claim no one has been allowed in there to audit how much they have in over 50 years leading them to speculate that they are bluffing. Although the dollar is no longer tied to the gold standard, throwing that much gold into the market would definitely add fuel the volatility of the finance world, which already has it's share of volatility and isn't hungry for more.The impact on the price of the dollar would be quite complicated and hard to predict." ]

[ "As your question is written now, it looks like you have a typo. Your stated APR is 5.542% = 0.05542, not 0.005542 as you've written. I ran the numbers that you gave (accounting for the typo) through the formula at Wikipedia and got $849.2528 / month, which will round to $849.25 for most payments. That doesn't match the number that you computed or the number on your TIL. (Maybe you also miskeyed the result of your calculation?) I agree that it's unlikely that this is just a calculation error by the mortgage company, although I wouldn't completely rule it out. Are you paying anything else like a property tax escrow? I didn't pull a blank TIL form to see what might go into the monthly payment line that you showed, but in many cases you do pay more than just principle and interest each month. (Not sure if that gets reflected at that point on the form though.)" ]

[ "There are a lot of great suggestions here on how to get and keep your finances in shape. But I have to say, I disagree with some on the starting point. The first step to living frugal is to convince yourself that it is worth it. That it is the way to go and the way you want to manage your finances. As @DrFredEdison and @fennec stated, the reason we frugal people don't spend wildly is because of what we believe. So I would suggest buying a book or video/audio series from someone like Dave Ramsey who will encourage and motivate you to spend wisely and show you practical ways to get started. With that said I do agree with a lot of the practical suggestions that have been given here.", "Not sure if I follow your question completely. Re: What if some fraud takes place that's too big even for it to fund? SIPC does not fund anything. What it does is takes over the troubled brokerage firm, books / assets and returns the money faster. Refer to SIPC - What SIPC Covers... What it Does Not and more specifically SIPC - Why We Are Not the FDIC. SIPC is free for ordinary investors. To get the same from elsewhere one has to pay the premium. Edit: The event we are saying is a large brokrage firm, takes all of the Margin Money from Customer Accounts and loses it and also sell off all the stocks actually shown as being held in customer account ... that would be to big. While its not clear as to what exactly will happens, my guess is that the limits per customers will go down as initial payments. Subsequent payments will only be done after recover of funds from the bankrupt firm. What normally happens when a brokrage firm goes down is some of the money from customers account is diverted ... stocks are typically safe and not diverted. Hence the way SIPC works is that it will give the money back to customer faster to individuals. In absence of SIPC individual investors would have had to fight for themselves.", "I am co-owner of a business, and we incorporated federally. (Mostly to limit liability.) There is some excellent information above, and most of my wisdom I got from a trusted lawyer and accountant (find experts you trust in these two areas, they will prove invaluable in so many areas.) The one point I would add is that if you decide to incorporate, you can do so federally or provincially. We were all set to go provincially, when our lawyer asked \"Is there any chance you might move the business? Any chance you might want to do work in other provinces? What about next year? Five years?\" If you are going through the expenses to set up a corporation, consider doing so federally, the extra costs were insignificant, but someday you might be glad you don't have to start from scratch. In this day and age, many people end up moving out of province for work, family concerns, etc.", "For some ideas on investing priority guidelines, see Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing. Congratulations on being debt free! My advice to you is to do what you can to remain debt free. You could certainly invest the money; it will earn much more over the long-term in a stock mutual fund than it would left in a savings account. However, if you need any of this money in the next few years, it would be a shame if it lost money in the short-term. How much do you need to finish grad school? Don't invest that money in the stock market, because you will need it over the next few years. Likewise, think about other expenses that are coming up. Will your car need to be replaced in the next couple of years? Will you have enough income to meet your living expenses while you are in grad school, or will you need some of this to money to help with that? Finally, it would be good to keep some extra as an emergency fund, so you can easily pay for any unexpected expenses that come up. If you can make it through grad school debt free, you will be much better off than if you invest all the money but take out student loans in the process. After you've accounted for all of that, whatever is left of the money could definitely be invested. If your goal is to start a retirement fund, an index mutual fund invested inside a Roth IRA is a great place to start.", "A few points that I would note: Call options - Could the bond be called away by the issuer? This is something to note as some bonds may end up not being as good as one thought because of this option that gets used. Tax considerations - Are you going for corporate, Treasury, or municipals? Different ones may have different tax consequences to note if you aren't holding the bond in a tax-advantaged account,e.g. Roth IRA, IRA or 401k. Convertible or not? - Some bonds are known as \"convertibles\" since the bond comes with an option on the stock that can be worth considering for some kinds of bonds. Inflation protection - Some bonds like TIPS or series I savings bonds can have inflation protection built into them that can also be worth understanding. In the case of TIPS, there are principal adjustments while the savings bond will have a change in its interest rate. Default risk - Some of the higher yield bonds may have an issuer go under which is another way one may end up with equity in a company rather than getting their money back. On the other side, for some municipals one could have the risk of the bond not quite being as good as one thought like some Detroit bonds that may end up in a different result given their bankruptcy but there are also revenue bonds that may not meet their target for another situation that may arise. Some bonds may be insured though this requires a bit more research to know the credit rating of the insurer. As for the latter question, what if interest rates rise and your bond's value drops considerably? Do you hold it until maturity or do you try to sell it and get something that has a higher yield based on face value?", "I'm going to ignore your numbers to avoid spending the time to understand them. I'm just going to go over the basic moving parts of trading an upside down car against another financed car because I think you're conflating price and value. I'm also going to ignore taxes, and fees, and depreciation. The car has an acquisition cost (price) then it has a value. You pay the price to obtain this thing, then in the future it is worth what someone else will pay you. When you finance a car you agree to your $10,000 price, then you call up Mr. Bank and agree to pay 10% per year for 5 years on that $10,000. Mr. Banker wires over $10,000 and you drive home in your car. Say in a year you want a different car. This new car has a price of $20,000, and wouldn't you know it they'll even buy your current car from you. They'll give you $7,000 to trade in your current car. Your current car has a value of $7,000. You've made 12 payments of $188.71. Of those payments about $460 was interest, you now owe about $8,195 to Mr. Banker. The new dealership needs to send payment to Mr. Banker to get the title for your current car. They'll send the $7,000 they agreed to pay for your car. Then they'll loan you the additional $1,195 ($8,195 owed on the car minus $7,000 trade in value). Your loan on the new car will be for $21,195, $20,000 for the new car and $1,195 for the amount you still owed on the old car after the dealership paid you $7,000 for your old car. It doesn't matter what your down-payment was on the old car, it doesn't matter what your payment was before, it doesn't matter what you bought your old car for. All that matters is how much you owe on it today and how much the buyer (the dealership) is willing to pay you for it. How much of this is \"loss\" is an extremely vague number to derive primarily because your utility of the car has a value. But it could be argued that the $1,195 added on to your new car loan to pay for the old car is lost.", "The first thing you need to do is look at your terms and conditions of your credit card, or ask your bank, how they will apply the payments. As Dilip notes in his answer, in the US, they will likely apply the minimum payment to the lower rate balance, and then must apply the rest above the minimum to the higher rate balance. In other countries, this will vary by law and custom. Do not assume it will pay off the higher balance, or proportionally, without asking. Let's take the following example. You owe $6000. $5000 is at 13.5% (normal purchase rate) and $1000 is at 22% (cash advance rate). If your bank applies payments to both balances proportionally, then a payment of $600 will reduce your purchase balance by $500 and your cash advance balance by $100. The average APR, then, is simply sum of the product of the APR times balance. So here, (.135*5000 + .225*1000)/6000 = 15%. This is called a weighted average. If the bank applies the payment differently - such as to the lower rate first, or some specified part to the lower rate and the rest to the higher rate - then this will be misleading if you enter it into a calculator, because your average APR will rise over time as you pay off the purchase balance but don't pay off the cash advance balance, or may decrease if the opposite happens. The weighted average is probably reasonably close in the circumstance that you describe, even if you have rules applying the balance differently, so long as they don't 100% pay down the lower rate - so it may be the simplest option for you in terms of rough calculations (where it's not critical to be correct, just close). One approach using the online calculators that might be better, is to treat these like two separate loans/cards. Many calculators exist for multiple balances. Then you can allocate funds differently to the two 'cards'. This would allow you to see how long you will need until you've paid off the higher balance, for example, although it probably won't perfectly match things - unless you find a site that has this specific option available you probably will have to either live with a small error in your calculations or do the math by hand.", "As revised, the answer is still that you're asking the wrong question. If your father wants to make money available on your debit card, all he has to do is deposit the money into your checking account. Where he gets that money from -- as an AmEx casH advance, by selling your bicycle for you, or simply out of one of his own bank accounts -- is irrelevant.", "The problem with daily-rebalanced \"inverse\" or \"leveraged\" ETFs is that since they rebalance every day, you can lose money even if your guess as to the market's direction is correct. Quoting from FINRA'S guide as to why these are a bad idea: How can this apparent breakdown between longer term index returns and ETF returns happen? Here’s a hypothetical example: let’s say that on Day 1, an index starts with a value of 100 and a leveraged ETF that seeks to double the return of the index starts at $100. If the index drops by 10 points on Day 1, it has a 10 percent loss and a resulting value of 90. Assuming it achieved its stated objective, the leveraged ETF would therefore drop 20 percent on that day and have an ending value of $80. On Day 2, if the index rises 10 percent, the index value increases to 99. For the ETF, its value for Day 2 would rise by 20 percent, which means the ETF would have a value of $96. On both days, the leveraged ETF did exactly what it was supposed to do—it produced daily returns that were two times the daily index returns. But let’s look at the results over the 2 day period: the index lost 1 percent (it fell from 100 to 99) while the 2x leveraged ETF lost 4 percent (it fell from $100 to $96). That means that over the two day period, the ETF's negative returns were 4 times as much as the two-day return of the index instead of 2 times the return. That example is for \"just\" leveraging 2x in the same direction. Inverse funds have the same kind of issue. An example from Bogleheads Wiki page on these kinds of funds says that over 12/31/2007 to 12/31/2010, The funds do exactly what they say on any given day. But any losses get \"locked in\" each day. While normally a 50% loss needs a 100% gain to get back to a starting point, a fund like this needs more than a 100% gain to get back to its starting point. The result of these funds across multiple days doesn't match the index it's matching over those several days, and you won't make money over the long term. Do look at the further examples at the links I've referenced above, or do your own research into the performance of these funds during time periods both when the market is going up and going down. Also refer to these related and/or duplicate questions:", "Here's how I have worked it out. Different answer to the one expected. Pretty sure it's right though." ]

[ "Verify if a local bank offers to participate in different stock markets - big companies like apple or facebook often gets traded on different markets - like Xetra (germany) or SIX (Switzerland). That being said I'd recommend you to rethink this strategy and maybe using some products offered by your bank - for 1000$ you will quickly drown in fees (my bank requires 40$ for every trade. If you buy and sell them you already lost nearly 10% of your investment)" ]

[ "Your employer decides what options you have in the 401k. You can talk to your HR about that. There are requirements for diversity of various types of investments, money-market funds is being one of them. That is the investment account equivalent of cash. While it is not really cash but rather short term bonds - the term is generally very short and the risk is very limited. You can't earn much there, and you can't lose much there - so for all intents and purposes you can treat is as a cash-equivalent.", "Same question had popped up in our office,and we got an answer from one of the senior colleague. He said that we can call it CARC (Compounded Annual Rate of Change).", "Since you have no sales, I'd likely question how well could you determine the value of the company's assets in a reasonable fashion. You may be better to estimate sales and discount that back to a current valuation. For example, insurance companies could determine that if you wanted to be paid $x/month for the rest of your life, the present day value of that is $y. There are similar mechanisms for businesses but this does get tricky as the estimates have to be somewhat conservative and you have to be prepared for some other scenarios. For example, if you got the $200,000 then would you really never have to ask for more external equity financing in the future or is it quite likely that you'd want another infusion down the road? While you can mark it at $1,000,000 there will be questions about why that value that you'd have to answer and saying, \"Cause I like big round numbers,\" may not go over well. My suggestion is to consider what kind of sales will the company have over the next 5 years that you could work back to determine a current price. If you believe the company can have $5,000,000 in sales over the 5 years then it may make sense to place the current valuation of $1,000,000 on it. I wouldn't look too much into the money and time you've invested as that isn't likely to go over well with investors that just because you've put in what is worth $x, the business may or may not be worth that. The challenge is that without sales, it is quite difficult to get an idea of what is the company worth. If it makes billions, then it is worth a lot more than a company that never turns a profit. Another way to consider this is the question of what kind of economic output do you think you could do working here for the next 5 years? Could you do thousands of dollars of work, millions of dollars or just a few bucks? Consider how you want this to be seen where if you want some help look up episodes of TV shows like \"Dragon's Den\" or \"Shark Tank\" as these give valuations often as part of the pitch which is what you are doing.", "Some credit checks are ignored as part of the scoring process. Some companies will pull your info, to make sure you haven't become a risk. Others will inquire before they send you an offer. Since you didn't initiate the inquiry it can't impact your score.", "One extremely important aspect that must be taken into consideration is the state of the housing market. If prices are rising it will probably be a false economy to delay your house purchase. Say you pay off a £5,000 student loan, thus delaying your house purchase another year you could well end up forking out an extra £10,000 on the mortgage due to the rise in house prices. Of course, if the housing market is falling then, without a doubt, pay off the student debt.", "I think you need to understand the options better before you go around calling anything worthless... $11k in a 1% savings account gets you just over $100 each year. Obviously you're not buying Ferraris with your returns but it's $100 more than your checking account will pay you. And, you're guaranteed to get your money back. I think a CD ladder is a great way to store your emergency fund. The interest rate on a CD is typically a bit better than a regular savings account, though the money is locked away and while we seem to be on the cusp of a rate increase it might not be the best time to put the money in jail. Generally there is some sort of fee or lost interest from cashing a CD early. You're still guaranteed to get your money back. Stock trading is probably a terrible idea. If you want some market exposure I'd take half of the money and buy a low expense S&P ETF, I wouldn't put my whole savings if I were you (or if I were me). Many large brokers have an S&P ETF option that you can generally buy with no commission and no loads. Vanguard is a great option VOO, Schwab has an S&P mutual fund SWPPX, and there are others. Actively trading individual stocks is a great way to let commissions and fees erode your account. There are some startup alternatives with lower fees, but personally I would stay away from individual stock picking unless you are in school for Finance and have some interest in paying attention and you're ready to possibly never see the money again. You're not guaranteed to get your money back. There are also money market accounts. These will typically pay some interest based on exposing your funds to some risk. It can be a bit better return than a savings account, but I probably wouldn't bother. An IRA (ROTH and Traditional) is just an account wrapper that offers certain tax benefits while placing certain restrictions on the use of some or all of the money until you reach retirement age. As a college student you should probably be more concerned about an emergency fund or traveling than retirement savings, though some here may disagree with me. With your IRA you can buy CDs or annuities, or stocks and ETFs or any other kind of security. Depending on what you buy inside the IRA, you might not be guaranteed to get your money back. First you need to figure out what you'd like to use the money for. Then, you need to determine when you'd need the money for that use. Then, you need to determine if you can sleep at night while your stock account fluctuates a few percent each day. If you can't, or you don't have answers for these questions, a savings account is a really low friction/low risk place store money and combat inflation while you come up with answers for those questions.", "The point of buying an index fund is that you don't have to pick winners. As long as the winners are included in the index fund (which can include far more than 500 stocks), you benefit on average because of overall upward historical market performance. Picking only the top 50 capitalized stocks in the S&P 500 does not guarantee you will successfully track the S&P 500 index because the stocks in the tail can account for an outsized amount of overall growth; the top 50 stocks by market capitalization change over time, and these stocks are not necessarily the stocks that perform better. As direct example, the 10 year average annual return for the S&P top 50 is 4.52%, while the 10 year average annual return for the S&P 500 is 5.10%. Issues of trading and balancing to maintain these aside, these indices are not the same.", "My original answer contained a fundamental error: it turns out that it is not true that any exchange can create its own product to track any underlying index. If the underlying index is copyrighted (such as the S&P indices, Russell indices, Dow Jones indices, etc.) then the exchange must enter into a licensing agreement (usually exclusive) with the copyright holder in order to use the index's formula (and name). Without such a license the exchange would only be able to approximate the underlying index, and I don't think that happens very much (because how would you market such a product?). The CME offers several futures (and other derivatives) whose face value is equivalent to some multiple of the S&P500's value on the date when the product expires. When such a product is actively traded, it may serve as a reasonable indicator of the \"market\"'s expectation of the S&P500's future value. So, you could pay attention to the front month of the CME's S&P 500 Mini future, which trades from 17:00-16:00 Chicago time, Sunday night through Friday afternoon. But remember that the prices quoted there are As another example, if you care about the Russell 2000 index, until 2017 the ICE Exchange happened to hold the license for its derivatives. They traded from 20:00-17:30 New York time, Sunday night through Friday afternoon. But in mid-2017 CME bought that license as well, so now you'll want to track it here. Moral: There's almost always some \"after hours\" product out there tracking whatever index you care about, but you may have to do some digging to find it, and it might not be all that useful for your specific purpose.", "I would open a taxable account with the same custodian that manages your Roth IRA (e.g., Vanguard, Fidelity, etc.). Then within the taxable account I would invest the extra money in low cost, broad market index funds that are tax efficient. Unlike in your 401(k) and Roth IRA, you will now have tax implications if your funds produce dividends or realize a capital gain. That is why tax-efficient funds are important to minimize this as much as possible. The 3-fund portfolio is a popular choice for taxable accounts because of simplicity and the tax efficiency of broad market index funds that are part of the three fund portfolio. The 3-fund portfolio normally consists of Depending on your tax bracket you may want to consider municipal bonds in your taxable instead of taxable bonds if your tax bracket is 25% or higher. Another option is to forgo bonds altogether in the taxable account and just hold bonds in retirement accounts while keeping tax efficient domestic and international tock funds in your taxable account. Then adjust the bond portion upward in your retirement accounts to account for the additional stocks in your taxable accounts. This will maintain the asset allocation that you've already chosen that is appropriate for your age and goals.", "Mint.com—Easy solution to provide insight into finances. Pros: Cons:" ]

[ "What might make more sense is to 'capture' your losses. Sell out the funds you have, move into something else that is different enough that the IRS won't consider it a wash sale, and you can then use those losses to offset gains (you can even carry them forward) You would still be in the market, just having made a sort of 'sideways move'. A month or two later (once you are clear of wash sale rules) you could shift back to your original choices. (this answer presumes you are in the US, or somewhere that lets you use losses to offset gains)" ]

[ "Yes timing does matter. Using a simple Rate of Change indicator over the past 100 days and smoothed out with a 50 day Moving Average, I have plotted the S&P 500 since the start of 2007. The idea is to buy when the ROC indicator crosses above the zero line and sell when the ROC indicator crosses below the zero line. I have compared the results below of timing the markets from the start of 2007 to dollar cost averaging starting from the start of 2007 and investing every 6 months. $80k is invested in both cases. For the timing the market option $80k was invested at the start of 2007, then the total figure was sold out when a sell signal was given, then the total amount reinvested when a new buy signal was given. For the DCA option $5000 was invested every 6 months starting from the start of 2007 until the last investment at the start of July 2014. The results are below: Timing the markets results in more than double the returns (not including dividends and brokerage). Edit It has been brought up that I haven't considered tax in my Timing the Market option. So I have updated my timing the market spread-sheet to take into account both long-term and short-term CGT in the USA for someone on the highest tax bracket. The results are below: The result is still almost a 2x higher returns for the timing the markets option. Also note that even with the DCA option you will have to sell one day and pay CGT on any profits there. However, the real danger with the DCA option is if you need to sell during a market downturn and not make any profits at all.", "There might just not be anything useful for you to do with that 'value'. As others mentioned, HELOCs have their risks and issues too. There is no risk-less way to take advantage of the value (outside of selling) It is similar to owning a rare stamp that is 'worth a million' - what good does it do you if you don't sell it? nothing. It is just a number on a sheet of paper, or even only on some people's minds.", "Take a look at FolioFN - they let you buy small numbers of shares and fractional shares too. There is an annual fee on the order of US$100/year. You can trade with no fees at two \"windows\" per day, or at any time for a $15 fee. You are better off leaving the stock in broker's name, especially if you live overseas. Otherwise you will receive your dividends in the form of cheques that might be expensive to try to cash. There is also usually a fee charged by the broker to obtain share certificates instead of shares in your account.", "Cosigning on a loan. More broadly any exchange of value between family members or friends. Despite good intentions, these often go awry.", "Generally, to be able to write off worthless securities, you need to show that they're indeed worthless. It's not necessarily easy, as you need to prove that there's no way they will regain any value in the future. What is usually done, instead, is very simple: you sell them. Many brokers are aware of this problem and will assist by buying these securities from you at a nominal price (E*Trade, for example, for $0.01, ScotTrade for $0.00), and providing a proper trade confirmation. This is a bona fide sale, so if the stock does regain value - it will be a profit for the broker. In this case - you just report it as a sale at loss. Check with your broker if they support such a solution.", "I assume that you are a citizen of India, and are what Indian law calls a NRI (NonResident Indian) and thus entitled to operate an NRE (NonResident External) account in India. You can deposit US dollars into the NRE account, but the money is converted to Indian Rupees (INR) and held as INR. You can withdraw the money and bring it back to the US as US dollars, but the INR will be converted to US$ at the exchange rate applicable on the date of the transaction. With the recent decline of the Indian Rupee against the US dollar, many NRE accounts lost a lot of their value. You can deposit any amount of money in your NRE account. Some banks may limit the amount you can send in one business day, but if 250 times that amount seriously limits the amount of money you want to send each year, you should not be asking here; there are enough expensive lawyers, bankers and tax advisors who will gladly guide you to a satisfactory solution. There is no limitation on the total amount that you can have in your NRE account. The earnings (interest paid) on the sum in your NRE account is not taxable income to you in India but you may still need to file an income tax return in India to get a refund of the tax withheld by the bank (TDS) and sent to the tax authorities. The bank should not withhold tax on the earnings in an NRE account but it did happen to me (in the past). While the interest paid on your NRE account is not taxable in India, it is taxable income to you on your US tax returns (both Federal and State) and you must declare it on your tax return(s) even though the bank will not issue a 1099-INT form to you. Be aware also about the reporting requirements for foreign accounts (FBAR, TD F90-22.1 etc). Lots of people ignored this requirement in the past, but are more diligent these days after the IRS got a truckload of information about accounts in foreign banks and went after people charging them big penalties for not filing these forms for ever so many years. There was a huge ruckus in the Indian communities in the US about how the IRS was unfairly targeting simple folks instead of auditing the rich! But, if the total value of the accounts did not exceed $10K at any time of the year, these forms do not need to be filed. It seems, though, that you will not fall under this exemption since you are planning on having considerably larger sums in your NRE account. So be sure and follow the rules.", "ITR1 or ITR2 needs to be filed. Declare the income through freelancing in the section \"income from other sources\"", "You cannot just read one book and some articles on Technical Analysis and some indicators and expect to be an expert and everything to just start falling into place and give you signals that will tell you when to buy and sell with precision and massive profits all the time. It is like someone reading a book on how to drive a car and then expecting to drive flawlessly the first time they sit in the driver's seat, or someone reading a book on brain surgery and expecting to be able to operate on a live patient the next day. It looks like you are using 3 or 4 indicators to get daily buy and sell signals on a daily chart for an EFT you're looking to hold for decades. So firstly you are using short term indicators for a long term outlook. You need to decide what timeframe you plan to hold your investments for and use chart periods and indicators that suit that timeframe. Secondly, each indicator can be used in a number of ways and the settings you use for each indicator can determine whether you get earlier or later signals. Also, you need to work out which indicators work well together and are complementary, compared to those that don't work well together and give conflicting signals. All this information will come together for you the more you read about and practice the art of Technical Analysis. If your timeframe is very long-term (decades) I would be using mainly a weekly chart, with a longer period MA, the ROC indicator and possibly some trend lines. Keep it simple. The price itself is very important too. You can determine when a trend is starting or has ended purely using the price. The definition of an uptrend is higher highs and higher lows, so on the weekly chart if there is a lower high followed by a lower low - this could be the end of the uptrend. If we get a lower low followed by a lower high - this again could be the end of the uptrend. These could be a good time to start getting cautious and maybe looking to sell. If you are using stop losses (which I recommend) this may be a good time to tighten your stops. Similarly, a downtrend is defined as lower lows and lower highs. If we get a higher low followed by a higher high it could be the end of the downtrend and maybe the start of an uptrend. This could be a good time to start getting ready to buy. You need to learn about how and where to set your buy and sell orders (including stops) and whether you wait for confirmation when you get a signal. All this takes some time, but the more you read, the more you attend live events and the more you practice the more they will become second nature. In order to get the best out of Technical Analysis you will need to learn, plan, practice and execute. A good book to help you prepare your trading plan is \"Smart Trading Plans\" by Justine Pollard. One of my favourite books is \"The Complete Trading Course - Price Patterns, Strategies, Setups, and Execution Tactics\" by Corey Rosenbloom. And another good book is \"Trade your Way to Financial Freedom\" by Van Tharp.", "When people (even people in the media) say: \"The stock market is up because of X\" or \"The stock market is down because of Y\", they are often engaging in what Nicolas Taleb calls the narrative falacy. They see the market has moved in one direction or another, they open their newspaper, pick a headline that provides a plausible reason for the market to move, and say: \"Oh, that is why the stock market is down\". Very rarely do statements like this actually come from research, asking people why they bought or sold that day. Sometimes they may be right, but it is usually just story telling. In terms of old fashioned logic this is called the \"post hoc, ergo proper hoc\" fallacy. Now all the points people have raised about the US deficit may be valid, and there are plenty of reasons for worrying about the future of the world economy, but they were all known before the S&P report, which didn't really provide the markets with much new information. Note also that the actual bond market didn't move much after hearing the same report, in fact the price of 10 year US Treasury bonds actually rose a tiny bit. Take these simple statements about what makes the market go up or down on any given day with several fistfuls of salt.", "Similar to what Adam F says above, except instead of just transfering the amount you spend on the credit card into the high interest account, why not keep the majority of your funds (apart from a small amount, say a couple of hundred for emergencies) in the high interest account until the credit card needs to be paid off. Even better, if you have a mortgage with an 100% offset account keep all your funds in this, and pay off your credit card in full from it on or before the due date. Being a 100% offset to your mortgage interest rate you will be saving at a higher rate than a high interest rate savings account, and you will be able to do all your normal banking from it unlike a high interest account which you usually have to link to an additional account to deposit and withdrawl money to and from. If you are to use a credit card keep these simple rules in mind: Hope this has helped, Regards Victor" ]

[ "No - there are additional factors involved. Note that the shares on issue of a company can change for various reasons (such as conversion/redemption of convertible securities, vesting of restricted employee shares, conversion of employee options, employee stock purchase programs, share placements, buybacks, mergers, rights issues etc.) so it is always worthwhile checking SEC announcements for the company if you want an exact figure. There may also be multiple classes of shares and preferred securities that have different levels of dividends present. For PFG, they filed a 10Q on 22 April 2015 and noted they had 294,385,885 shares outstanding of their common stock. They also noted for the three months ended March 31 2014 that dividends were paid to both common stockholders and preferred stockholders and that there were Series A preferred stock (3 million) and Series B preferred stock (10 million), plus a statement: In February 2015, our Board of Directors authorized a share repurchase program of up to $150.0 million of our outstanding common stock. Shares repurchased under these programs are accounted for as treasury stock, carried at cost and reflected as a reduction to stockholders’ equity. Therefore the exact amount of dividend paid out will not be known until the next quarterly report which will state the exact amount of dividend paid out to common and preferred shareholders for the quarter." ]

[ "I wrote about this in another answer: You can sell the scrip dividend in the market; the capital gain from this sale may fall below the annual tax-free allowance for capital gains, in which case you don't pay any capital gains tax on that amount. For a cash dividend, however, there isn't a minimum taxable amount, so you would owe dividend tax on the entire dividend (and may therefore pay more taxes on a cash dividend). Since you haven't sold the shares in the market yet, you haven't earned any income on the shares. You don't owe taxes on the scrip until you sell the shares and earn capital gains on them. HMRC is very explicit about this, in CG33800: It is quite common for a company, particularly a quoted company, to offer its shareholders the option of receiving additional shares instead of a cash dividend. The expression `stock or scrip dividend' is used to describe shares issued in such circumstances. The basic position under tax law is that when a company makes a bonus issue of shares no distribution arises, and the bonus issue of shares is not income for tax purposes in the hands of the recipient. Obviously, if this is an issue for you, talk to a tax professional to make sure you get it right.", "I'm in a similar situation as I have a consulting business in addition to my regular IT job. I called the company who has my IRA to ask about setting up the Individual 401k and also mentioned that I contribute to my employer's 401k plan. The rep was glad I brought this up because he said the IRS has a limit on how much you can contribute to BOTH plans. For me it would be $24K max (myAge >= 50; If you are younger than 50, then the limit might be lower). He said the IRS penalties can be steep if you exceed the limit. I don't know if this is an issue for you, but it's something you need to consider. Be sure to ask your brokerage firm before you start the process.", "I think \"Psychological Pricing\" is a similar phenomenon to what you are looking for. This is where retailers use certain numbers in prices because those prices are more appealing to consumers. Since stocks - and in your case bitcoin - have prices, they too will be more or less appealing at different prices based on psychology alone.", "Can I pay $12,000 extra once a year or $1000 every month - which option is better? Depends when. If you mean 12K now vs 1K a month over the next 12 months, repeating this each year, now wins. If you mean saving 1K a month for 12 months then doing a lumpsum, the 1K a month wins. Basically, a sooner payment saves you more money than a later payment. The first option does sound better, but for a 30 year mortgage, is it that significant? Your number one issue is that you have a thirty year mortgage. The interest you pay on it is monstrous. For the 30 year term, you pay around 500K in interest. A 15-year mortgage is 300K cheaper (only 200K in interest will be paid). The monthly payment would be 1250 more. How much money and years on a mortgage can I save? When is the best time to pay? At the end of each year? You can knock off about a dozen years. Save I think ~250K. You can find mortgage calculators online or talk to your mortgage advisor to play around with the numbers.", "Health insurance varies wildly per state and per plan and per provider - but check them out to have a baseline to know what it should cost if you did it yourself. Don't forget vacation time, too: many contract/comp-only jobs have no vacation time - how much is that 10 or 15 days a year worth to you? It effectively means you're getting paid for 2080 hours, but working 2000 (with the 2 week number). Is the comp-only offer allowing overtime, and will they approve it? Is the benefits-included job salaried? If it's truly likely you'll be working more than a normal 40 hour week on a routine basis (see if you can talk to other folks that work there), an offer that will pay overtime is likely going to be better than one that wouldn't .. but perhaps not in your setting if it also loses the PTO.", "Now i want to get this money in my new UK bank account, does this mean that gov will take taxes from this money as well. Yes that is income and you have to pay tax on that. But it might be a bit complicated than that, so I would ask you to call up HMRC or visit an accountant or maybe ask the finance people of your employer. Also one of my family members send us money every few months and will send to this bank from now on, does taxes also apply on this? See the HMRC page about capital gains tax on gifts: You won't have to pay Capital Gains Tax when you give a gift to your husband, wife or civil partner - as long as both of the following apply: It's useful to keep a note of what the asset cost you. Your spouse or civil partner may need this to work out their Capital Gains Tax when they dispose of the asset. Example: Mr B lives with his wife and gives her an antique table that he bought for £12,000 in 2003. Mrs B spends £500 restoring the table, eventually selling it for £20,000. Her total costs are £12,500 (£500 plus Mr B's original cost £12,000). Mrs B's gain is £7,500 (£20,000 less £12,500). When you make a gift to a family member or other person you're connected with, you'll need to work out the gain or loss. This doesn't apply to gifts you make to your spouse or civil partner. This also applies if you dispose of an asset to them in any other way - for example, you sell it to them for a low price. A 'connected person' in this context is someone such as your brother, sister, child, parent, grandparent, mother-in-law or business partner. Follow the link below for more information about connected people and Capital Gains Tax. You must get a valuation of the asset at the time you made the gift. Use this value in place of any amount you received for the asset to work out your gain or loss. If you gave the asset away, then of course the amount you received for it will be nothing. If you make a loss you can only deduct the loss from gains you make on gifts or other disposals to the same person.", "The S&P top 5 - 401(k) usually comply with the DOL's suggestion to offer at least three distinct investment options with substantially different risk/return objectives. Typically a short term bond fund. Short term is a year or less and it will rarely have a negative year. A large cap fund, often the S&P index. A balanced fund, offering a mix. Last, the company's stock. This is a great way to put all your eggs in one basket, and when the company goes under, you have no job and no savings. My concern about your Microsoft remark is that you might not have the choice to manage you funds with such granularity. Will you get out of the S&P fund because you think this one stock or even one sector of the S&P is overvalued? And buy into what? The bond fund? If you have the skill to choose individual stocks, and the 401(k) doesn't offer a brokerage window (to trade on your own) then just invest your money outside the 401(k). But. If they offer a matching deposit, don't ignore that.", "No, you can not cheat the IRS. This question is also based on the assumption that the stock will return to $1 which isn't always a safe assumption and that it will continue to cycle like that repeatedly which is also likely a false assumption.", "Honestly, I wonder if the other answerers aren't overthinking it. Their answers are detailed and correct, but what your coach may be saying is this: When you have bought a stock, on cash or margin, and you are watching it rise you are evaluating when you sell on the price of the stock you are seeing. In reality, you should look at the bid (price buyers will give you for the stock) and ask (price sellers will charge you for the stock) prices. If the stock is going up, odds are the price of the stock is very close to the ask price because it is purchases that are driving it up, but that's not what you're going to get when you sell. You're going to get something around the bid price. If the spread between the two is large (i.e. a volatile stock) this could be many cents or more lower than the ask price. Therefore, what your coach may mean by \"Selling on Ask\" is you're using the stock price when it's equal or close to the ask price to decide when to sell, instead of letting the stock peak and drop (when its price will approach the bid price) or letting the trailing bid offers catch up to your desired sell point and selling then (i.e. letting the stock point grow PAST your sell point, dragging the bid price up with it). Just a thought, but that sounds like a term a coach would come up with to mean selling and getting less than you thought you were going to from the sale. (I know it's a necro reply, but the Interwebs are immortal and people come via Google... I did)", "What determines your profitability is not your time, but your TRADES. It is probably a mistake to go into the market and say, I hope to make X% today/this month/this year. As a practical matter, you can make a lot of money in a short period of time, or lose a lot over a long period of time (the latter is more likely). You're better off looking at potential trades and saying \"I like this trade\" (be sure to know why) and \"I dislike that trade.\" If you're right about your chosen trade, you'll make money. Probably not on your original timetable, because markets react more slowly than individual people do. Then make ONLY those trades that you genuinely like and understand. IF you get into a \"rhythm,\" (rather few people do), your experience might tell you that you are likely to make, say, X% per month or year. But that's ONLY if the market continues to accommodate YOUR style of trading. If the markets change, YOU must change (or get lost in the shuffle). Trading is a risky, if sometimes rewarding business. The operative motto here is: \"You pay your money and you take your chances,\" NOT \"You put in your time and eventually rewards will come.\"" ]

[ "You are overlooking the fact that it is not only supply & demand from investors that determines the share price: The company itself can buy and sell its own shares. If company X is profitable over the long haul but pays 0 dividends then either Option (2) is pretty ridiculous, so (1) will hold except in an extreme \"man bites dog\" kind of fluke. This is connected with the well-known \"dividend paradox\", which I discussed already in another answer." ]

[ "A few of the answers are spot on but here's another thing to consider: the type of trade. For example, I sometimes day trade stocks with momentum where the stock price is spiking relatively fast. A limit order in this situation may never get filled and you will miss out on the trade. A market order will get you filled but you mostly likely pay more than your limit order. However you are now catching the wave up. Overall, using a limit or market is relative to your trading style and the type of trade. I always prefer to use a limit buy order.", "Simple, there is no magic price adjustment after sales - why do you expect the stock price to change? The listed price of a stock is what someone was willing to pay for it in the last deal that was concluded. If any amount of stock changes ownership, this might have the effect that other people are willing to buy it for a higher price - or not. It is solely in the next buyer's decision what he is willing to pay. Example: if you think Apple stocks are worth 500$ a piece, and I buy a million of them, you might still think they are worth 500$. Or you might see this as a reason that they are worth 505$ now.", "Yes, you would pay no taxes at the time of purchase. In fact, this is not uncommon. Many early employees of startup companies are offered stock options that can be \"early-exercised\" (exercised before they vest). In such a case, an employee who exercises immediately upon grant (and assuming the exercise price of the option is the FMV at the time of grant) purchases the stock at FMV, and there no no tax paid when filing 83(b) election.", "Thanks to this youtube video I think I understood the required calculation. Based on following notation: then the formula to find x is: I found afterwards an example on IB site (click on the link 'How to Determine the Last Stock Price Before We Begin to Liquidate the Position') that corroborate the formula above.", "Or at least I saw it do so with Bank of America.", "Read \"The intelligent Investor\" book before you do anything. I started when I really didn't understand anything about stocks. I bought an internet stock for $150 per share which sold at 75cents a year later. I sold it for a profit but would've been a disaster.", "I live in one of the highest cost of living areas in my country. For the cost of less than half the down payment my spouse and I have saved up for a house we could easily buy a home in most of the lower cost of living areas (and several homes in, say, Detroit). As for the rest of your question, though, we've chosen not to live that way. Because, like all high cost of living areas, ours is near a city there are more free and inexpensive things to do than you would think at first. While others in our area think a great time is pre-gaming drinks at a nice bar, an expensive restaurant, then some more drinks we've taught ourselves how to make great meals from scratch using sale and inexpensive ingredients from the grocery store and often do that on weekends, topped off by a movie from the redbox that we promptly return the next day. We have chosen friends who will hang out with us over potluck dinners and board games instead of out on the town. On weekend days we visit free museums, do hikes, wander around revitalized downtown strips, or play at the local parks. Our groceries, as I mentioned, are sale items or use coupons and we go for less expensive meats and produce. We visit our local farmer's market for fun, not to buy the expensive produce. We might find ourselves wandering through the mall to window shop, but when it comes time to actually buy clothing or goods for the apartment we shop around for up to months to find a good deal. Plenty of our friends have money enough to spend, and the most debt they are usually wallowing in is a big car payment, no consumer debt. At the same time I have trouble imagining some of them buying a house any time soon, because they simply can't be saving all that much (since I know their incomes). They may eventually be able to afford a condo and ride rising housing prices to a townhome and then a house - it's what lots of people do around here, loosing buckets money in realtor fees and closing costs along the way. Even with these choices, it's hard to view my friends as selfish knowing that most of them give around 10% of their income to charity. There are probably plenty of people around here swimming in debt (somebody recently asked in a Q&A with the local paper editors how she could stop going to the city's most expensive restaurants and start living within her means when she only liked expensive places), but lots of folks can stretch themselves and afford to get by while wasting a lot of money. It's not what my spouse and I have chosen to do, because we want to be able to live very responsibly and plan for a rainy day, but the longer you live with and around the money that tends to permeate high cost of living areas, the more it will seem normal to you. Also, if it's really $1000/mo for a 2 br. apartment, your cost of living is still lower than mine is. If I were you I wouldn't try to acclimate myself to the spendy habits of your surroundings. Instead I'd find friends who are frugal and work on maintaining your good financial habits. If you ever want one of those $4, $5, or $6K (plus!) houses, you're going to need them.", "To understand the answer we first have to understand what Goodwill is. Goodwill in a companies balance sheet is an intangible asset that represents the extra value because of a strong brand name, good customer relations, good employee relations and any patents or proprietary technology. An article from The Economist explains this very well and actually talks about Time Warner directly - The goodwill, the bad and the ugly When one firm buys another, the target’s goodwill—essentially the premium paid over its book value—is added to the combined entity’s balance-sheet. Goodwill and other intangibles on the books of companies in the S&P 500 are valued at $2.6 trillion, or 10% of their total assets, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs. As the economy deteriorates and more firms trade down towards (or even below) their book value, empire-builders are having to mark down the value of assets they splashed out on in rosier times. A recently announced $25 billion goodwill charge is expected to push Time Warner into an operating loss for 2008, for instance. Michael Moran of Goldman Sachs thinks such hits could amount to $200 billion or more over the cycle. Investors have so far paid little attention to intangibles, but as write-downs proliferate they are likely to become increasingly wary of industries with a high ratio of goodwill to assets, such as health care, consumer goods and telecoms. How bad things get will depend on the beancounters. American firms used to be allowed to amortise goodwill over many years. Since 2002, when an accounting-rule change ended that practice, goodwill has had to be tested every year for impairment. In this stormy environment, with auditors keener than ever to avoid being seen to go easy on clients, companies are being told to mark down assets if there is any doubt about their value. The sanguine point out that this has no effect on cashflow, since such charges are non-cash items. Moreover, some investors take goodwill write-offs with a pinch of salt, preferring to look past such non-recurring costs and accept the higher \"normalised\" earnings numbers to which managers understandably cling. The largest companies are thus able to survive thumping blows that might otherwise floor them, such as the $99 billion loss that the newly formed but ill-conceived AOL Time Warner, as it then was, reported for 2002. But the impact can be all too real, as write-downs reduce overall book value and increase leverage ratios, a particular concern in these debt-averse times.", "No, there's nothing special in mutual funds or ETFs. Wash sale rules apply to any asset.", "The signature actually harks back to the days before every business checked every transaction online. When charge cards were introduced modems didn't exist. Nowadays, stolen credit cards are usually reported within 24 hours and the card won't work. Businesses that face low fraud rates don't bother checking. They probably figure that a certain percentage of charges get charged back because the cardholder claims that they didn't make them, and the credit card company usually just passes the cost on to the merchant, so it's really the merchant who should be worried about fraud since he or she is going to pay for it. The real question for the merchant is whether checking signatures actually reduces charge backs. If the credit card is stolen, how hard would it be for thieves to practice the signature on the card a few times until they can reproduce it well enough to fool someone? Businesses that face high fraud rates are often more careful. In New York City, try buying some Nikes on 34th Street, and you'll get your signature checked, your driver's license checked, and they'll call up your 5th grade social studies teacher." ]

[ "Wiring is the best way to move large amounts of money from one country to another. I am sure Japanese banks will allow you to exchange your Japanese Yen into USD and wire it to Canada. I am not sure if they will be able to convert directly from JPY to CND and wire funds in CND. If you can open a USD bank account in Canada, that might make things easier." ]

[ "Now assume these shares are vested, held for at least 1 year, and are then sold for $5 each. Everything I've read implies that the grantee now owes long-term capital gains taxes on the difference, which would be 10k * ($5 - $1). No. That's exactly what the SO is NQ for. Read more on the differences between ISO and NQSO here. Now assume these shares are vested, held for at least 1 year, and are then sold for $5 each. Everything I've read implies that the grantee now owes long-term capital gains taxes on the difference, which would be 10k * ($5 - $1). At this point you no longer have NQSO, you have RSU. If you filed 83(b) when you exercised, then you pay capital gains tax when they vest. If you didn't - its ordinary income to you. NQSO is a red herring here since once exercised they no longer exist. If you didn't file 83(b), then when the stock vests the difference between the FMV at vest and the money you spent on it when exercising (if any) is considered wages and taxed as ordinary income (+FICA etc). From that point the RSU becomes a regular stock investment and the capital gains clock starts ticking.", "Welcome to Money.SE. I will say upfront, Personal Finance is just that, personal, and you are likely to get multiple, perhaps conflicting, answers. Are you sure the PMI will drop off after 2 years? The rules are specific, and for PMI, when prepayments put you at that 78/80% LTV, your bank can require an appraisal, not automatically drop it. Talk to the banks, get confirmation, and depending what they say, keep hacking away at the mortgage. After this, I suggest jumping on Roth IRAs. You are in the 15% bracket, and the Roth will let you deposit $5500 for each you and your wife. A great way to kickstart a higher level of retirement savings. After this, I'm not comfortable with the emergency savings level. If you lose your job tomorrow (Funny story, my wife and I lost our's on the same day 3 years ago) and don't have enough savings (Our retirement accounts were good to just retire that day) you can easily run out of money and be late on the mortgage. It's great to prepay the mortgage to get rid of that PMI, but once there, I'd do the Roth and then focus on savings. 6 months expenses minimum. We have a great Q&A here titled Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing in which I go in to more detail, as do 4 other members. I am not getting on the \"investments will return more than your mortgage cost\" soapbox. A well-funded emergency fund is a very conservative bit of advice. With no matched 401(k), I suggest a balance of the Roth savings and prepayments. From another great post, Ideal net worth by age X? Need comparison references you should have nearly 1 year's salary (90K) saved toward retirement. Any question on my advice, add a comment and I will edit in more details.", "Cost. If an investor wanted to diversify his portfolio by investing in the companies that make up the S&P 500, the per-share and commission costs to individually place trades for each and every one of those companies would be prohibitive. I can buy one share of an exchange-traded fund that tracks the S&P 500 for less than the purchase price of a single share in some of the companies that make up the index.", "I am very happy with Charles Schwab. I use both their investing tools and banking tool, but I don't do much investing besides buy more shares a random mutual fund I purchase 4 years ago I did once need to call in about an IRA rollover and I got a person on the phone immediately who answered my questions and followed up as he said he would. It is anecdotal, but I am happy with them.", "What you are suggesting will not work. Banks have strict guidelines about what they can and cannot do with an FHA loan property. Remember the FHA is only an insurance policy to the bank saying that if you default they will cover a high percentage of the loan. The bank won't take the risk of violating their insurance policy and the government refusing to pay them off if you default. Instead, consider doing a creative sale on your property, maybe a rent to own deal or owner financing. As long as you pay the mortgage the bank won't even know you don't live there and you can rent the house out to someone who eventually will buy it after the timeframe expires. Meanwhile you can go and get a new home or condo either thru regular financing or owner financing(search the internet to see how to do this) and you can use owner financing until you complete the sale of the first house. Otherwise just tough it out in the house you are in until the time expires and then sell. You made no mention of the property value but I am assuming if you bought it 3 years ago that you may have a little equity. Pleas note that if you sell at that time though you will likely have to come out of cash because your equity won't cover the realtor fee and closing cost. But if you do the rent to own I suggested earlier you can sell at a slightly higher price making sure you can cover those cost. I realize this answer is a little out the box but I deal with people who don't want properties all day and I have completed transactions like this many times. Good Luck and God Bless!", "You are omitting how the company made 120 million in the previous year and may be facing a shrinking market and thus have poor future prospects. If the company is shrinking, what will the shares be worth down the road. Remember companies like AOL or Blackberry? There was a time they had big profits before things changed which is the part you aren't considering here. If the company has lost something big on its earnings, e.g. the oil wells it owned have run out of reserves or the patents on its key drugs have expired, then there could be the perception that the company won't be able to compete in the future to continue to deliver earnings. Some companies may well end up going broke as one could look at GM for a company that used to be one of the largest car companies in the world and yet it ended up going broke.", "From the Massachusetts Department of Revenue: 1st - Massachusetts Source Income That is Excluded Massachusetts gross income excludes certain items of income derived from sources within Massachusetts: non-business related interest, dividends and gains from the sale or exchange of intangibles, and qualified pension income. 2nd - Massachusetts Source Income That is Included: Massachusetts gross income includes items of income derived from sources within Massachusetts. This includes income: 3rd - Trade or business, Including Employment Carried on in Massachusetts: A nonresident has a trade or business, including any employment carried on in Massachusetts if: A nonresident generally is not engaged in a trade or business, including any employment carried on in Massachusetts if the nonresident's presence for business in Massachusetts is casual, isolated and inconsequential. A nonresident's presence for business in Massachusetts will ordinarily be considered casual, isolated and inconsequential if it meets the requirements of the Ancillary Activity Test (AAT) and Examples. When nonresidents earn or derive income from sources both within Massachusetts and elsewhere, and no exact determination can be made of the amount of Massachusetts source income, an apportionment of income must be made to determine that amount considered Massachusetts gross income. 4th - Apportionment of Income: Apportionment Methods: The three most common apportionment methods used to determine Massachusetts source income are as follows: Gross income is multiplied by a: So if you go to Massachusetts to work, you have to pay the tax. If you collect a share of the profit or revenue from Massachusetts, you have to pay tax on that. If you work from Oregon and are paid for that work, then you don't pay Massachusetts tax on that. If anything, your company might have to pay Oregon taxes on revenue you generate (you are their agent or employee in Oregon). Does the answer change depending on whether the income is reported at 1099 or W-2? This shouldn't matter legally. It's possible that it would be easier to see that the work was done in Oregon in one or the other. I.e. it doesn't make any legal difference but may make a practical difference. All this assumes that you are purely an employee or contractor and not an owner. If you are an owner, you have to pay taxes on any income from your Massachusetts business. Note that this applies to things like copyrights and real estate as well as the business. This also assumes that you are doing your work in Oregon. If you live in Oregon and travel to Massachusetts to work, you pay taxes on your Massachusetts income in Massachusetts.", "As an F1 student, I have been investing (and occasionally buying and selling within few weeks) for several years, and I have never had problems (of course I report to IRS gains/losses every year at tax time). On the other hand, the officer in charge of foreign students at my school advised me to not run ads on a website and make a profit. So, it seems to me that investing is perfectly legit for a F1 student, as it's not considered a business activity. That's obviously my personal understanding, you may want to speak with an immigration attorney to be on the safe side.", "Most US states have rules that go something like this: You will almost certainly have to pay some registration fees, as noted above. Depending on how you organize, you may or may not need to file a separate tax return for the business. (If you're sole proprietor for tax purposes, then you file on Schedule C on your personal Form 1040.) Whether or not you pay taxes depends on whether you have net income. It's possible that some losses might also be deductible. (Note that you may have to file a return even if you don't have net income - Filing and needing to pay are not the same since your return may indicate no tax due.) In addition, at the state level, you may have to pay additional fees or taxes beyond income tax depending on what you sell and how you sell it. (Sales tax, for example, might come into play as might franchise taxes.) You'll need to check your own state law for that. As always, it could be wise to get professional tax and accounting advice that's tailored to your situation and your state. This is just an outline of some things that you'll need to consider.", "Ignoring brokerage fees and the wash-sale rule (both of which are hazardous to your health), and since the 15% LTCG tax is only on the gain, the stock would have to drop 15% of the gain in price since you originally purchased it." ]

[ "This article has a section titled \"Do you need an umbrella policy to cover your personal liability risks?\" that says: If you have young children, for example, you might need a policy because they have lots of friends. These little tikes might get into some mischief and hurt themselves at your home. If so, you’re at risk of being sued. Do you have people over often? Do you drive like a maniac or a Parisian? Do you have firearms on your premises? Do you have gardeners and housekeepers on the grounds? All these are reasons why you might want to own an umbrella policy. Although many people in the US are homeowners, parents, drivers, etc., not everyone falls into these categories. For some people, as low as the premiums for such a policy might be, the expected cost outweighs the expected benefit. The cost of a lawsuit may be extremely high, but someone may feel that the chance of a lawsuit being filed against them is low enough to be safely ignored and not worth insuring against. I'm probably not a great example, but I'll use my own situation anyway. Even though a liability policy probably wouldn't cost me too much, I'm almost certain that I wouldn't derive any benefit from it. I live alone without children (or firearms, pet tigers, gardeners, etc.) in a 520 sq. ft. apartment, so the probability that something bad would happen to someone on the small bit of property that I rent and that they would file a sizable lawsuit against me is small enough that I choose to ignore it." ]

[ "Just echoing the other answers here. You're not ready yet. 3% down, or no money down loans are what got so many of us into trouble these last few years. It sounds like you make a pretty good living and are able to squirrel away money despite paying rent. Let me suggest something that I haven't seen here yet. Save up for a 20% down payment. You will get better rates, won't have to buy mortgage insurance and it will give you enough of a cushion on your payment that you could better weather a job loss or other loss of income. Your priority for saving are, in order: Home prices aren't going up any time soon, so you're not going to miss out on a great deal. Keep your expenses low, treat yourself and your kids once in a while and keep saving.", "If you take a loan, you make a contract with your lender, let's call them \"bank\" (even if it might not be a real bank). This loan contract contains an agreed-upon way of paying back the loan. Both sides agreed upon these conditions. Any change of it (like paying back early) needs the consent of both sides. So, in general, no, you cannot just pay back everything earlier unless the other side accepts this change of the contract. Consider it from the bank's point of view: They want to earn money by getting the interest you have to pay when you pay back everything nice and slowly. It is their business. They plan on these expected revenues etc. So if, for whatever reason, you have to pay back the whole remaining loan at once, you create a revenue loss for the bank and are liable for this financial damage. In German the term for this is \"Vorfälligkeitsentschädigung\" which translates to \"prepayment penalty\" or \"acceleration fee\". You just have to pay it, so in the end you come out like if you were paying back the loan in the agreed-upon fashion. However, many loan contracts contain the option to pay back early at specific points in time in specific amounts and under specific conditions.", "does it still count as a capital gain or loss? Yes. Is it essentially treated like you sold the stock at the price of the buy-out? Yes. Do you still get a 1099-B from your broker? Yes.", "You are asking 'what if', do you have some anticipated answers? Having volume smaller than open interest is the norm. As far as I can tell, having only one trading day and no previous open interest only affects someone trying to sell a contract they are holding. Meaning that if you only have one day to sell your contract then you need to offer it 'at market' or at the bid price (or even lower than the bid price). If you cannot sell your contract then you have to let it expire worthless or you have to exercise it. Those are your three options: let it expire, sell it (perhaps at a loss), and exercise it. Edit: be careful about holding an in-the-money option. Many brokers will automatically exercise an in-the-money contract if you hold it till expiration date.", "You mentioned depositing the check and then sending a personal check. Be sure to account for time, since any deposit over $10,000 the money will be made available in increments, so it may take 10-14 days to get the full amount in your account before you could send a personal check. I would not recommend this option regardless, but if you do, just a heads up.", "There are many flaws with your idea. Say I want to borrow $225,000.00 to accrue interest on a 1.20% APY account. I promise ... that I cannot withdraw nor touch the account by legal contract. If you break the contract and lose the money, the lender is out the money. They can take you to court and will win, but if you don't have the money, then they don't get paid. (You can't squeeze water out of a rock even if a judge orders you to.) By sharing the interest with me on a loan, they keep a percentage that they'd normally get... If you're \"investing\" the money at 1.2%, and the lender gets some amount less than that, then they are getting much less than they \"normally\" get. Lenders typically get somewhere from 5-15% on loans. The money can also be used to fund a stock/trading account. Regardless of whether I profit, I pay interest on the loan and split the profit shares 24/7. How can the lender lose with legal enforcing? Again, if you lose the money, no amount of legal enforcing can force you to pay money that you don't have. Even if you go to jail for fraud the lender still doesn't get paid. Simply, no bank would ever agree to this.", "Those choices aren't mutually exclusive. Yes, most discussion of the mortgage interest deduction ignores the fact that for a standard itemizer, much, if not all of this deduction can be lost. For 2011, the std deduction for a single is $5,800. It's not just mortgage interest that's deductible, state income tax, realestate tax, and charitable contributions are among the other deductions. If this house is worth $350K, the property tax is about $5K, and since it's not optional, I'd be inclined to assume that it's the deduction that offsets the std deduction. Most states have an income tax, which tops off the rest. You are welcome to toss this aside as sophistry, but I view it as these other deductions as 'lost' first. I'm married, and our property tax is more than our standard deduction, so when doing the math, the mortgage is fully deductible, as are our contributions. In your case, the numbers may play out differently. No state tax? Great, so it's the property tax and deductions you'd add up first and decide on the value the mortgage deduction brings. Last, I don't have my mortgage for the deduction, I just believe that long term my other investments will exceed, after tax, the cost of that mortgage.", "Yes, you can do this. I do this for my own single-member LLC, but I usually do it online instead of writing a check. Your only legal obligation is to pay quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS. I'm assuming you are not otherwise doing anything shady. For example, that you have funds in your business account to pay any expenses that will be due soon or that you are trying to somehow pull a fast one on someone else...", "You could use a stock-only ISA and invest in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). ETFs are managed mutual funds that trade on open exchanges in the same manner as stocks. This changes the specific fund options you have open to you, but there are so many ETFs at this point that any sector you want to invest in is almost certainly represented.", "There is plenty of over-rationalisation in the majority of these answers, when the simple answer is that it is simply down to statistics. Say an insurer had two pieces of information about two separate drivers: annual mileage, and whether they had had an accident in the last 3 years. Driver A drives 10,000 miles a year and hasn't had an accident in the past 3 years. Driver B drives 500 miles a year and hasn't had an accident in the past 3 years. Which would the insurer think was the safer bet? The answer is A, and this makes his premiums lower. The reason for this is that the insurer has a lot more data about Driver A than Driver B: they know that Driver A has driven 30,000 miles without having an accident. This could, of course, be luck, or a fluke, but it is likely that Driver A is actually a safe driver. The chance that Driver A hasn't had an accident just through sheer luck and that they are actually a terrible driver is quite slim. On the other hand, Driver B has only driven 1,500 miles in the past three years. Whilst this seems like prima facie evidence of them being as safe a driver as Driver A, it is much more likely that Driver B could have driven 1,500 miles and avoided an accident through sheer luck, even though they are a terrible driver. This means drivers who drive low amounts of mileage will be penalised relative to other drivers who have high mileage. It has nothing to do with insurers taking a judgement that 'doing more mileage makes you more experienced' or 'makes you a better driver' as others have suggested here (although, it is probably true - it's not quantifiable from an insurer's perspective)." ]

[ "One of the more subtle disadvantages to large credit card purposes purchases (besides what the other answer mentions), is that it makes you less prepared for emergencies. If you carry a large balance on your credit card with the idea that your income can easily handle the payments to beat the no-interest period, you never know when you'll have an unexpected emergency and you'll end up having to pay less, miss the deadline and end up paying huge interest. Even if you are fastidious about saving and budgeting, what if your family comes under a large financial burden (just as one possible example)?" ]

[ "Personal story here: I ended up at the Santa Monica hospital without insurance and left with a bill of $30k-$35k. They really helped me, so I felt like I had a duty to pay them. However, close inspection revealed ridiculous markups on some items which I would have disputed, but I noticed that I had been billed for a few thousands of services not rendered. I got very mad at them for this, they apologized, told me they'd fix it. I never heard back from them and they never put it in collection either. I'm assuming they (rightfully) got scared that I'd go to court and this would be bad publicity. Sometimes I feel guilty I didn't pay them anything, sometimes I feel like they tried to screw me.", "Like in the US, more flexibility is extended to hidden orders. Australia has taken an aggressive approach to hidden orders in the direction of lower ticks. Aussies have a rich financial that evolved differently than the Dutch custom more familiarly known in the UK and US. They, like Chicago evolved out of commodities trade rather than trade. When commodities are worth nearly nothing per unit, larger precision comes naturally. For the Dutch, it was the opposite. A single ship would trade in 1/64 share or for the largest vessels, 1/128 share. Here, there's no point to high precision. New York, founded by the Dutch specialized in logistics just the same. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, so both Chicago, Australia, and other financial systems built by commodities rather than trade have extended the higher precision logic to everything else, and pricing is fantastic. It should not be a surprise why Australia has taken a lead in pushing infinite precision.", "tl,dr: I-bonds do not fit well into most personal finance plans. First the questions (succinct reference): I like your thought process weighing your liquidity and risk versus your return. This is very important. However, I think you might be sidetracked a bit by I-Bonds. I-Bonds are not generally good for personal investment as they are not marketable when necessary, have redemption penalties and hold lower overall yields in general. Finally, they are significantly harder to trade as you can buy and hold a TIPS ETF and get exposure to all maturities and get the current competitive rate all in one purchase. Inflation protection is in general an interesting problem. While inflation-protected bonds sound like they are great for inflation protection (after all it is in the name), they may not be the best instruments for long/medium term protection. It is really important to remember that inflation protected bonds have significantly lower returns and one form of inflation protection is to just have more money in the future. TIPS really protect against large inflation changes as normal bonds have the future expected inflation already baked in their higher rates. Also, when you own a stock you own part of a company and inflation will increase the value of the company relative to the inflated currency. Foreign stocks can give even more protection if you think inflation in your local currency is going to be higher then the foreign currency. Stocks in the past have had significantly higher return overall than inflation protected bonds but have higher risk as well. As a medium term, low-risk portfolio, it is worth looking into some combination of TIPS, normal bonds and a small to medium allocation of local/foreign stocks all done through low-fee mutual funds or index ETFs.", "Yes, there is a profession that does exactly what you're looking for. It's called a fee-only financial advisor. These are professionals who (in the United States) enter into a fiduciary relationship with a client, meaning they are legally required to put your financial interests above all other considerations (such as any behind-the-scenes incentives to promote certain products). Between that requirement and the fact that they are paid for their time (and not on commission), they have zero incentive to try to sell you anything that you do not need. Their only job is to help you with your financial situation. (Of course, some of them may be better than others.) See the profession's website here to find such an advisor near you. (Credit to Marketplace Money, the old name for Marketplace Weekend, for mentioning fee-only advisors at least 87 times per show.)", "Sure, it's irresponsible for an executor to take actions which endanger the estate. But what about passivity or inaction? Put it another way. Is it the obligation of the executor to avoid making revenue for the estate? Think about it - what a silly idea! Consider a 12-unit apartment building full of rent paying tenants. A tenant gives notice and leaves. So do 4 more. With only 7/12 tenants, the building stops being a revenue center and becomes a massive money pit. Is that acceptable? Heck no! Realistically this will be managed by a property management company, and of course they'll seek new tenants, not stopping merely because the owner died. This situation is not different; the same fiscal logic applies. The counter-argument is usually along the lines of \"stuff might happen if you rent it out\"... true. But the stuff that happens to abandoned houses is much worse, and much more likely: squatters, teen \"urban explorers\", pot growers, copper thieves, winter pipe freeze flooding and wrecking interiors, etc. Don't take my word on it -- ask your insurer for the cost of insuring an abandoned house vs. a rented one. Renting brings a chunk of cash that comes in from tenants - $12,000/year on a $1000/mo. rental. And that will barely pay the bills if you have a young mortgage on a freshly purchased house at recent market rates. But on an old mortgage, renting is like printing money. That money propagates first to the estate (presumably it is holding back a \"fix the roof\" emergency fund), and then to the beneficiaries. It means getting annual checks from the estate, instead of constantly being dunned for another repair. But I don't care about making revenue (outside of putting back a kitty to replace the roof). Even if it was net zero, it means the maintenance is being done. This being the point. It is keeping the house in good repair, occupied, insured, and professionally managed -- fit and ready for the bequest's purpose: occupancy of an aunt. What's the alternative? Move an aunt into a house that's been 10 years abandoned? Realistically the heirs are going to get tired/bored of maintaining the place at a total cash loss, maintenance will slip, and you'll be moving them into a neglected house with some serious issues. That betrays the bequest, and it's not fair to the aunts. Rental is a very responsible thing to do. The executor shouldn't fail to do it merely out of passivity. If you decide not to do it, there needs to be a viable alternative to funding the home's decent upkeep. (I don't think there is one). Excluding a revenue-producing asset from the economy is an expensive thing to do.", "I'm a business law student, so medical stuff isn't really my specialty. I'll share with you what I know though. First, as to the legality, I'm not aware of anything making it illegal for them to consider their business with you concluded. Absent any contract between you and the doctor, it seems to me that you agreed to pay them in cash. If I was the business, I'd assume our business had been concluded as well. As for any contracts between the insurance company and the doctor's office, as far as I know, that's between them. That wouldn't give you standing to sue the doctor. I'm unfamiliar with a patient submitting insurance claims, but if that's something you are allowed to do with your insurance company and all you need is more information, submit a request for your medical records to the doctor. Under United States law, your medical records are yours. You have a right to receive a copy of them. Keep in mind though that the doctor's office may charge you a small copying fee to cover expenses they incur while making a copy for you. As far as complaining, I would suggest your local Better Business Bureau. Each state generally has a medical board which oversees doctors. You might lodge a complaint with them as well. I hope this helps. Keep in mind that I'm not an attorney. This is not legal advice. This is only what I personally would do if I were in your situation. You can and should consult an attorney who is licensed to practice law in your particular jurisdiction.", "Yes, and there are almost no checks (no pun intended) on people pulling money from your account using a routing number. It is an EXTREMELY insecure system. If you want a real Halloween scare, read this article: Easy Check Fraud Technique Draws Scrutiny. Unfortunately you just have to live with it. If you are curious why this loophole is allowed to continue, consider how hard it is to close it without undermining the convenience of checks. Short of you going to the bank with each person you write a check to and showing ID to validate the transaction, I don't see how you could continue to use a negotiable instrument like this without such a security hole. The ultimate answer is going to have to be replacing checks with other means of payment.", "At twenty-two, you can have anywhere between 100%-70% of your securities portfolio in equities. It is reasonable to start at 100% and reduce over time. The one thing that I would mention with that is that your target at retirement should be 70% stocks/30% bonds. You should NEVER have more than 30% bonds. Why? Because a 70/30 mix is both safer than 100% bonds and will give a higher return. Absent some market timing strategy (which as an amateur investor, you should absolutely avoid) or some complicated balancing scheme, there is never a reason to be at more than 30% bonds. A 50/50 mix of stocks and bonds or a 100% bonds ratio not only returns less than the 70/30 mix, it is actually riskier. Why? Because sometimes bonds fall. And when they do, stocks generally gain. And vice versa. Because of this behavior, the 70/30 mix is less likely to fall than 50% or 100% bonds. Does that mean that your stock percentage should never drop below 70%? No. If your portfolio contains things other than stocks and bonds, it is reasonable for stocks to fall below 70%. The problem is that when you drop stocks below 70%, you should drop bonds below 30% as well. So you keep the stock to bond ratio at 7:3. If you want to get a lower risk than a 70/30 mix, then you should move into cash equivalents. Cash equivalents are actually safer than stocks and bonds either individually or in combination. But at twenty-two, you don't really need more safety. At twenty-two, the first thing to do is to build your emergency fund. This should be able to handle six months of expenses without income. I recommend making it equal to six months of your income. The reason being that it is easy to calculate your income and difficult to be sure of expenses. Also, you can save six months of income at twenty-two. Are you going to stay where you are for the next five years? At twenty-two, the answer is almost certainly no. But the standard is the five year time frame. If you want a bigger place or one that is closer to work, then no. If you stay somewhere at least five years, then it is likely that the advantages to owning rather than renting will outweigh the costs of switching houses. Less than five years, the reverse is true. So you should probably rent now. You can max out your 401k and IRA now. Doing so even with a conservative strategy will produce big returns by sixty-seven. And perhaps more importantly, it helps keep your spending down. The less you do spend, the less you will feel that you need to spend. Once you fill your emergency fund, start building savings for a house. I would consider putting them in a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). A REIT will tend to track real estate. Since you want to buy real estate with the results, this is its own kind of safety. It fell in value? Houses are probably cheap. Houses increasing in price rapidly? A REIT is probably growing by leaps and bounds. You do this outside your retirement accounts, as you want to be able to access it without penalty.", "Uh, Quicken is virtually identical to MS Money. If you liked money and don't want to change, use that.", "There are very few banks which offer two-factor authentication. Part of the reason is cost. Providing a token to every account-holder is expensive, not just in the device or system, but in providing support and assistance to the millions of people who won't have the faintest idea how it works and complain that they no longer have access to their accounts. That said, it is sometimes available on request for personal accounts and many banks require it for their business clients. My HSBC Business account comes with two-factor as default and it works extremely well. There is also the pseudo-two-factor security offered by Visa and MasterCard (3-D secure) which performs a similar function." ]

[ "You should check several things: How your business can deduct your child care expenses is beyond me. If your mother-in-law starts a business as a neighborhood babysitter, she might get some deductions for her related expenses though." ]

[ "Investment banks will put out various reports and collect revenues from that along with their banking activity. I don't read them or care to read them myself. If banks can make money from something, they will likely do it, especially if it is legal. To take the Tesla stock question for a moment: Aren't you ruling out that yesterday was the day that Tesla was included in the Nasdaq 100 and thus there may be some people today exiting because they tried to cash in on the index funds having to buy the stock and bid it up in a sense? Or as @littleadv points out there could be those tracking the stocks not in the index that would have been forced to sell for another idea here. The Goldman note is a possible explanation but there could well be more factors in play here such as automated trading systems that seek to take advantage of what could be perceived as arbitrage opportunities. There can be quick judgments made on things which may or may not be true in the end. After all, who knows exactly what is causing the sell-off. Is it a bunch of stop orders being triggered? Is it people actually putting in sell order manually? Is it something else? There are lots of questions here where I'm not sure how well one can assign responsibility here.", "Is that indicator can only be used for short-term trade? First of all, indicator works perfect during trends and oscillator works perfectly in the range market(or flat market). So, indicator can be used for long term, as well as short term. I mean if it is a range market, using this or any other indicator will not help much, so it you should consider market direction first. If it can be used to long-term trade, is there something I need to change from the parameters used? like, only using SMMA(5,8,13)? The parameters are there to change them. Of course you can change them based on your trading style. Considering my statement above does not mean that trading is very easy. I never use indicators alone to make trading decisions. It is always good to use oscillator to filter out bad trading signals.", "You're asking three different things: What is the fastest way, what is the cheapest way and what is the easiest way. You will not find one method that is all three at once. The fastest way is a wire transfer. The cheapest way that I've encountered is a foreign exchange service like XE. The easiest way is probably Paypal since the money is already in Paypal.", "I used to think that paying off ahead of time made sense, but I no longer do, at least in most cases. The upside is that you can get a return on your money equal to the mortgage interest rate (it's less than that in the US, where mortgage interest is deductible, so it's roughly the mortgage interest rate * 1 - your marginal income tax rate). There are a few downsides. The biggest is that cash is the most liquid asset you can have; you can get at it with no restrictions. If you put that cash into your house, you are converting that into an asset with a lot of restrictions; you can't get at it without fees, nor can you get at it if you don't have a job, which is when you would need it most. So, you are putting your money in a hard-to-get-at place for a small interest rate. I don't think it is worthwhile. (edit) One complication is PMI. If you are currently paying PMI, it may make sense to put money towards the mortgage until you get to 20% and can get rid of the PMI.", "This is a hard question to answer. Government debt and mortgages are loosely related. Banks typically use yields on government bonds to determine mortgage interest rates. The banks must be able to get higher rates from the mortgage otherwise they would buy government bonds. Your question mentions default so I'm assuming a country has reneged on its promise to pay either the principal or interest on government bonds. The main thing to consider is \"Who does not get their money?\". In other words, who does the government decide not to pay. This is the important part. The government will have some money so they could pay some bond holders. They must decide who to shaft. For example, let's look at who holds Greek government debt. Around 70% of Greek government debt is held outside Greece. See table below. The Greek government could decide to default only on the debt to foreign holders. In that case the banks in France and Switzerland would take the loss on their bonds. This could cause severe problems in France and Switzerland depending on the percentage of Greek bonds that make up the banks' assets. Greek banks would still face losses, however, since the price of their Greek bond holdings would drop sharply when the government defaults. Interestingly, the losses for the Greek banks may be smaller than the losses faced by the French and Swiss banks. This is usually the favored option chosen by government since the French and Swiss don't vote in Greece. Yields on Greek government bonds would rise dramatically. If your Greek mortgage is an adjustable rate mortgage then you could see some big adjustments upward. If you live in France or Switzerland then the bank that owns your mortgage may go under if Greece defaults. During liquidation the bank will sell their assets which includes mortgages and you will probably not notice any difference in your mortgage. As I stated earlier: this is a hard question to answer since the two financial instruments involved (bonds and mortgages) are similar but may or may not be related.", "Of course, it is a scam. Regardless of how the scam might work, you already know that the person on the other end is lying, and you also know that people in trouble don't contact perfect strangers out of the blue by e-mail for help, nor do they call up random phone numbers looking for help. Scammers prey on the gullibility, greed, and sometimes generosity of the victims. As to how this scam works, the money that the scammer would be depositing into your father's account is not real. However, it will take the bank a few days to figure that out. In the mean time, your father will be sending out real money back to the scammer. When the bank figures out what is going on, they will want your father to pay back this money.", "If your debt will all be less than 25% gross (yes, I see you said take home) you are in great shape. I'd get the car and not worry. The well written mortgage is 20% down, with a housing payment (which of course includes prop tax and insurance, as noted by mhoran, below) under 28% and total debt under 36%. You are well within the limits, not even close. That's great.", "Investing only in one industry may be problematic as it is highly correlated. There are factor outside your (or anyones) knowledge which may affect all the industry: If you are familiar with the industry it may happen that you work in that (ignore rest of paragraph if this is not the case). In such case you are likely to have problems at work (frozen salary, no bonus, position terminated) and you need to liquidate the investments at that point (see many advice regarding ESPP). Depending on your field you may have some inside knowledge so even if you would took a position without it you may need to somehow prove it. On the other hand diversifying the investment might reduce the volatility of investment. Rise in oil will cause problems for air industry but will be a boom for oil industry etc. In this way you smooth the grow of the investments. Investing part of portfolio into specific industry may make more sense. It still possibly worth to avoid it at the beginning investor may have trouble to beat the market (for example according to behavioural economics you are exposed to various biases, or if markets are efficient then prices most likely already take into account any information you may have). (I'm still new to all this so it's mostly based on what I read rather then any personal experience. Also a standard disclaimer that this is not an investment, or any other, advice and I'm not licensed financial advisor in any jurisdiction)", "Bad signs:", "The market capitalization of a stock is the number of shares outstanding (of each stock class), times the price of last trade (of each stock class). In a liquid market (where there are lots of buyers and sellers at all price points), this represents the price that is between what people are bidding for the stock and what people are asking for the stock. If you offer any small amount more than the last price, there will be a seller, and if you ask any small amount less than the last price, there will be a buyer, at least for a small amount of stock. Thus, in a liquid market, everyone who owns the stock doesn't want to sell at least some of their stock for a bit less than the last trade price, and everyone who doesn't have the stock doesn't want to buy some of the stock for a bit more than the last trade price. With those assumptions, and a low-friction trading environment, we can say that the last trade value is a good midpoint of what people think one share is worth. If we then multiply it by the number of shares, we get an approximation of what the company is worth. In no way, shape or form does it not mean that there is 32 billion more invested in the company, or even used to purchase stock. There are situations where a 32 billion market cap swing could mean 32 billion more money was invested in the company: the company issues a pile of new shares, and takes in the resulting money. People are completely neutral about this gathering in of cash in exchange for dilluting shares. So the share price remains unchanged, the company gains 32 billion dollars, and there are now more shares outstanding. Now, in some sense, there is zero dollars currently invested in a stock; when you buy a stock, you no longer have the money, and the money goes to the person who no longer has the stock. The issue here is the use of the continuous tense of \"invested in\"; the investment was made at some point, but the money doesn't really stay in this continuous state of being. Unless you consider the investment liquid, and the option to take money out being implicit, it being a continuous action doesn't make much sense. Sometimes the money is invested in the company, when the company causes stocks to come into being and sells them. The owners of stocks has invested money in stocks in that they spent that money to buy the stocks, but the total sum of money ever spent on stocks for a given company is not really a useful value. The market capitalization is an approximation, which under the efficient market hypothesis (that markets find the correct price for things nearly instantly) is reasonably accurate, of the value the company has collectively to its shareholders. The efficient market hypothesis isn't accurate, but it is an acceptable rule of thumb. Now, this value -- market capitalization -- is arguably not the total value of a company: other stakeholders include bond holders, labour, management, various contract counter-parties, government and customers. Some companies are structured so that almost all value is captured not by the stock owners, but by contract counter-parties (this is sometimes used for hiding assets or debts). But for most large publically traded companies, it (in theory) shouldn't be far off." ]

[ "If you're researching a publicly traded company in the USA, you can search the company filings with the SEC. Clicking 'Filings' should take you here." ]

[ "I'd talk to a solicitor and see if you can structure the purchase in a way that breaks the property into three pieces. One would be the freehold of the whole building, one would be a long lease on the downstairs part (on which you would get a residential mortgage) and one would be a long lease on the upstairs flat (on which you would get a buy-to-let mortgage). Since there's essentially no price premium for freehold as opposed to long lease, you should be able to raise enough money from the two mortgages to fund the purchase.", "If I recall correctly, the pay schedule is such that you initially pay mostly interest. As James Roth suggests, look at the terms of the loan, specifically the payment schedule. It should detail how much is being applied to interest and how much to the actual balance.", "Generally, yes. Rather than ask, \"why are these guys so cheap?\", you should be asking why the big names are so expensive. :) Marketing spend plays a big role there. Getting babies to shill for your company during the super bowl requires a heck of a lot of commissions. Due to the difficulties involved in setting up a brokerage, it's unlikely that you'll see a scam. A brokerage might go bankrupt for random reasons, but that's what investor insurance is for. \"Safeness\" is mostly the likelihood that you'll be able to get access to your funds on deposit with the broker. Investment funds are insured by SIPC for up to $500,000, with a lower limit on cash. The specific limits vary by broker, with some offering greater protection paid for on their own dime. Check with the broker -- it's usually on their web pages under \"Security\". Funds in \"cash\" might be swept into an interest-earning investment vehicle for which insurance is different, and that depends on the broker, too. A few Forex brokers went bankrupt last year, although that's a new market with fewer regulatory protections for traders. I heard that one bankruptcy in the space resulted in a 7% loss for traders with accounts there, and that there was a Ponzi-ish scam company as well. Luckily, the more stringent regulation of stock brokerages makes that space much safer for investors. If you want to assess the reliability of an online broker, I suggest the following: It's tempting to look at when the brokerage was founded. Fly-by-night scams, by definition, won't be around very long -- and usually that means under a few months. Any company with a significant online interface will have to have been around long enough to develop that client interface, their backend databases, and the interface with the markets and their clearing house. The two brokerages you mentioned have been around for 7+ years, so that lends strength to the supposition of a strong business model. That said, there could well be a new company that offers services or prices that fit your investment need, and in that case definitely look into their registrations and third-party reviews. Finally, note that the smaller, independent brokerages will probably have stiffer margin rules. If you're playing a complex, novel, and/or high-risk strategy that can't handle the volatility of a market crash, even a short excursion such as the 2010 flash crash, stiff margin rules might have consequences that a novice investor would rather pretend didn't exist.", "How much is rent in your area? You should compare a rental payment versus your mortgage payment now, bearing in mind the opportunity cost of the difference. Let's say that a rental unit in your area that has the same safety & convenience as your house costs $1600 per month to rent, and your mortgage is $2400. By staying in the house, you are losing that $800 month as well as interest earned on banking that money (however, right now, interest rates are negligible). Factor in total cost of ownership too, meaning extra utilities for one or the other (sometimes houses are cheaper, sometime not), property insurance and taxes for the house (if they aren't already in escrow through your mortgage) and generic house repair stuff. If the savings for a rental are worth more than a couple hundred a month, then I suggest you consider bailing. Start multiplying $500-1000 per month out over a year or two and decide if that extra cash is better for you than crappy credit. Also, this is not the most ethical thing, but I do know of one couple who stopped paying their mortgage for several months, knowing they were going to give the house back at the end. They took what they would have spent in mortgage payments during that time into a savings account, and will have more than enough cash to float for the few years that their credit is lowered by the default. Also something to consider is that we are in a time of ridiculous numbers of people defaulting. As such, a poor credit score might start to be more common among people with decent incomes, to the point where a \"poor\" score in 5 years is worth about the same as an \"average\" score today. I wouldn't count on that, but it might soften the blow of your bad credit if you default.", "I wouldn't buy a house at this time. Your credit card debt is the most expensive thing you have. Which is to say that you want to get rid of it as soon as possible. The lawyer isn't cheap, and your personal situation is not fully resolved. Congratulations on paying off the IRS, and getting up the 401k to 17.5k. Take care of the two things in paragraph 1, first,and then think about buying a house. You're doing too much good work to have it possibly be derailed by home payments.", "My question is... how is this new value determined? Does it go off of the tax appraised value? The tax assessors values are based on broad averages and are not very useful in determining actual home value. The most defensible valuation outside of a sale is a professional appraisal, real-estate agents may or may not give you reasonable estimates, but their opinions are less valuable than that of a professional appraiser. Additionally, agents hoping to land you as a client (even if you tell them you're not trying to sell) could be motivated to over-estimate. In many instances a few opinions from agents will be good enough, but if there is any contention a professional appraisal will be better. Should you, prior to your death, get an independent appraiser to appraise the value of the property and include that assessment of the properties value with the will or something? The real-estate market fluctuates too much to make having an appraisal done prior to your death a practical approach in most circumstances. You could make arrangements so that an appraisal would be scheduled after your death. Here's a good resource on the topic: Estimating the Value of Inherited Real Estate", "A company CAN hold on to money. This is called retained earnings. Not all money is due back to the owners (i.e. stockholders), but only the amount that the board of directors chooses to pay back in the form of dividends. There is a lot more detail around this, but this is the simple answer to your question.", "These stocks have no value to them, are just waiting for paper work to liquefy and vanish. The other gamblers are bots waiting for some sucker to buy so they can sell right away. So maybe a fresh new penny stock that hasn't been botted yet gives some higher chance of success, but you probably need to be a bot to sell it quickly enough. All in all not that much different from buying regular stocks...", "Does it ever make sense? Yes, but almost never. If you're in a situation where you're invested in something with low rates (think government securities) or cash equivalents, then you do need to think about rate spread as you mention. Does the savings over the life over the mortgage beat out the 35% hit now, plus all the interest you would earn over those 20 years? Have you factored in other considerations such as mortgage interest deduction on taxes? Don't forget you need to think about how rates will change down the line (they can't go much lower, so potentially you'll get better rates in the 401(k) down the line). Don't forget there's also the impact of inflation; again the rates on your savings may go up, but your mortgage is a fixed payment, so with even a low rate of inflation, your payments effectively become \"less\" over time. If your investments are in something like stocks and bonds, then I would say undoubtedly you would want to keep the money in the 401(k). Time in market and compounding are your best friends over a long time horizon. Also, as mentioned by @JohnFX, the hit of your 35% now is something you will absolutely feel now. Hopefully not, but your life situation could change where you have an emergency and need to drain your savings or you may not see the end of that 20 years.", "I came up with a real way. I saw once the market be so dumb as to allow this to work. Inflation rate = 2.5%. Home interest rate = 3%. Tax deduction = 1%. Money spent on inflation-adjusted I bonds (at the time these paid 0% net, that is 2.5% gross). Result, .5% profit after accounting for inflation. The kicker: Uncle Sam's I bonds are tax free. Sure it's not possible today, but the rates occasionally drop low enough." ]

[ "Another option, not yet discussed here, is to allow the loan to go into default and let the loaning agency repossess the property the loan was used for, after which they sell it and that sale should discharge some significant portion of the loan. Knowing where the friend and property is, you may be able to help them carry out the repossession by providing them information. Meanwhile, your credit will take a significant hit, but unless your name is on the deed/title of the property then you have little claim that the property is yours just because you're paying the loan. The contract you signed for the loan is not going to be easily bypassed with a lawsuit of any sort, so unless you can produce another contract between you and your friend it's unlikely that you can even sue them. In short, you have no claim to the property, but the loaning agency does - perhaps that's the only way to avoid paying most of the debt, but you do trade some of your credit for it. Hopefully you understand that what you loaned wasn't money, but your credit score and earning potential, and that you will be more careful who you choose to lend this to in the future." ]

[ "While it is not common, it is also not \"uncommon.\" A subtle distinction. If you are poor, you almost certainly get some kind of government assistance (not even talking about Obamacare or Trumpcare, but just general assistance.) If you are middle class or rich, that is where you get hit the most. They seem to realize you \"can't get blood from a stone\" and don't try to get payment out of poor people. But middle class and rich people, yes it just takes longer but they do hang in there with billing. My own experience is that years and years ago (way before Obamacare) I had a time in the hospital with a lot of tests, but I was poor and sleeping on a relatives floor at the time. I got all the tests I needed, and they took great care of me, and the hospital wrote it off as \"charity care.\"", "And then there is the issue of people who actually don't intend to reduce the size of their loan. They only want to pay the interest, so their debt with the bank remains constant. If you are upside down, it means you will not have the financial means to remove the debt. If, for some reason, you are no longer able to pay the bank, you might lose the house. After that you will have no house, but you still have a debt with the bank.", "The Money Girl (Quick and Dirty Tips for a richer life) Podcast is a pretty good source for this type of information. Some Recent Topics:", "The stock will slowly gain that $1 during the year. Suppose we have the highly theoretical situation that a company's stock is worth exactly $10 right after it paid its dividend, its dividend is always $1 per stock, and the company and everything else is so stable that its value never changes. Then the stock value right before the next dividend is paid will be close to $11 -- after all, it's worth a certain $1 dividend the next day, plus the $10 stock. And in between, half a year after the dividend was paid, it will be in between, say $10.50, or actually slightly less than that (because people like to buy in late so they can make money some other way with the money first). But the point holds -- the price decrease on the day that dividend is paid had been building up the whole period before that decrease. So stock dividends do make you money.", "I personally spoke with a Questrade agent about my question. To make a long story short: in a margin account, you are automatically issued a loan when buying U.S. stock with a Canadian money. Whereas, in a registered account (e.g. RRSP), the amount is converted on your behalf to cover the debit balance. Me: What happens if I open an account and I place an order for U.S. stocks with Canadian money? Is the amount converted at the time of transfer? How does that work? Agent: In a margin account, you are automatically issued a loan for a currency you do not have, however, if you have enough buying power, it will go through. The interest on the overnight balance is calculated daily and is charged on a monthly basis. We do not convert funds automatically in a margin account because you can have a debit cash balance. Agent: In a registered account, the Canada Revenue Agency does not allow a debit balance and therefore, we must convert your funds on your behalf to cover the debit balance if possible. We convert automatically overnight for a registered account. Agent: For example, if you buy U.S. equity you will need USD to buy it, and if you only have CAD, we will loan you USD to cover for that transaction. For example, if you had only $100 CAD and then wanted to buy U.S. stock worth $100 USD, then we will loan you $100 USD to purchase the stock. In a margin account we will not convert the funds automatically. Therefore, you will remain to have a $100 CAD credit and a $100 USD debit balance (or a loan) in your account. Me: I see, it means the longer I keep the stock, the higher interest will be? Agent: Well, yes, however, in a registered account there will be not be any interest since we convert your funds, but in a margin account, there will be interest until the debit balance is covered, or you can manually convert your funds by contacting us.", "Is the parent company's common stock public? If not, then there will be absolutely no pressure from everyone liquidating at the same time. If so, consider the average daily volume of transactions in the parent company's stock. Is it much greater than the volume your 10k co-workers will have to liquidate? If so, I wouldn't expect much of an impact from all liquidating at once. Any other situation, you are probably right to be a bit worried about simultaneous liquidation. If this was my case, I'd probably submit a limit sell order so as to try and pick out a high for the timing of my liquidation, and lower my limit vs fair value as it got closer to the expiration of your ability to hold the parent company stock.", "mhoran_psprep has answered the question well about \"shorting\" e.g. making a profit if the stock price goes down. However a CEO can take out insurance (called hedging) against the stock price going down in relation to stocks they already own in some cases. But is must be disclosed in public filings etc. This may be done for example if most of the CEO’s money is in the stock of the company and they can’t sell for tax reasons. Normally it would only be done for part of the CEO’s holding.", "The Wikipedia page for Repurchase Agreement has two relevant pointers on this topic: The legal title for any securities used in a repo actually pass from seller to buyer during the term of the agreement. In basic terms this means that if one sells a bond on repo with a promise to buy it back, then the ownership actually transfers to the buyer for that period of time. If a coupon is paid during this time period, it can either go to the buyer or the seller. Usually, the coupon payment goes to the initial owner of the security pre-repo (our \"seller\"). But sometimes the repurchase agreement will specify otherwise. So, again in basic terms, usually the repo seller/initial security owner receives any payments made during the term of the repurchase agreement. (Both points are in the first paragraph of the section \"Structure and Terminology\".)", "There's not a single answer here, as the premium you pay for car insurance depends on multiple factors, including (but not limited to): All these factors contribute to the likelihood of getting into an accident, and the expected damage from an accident. So just having an accident and making a claim will likely raise your premium (all else being equal), but whether or not it will be cheaper in the long run depends (obviously) on how much your premium goes up, which cannot determined without all of the facts. Your agent could tell you how much it would go up, but even making such an inquiry would likely be noted on your insurance record, and may cause your premium to go up (although probably not by as much). However, the point of insurance is to reduce the out-of-pocket expenses from future accidents, so the question to ask is: How likely am I to have another accident, and if I do, can I pay cash for it or will I need to offset some cost with an insurance claim. Do you risk making a claim and having your rates go up by more than $700 over the next 3-4 years (the rough time it takes for a \"surcharge\" to expire)? Or do you just pay for the repair out-of-pocket and keep your premiums lower?", "Since all the other answers thus far seem to downplay the risk (likelihood) of the money being seized, I figure I may as well make my comment an answer. Unless you happen to have your legal team travelling with you and your suitcase of cash, you should expect that you'll be questioned extensively, so that any sign of nervousness, inconsistency in your answers or anything you say that doesn't \"make sense\" to the officer will be used as an excuse to seize your money, and you'll learn an expensive lesson in civil asset forfeiture. The government will file a complaint against your money, leading to a ridiculously named case, such as United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency. Worth noting that while the outcome in this case was not in the government's favor, in the vast majority of cases, the government keeps the cash. Between 9/11 and 2014, U.S police forces have seized over 2.5 billion dollars in cash without search warrants or indictments and returned the money in less than 10% of cases. That last link is kind of a long read, but contains cases where people with completely legitimate money and documentation for their money had it seized anyway, and were only able to recover it after months or years in court." ]

[ "If you are off by coins, how can you be sure that you only made a typo and didn't miss a transaction? To start off, I would strongly you find a way to be precise. It doesn't matter so much in the accounting, but the habit of doing a thorough job will pay off in other dividends down the line. Basically, do the pennies now. Tryout some free online software to save the headache of data entry. But........ Since my primary goal is to get you to do the budgeting, and if you really hate the coins, just be consistent in how you fudge the debits and the credits. Always round down to the nearest whole in income, and always round up on expenses. You won't overspend this way, and your back account should have a little bit of padding because you will assume less money in and more money out. Honestly, I do tracking in both Quicken and Mint.com, so the transaction size is no big deal to me. If I did it all in Excel, I would round to whole notes. You didn't tag your question with a country, so I don't know if or similar is available to you." ]

[ "This may not apply in your particular situation, but I think it's important to mention: When a debt collector doesn't act like a debt collector, it may be because they aren't actually a debt collector. It's certainly strange that someone called you to collect money from you, and when you asked for a simple document, they not only got off the phone quickly but they also told you the debt would be cancelled. That just doesn't make sense: Why would they cancel the debt? Why wouldn't they send you the document? My initial impression is that you were possibly being scammed. The scam can take on many forms: Whenever you are called by a debt collector (or someone pretending to be one), it's a good idea to verify their identity first. More info here.", "Call in to the bank using a publicly available number to verify the request.", "Just a thought, but have you considered approaching your sister about assuming the student loans or repaying your mother (even if it is a small amount/month) for financing her college education? If she is in her last year of college, in theory she should be earning at least some income within the next 2 years. Also, it doesn't seem like a lot to ask considering the sacrifices (both financial and otherwise) that a single mom probably made over the years. I'm sure your mom would be hesitant to ask as it seems like she prioritizes her children above herself by your description of the situation, but I bet if you could talk the sister into the mom would grudgingly accept it if she really is in such a tight financial situation.", "Brokerages offer you the convenience of buying and selling financial products. They are usually not exchanges themselves, but they can be. Typically there is an exchange and the broker sends orders to that exchange. The main benefit that brokers offer is a simpler commission structure. Not all brokers have their own liquidity, but brokers can have their own allotment of shares of a stock, for example, that they will sell you when you make an order, so that you get what you want faster. Regarding accounts at the exchanges to track actual ownership and transfer of assets, it is not safe to assume thats how that works. There are a lot of shortcomings in how the actual exchange works, since the settlement time is 1 - 3 business days, depending on the product (so upwards of 5 to 6 actual days). In a fast market, the asset can change hands many many times making the accounting completely incorrect for extended time periods. Better to not worry about that part, but if you'd like to read more about how that is regulated look up \"Failure To Deliver\" regulations on short selling to get a better understanding of market microstructure. It is a very antiquated system.", "Apple is currently the most valuable company in the world by market capitalisation and it has issued bonds for instance. Amazon have also issued bonds in the past as have Google. One of many reasons companies may issue bonds is to reduce their tax bill. If a company is a multinational it may have foreign earnings that would incur a tax bill if they were transferred to the holding company's jurisdiction. The company can however issue bonds backed by the foreign cash pile. It can then use the bond cash to pay dividends to shareholders. Ratings Agencies such as Moody's, Fitch and Standard & Poor's exist to rate companies ability to make repayments on debt they issue. Investors can read their reports to help make a determination as to whether to invest in bond issues. Of course investors also need to determine whether they believe the Ratings Agencies assesments.", "In most countries there are specific guidelines on buy backs. It is never a case where by one fine morning company would buy its shares and sell it whenever it wants. In general company has to pass a board resolution, sometimes it also requires it to be approved by share holders. It has to notify the exchange weeks in advance. Quite a few countries require a price offer to all. I.E. it cannot execute a market order. All in all the company may have inside information, but it cannot time the market.", "I'm an Australian who just got back from a trip to Malaysia for two weeks over the New Year, so this feels a bit like dejavu! I set up a 28 Degrees credit card (my first ever!) because of their low exchange rate and lack of fees on credit card transactions. People say it's the best card for travel and I was ready for it. However, since Malaysia is largely a cash economy (especially in the non-city areas), I found myself mostly just withdrawing money from my credit card and thus getting hit with a cash advance fee ($4) and instant application of the high interest rate (22%) on the money. Since I was there already and had no other alternatives, I made five withdrawals over the two weeks and ended up paying about $21 in fees. Not great! But last time I travelled I had a Commonwealth Bank Travel Money Card (not a great idea), and if I'd used that instead on this trip and given up fees for a higher exchange rate, I would have been charged an extra $60! Presumably my Commonwealth debit card would have been the same. This isn't even including mandatory ATM fees. If I've learned anything from this experience and these envelope calculations I'm doing now, it's these:", "You are assuming 100% occupancy and 100% rent collection. This is unrealistic. You could get lucky and find that long term tenant with great credit that always pays their bills... but in reality that person usually buys a home they do not rent long term. So you will need to be prepared for periods of no renters and periods of non payment. The expenses here I would expect could wipe out more than you can make in \"profit\" based on your numbers. Have you checked to find out what the insurance on a rental property is? I am guessing it will go up probably 200-500 a year possibly more depending on coverage. You will need a different type of insurance for rental property. Have you checked with your mortgage provider to make sure that you can convert to a rental property? Some mortgages (mine is one) restrict the use of the home from being a rental property. You may be required to refinance your home which could cost you more, in addition if you are under water it will be hard to find a new financier willing to write that mortgage with anything like reasonable terms. You are correct you would be taking on a new expense in rental. It is non deductible, and the IRS knows this well. As Littleadv's answer stated you can deduct some expenses from your rental property. I am not sure that you will have a net wash or loss when you add those expenses. If you do then you have a problem since you have a business losing money. This does not even address the headaches that come with being a landlord. By my quick calculations if you want to break even your rental property should be about 2175/Month. This accounts for 80% occupancy and 80% rental payment. If you get better than that you should make a bit of a profit... dont worry im sure the house will find a way to reclaim it.", "I'm not familiar with QQQ, but I'm guessing this is something like IShares Ftse 100 (see description here)", "Yes. The simplest option to track your spending over time is to familiarize yourself with the \"Reports\" menu on the toolbar. Take a look specifically at the \"Reports > Income/Expense > Income Statement\" report, which will sum up your income and spending over a time frame (defaults to the current year). In each report that you run, there is an \"Options\" button at the top of the screen. Open that and look on the \"General\" tab, you'll be able to set the time frame that the report displays (if you wanted to set it for the 2 week block since your last paycheck, for example). Other features you're going to want to familiarize yourself with are the Expense charts & statements, the \"Cash Flow\" report, and the \"Budgeting\" interface (which is relatively new), although there is a bit of a learning curve to using this last feature. Most of the good ideas when it comes to tracking your spending are independent of the software you're using, but can be augmented with a good financial tracking program. For example, in our household we have multiple credit cards which we pay in full every month. We selected our cards on specific benefits that they provide, such as one card which has a rotating category for cash back at certain business types. We keep that card set on restaurants and put all of our \"eating out\" expenses on that card. We have other cards for groceries, gas, etc. This makes it easy to see how much we've spent in a given category, and correlates well with the account structure in gnucash." ]

[ "Typically the fees are charged when the order is executed. The only catch I have ever ran into is when an order is partially executed. A good-till-cancel order that gets executed in several blocks over multiple days may get charged a separate commission for each day (but typically not each block). If this is a simple brokerage account, you could avoid the whole question by using robinhood.com, which charges no commissions or maintenance fees." ]

[ "I have found The DRiP Investing Resource Center to be a useful resource for more information about DRIP investing. Moneypaper.com offers a list of companies offering both direct purchase options and dividend reinvestment plans. For those offering dividend reinvestment plans, but not direct purchase, you have the option of using a service to purchase your first shares to enroll in the DRIP program. The tax paperwork for DRIPs is a pain due to the partial shares purchased over time when you have to figure out your own cost basis upon sale of shares , but a spreadsheet and a FIFO (first in first out) approach makes it not too much of a headache. -MU", "There is actually a restriction on how high a wage they can pay you. There didn't use to be, but now it has to be reasonable for the work you are doing, so they can't pay you $100/hr while other people doing the same work get minimum wage. You might ask why on earth a parent would want to pay a child way more than they're worth? The salary is tax deductible to the company. Then the child pays their \"expenses\" - hockey fees and equipment, field trips, birthday presents for their friends and so on - out of the money the company paid them. They also save for their post-secondary education. The rest of the family budget now has a little more room, and the parents can lower their own salaries if they have expensive children. This means more net money in the company and less total income tax paid by the family for the same total income. My concern is that if your parents don't know whether or not you must be paid minimum wage (you must, there's no family exemption) then they also don't know whether you should have EI deducted (probably not) and various other special cases like eligibility for summer student subsidies. The firm's accountant should be able to help with these things and the company should know all this. It's not the role of a 14 year old to ask the Internet how to run a business, the business owners should know it.", "As an investor you must remember to forgive yourself. However, you must not only forgive but make it up to yourself by putting in the hours of study necessary to ensure that what you are forgiving yourself for will not happen again. Studying (finance, fundamental analysis, statistics, etc.)will also help you to worry less. Once you have put in the hours of study necessary, you can turn to any of a number of still relatively conservative strategies, such as seeking out undervalued blue-chip stocks to purchase or selling covered call options. Good luck.", "Until they're old enough to be legally responsible for their own credit, the only thing you can really do is show them by example how to manage money and credit in your own finances. Teach them budgeting, immerse them in understanding how credit and financing work, and teach them smart ways to make their money work for them. When they're teenagers, you could potentially approach small banks or credit unions about ways to perhaps co-sign loans for them and let them make payments to learn good habits for managing their responsibilities, but that's not always easy either. It won't do anything for their credit, but having the responsibility of coming in to make payments might instill good habits and help their self-esteem at the same time. You have great intentions, but as has been pointed out here already, from a legal standpoint there's not much you can do. All you can do is prepare them for the day when they are on their own and can enter into credit agreements. Kids going to college get into real trouble with credit because cards are handed out like candy to them by the banks, so teaching them money management skills is invaluable and something you can do now.", "Step 1)I answer the phone saying it is illegal to call my cell phone and I want all further communications in writing. Put this number on the do not call list and reverse search the number they dialed. Step 2) I say that whoever changed their number and how long I have owned the number and I call forward when they don't stop. I forward calls through google voice and mark them as spam. They get a sorry number was disconnected recording. Step 3) REALLY HARSH. I say the person passed away only if they aren't deterred enough by the previous efforts or they get cross into extreme harassment. Usually Step 1 is enough to stop the calls no matter who they ask for.", "The nature of this question (finding a financial adviser) can make it a conundrum. Those who have little financial experience are often in the greatest need of a financial adviser and at the same time are the least qualified to select one. I'm not putting you or anyone in particular in this category. And of course it's a sliding scale: In general the more capable you are of running your own finances the more prepared you are to answer this question. With that said, I would recommend backing up half a step. Consider advisers other than strictly fee-only advisers. Perhaps you have already considered this decision. But perhaps others reading this have not. My (Ameriprise) adviser charges a monthly (~$50) fee, but also gets percentage-based portions of certain investments. Based on a $150/hr rate that amounts to four hours per year. Does he spend four hours per year on my account? Well so far he does (~2 yrs). But that is determined primarily by how much interaction I choose to have with him. (I suppose I could spend more time asking him questions and less time on this forum. :P) I have never fully understood the gravitation towards fee-based advisers on principle. I guess the theory is they are not making biased decisions about your investments because they don't have as much of a stake in how well your investments to do. I don't necessarily see that as an advantage. It seems they would have less of an incentive to ensure the growth of your investments. Although if you're nearing retirement then growth isn't your biggest concern. Perhaps a fee-based adviser makes more sense in that scenario. Whatever pay structure your adviser uses, it would seem to make sense to consider a successful adviser with a good client base. This implies that the adviser knows what he/she is doing. (But it could also just be a sign that they are good at marketing themselves.) If your adviser has a good base of wealthy clients then choosing a strictly-fee based adviser would mitigate the risk of your adviser having less incentive to consider your portfolio vs that of more wealthy clients. To more directly answer your question I suggest asking several of your adviser candidates for advice on choosing an adviser. I suspect you will get some good advice as well as good insight on the integrity and honesty of the adviser.", "Another option to a human advisor is FutureAdvisor, a web service that (if it supports your 401k plan) gives personalized algorithmic advice on what you should hold in your 401(k) and other retirement accounts. If it doesn't support your 401(k) plan just yet you can sign up to be emailed when your plan is added. [Disclosure: I work here, but I believe in the product and it's designed to solve this exact problem so I'm mentioning it here] Note from JoeTaxpayer - bolu's disclosure is much appreciated. The fee is $39/yr, with a free trial. Consider that a commissions based advisor won't even take on a $10K level account, and at $100K, you'd be hard pressed to gain by more than his 1% fee. So while I've not dug deeper into this site, a rules-based methodology is likely to be worth the cost if over time it gains you even a fraction of a percent compared to what you'd have done blindly.", "How is that possible?? The mutual fund doesn't pay taxes and passes along the tax bill to shareholders via distributions would be the short answer. Your basis likely changed as now you have bought more shares. But I gained absolutely nothing from my dividend, so how is it taxable? The fund has either realized capital gains, dividends, interest or some other form of income that it has to pass along to shareholders as the fund doesn't pay taxes itself. Did I get screwed the first year because I bought into the fund too late in the year? Perhaps if you don't notice that your cost basis has changed here so that you'll have lower taxes when you sell your shares. Is anyone familiar with what causes this kind of situation of receiving a \"taxable dividend\" that doesn't actually increase the account balance? Yes, I am rather familiar with this. The point to understand is that the fund doesn't pay taxes itself but passes this along. The shareholders that hold funds in tax-advantaged accounts like 401ks and IRAs still get the distribution but are shielded from paying taxes on those gains at that point at time. Is it because I bought too late in the year? No, it is because you didn't know the fund would have a distribution of that size that year. Some funds can have negative returns yet still have a capital gains distribution if the fund experiences enough redemptions that the fund had to sell appreciated shares in a security. This is part of the risk in having stock funds in taxable accounts. Or is it because the fund had a negative return that year? No, it is because you don't understand how mutual funds and taxes work along with what distribution schedule the fund had. Do I wait until after the distribution date this year to buy? I'd likely consider it for taxable accounts yes. However, if you are buying in a tax-advantaged account then there isn't that same issue.", "You are right in insisting upon a proper B2B contract in any business relationship. You wish to reduce your risk and be compensated fairly. In addition to the cost and complexity of international wire transfers, the US companies may also be considering the fact that as an international contractor in a relatively hard-to-reach jurisdiction, payments to you place the company at higher risk than payments to a domestic contractor. By insisting upon PayPal or similar transmitters, they are reducing their internal complexity and reducing their financial exposure to unfulfilled/disputed contract terms. Therefore, wire payments are \"hard\" in an internal business sense, as well as in a remittance transfer reporting sense. The internal business procedure will likely be the hardest to overcome--changing risk management is harder than filling out forms.", "Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it - Publilius Syrus It could be that, despite predictions from experts to the contrary, investors believe that renegotiating trade deals will have a positive affect on the economy, despite the upheaval uncertainty, and risk that it brings. Keep in mind that, as Pete B points out, this is part of a bigger post-election trend many people refer to as the \"trump rally,\" which is a factor of more than one policy. Whether or not these policies will actually result in an a more robust economy, investors seem to be betting that it will." ]

[ "Are there other options I haven't thought of? Mutual funds, stocks, bonds. To buy and sell these you don't need a lawyer, a real-estate broker and a banker. Much more flexible than owning real estate. Edit: Re Option 3: With no knowledge of investing the first thing you should do is read a few books. The second thing you should do is invest in mutual funds (and/or ETFs) that track an index, such as the FTSE graph that was posted. Index funds are the safest way to invest for those with no experience. With the substantial amount that you are considering investing it would also be wise to do it gradually. Look up \"dollar cost averaging.\"" ]

[ "Point of order: \"What goes up must come down\" refers to gravity of terrestrial objects below escape velocity and should not be generalized beyond its intent. It's not true that stocks MUST come down just because they have gone up. For example, we would not expecting the price of oil to come down to 1999 levels, right? Prices, including those of stocks, are not necessarily cyclical. Anyway, short selling isn't necessarily a bad idea. In some sense, it is insurance if you have a lot of assets (like maybe your human capital) that will take a dive when the market goes down. Short selling would have lost a lot of money in your case as the stock market between 2011 (when you wrote the question) and 2014 (when I wrote this answer) performed very well. On average the long side stock market should make money over long periods of time as compensation for risk and the short side should lose money, so it's not a good way to make money if you don't have an informational advantage. Like all insurance, it protects you against certain calamities, but on average it costs you money.", "These cars are generally considered out of date and are less prone to be victims of car theft while being reasonably safe. Make sure you pick a model with a good reliability reputation, see what comes up at your local junk yard (the common old models have survived long enough to not end up there until now). Servicing your car takes some effort and some initial investments, but learning how to fix simple problems by yourself will save you a lot of money in the long run. Start by learning how to locate some simple faults. Diagnosing issues is a very costly process if done professionally, but some you may be able to find by yourself. All cars sold in USA from 1996 are required to have this connection below the steering rack. As a consequence most cars manufactured 1995 will have this connector world wide. If you connect your OBD2 adapter to this port your car will be able to tell you what's wrong through an app on your phone and you will be able to clear fault codes by yourself to make sure the problem really is solved. This is what you mechanic should use when servicing your car. While a new print can be expensive you can find used manuals getting thrown out of service centers or at yard sales. These will include service notes and sometimes had-written notes to help you out. The majority of parts on scrapped cars are still in working condition and may not ever see significant wear and tear. If you put some time into removing the part yourself you will have a good idea of how difficult it is to replace the part on your car and outsource the work to a professional if needed. This of course assumes you bring good parts. The main income should come from the work performed on your car, not the markup of spare parts. Generally speaking specialized mechanics working with one or few brands of cars are preferable as these will not only be familiar with your car but are also more likely to get original spare parts (not \"pirate\" parts made to be compatible at a cheaper price). This will make sure the part works as intended and not cause wear and tear of other parts. For example you'd much rather replace a broken fuse instead of cleaning up the aftermath of fried electronics. Turn off the AC when it's not needed. There should be a button labeled \"ECON\" or similar which will disable the AC compressor while keeping the rest of the systems running. The compressor is usually driven by a belt from the crankshaft and will eat up some of the power your engine produces. Just remember that while it saves gas, uncomfortable driving conditions may shorten your patience and reduces your attention. Accelerate up to speed quickly. Contrary to popular belief, this saves more gas than accelerating slowly because the time your engine is under increased load is shorter combined with higher efficiency at medium engine speeds. Allow your speed to decline on uphills, you will regain that speed once the road levels out. Unless you're in heavy traffic driving a bit slower shouldn't harm the flow. Don't let go of the gas pedal, just avoid compensating as much. Your target should be to not lose more than 20% of your speed over the entire ascent and have a constant deceleration or you will start interfering with traffic. Make sure your car is healthy. As obvious as it may sound, worn out parts may harm your mileage. Increased friction in bearings due to broken protective covers or reduced pressure from a broken exhaust are just examples if things that will ruin the efficiency of you driveline. By themselves they may not do much but they add up into both gas consumption and reliability issues. Really do read your owners manual. Nobody knows your car better than the people who built it. What's best for my car may not be best for your car and the best way to make sure your car is working as intended is to take an afternoon with your manual and a cup of your favorite beverage. Afterwards you will know how all the features of your car works. \"Take care of your car and it takes care of you\" is the principle I'm working with. A car you're happy with will make you more calm behind the wheel and leads to higher quality of your driving decisions. Both you and your fellow commuters will benefit from this, even if they may never take the time to thank you.", "I'm surprised to even hear this question with the current state of devaluation of real estate. One thing I'll add to the other answers is to make sure you are doing a true apples/apples comparison to other investments when considering real estate. You can't just take subtract the purchase price from the sales price to get your ROI. Real estate has very heavy carry costs that you need to factor into any ROI calculation including: One more point: A house that you live in shouldn't be considered an investment, but rather an expense. You have to be able to liquidate an investment and collect your return. Unless you plan to move back in with your parents, you are always going to need a place to live so you can never really cash out on that investment, except perhaps by downgrading your lifestyle or a reverse mortgage.", "Wikipedia's article on the Parable of the broken window mentions that Keynesians would argue that broken windows can be useful in depressed economies. I think Japan's economy was somewhat depressed, so if it applies anywhere, it'd apply in this scenario.", "How can people afford 10% mortgage? Part of the history of housing prices was the non-bubble component of the bubble. To be clear, there was a housing bubble and crash. Let me offer some simple math to illustrate my point - This is what happened on the way down. A middle class earner, $60K/yr couple, using 25% of their income, the normal percent for a qualified mortgage, was able to afford $142K for the mortgage payment. At 10% fixed rate. This meant that after down payment, they were buying a house at $175K or so, which was above median home pricing. Years later, obviously, this wasn't a step function, with a rate of 4%, and ignoring any potential rise of income, as in real term, income was pretty stagnant, the same $1250/mo could pay for a $260K mortgage. If you want to say that taxes and insurance would push that down a bit, sure, drop the loan to $240K, and the house price is $300K. My thesis ('my belief' or 'proposal', I haven't written a scholarly paper, yet) is that the relationship between median home price and median income is easily calculated based on current 30 year fixed rate loans. For all the talk of housing prices, this is the long term number. Housing cannot exceed income inflation long term as it would creep up as a percent of income and slow demand. I'm not talking McMansion here, only the median. By definition, the median house targets the median earners, the middle class. The price increase I illustrate was just over 70%. See the famous Shiller chart - The index move from 110 to 199 is an 81% rise. I maintain, 70 of that 81 can be accounted for by my math. Late 80's, 1987 to be exact, my wife got a mortgage for 9%, and we thought that was ok, as I had paid over 13% just 3 years earlier.", "Stockpile? No. Keep a few around? Sure, if you are a collector. I used to collect pennies and I thought the steel pennies from WWII were neat. I do believe I paid about $0.01 for them at the coin shop. They might be worth $0.15 if in great condition today. No harm in finding $20 worth of really nice nickels, maybe in chronological order and from the different mints. Put them in a collector case so they stay nice and chuck them in your fireproof safe with your house deed and insurance policies. But I don't think you are going to hit it particularly big, but it might be a nice thing to pass along as an inheritance.", "You'd need to test the assumptions here - in effect you're saying that in 15 years your account will have a balance 10x your income. But normally you'd expect your income to grow over the years (e.g. promotions) and so you'd hope that your income in 15 years would be significantly larger than what it is now. But, even in the case where your account eventually does grow to 10x your salary at that time, it may still be worth continuing to contribute. In effect, adding a further 1% to your account is boosting the \"compounding return\" on your account by 1% - after fees and risk free. This additional 1% \"return\" in effect makes your retirement plan safer - you either get a higher total return for the same investment mix, or you can get the same total return for a slightly safer investment mix. In effect, you're treating your salary as a \"safe\" annuity and each year putting 10% of the \"return\" from that into your more risky retirement account.", "I would suggest they are not wasted because your premiums fund unemployment insurance, which is a net to prevent people from going under if they lose their jobs. Unemployment insurance is in many ways an incubator for success because it allows an entrepreneur to take more risk in starting a business because failure won't mean devastation. Perhaps that person who took the risk because of the ability to fail started the business that you now work for. Society works better (in my opinion) by keeping the bottom closer to the top. Paying into the unemployment insurance fund indirectly provides you opportunity.", "In the US there is no set date. If all goes well there are multiple dates of importance. If it doesn't go well the budget process also may include continuing resolutions, shutdowns, and sequestrations.", "In the past 10 years there have been mutual funds that would act as a single bucket of stocks and bonds. A good example is Fidelity's Four In One. The trade off was a management fee for the fund in exchange for having to manage the portfolio itself and pay separate commissions and fees. These days though it is very simple and pretty cheap to put together a basket of 5-6 ETFs that would represent a balanced portfolio. Whats even more interesting is that large online brokerage houses are starting to offer commission free trading of a number of ETFs, as long as they are not day traded and are held for a period similar to NTF mutual funds. I think you could easily put together a basket of 5-6 ETFs to trade on Fidelity or TD Ameritrade commission free, and one that would represent a nice diversified portfolio. The main advantage is that you are not giving money to the fund manager but rather paying the minimal cost of investing in an index ETF. Overall this can save you an extra .5-1% annually on your portfolio, just in fees. Here are links to commission free ETF trading on Fidelity and TD Ameritrade." ]

[ "I'm going to go with \"ridiculous notion.\" :) The vast majority of businesses are legitimate, run by honest people trying to earn a living for themselves and their employees. These days, almost all of them accept credit cards. Crooked businesses are a very small minority. When a bad business over charges you, you dispute the charge, and you get your money back. But that's not all that happens. The bad merchant pays penalties for this, and if it happens more than a couple of times, the merchant loses their merchant account with their bank, which means that they lose their ability to accept credit card payments anymore. A crooked business is not able to rob people via credit card for very long at all. A whitelist would certainly not be able to include every legitimate business. And a blacklist would never be able to be kept up-to-date, as bad businesses come and go continuously; as soon as a business was added to the blacklist, they would lose their merchant account and would no longer need to be on the list. What you are describing is very rare. My brother once had a bad experience with a tech support company where they were repeatedly charging him for a service they never performed. But a credit card chargeback took care of it. If that company made a habit of that, I'm sure that they got in trouble with their bank. Instead, the most common credit card fraud happens when crooks use your credit card at perfectly legitimate businesses. But your whitelist/blacklist wouldn't help you with that at all." ]

[ "I expected a word or two on the price elasticity of demand here :) Andrey, Your question needs slight revision in its current form. Rising prices actually do not mean increased profitability for a company. The quantity they sell also pays a huge part and actually is correlated to the price at which they sell the goods (and other factors such as the price at which their competitor sells the goods etc., but we will ignore it for simplicity). The net profit of sales for any firm is equal to (Qty x Sale Price) - COGS - SG&A - taxes - other expenses where, COGS means cost of goods sold SG&A means sales, general and admin costs (e.g., cleaning the inventory storage area daily so that the goods stay fresh etc.) other expenses include any miscellaneous other costs that the firm incurs to make the sale. Now, if everything in that equation remains same (COGS, SG&A, taxes, and other expenditures), rising prices will only translate into a higher profit if the quantity does not fall by the same margin. Prices may also rise simply as a response to risking COGS, SG&A or other expenditures --the latter may be observed in inflationary environments. In such a case, the supplying firm can end up losing its profit margin if the quantity falls by more than the price rise.", "It's probably a scam or maybe some amateur agency trying to put pressure on their target. Normal garnishment goes through the court system. Just ignore it. Tell your employer they obviously have the wrong person since the SS is wrong. Suing clowns like this is not worth it. Just to clarify this some more for you: Trying to collect on a random person with the same name is called \"tagging\" in the collection industry. Before 2010 it was common because it was actually easier to legally bully the wrong person (who had money) than the right person who does not have money. That was then, this is now. Various federal and state laws have been passed since that time to prevent identity theft and these laws create big liabilities for debt collectors that try to bully the wrong person. Therefore, it rarely happens anymore, though of course sometimes agencies will still call you if they think they have a soft target. That's what the call to your employer is, just a test. A pro collector (like a law firm) would never call an employer, because they could get sued for doing that, but some amateur working out of his basement might. That's what you are dealing with: some joker in a basement. Such people never sue, they just buy old debt for pennies on the dollar and try random harassing phone calls. Ignore it and he will move on to the next \"John Smith\" on his list. A lot of lawyers will advise you to \"talk\" to the collector, correcting their misinformation, blah blah. Lawyers like talking, because the more talk there is, the more money they make. In the real legal world: never talk to your enemy or give them information. The way real courts and judges work is that they don't like plaintiffs who sue the wrong person. In fact, they do not like it VERY MUCH. Very bad things happen in courtrooms to people who sue the wrong person. Judges have VERY short patience in general and they DO NOT LIKE IT when somebody wastes their time by suing the wrong person. Basically what this means is: ignore the guy and he will go away.", "The fluctuation of interest rates during the next year could easily dwarf the savings this attempt to improve your credit score will have; or the reverse is true. Will the loan improve your score enough to make a difference? It will not change the number of months old your oldest account is. It will increase the breadth of your accounts. Applying for the car loan will result in a short term decrease in the score because of the hard pull. The total impact will be harder to predict. A few points either way will generally not have an impact on your rate. You will also notice the two cores in your question differ by more than 30 points. You can't control which number the lender will use. You also have to realize the number differs every day depending on when they pull it that month. The addition of a car loan, assuming you still have the loan when you buy the house, will not have a major impact on your ability to get afford the home mortgage. The bank cares about two numbers regarding monthly payments: the amount of your mortgage including principal, interest, taxes and insurance; and the amount of all other debt payments: car loan, school loans, credit cards. The PITI number should be no more than 28%-33% of your monthly income; the other payments no more than 10%. If the auto loan payments fit in the 10% window, then the amount of money you can spend each month on the mortgage will not be impacted. If it is too large, then they will want to see a smaller amount of your income to go to PITI. If you buy the car, either by cash or by loan, after you apply for the mortgage they will be concerned because you are impacting directly numbers they are using to evaluate your financial health. I have experienced a delay because the buyer bought a car the week before closing. The biggest impact on your ability to get the loan is the greater than 20% down payment, Assuming you can still do that if you pay cash for the car. Don't deplete your savings to get to the 50% down payment level. Keep money for closing costs, moving expenses, furnishing, plus other emergencies. Make it clear that you can easily cover the 20% level, and are willing to go higher to make the loan numbers work.", "Yes, however you would have to wait for the $900 to actually be available in your credit card account if making the transaction from an account from another bank or provider, as it usually might take one to two business days for this to happen. If both the chequing account and credit card account are with the same bank, then usually this will go through straight away, and you will be able to make your next purchase on the same day, but I would check your credit card balance first before making that purchase.", "Usually the most significant risk scenarios here are: Third parties can abuse your routing/account numbers to initiate debits, but this is a type of fraud that is easily traced. It can happen, but it is more likely that it would be a scenario where you were specifically targeted vs. the victim of some random fraud. Defending against someone who is specifically going after you is very difficult, especially if you don't know about it. Your SSN isnt used for the bank transfer, you are providing it so that the entity making the payments can report on payments to you for tax purposes. If you are truly worried about this type of scenario, I suggest setting up a dedicated savings account for the purpose of receiving these payments and then sweeping (either manually or automatically) the funds into another account. Most stock brokers will allow you to automate this, and most banks will let you do this manually.", "You could have both options exercised (and assigned to you) on the same day, but I don't think you could lose money on both on the same day. The reason is that while exercises are immediate, assignments are processed after the markets close at the end of each day. See http://www.888options.com/help/faq/assignment.jsp for details. So you would get both assignments at the same time, that night. The net effect should be that you don't own any stock (someone would put you the stock, then it'd be called away) and you don't have the options anymore. You should have incoming cash of $1500 selling the stock to the call exerciser and outgoing cash of $1300 buying from the put exerciser, right? So you would have no more options but $200 more cash in your account in the morning. You bought at 13 and sold at 15. This options position is an agreement to buy at 13 and sell at 15 at someone else's option. The way you lose money is if one of the options isn't exercised while the other is, i.e. if the stock is below 13 so nobody is going to opt to buy from you at 15, but they'll sell to you at 13; or above 15 so nobody is going to opt to sell to you at 13, but they'll buy from you at 15. You make money if neither is exercised (you keep the premium you sold for) or both are exercised (you keep the gap between the two, plus the premium). Having both exercised is surely rare, since early exercise is rare to begin with, and tends to happen when options are deep in the money; so you'd expect both to be exercised if both are deep in the money at some point. Having both be exercised on the same day ... can't be common, but it's maybe most likely just before expiration with minimal time value, if the stock moves around quickly so both options are in the money at some point during the day.", "A terrific resource is this article. To summarize the points given: PROS: CONS: There is no generic yes or no answer as to whether you ought to max out your 401(k)s. If you are a sophisticated investor, then saving the income for investing could be a better alternative. Long term capital gains are taxed at 15% in the US, so if you buy and hold on to good companies that reinvest their earnings, then the share price keeps going up and you'll save a lot of money that would go in taxes. If you're not a very good investor, however, then 401(k)s make a lot of sense. If you're going to end up setting up some asset allocation and buying ETFs and rebalancing or having a manager rebalance for you every year or so, then you might as well take the 401(k) option and lower your taxable income. Point #1 is simply wrong, because companies that reinvest earnings and growing for a long time are essentially creating tax-free gains for you, which is even better than tax-deferred gains. Nonetheless, most people have neither the time nor the interest to research companies and for them, the 401(k) makes more sense.", "I'm normally a fan of trying to put all the relevant info in an answer when possible, but this one's tough to do in one page. Here's the best way, by far to learn the basics: The OIC (Options Industry Council) has a great, free website to teach investors at all levels about options. You can set up a learning path that will remember which lessons you've done, etc. And they're really, truly not trying to sell you anything; their purpose is to promote the understanding and use of options.", "I was once the personal assistant to two wealthy NYC sisters. They did not pay for anything. For example, if we were riding the subway, I would pay, and be reimbursed by the Company. They had multiple residences and investment properties. Each property was purchased through a separate Limited Liablity Corporation, and paid for by the Company. When they purchased, donated or sold art, it was through their family Foundation. Their income primarily came from a draw of funds from the family estate, although one of them worked as an architect, which provided further income.", "Sorry to hear about your spouse's health issues. May he have a speedy and, as far as possible, full recovery. The Patient Protectection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka Obamacare) is now the law of the land. Among its many provisions are that insurers may no longer deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, they may not put lifetime caps on benefits, and they may not charge different premiums based on any criteria except age cohort and geographic area (i.e. rates may be higher for 50 year olds than 30 year olds, but sick and healthy 50 year olds living in the same area pay the same). If he gets government health coverage because he's on disability, this may not matter. On the other hand, you might find it better to put him on your employer's policy, because you like the coverage better, the employer covers part of the dependent premium, or some other reason. In any case, they can't discriminate against him or you based on his condition. ETA: Rates may vary by geography as well as age." ]

[ "You only need umbrella policy for large amounts of liability protection (I think they usually start with $1M). So if you don't have and don't expect to have assets at such a high value - why would you need the insurance? Your homeowners/renters/car/travel insurance should be enough, and you still need to have those for umbrella since its on top of the existing coverage, not instead. Many people just don't have enough assets to justify such a high coverage." ]

[ "The mental approach should be that you always knew the risk of gambling and it was extra money that you had (or should have had). Now think that the 'horse' race is not over and in the near future it will pick up pace against the others and be back on track.", "One of the key things to look for is trading volume. I think the price spread will be better on high volume ETFs, which means you'll be able to sell for more when the time comes. Check Google or Yahoo finance for those stats.", "Your reasoning is backwards. As others have pointed out, you cannot just decide how much you charge irrespective of the market. Let me paraphrase a little economics 101 to underline why you also should not think like this: You can see a rental property like your house (the same reasoning is usually explained with the example of hotel rooms) as a series of perishable goods. Your house represents the potential sale of the January rent (which perishes once January is over), plus the February rent etc. Your approach was to compute the total costs (all fixed and variable costs of owning that house as well as costs associated to renting specifically) and average them over the time period so that you know how much to ask at least. Assuming that you are only looking to rent it out, not sell it or let a family member live there, you can't think like this. Most of those costs that you averaged are what economists call sunk costs. You have already incurred the mortgage costs and they are not affected by your decision to rent or not to rent. These costs are irrelevant to your decision making process. You only need to think about marginal costs: those additional costs that you have when you rent but not when you don't. Look at the market prices for renting similar properties in that region and compare them with your marginal costs. As long as they are higher than your marginal costs, rent it out. This does not mean that you are sure to make profits, but it means that you are sure to make less losses than in your only alternative of not renting.", "I think that is the wrong approach. You certainly need to teach the value of work, but you cannot tie it to income levels as a hard and fast rule. If you do, how do you then explain athletes making millions per year and only 'working' half a year, at most. And, then comparing that person to a person working hard in a factory, 40-50 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, bringing home $50K per year? I've always taught my kids to work hard and with integrity. And, most importantly, you better enjoy the work you do because no matter how much money you make, if you dread getting up in the morning to go to work, your money won't make you happy. I've never focused on the amount of money they should be making.", "Buying now with a mortgage gets you: Waiting to buy with all cash gets you: These are also some of the pros or cons for the rent or buy dilemma that Paul mentioned in comments to the OP. This is a very complex, multi-faceted question, that would not respond well to being put into any equation or financial model. Most people answer the question with \"buy the home now with a mortgage\" if they can pay for the down payment. This is why the mortgage industry exists. The people who would want to finance now rather than buy with all cash later would not only be analyzing the question in terms of financial health but also in terms of general well being. They might consider the tremendous pride that comes with home ownership and living under a roof of one's own. Who can say that those people are wrong?", "A Roth IRA is simply a tax-sheltered account that you deposit funds into, and then invest however you choose (within the limits of the firm you deposit the funds with). For example, you could open a Roth IRA account with Vanguard. You could then invest the $3000 by purchasing shares of VOO, which tracks the S&P 500 index and has a very low expense ratio (0.04 as of last time I checked). Fidelity has a similar option, or Schwab, or whatever brokerage firm you prefer. IRAs are basically just normal investment accounts, except they don't owe taxes until you withdraw them (and Roth don't even owe them then, though you paid taxes on the funds you deposit). They have some limitations regarding options trading and such, but if you're a novice investor just looking to do basic investments, you'll not notice. Then, your IRA would go up or down in value as the market went up or down in value. You do have some restrictions on when you can withdraw the funds; Roth IRA has fewer than a normal IRA, as you can withdraw the capital (the amount you deposited) without penalty, but the profits cannot be withdrawn until you're retirement age (I won't put an actual year, as I suspect that actual year will change by the time you're that old; but think 60s). The reason not to invest in an IRA is if you plan on using the money in the near future - even as an \"emergency fund\". You should have some money that is not invested aggressively, that is in something very safe and very accessible, for your emergency fund; and if you plan to buy a house or whatever with the funds, don't start an IRA. But if this is truly money you want to save for retirement, that's the best place to start. **Note, this is not investment advice, and you should do your own homework prior to making any investment. You can lose some or all of the value of your account while investing.", "Exchange traded options are issued in a way that there is no counter party risk. Consider, stocks and options are held in street name. So, for example, if I am short and you are long shares, no matter what happens on my end, your shares are yours. To be complete, it's possible to enter into a direct deal, where you have a contract for some non-standard option, but that would be very rare for the average investor.", "None of the previous answers (which are all good) mention margin accounts (loans from your broker). You may also have heard them described as \"leverage\". It may seem odd to mention this rather narrow form of debt here, but it's important because overuse of leverage has played a large part in pretty much every financial crisis you can think of (including the most recent one). As the Investopedia definitions indicate, leverage magnifies gains, but also magnifies losses. I consider margin/leverage to be \"bad\" debt.", "Buybacks do not increase the company's value. Cash is traded for outstanding shares. This is similar to a dividend, but instead of cash, investors receive a rising share-price. Whether an investor prefers a cash dividend or capital gains is less important than the outcome that their investment is gaining value for them.", "Note: Specific to UK. I can't recommend anything higher than Crunch - they act as your accountant and have their own cloud accounting software, so it's more expensive than just using cloud accounting software, but if you use an accountant to do your year-end anyway, then they cost about the same as using cloud accounting software plus using an accountant to do your year-end. The thing I like (as a software development contractor) is that I don't have to know or worry about different ledger accounts, or journal entries, or any of the other weird accounting things, etc. Most cloud accounting software claim to simplify accounting \"so that you can concentrate on running your business\" whereas the reality is that you still have to spend ages learning how to be an accountant just to fill it in correctly. With Crunch that's actually true, it does actually make it simple. I've used Crunch, Sage, and Xero, so my sample-set isn't very big - just thought I'd share my experiences. If you value your time and get annoyed by having to create multiple internal transfers between different ledgers just to do something simple, it's for you. This probably sounds like a sales pitch, but I have nothing to do with them and nothing to gain by recommending them. The only reason I'm so passionate is I started a new business to do an online shop and tried to use Crunch, but they don't do retail businesses. Only contractors/freelancers or simple service-based businesses (their software is geared up specifically for that which I guess is why it's more simple than the others). Anyway, so now I'm annoyed at having to use the more complicated ones." ]

[ "If you're wealthy why do you think they wouldn't sue you for the money you owed?? And, as sunk818 says, credit scores can influence insurance costs. While you could self-insure your home you generally can't self-insure when it comes to liability coverage on a car." ]

[ "Any money that ScottMcGready gives to the company is a personal loan that must be repaid by the company at some point without tax consequences. Any money that the company gives to ScottMcGready is either salary (Scott pays income tax, company counts this as cost), or a dividend (Scott pays dividend tax), or a loan (Scott must repay the loan).", "In most cases you cannot do \"reverse lookup\" on tax id in the US. You can verify, but for that you need to have more than just the FEIN/SSN. You should also have a name, and some times address. Non-profits, specifically, have to publish their EIN to donors, so it may be easier than others to identify those. Other businesses may not be as easy to find just by EIN.", "I'll give the TLDR answer. 1) You can't forecast the price direction. If you get it right you got lucky. If you think you get it right consistently you are either a statistical anomaly or a victim of confirmation bias. Countless academic studies show that you can not do this. 2) You reduce volatility and, importantly, left-tail risk by going to an index tracking ETF or mutual fund. That is, Probability(Gigantic Loss) is MUCH lower in an index tracker. What's the trade off? The good thing is there is NO tradeoff. Your expected return does not go down in the same way the risk goes down! 3) Since point (1) is true, you are wasting time analysing companies. This has the opportunity cost of not earning $ from doing paid work, which can be thought of as a negative return. \"With all the successful investors (including myself on a not-infrequent basis) going for individual companies directly\" Actually, academic studies show that individual investors are the worst performers of all investors in the stock market.", "Exposure is the amount of money that you are at risk of losing on a given position (i.e. on a UST 10 year bond), portfolio of positions, strategy (selling covered calls for example), or counterparty, usually represented as a percentage of your total assets. Interbank exposure is the exposure of banks to other banks either through owning debt or stock, or by having open positions with the other banks as counterparties. Leveraging occurs when the value of your position is more than the value of what you are trading in. One example of this is borrowing money (i.e. creating debt for yourself) to buy bonds. The amount of your own funds that you are using to pay for the position is \"leveraged\" by the debt so that you are risking more than 100% of your capital if, for example, the bond became worthless). Another example would be buying futures \"on margin\" where you only put up the margin value of the trade and not the full cost. The problem with these leveraged positions is what happens if a credit event (default etc.) happens. Since a large amount of the leverage is being \"passed on\" as banks are issuing debt to buy other banks' debt who are issuing debt to buy debt there is a risk that a single failure could cause an unravelling of these leveraged positions and, since the prices of the bonds will be falling resulting in these leveraged positions losing money, it will cause a cascade of losses and defaults. If a leveraged position becomes worth less than the amount of real (rather than borrowed or margined) money that was put up to take the position then it is almost inevitable that the firm in that position will default on the requirements for the leverage. When that firm defaults it sparks all of the firms who own that debt to go through the same problems that it did, hence the contagion.", "Keep in mind a good lawyer will have the contract cover the five D's: Its really best to lay these things out ahead of time. I watched, first hand, two friends start a business. When they were broke and struggling the worked very well together. Then the money started rolling in. Despite exceeding their dreams they were constantly at each other's throats fighting and bickering over stupid stuff. In the end, because they had decent legal docs, they both were able to pull money out of the business. Had that not been worked out they would have destroyed the business so that no one would have profited.", "In order: A seller of the stock (duh!). You don't know who or why this stock was sold. It could be any reason, and is of no concern of yours. It doesn't matter. Investors (pension funds, hedge funds, individual investors, employees, management) sell stock for many reasons: need cash, litigation, differing objectives, sector rotation, etc. To you, this does not matter. Yes, it does affect stock market prices: If you were not willing to buy that amount of shares, and there were no other buyers at that price, the seller would likely choose to lower the price offered. By your purchase, you are supporting the price.", "In regards to the legal recourse, no there is none. Also, despite your frustrations with Citi, it may not be their fault. Mortgage companies are now forced to select appraisers (essentially at random) through 3rd party Appraisal Resource Companies (ARCs). This randomization mandate from the government was issued in order to combat fraud, but it is really causing more trouble for homeowners because it took away appraiser accountability. Basically, there's nothing we can do to fire an appraiser anymore. I've had appraiser do terrible jobs, just blatantly wrong, and have gone the distance with the dispute process only to find they won't change the value. My favorite real-life example came from an appraiser who got the bedroom count wrong (4 instead of 5); yet he took pictures of 5 bedrooms. The one he excluded he stated it shouldn't count because it didn't have a closet. Problem is, it DID have a closet. I had the homeowner take pictures of all of the closets in his house, and send them in. He still refused to change the count. After close to 2 months of the dispute process, the ARC came in and changed the count, but did not chagne the value, stating that the room count didn't increase the sqft, and there would be no adjustment in value. I was floored. The only solution we had was to wait for the appraisal to expire, then order it again; which we did. The new appraiser got the count right, and surprisingly (not really), it came in at the right value... In regards to the value necessary to avoid MI, they are likely using 80%, but it's not based on your current balance vs the value, it's based on the new loan amount (which will include costs, prepaids, skipped mortgage payments, etc) vs the value. Here are your options: Get a new appraisal. If you are confident the value is wrong, go somewhere else and get a new appraisal. Restructure the loan. Any competent Loan Officer would have noticed that you are very close to 80%, and should have offer you the option of splitting the mortgage into a 1st and 2nd loan. Keeping the first loan at 80%, and taking out a 2nd for the difference would avoid MI. Best Regards, Jared Newton", "You can find out the general types of investments by reading the public corporation 10-Q report that is filed with the SEC it can be accessed via the EDGAR system. It will not tell you what securities they have, but it does identify the short term and long term investments categories and their value.", "Here's my take on it (and quite a few people might disagree) - student loans aren't bankruptable, so they'll stay with you forever. So if you want to reduce your risk over time and have a funded emergency fund and some cash put aside for, say, a car or another major expense, then I'd try to throw money at the student loan to get rid of it quickly.", "I can think of a few simple and quick techniques for timing the market over the long term, and they can be used individually or in combination with each other. There are also some additional techniques to give early warning of possible turns in the market. The first is using a Moving Average (MA) as an indication of when to sell. Simply if the price closes below the MA it is time to sell. Obviously if the period you are looking at is long term you would probably use a weekly or even monthly chart and use a relatively large period MA such as a 50 week or 100 week moving average. The longer the period the more the MA will lag behind the price but the less false signals and whipsawing there will be. As we are looking long term (5 years +) I would use a weekly chart with a 100 week Exponential MA. The second technique is using a Rate Of Change (ROC) Indicator, which is a momentum indicator. The idea for timing the markets in the long term is to buy when the indicator crosses above the zero line and sell when it crosses below the zero line. For long term investing I would use a 13 week EMA of the 52 week ROC (the EMA smooths out the ROC indicator to reduce the chance of false signals). The beauty of these two indicators is they can be used effectively together. Below are examples of using these two indicators in combination on the S&P500 and the Australian S&P ASX200 over the past 20 years. S&P500 1995 to 2015 ASX200 1995 to 2015 If I was investing in an ETF tracking one of these indexes I would use these two indicators together by using the MA as an early warning system and maybe tighten any stop losses I have so that if the market takes a sudden turn downward the majority of my profits would be protected. I would then use the ROC Indicator to sell out completely out of the ETF when it crosses below zero or to buy back in when the ROC moves back above zero. As you can see in both charts the two indicators would have kept you out of the market during the worst of the downfalls in 2000 and 2008 for the S&P500 and 2008 for the ASX200. If there is a false signal that gets you out of the market you can quite easily get back in if the indicator goes back above zero. Using these indicators you would have gotten into the market 3 times and out of it twice for the S&P500 over a 20 year period. For the ASX200 you would have gone in 6 times and out 5 times, also over a 20 year period. For individual shares I would use the ROC indicator over the main index the shares belong to, to give an indication of when to be buying individual stocks and when to tighten stop losses and stay on the sidelines. My philosophy is to buy rising stocks in a rising market and sell falling stocks in a falling market. So if the ROC indicator is above zero I would be looking to buy fundamentally healthy stocks that are up-trending and place a 20% trailing stop loss on them. If I get stopped out of one stock then I would look to replace it with another as long as the ROC is still above zero. If the ROC indicator crosses below zero I would tighten my trailing stop losses to 5% and not buy any new stocks once I get stopped out. Some additional indicators I would use for individual stock would be trend lines and using the MACD as a momentum indicator. These two indicators can give you further early warning that the stock may be about to reverse from its current trend, so you can tighten your stop loss even if the ROC is still above zero. Here is an example chart to explain: GEM.AX 3 Year Weekly Chart Basically if the price closes below the trend line it may be time to close out the position or at the very least tighten up your trailing stop loss to 5%. If the price breaks below an established uptrend line it may well be the end of the uptrend. The definition of an uptrend is higher highs and higher lows. As GEM has broken below the uptrend line and has maid a lower low, all that is needed to confirm the uptrend is over is a lower high. But months before the price broke below the uptrend line, the MACD momentum indicator was showing bearish divergence between it and the price. In early September 2014 the price made a higher high but the MACD made a lower high. This is called a bearish divergence and is an early warning signal that the momentum in the uptrend is weakening and the trend could be reversing soon. Notice I said could and not would. In this situation I would reduce my trailing stop to 10% and keep a watchful eye on this stock over the coming months. There are many other indicators that could be used as signals or as early warnings, but I thought I would talk about some of my favourites and ones I use on a daily and weekly basis. If you were to employ any of these techniques into your investing or trading it may take a little while to learn about them properly and to implement them into your trading plan, but once you have done that you would only need to spend 1 to 2 hours per week managing your portfolio if trading long-term or about 1 hour per nigh (after market close) if trading more medium term." ]

[ "If you don't have much money, and more important, don't itemize, donations are strictly between you and your karma. If you itemize (from a combination of mortgage interest, property tax, and state tax), by donating used goods, you can get some return on your taxes, and feel good about yourself. When I donate at charity time (December for me) I don't look at every $1000 check as a $250 benefit back to me, although that's the effect. I care deeply about the charity's cause and have personally visited each of them. You want to drop $50 to some huge agency that's funding cancer research? No objection. But when I visit a Veteran's Center or School for the Blind, I can see the good work my money is doing." ]

[ "Annuities are usually not good deals. Commissions to the salesman can be as high as 9% of the initial premium. They're not scams, just not the best deals for most circumstances. Basically, these things are a combination of an investment vehicle and multiple insurance policies, including permanent insurance. The 8.2% \"return\" is the total cash value of the account, which your heirs get if you die.", "I suppose it depends on your goals and expectations, but I'd argue its not easy. Regardless of the chosen sub discipline of trading or investing you pursue there will be some theoretical and research work to do, some learning of the mechanics of the market, and some 'ropes' to learn upfront. After that the time frame you are working in, the complexity and time requirements of your methodology dictate how much time you need. I personally spend enough time on it to be considered equivalent to a part time job, but I enjoy continually learning and researching. If I weren't constantly trying to improve and research I would say the mechanics might take a half hour a day. However, I would gladly do it full time if I were able. I believe that is important, if you simply want to make lots of money but hate the process you will likely fail. As mentioned earlier if you are new to this the majority of your time will be spent initially learning whats out there, trying various things out, and finding what works for you. There are a lot of different ways to approach the market and a number of markets to approach. For me it took two years to find my niche and become profitable. Learn to loose small and keep your itchy fingers in check during that learning curve.", "With that credit rating you should have no trouble getting a rate in that range. I have a similar credit score and my credit union gave me a car loan at 1.59%. No haggling required. In regards to your question, I think you have it backwards. They are more likely to give you a good rate on a high balance than a low one. Think about it from the bank's perspective... \"If I give you a small sale, will you give me a discount?\" This is the question you are asking. Their profit is a factor of how much you borrow and the interest rate. Low rate=less profit, low financing amount = less profit. The deal you proposed is a lose-lose for them.", "Restricted Stock Units are different from stock options because instead of buying them at a particular strike price, you receive the actual shares of stock. They are taxed as ordinary income at the time that the restriction is lifted (you don't have to sell them to be taxed). Usually, you can choose to have a percentage of the stock withheld to cover tax withholding or pay for the withholding out of pocket (so you can retain all of your shares).", "Bond ETFs are just another way to buy a bond mutual fund. An ETF lets you trade mutual fund shares the way you trade stocks, in small share-size increments. The content of this answer applies equally to both stock and bond funds. If you are intending to buy and hold these securities, your main concerns should be purchase fees and expense ratios. Different brokerages will charge you different amounts to purchase these securities. Some brokerages have their own mutual funds for which they charge no trading fees, but they charge trading fees for ETFs. Brokerage A will let you buy Brokerage A's mutual funds for no trading fee but will charge a fee if you purchase Brokerage B's mutual fund in your Brokerage A account. Some brokerages have multiple classes of the same mutual fund. For example, Vanguard for many of its mutual funds has an Investor class (minimum $3,000 initial investment), Admiral class (minimum $10,000 initial investment), and an ETF (share price as initial investment). Investor class has the highest expense ratio (ER). Admiral class and the ETF generally have much lower ER, usually the same number. For example, Vanguard's Total Bond Market Index mutual fund has Investor class (symbol VBMFX) with 0.16% ER, Admiral (symbol VBTLX) with 0.06% ER, and ETF (symbol BND) with 0.06% ER (same as Admiral). See Vanguard ETF/mutual fund comparison page. Note that you can initially buy Investor class shares with Vanguard and Vanguard will automatically convert them to the lower-ER Admiral class shares when your investment has grown to the Admiral threshold. Choosing your broker and your funds may end up being more important than choosing the form of mutual fund versus ETF. Some brokers charge very high purchase/redemption fees for mutual funds. Many brokers have no ETFs that they will trade for free. Between funds, index funds are passively managed and are just designed to track a certain index; they have lower ERs. Actively managed funds are run by managers who try to beat the market; they have higher ERs and tend to actually fall below the performance of index funds, a double whammy. See also Vanguard's explanation of mutual funds vs. ETFs at Vanguard. See also Investopedia's explanation of mutual funds vs. ETFs in general.", "You're correct about the 401(k). Your employer's contributions don't count toward the $18k limit. You're incorrect about the IRAs though. You can contribute a maximum of $5500 total across IRA and Roth IRA, not $5500 to each. There are also limits once you reach higher levels of income. from IRS.gov: Retirement Topics - IRA Contribution Limits: For 2015, 2016, and 2017, your total contributions to all of your traditional and Roth IRAs cannot be more than:", "It seems I can make contributions as employee-elective, employer match, or profit sharing; yet they all end up in the same 401k from my money since I'm both the employer and employee in this situation. Correct. What does this mean for my allowed limits for each of the 3 types of contributions? Are all 3 types deductible? \"Deductible\"? Nothing is deductible. First you need to calculate your \"compensation\". According to the IRS, it is this: compensation is your \"earned income,\" which is defined as net earnings from self-employment after deducting both: So assuming (numbers for example, not real numbers) your business netted $30, and $500 is the SE tax (half). You contributed $17.5 (max) for yourself. Your compensation is thus 30-17.5-0.5=12. Your business can contribute up to 25% of that on your behalf, i.e.: $4K. Total that you can contribute in such a scenario is $21.5K. Whatever is contributed to a regular 401k is deferred, i.e.: excluded from income for the current year and taxed when you withdraw it from 401k (not \"deducted\" - deferred).", "If you're going to be a day trader, you really need to know your stuff. It's risky, to say the least. One of the most important elements to being successful is having access to very fast data streams so that you can make moves quickly as trends stat to develop in the markets. If you're planning on doing this using consumer-grade sites like eTrade, that's not a good idea. The web systems of many of the retail brokerage firms are not good enough to give you data fast enough for you to make good, timely decisions or to be able to execute trades way that day traders do in order to make their money. Many of those guys are living on very thin margins, sometimes just a few cents of movement one way or the other, so they make up for it with a large volume of trades. One of the reasons you were told you need a big chunk of money to day trade is that some firms will rent you out a \"desk\" and computer access to day trade through their systems if you're really serious about it. They will require you to put up at least a minimum amount of money for this privilege, and $25k may not be too far out of the ballpark. If you've never done day trading before, be careful. It doesn't take much to get caught looking the wrong way on a trade that you can't get out of without losing your shirt unless you're willing to hold on to the stock, which could be longer than a day. Day trading sounds very simple and easy, but it isn't. You need to learn about how it works (a good book to read to understand this market is \"Flash Boys\" by Michael Lewis, besides being very entertaining), because it is a space filled with very sophisticated, well-funded firms and individuals who spend huge sums of money to gain miniscule advantages in the markets. Be careful, whatever you do. And don't play in day trading with your retirement money or any other money you can't afford to walk away from. I hope this helps. Good luck!", "One way I heard of, from a friend who ran a similar fund as yours, is to calculate $days of investment and divide the investment as accordingly. For example, If I invested 10$ for 10 days and you have invested 20$ for 5 days. At the end of the 10th day my $day = 10*10=100, while your $day=20*5=100. If the investement has grown to 100$, the I should get $100/(100+100)*100=$50, you also should get the same. This I guess is equitable, you could try dividing the corpus with above method. It consideres the amount invested as well as the time invested for. I think by the above method, you could also handle the inbetween withdrawals.", "Besides all of the other answers, I will point out that many people simply don't have enough cash sitting around to buy a home outright. It would take many years (or even decades) for the average family to accumulate the necessary cash. Also, while you are pinching your pennies for years in an attempt to save up for your dream house, remember that inflation is steadily driving up the cost of goods and services. A house that costs $200K today could cost $230K in 5 years due to inflation." ]

[ "Price, whether related to a stock or ETF, has little to do with anything. The fund or company has a total value and the value is distributed among the number of units or shares. Vanguard's S&P ETF has a unit price of $196 and Schwab's S&P mutual fund has a unit price of $35, it's essentially just a matter of the fund's total assets divided by number of units outstanding. Vanguard's VOO has assets of about $250 billion and Schwab's SWPPX has assets of about $25 billion. Additionally, Apple has a share price of $100, Google has a share price of $800, that doesn't mean Google is more valuable than Apple. Apple's market capitalization is about $630 billion while Google's is about $560 billion. Or on the extreme a single share of Berkshire's Class A stock is $216,000, and Berkshire's market cap is just $360 billion. It's all just a matter of value divided by shares/units." ]

[ "Having dealt with with Social Security, state agencies, and banks more than I'd care to, I would urge you to do the following: 1) Get a 100% clear answer on whether or not you are listed as \"joint\" or \"authorized user/signer\" for an account. This will probably require a call to the bank, but for less than an hour of you and your friend's time you will save yourself a whole lot of hassle. The difference is like this: if you worked at a business that added you as an authorized user for a credit or debit card, this would allow you to use the card to buy things. But that doesn't make the money in the bank yours! On the other hand if you are listed as \"joint\", this regards ownership, and it could become tricky to establish whether its your money or not to any governmental satisfaction. 2) You are completely correct in being honest with the agency, but that's not enough - if you don't know what the facts are, you can't really be honest with them. If the form is unclear it's ok to ask, \"on having a bank account, does being listed as an authorized user on someone else's account count if it isn't my money or bank account?\" But if you are listed as holding the account jointly, that changes the question to: \"I am listed as joint on someone else's checking account, but it isn't my money - how is that considered?\" To Social Security it might mean generating an extra form, or it might mean you need to have the status on the account changed, or they might not care. But if you don't get the facts first, they won't give you the right answers or help you need. And from personal experience, it's a heck of a lot easier to get a straight and clear answer from a bank than it is from a federal government agency. Have the facts with you when you contact them and you'll be ok - but trust me, you don't want them guessing!", "NRE is better. It's a tax free account, exempt from income tax. NRE account is freely repatriable (Principal and interest earned) while the NRO account has restricted repatriability", "This is primarily opinion based. It is like predicting what will happen in future, similar to predicting the value of stock. This is interesting topic on a coin discussion forum like WOC My question is whether moving the coins out of the Whitman folders (some of which are in serious disrepair) to the stapled pockets will adversely affect their value? Whitman folders are for basic collectors to know what to collect and easily show what is missing. These are not great way to preserve coins. Infact good quality coins should never be put into such folders. There are quite a few ways to store coins, Stapled flips ... now one also gets self adhesive flips. Coin Capsules or Archival grade envelops. It depends on the value of coin and how long you want to store these and where are the coins kept [moisture, humidity, pollutants are bad for coins]", "the mortgage interest deduction alone couldn't make this work, but if you realize less income by living off the mortgage funds, then it could definitely reduce your taxes by much more than the cost of the mortgage interest. particularly, if you are waiting for some future cut-off date (e.g. turning 59.5 and getting access to roth funds, turning 70 and getting social security, simply doing a roth conversion with strategic recharacterization at age 40 and waiting 5 years to get the money out penalty-free, etc.). and that future date could be quite far off if you only use a small fraction of the total mortgage each year. plus, it is fairly reasonable to assume that equity market returns will outpace mortgage rates, especially if you are \"rich\" and don't need to worry about living on the street even if the market hits unprecedented lows. while i find most financial advisers to be incompetent (most people really...), i wouldn't write this guy off, just because he left out the specific details that made the strategy work for one particular client.", "Yes it is possible, as long as the broker you use allows conditional orders. I use CMC Markets in Australia, and they allow free conditional orders either when initially placing a buy order or after already buying a stock. See the Place New Order box below: Once you have selected a stock to buy, the number of shares you want to buy and at what price you can place up to 3 conditional orders. The first condition is a \"Place order if...\" conditional order. Here you can place a condition that your buy order will only be placed onto the market if that condition is met first. Say the stock last traded at $9.80 and you only want to place your order the next day if the stock price moves above the current resistance at $10.00. So you would Place order if Price is at or above $10.00. So if the next day the price moves up to $10 or above your order will be placed onto the market. The second condition is a \"Stop loss\" conditional order. Here you place the price you want to sell at if the price drops to or past your stop loss price. It will only be placed on to the market if your buy order gets traded. So if you wanted to place your stop loss at $9.00, you would type in 9.00 in the box after \"If at or below ?\" and select if you want a limit or market order. The third condition is a \"Take profit\" conditional order. This allows you to take profits if the stock reaches a certain price. Say you wanted to take profits at 50%, that is if the price reached $15.00. So you would type in 15.00 in the box after \"If at or above ?\" and again select if you want a limit or market order. These conditional orders can all be placed at the time you enter your buy order and can be edited or deleted at any time. The broker you use may have a different process for entering conditional orders, and some brokers may have many more conditional orders than these three, so investigate what is out there and if you are confused in how to use the orders with your broker, simply ask them for a demonstration in how to use them.", "Many Web sites and articles warn against buying former rental cars, because people renting these cars often mistreat them. Many of those are also written by unqualified individuals for publication on blog farms and encourage all sorts of odious financial practices. That's not even considering the interests of who is paying to advertise on said blogs-- I'm sure their interests align with making sure you always pay top dollar for a new car. Because those icky used ones are so mistreated! Never trust financial advice published on the internet (or in the media, for that matter). Edit: One caveat on further thought-- never, never buy used vehicles from government auctions (impounds, asset seizures, old police cars, etc). Anybody irresponsible enough to go to jail or abandon their car long enough to lose their assets likely isn't a responsible owner of such, and cops and crooks alike do absolutely beat the snot out of police cars. When it comes to government-owned vehicles (police cars, schoolbuses) municipal governments are notoriously stingy and will squeeze every last minute of use out of them before putting them on the market. If you're buying a government vehicle, assume it's being sold because it has intractable problems. But from a financial point of view, I notice that rental agencies sell cars within the first two years, during the time when they depreciate the most. Bingo. I figure many large rental companies will have mathematicians who calculate the best time to sell. Does the fact that they sell the car mean during this time suggest that they know the car's cost of further maintenance or other costs will be higher? Or is there another reason they sell at this time which, has a calculated advantage to them, but which is less than idea statistically for me, the purchaser? It doesn't take a PhD to realize it's bad for business if your model revolves around renting out 1970s rustbuckets that run the risk of breaking down and leaving customers stranded in inopportune or dangerous places. Uhaul in particular has a terrible reputation for this, and it shows in the condition of their trucks-- relics of the 90s, all of them. Uber won't let you drive for them if your car is older than 7-10 years for the same reasons. Yes, as a car ages, the chance of having to make repairs increases. Rental agencies are in the business of renting vehicles, not running service centers and garages. It's more aligned with their core business model to just dispose of cars once they've squeezed the most reliable years out of them and amortize the vehicles' depreciation across the tax deductions and fleet pricing they enjoy when buying new ones. This gets them out of the service game and lets them focus on their core business-- procurement and rental. There's no calculated \"time-to-lemon\" that they're trying to skirt here; they're just trying to avoid having to make any repairs whatsoever.", "The main reason is that you move from the linear payoff structure to a non-linear one. This is called convexity in finance. With options you can design a payoff structure in almost any way to want it to be. For example you can say that you only want the upside but not the downside, so you buy a call option. It is obvious that this comes at a price, the option premium. Or equivalently you buy the underlying and for risk management reasons buy a put option on top of it as an insurance. The price of the put could be seen as the insurance premium. You can of course combine options in more complicated ways so that you e.g. profit as long as the underlying moves strongly enough in either direction. This is called a straddle.", "Social security number should only be needed for things that involve tax withholding or tax payment. Your bank or investment broker, and your employer, need it so they can report your earnings. You need it when filing tax forms. Other than those, nobody should really be asking you for it. The gym had absolutely no good reason to ask and won't have done anything with the number. I think we can ignore that one. The store cards are a bigger problem. Depending on exactly what was done with the data, you may have been messing up the credit record of whoever legitimately had that number... and if so you might be liable on fraud charges if they or the store figure out what happened and come after you. But that's unrelated to the fact that you have a legitimate SSN now. Basically, you really don't want to open this can of worms. And I hope you're posting from a disposable user ID and not using your real name... (As I noted in a comment, the other choice would be to contact the authorities (I'm not actually sure which bureau/department would be best), say \"I was young, foolish, and confused by America's process... do I need to do anything to correct this?\", and see what happens... but it might be wise to get a lawyer's advice on whether that's a good idea, a bad idea, or simply unnecessary.)", "It used to be Nigerian royalty, now it's Ghanaian porn stars. Great. This is a bog-standard 419 scam. It's probably the most lucrative single swindle in the world. It's always hard to get people to believe they have been tricked, but don't let your dad participate.", "When a question is phrased this way, i.e. \"for tax purposes\" I'm compelled to advise - Don't let the tax tail wag the investing dog. In theory, one can create a loss, up to the $3K, and take it against ordinary income. When sold, the gains may be long term and be at a lower rate. In reality, if you are out of the stock for the required 30 days, it will shoot up in price. If you double up, as LittleAdv correctly offers, it will drop over the 30 days and negate any benefit. The investing dog's water bowl is half full." ]

[ "Possible (unlikely) reasons: But usually, yeah, if you can pay cash, you should." ]

[ "Founder makes available 100% equity, but uses a reasonable amount of the proceeds to pay him/herself a salary (or wage) and from that salary invests in the same initial offering to acquire shares for him/herself. I see several problems. What is a reasonable salary? Also, this leaves the door open to the following scam: Founders say that they are going to follow this plan. However, instead of buying shares, they simply quit after being paid the salary. They use knowledge gained from this business to start a competitor. Investors are left holding an empty company. Tax consequences. The founder would pay income tax on the salary. By contrast, if the founder instead sells shares, that would be capital gains tax, which is lower in many countries (e.g. the United States). Why would I want to invest in a business where the founders don't believe in it enough to take a significant equity stake? Consider the Amazon.com example. Jeff Bezos makes a minimal salary, around $80,000 a year, less than many of his employees. But he has a substantial ownership position. If the company doesn't make money, he won't. Would investors really value the stocks with a P/E of 232.10 in 2016 if they didn't trust him to make the right long term decisions? It's also worth noting that most initial public offerings (IPOs) are not made when the founder is the only employee. A single employee company instead looks for private investors, often called angel investors. Companies generally don't go public until they are established in some way, often making money. Negotiating with angel investors is different from negotiating with the public. They can personally review the books and once invested tend to have input on how the money is spent. In other words, this is mostly solving the wrong problem if you talk about IPOs. This might make more sense with a crowdfunded venture, as that replaces a few angel investors with many individuals. But most crowdfunded ventures tend to approach things from the opposite direction. Instead of looking for investors, they look for customers. If they offer a useful product, they will get customers. If not, they never get the money. Beyond all this, if a founder is only going to get a fair salary some of the time, then why put in any sweat equity? This works fine if the company looks valuable after a year. What if it doesn't? The founder is out a year of sweat equity and has nothing in return. That happens now too, but the possibility of the big return offsets it. You're taking out the big return. I don't think that this is good for either founders or investors. The founder trades a potentially good or even great return for a mediocre return. The investors trade a situation where both they and the founder benefit from a successful company to one where they benefit a lot more than the founder. That's not good for either side.", "The standard approach is to reach an agreement and put it in writing. What you agree upon is up to you, but in the US if you want to avoid gift taxes larger loans need to be properly documented and must charge at least a certain minimal interest rate. (Or at least you must declare and be taxed upon that minimal income even if you don't actually charge it. Last I looked, the federal requirement was somewhere under 0.3%, so this isn't usually an issue. There may also be state rules.) When doing business with friends, treat it as business first, friendship second. Otherwise you risk losing both money and friendship. Regarding what rate to charge: That is something you two have to negotiate, based on how much the borrower needs the money, how much lending the money puts the lender at risk, how generous each is feeling, etc. Sorry, but there is no one-size-fits-all answer here. What I charge (or insist on paying to) my brother might be different from what I charge my cousin, or a co-worker, or best friend, or... If both parties think it's fair, it's fair. If you can't reach an agreement, of course, the loan doesn't happen.", "To answer your precise question, your plans are not at all misguided, and are in fact very reasonable. You are clearly financially very comfortable, and from the tone of your post it sounds like you value security and simplicity over maximizing your investment return over the coming years. If money was the most important thing to you then you would stay shackled to your high paying jobs. @JoeTaxpayer's answer has some great information for a person who is interested in maximizing their investment return. If you followed that advice, you might increase your return on investments by up to 1%/year (I'm just throwing a ball park number out there). So your choice is simple. Peace of mind on one hand and perhaps 1% additional return on investments on the other hand.", "The best answer to this is: Read the fine print on your credit card agreement. What is common, at least in the US, is that you can make any charges you want during a time window. When the date comes around that your statement balance is calculated, you will owe interest on any amount that is showing up as outstanding in your account. Example... To revise the example you gave, let's say Jan 1. your account balance was $0. Jan. 3rd you went out and spent $1,000. Your account statement will be prepared every XX days... usually 30. So if your last statement was Dec. 27th, you can expect your next statement to be prepared ~Jan.24 or Jan. 27. To be safe, (i.e. not accrue any interest charges) you will want to make sure that your balance shows $0 when your statement is next prepared. So back to the example you gave--if your balance showed $1,000... and you paid it off, but then charged $2,000 to it... so that there was now a new set of $2,000 charges in your account, then the bank would begin charging you interest when your next statement was prepared. Note that there are some cards that give you a certain number of days to pay off charges before accruing interest... it just goes back to my saying \"the best answer is read the fine print on your card agreement.\"", "It is more easier if you select a Broker in India that would allow you these services. The reason being the broker in India will follow the required norms by India and allow you to invest without much hassel. Further as the institution would be in India, it would be more easy for resolving any disputes. ICICI Direct an Indian online broker allows one to trade in US stocks. For more details refer to ICIC Direct. Reliance Money also offers limited trading in US stocks. Selecting a Broker in US maybe more difficult as your would have to met their KYC norm's and also operate a Bank account in US. I am not aware of the requirements. For more details visit ICICI Direct website. Refer to http://www.finance-trading-times.com/2007/10/investing-in-us-stocks-and-options.html for a news article. TDAmeritrade or Charlesschwab are good online brokers, however from what I read they are more for US nationals holding Social Security. Further with the recent events and KYC norms becoming more stringent, it would be difficult for an individual [Indian Citizen] to open an account directly with these firms.", "The main reason, as far as I can see, is that the dividends are payments with which the shareholders may do what they want. Capital that the company has no use for does not make a significant positive return on investment, as you pointed out, yes the company could accrue interest, but that is not going to make the company large sums of cash. While the company may be great at making shoes - maybe even the best in the world - doesn't mean they are good investors. Sure they could dabble at using their capital to invest in other equities, but they don't, because they just want to focus on making shoes. If the dividend goes to the investors, they can do what they wish, be it reinvest in the company, or invest elsewhere. Other companies that may make good use of the capital, and create significant returns on it are one such example. That is the rational answer, beyond that, one of the main reasons is that people like the feeling of receiving dividends - it might not be the answer you are looking for, but many people prefer companies that pay dividends for no rational reason over companies which grow their asset value.", "Good luck!", "Oracle specifically is paying a dividend with a current yield of about 1.4% annually and has appreciated nearly 50% over the last 5 years. Granted, the past doesn't guarantee the future but the company has paid a pretty steady dividend since 2009. If you're buying as part of an employee program you would presumably be holding the shares for a long time and the daily and even monthly movements aren't terribly relevant to a long term holding period. Additionally, you may be able to buy the shares at a discount to the market price as part of your employee program. You probably also won't pay any transaction fee.", "so if we rent it out we don't want to just charge what we're paying on our mortgage - we'd definitely be losing money if we did that. I think you're overlooking one thing: your profit/loss is not monthly. Your profit is the property that's left after the mortgage ends. Even if you have to add extra $100 every month because you rent lower than the mortgage + maintenance + taxes, after 30 years you're left with property worth ie.$200k while you've paid for it ie. 30 years * 12 months * $100 = $36k. You can rent it lower than your costs and still make a profit in the long run.", "Paying down your mortgage saves lots of interest. With a long term mortgage you end up paying twice us much to the bank than the sales price of the house. Even low mortgage interests are higher than short term bonds. The saving of those interest are as much an investment as the interest you get from a bond. However, before paying off a mortgage other higher interest loans should be paid off. Also it should be considered if the mortgage interest create a tax reduction in the comparison with any other options." ]

[ "The simple answer is that, even though mortgages can go for 10, 15, 20 and 30 year terms in the U.S., they're typically backed by bonds sold to investors that mature in 10 years, which is the standard term for most bonds. These bonds, in the open market, are compared by investors with the 10-year Treasury note, which is the gold standard for low-risk investment; the U.S. Government has a solid history of always paying its bills (though this reputation is being tested in recent years with fights over the debt ceiling and government budgets). The savvy investor, therefore, knows that he or she can make at least the yield from the 10-year T-note in that time frame, with virtually zero risk. Anything else on the market is seen as being a higher risk, and so investors demand higher yields (by making lower bids, forcing the issuer to issue more bonds to get the money it needs up front). Mortgage-backed securities are usually in the next tier above T-debt in terms of risk; when backed by prime-rate mortgages they're typically AAA-rated, making them available to \"institutional investors\" like banks, mutual funds, etc. This forms a balancing act; mortgage-backed securities issuers typically can't get the yield of a T-note, because no matter how low their risk, T-debt is lower (because one bank doesn't have the power to tax the entire U.S. population). But, they're almost as good because they're still very stable, low-risk debt. This bond price, and the resulting yield, is in turn the baseline for a long-term loan by the bank to an individual. The bank, watching the market and its other bond packages, knows what it can get for a package of bonds backed by your mortgage (and others with similar credit scores). It will therefore take this number, add a couple of percentage points to make some money for itself and its stockholders (how much the bank can add is tacitly controlled by other market forces; you're allowed to shop around for the lowest rate you can get, which limits any one bank's ability to jack up rates), and this is the rate you see advertised and - hopefully - what shows up on your paperwork after you apply." ]

[ "Disregarding the particular example and focusing on the actual questions: YES, definitely, the whole concept of \"pump and dump scheme\" refers to the many cases when this was intentionally done; Everything has a limit, but the limit can be quite high, especially if starting from a low value (a penny stock) and if the stock is low volume, then inflating ten or hundred times over a real value may be possible; and any value might be infinitely times overvalued for a company that turns out to have a value of zero. Yes, unless it's done very blatantly, you should expect that the \"inflator\" has much more experience in hiding the signs of inflation than the skill of average investor to notice them.", "Something that introduces the vocabulary and treats the reader like an intelligent individual? It's a bit overkill for 'retirement', but Yale has a free online course in Financial Markets. It's very light on math, but does a good job establishing jargon and its history. It covers most of the things you'd buy or sell in financial markets, and is presented by Nobel Prize winner Robert Schiller. This particular series was filmed in 2007, so it also offers a good historical perspective of the start of the subprime collapse. There's a number of high profile guest speakers as well. I would encourage you to think critically about their speeches though. If you research what's happened to them after that lecture, it's quite entertaining: one IPO'd a 'private equity' firm that underperformed the market as a whole, another hedge fund manager bought an airline with a partner firm that was arrested for running a ponzi scheme six months later. The reading list in the syllabus make a pretty good introduction to the field, but keep in mind they're for institutional investors not your 401(k).", "I think you're missing Simon Moore's point. His point is that, due to low inflation, the returns on almost all asset classes should be less than they have been historically, so we shouldn't rebalance our portfolio or withdraw from the market and hold cash based on the assumption that stocks (or any other asset) seem to be underperforming relative to historical trends. His last paragraph is written in case someone might misunderstand him, he is not advocating to hold cash, just that investors should not expect as good returns as has happened historically, since those happened in higher inflation environments. To explain: If the inflation rate historically has been 5% and now it's 2%, and the risk-free-market return should be about 2%, then historically the return on a risk-free asset would be 7% (2%+5%), and now it should be expected to be 4% (2%+2%). So, if you have had a portfolio over some time you might be concerned that the rate of return is worsening, but Simon's point is that before you sell off your stocks / switch investment brokers, you should try to figure out if inflation is the cause of the performance loss. On the subject of cash: cash always loses value over time from inflation, since inflation is a measure of the increase in prices over time-- it's a part of the definition of what inflation is. That said, cash holdings lose value more slowly when inflation is lower, so they are relatively less worse than before. The future value of cash doesn't go up in low inflation (you'd need deflation for that), it just decreases at a lower rate, that is, it becomes less expensive to hold- but there still is a price. As an addendum, unless a completely new economic paradigm is adopted by world leaders, we will always see cash holdings decrease in value over time, since modern economics holds that deflation is one of the worst things that can happen to an economy.", "The CBOE states, in an investor's guide to Interest Rate Options: The Options’ Underlying Values Underlying values for the option contracts are 10 times the underlying Treasury yields (rates)— 13-week T-bill yield (for IRX), 5-year T-note yield (for FVX), 10-year T-note yield (for TNX) and 30-year T-bond yield (for TYX). The Yahoo! rate listed is the actual Treasury yield; the Google Finance and CBOE rates reflect the 10 times value. I don't think there's a specific advantage to \"being contrary\", more likely it's a mistake, or just different.", "Not only are they high volume but also most finish materials are very basic. For example lighting fixtures, most builders put ceiling fans in all bedrooms ($75) where Rausch coleman uses a flush mount ($15) in the spare bedrooms. Same with flooring they use a vinyl plank where most builders use wood. This can be $1sqft or more cheaper. Cabinets, carpet, tile, countertops, faucets, all they same. These are all cosmetics and you can save a ton of money while building by doing this and still build a quality home. Rausch Coleman builds a quality home at an affordable price by keeping the cosmetics basic.", "That depends on how you're investing in them. Trading bonds is (arguably) riskier than trading stocks (because it has a lot of the same risks associated with stocks plus interest rate and inflation risk). That's true whether it's a recession or not. Holding bonds to maturity may or may not be recession-proof (or, perhaps more accurately, \"low risk\" as argued by @DepressedDaniel), depending on what kind of bonds they are. If you own bonds in stable governments (e.g. U.S. or German bonds or bonds in certain states or municipalities) or highly stable corporations, there's a very low risk of default even in a recession. (You didn't see companies like Microsoft, Google, or Apple going under during the 2008 crash). That's absolutely not the case for all kinds of bonds, though, especially if you're concerned about systemic risk. Just because a bond looks risk-free doesn't mean that it actually is - look how many AAA-rated securities went under during the 2008 recession. And many companies (CIT, Lehman Brothers) went bankrupt outright. To assess your exposure to risk, you have to look at a lot of factors, such as the credit-worthiness of the business, how \"recession-proof\" their product is, what kind of security or insurance you're being offered, etc. You can't even assume that bond insurance is an absolute guarantee against systemic risk - that's what got AIG into trouble, in fact. They were writing Credit Default Swaps (CDS), which are analogous to insurance on loans - basically, the seller of the CDS \"insures\" the debt (promises some kind of payment if a particular borrower defaults). When the entire credit market seized up, people naturally started asking AIG to make good on their agreement and compensate them for the loans that went bad; unfortunately, AIG didn't have the money and couldn't borrow it themselves (hence the government bailout). To address the whole issue of a company going bankrupt: it's not necessarily the case that your bonds would be completely worthless (so I disagree with the people who implied that this would be the case). They'd probably be worth a lot less than you paid for them originally, though (possibly as bad as pennies on the dollar depending on how much under water the company was). Also, depending on how long it takes to work out a deal that everyone could agree to, my understanding is that it could take a long time before you see any of your money. I think it's also possible that you'll get some of the money as equity (rather than cash) - in fact, that's how the U.S. government ended up owning a lot of Chrysler (they were Chrysler's largest lender when they went bankrupt, so the government ended up getting a lot of equity in the business as part of the settlement). Incidentally, there is a market for securities in bankrupt companies for people that don't have time to wait for the bankruptcy settlement. Naturally, people who buy securities that are in that much trouble generally expect a steep discount. To summarize:", "The best investment is always in yourself and increasing your usable skills. If you invest the money in expanding your skills, it won't matter what the economy does, you will always be useful.", "Grocery food is not subject to sales tax in Maryland, but some food is taxed depending on category or preparation. So you must have had a combination of grocery and taxable foods. One of the cheaper items you purchased was subject to a whopping penny of sales tax. http://taxes.marylandtaxes.com/Individual_Taxes/Taxpayer_Assistance/Individual_Tax_FAQs/Use_Tax_FAQs/q4.shtml In general, food sales are subject to Maryland's 6 percent sales and use tax unless a person operating a substantial grocery or market business sells the food for consumption off the premises and the food is not a taxable prepared food. A grocery or market business is considered to be \"substantial\" if the sales of grocery or market food items total at least 10 percent of all food sales.", "I wouldn't personally spend any money on an appraisal. Spend some time yourself looking at Zillow.com and maybe Realtor.com and other sites to review recent sales in your specific area. Not the houses a mile away. Try to find comparables to yours. The key factor is dollars per square foot. See if the trend over the last couple of years is upwards or downwards in dollars per square foot of living area. If it's downwards, I wouldn't invest for sure.", "No, if you are a nonresident alien, you cannot deduct sales tax. You can only deduct state income tax. 1040NR Schedule A (which is page 3 of 1040NR) does not contain an option for sales tax, like 1040 Schedule A does. If you are a resident alien, then you can deduct sales tax." ]

[ "From my experience, I opened a business account to handle my LLC which owns a rental property. The account process and features were similar to shopping for a personal checking account. There would be fees for falling below a minimum balance, and for wanting a paper statement. In my case, keeping $2000 avoids the fee, and I pull the statements online and save the PDFs. Once open for a certain amount of time, you might be able to get credit extended based on the money that flows through that account. The online access is similar to my personal checking, as is the sending of payments electronically." ]

[ "Going from personal experience, my parents let my brother and me borrow money from them all the time. However there was always some noteworthy things to take into account. As an example, I borrowed a large sum of money on my student loan (we will just say it was $50,000). I had saved nearly $30,000 on my own and my parents lent me $10,000. I paid the remaining off over the course of about a year and a half. After this loan was paid off - I started paying my parents back. They dictated that I should not worry about paying them until my other interest loans were paid off. Once they were, my priority was to pay back my parents. Its supposed to help your children get ahead a little bit rather then sucking out interest from them. As long as the money was not needed elsewhere and is spent on something important I would not worry about it. Just make sure they are aware they are expected to pay it back in a reasonable amount of time or with specific requirements (such as after other loans are paid off).", "You have several questions in your post so I'll deal with them individually: Is taking small sums from your IRA really that detrimental? I mean as far as tax is concerned? Percentage wise, you pay the tax on the amount plus a 10% penalty, plus the opportunity cost of the gains that the money would have gotten. At 6% growth annually, in 5 years that's more than a 34% loss. There are much cheaper ways to get funds than tapping your IRA. Isn't the 10% \"penalty\" really to cover SS and the medicare tax that you did not pay before putting money into your retirement? No - you still pay SS and medicare on your gross income - 401(k) contributions just reduce how much you pay in income tax. The 10% penalty is to dissuade you from using retirement money before you retire. If I ... contributed that to my IRA before taxes (including SS and medicare tax) that money would gain 6% interest. Again, you would still pay SS and Medicare, and like you say there's no guarantee that you'll earn 6% on your money. I don't think you can pay taxes up front when making an early withdrawal from an IRA can you? This one you got right. When you file your taxes, your IRA contributions for the year are totaled up and are deducted from your gross income for tax purposes. There's no tax effect when you make the contribution. Would it not be better to contribute that $5500 to my IRA and if I didn't need it, great, let it grow but if I did need it toward the end of the year, do an early withdrawal? So what do you plan your tax withholdings against? Do you plan on keeping it there (reducing your withholdings) and pay a big tax bill (plus possibly penalties) if you \"need it\"? Or do you plan to take it out and have a big refund when you file your taxes? You might be better off saving that up in a savings account during the year, and if at the end of the year you didn't use it, then make an IRA contribution, which will lower the taxes you pay. Don't use your IRA as a \"hopeful\" savings account. So if I needed to withdrawal $5500 and I am in the 25% tax bracket, I would owe the government $1925 in taxes+ 10% penalty. So if I withdrew $7425 to cover the tax and penalty, I would then be taxed $2600 (an additional $675). Sounds like a cat chasing it's tail trying to cover the tax. Yes if you take a withdrawal to pay the taxes. If you pay the tax with non-retirement money then the cycle stops. how can I make a withdrawal from an IRA without having to pay tax on tax. Pay cash for the tax and penalty rather then taking another withdrawal to pay the tax. If you can't afford the tax and penalty in cash, then don't withdraw at all. based on this year's W-2 form, I had an accountant do my taxes and the $27K loan was added as earned income then in another block there was the $2700 amount for the penalty. So you paid 25% in income tax for the earned income and an additional 10% penalty. So in your case it was a 35% overall \"tax\" instead of the 40% rule of thumb (since many people are in 28% and 35% tax brackets) The bottom line is it sounds like you are completely unorganized and have absolutely no margin to cover any unexpected expenses. I would stop contributing to retirement today until you can get control of your spending, get on a budget, and stop trying to use your IRA as a piggy bank. If you don't plan on using the money for retirement then don't put it in an IRA. Stop borrowing from it and getting into further binds that force you to make bad financial decisions. You don't go into detail about any other aspects (mortgage? car loans? consumer debt?) to even begin to know where the real problem is. So you need to write everything down that you own and you owe, write out your monthly expenses and income, and figure out what you can cut if needed in order to build up some cash savings. Until then, you're driving across country in a car with no tires, worrying about which highway will give you the best gas mileage.", "Every economy wants growth and for growth to come you need investments. So, you must provide some motive for people to risk their money (every investment has inherently a degree of risk or if you want uncertainty about the outcome). As a result the tax on capital gains is lower than on other types of income (because the risk is almost zero). The tax is considered in the calculation of the net interest rate. And you can see this as the interest which the investors demand in order to invest their money.", "It is a general truism but the reasons are that the rules change dramatically when you simply have more capital. Here are some examples, limited to particular kinds of markets: Under $2,000 in capital Nobody is going to offer you a margin account, and if you do get one it isn't with the best broker on commissions and other capabilities. So this means cash only trading, enjoy your 3 business day settlement periods. This means no shorting, confining a trader to only buy and hold strategies, making them more dependent on luck than a more capable trader. This means it is more expensive to buy stock, since you have to put down 100% of the cash to hold a share, whereas someone with more money puts down less capital to hold the exact same number of shares. This means no covered options strategies or spreads, again limiting the market directions where a trader could earn Under $25,000 in capital In the stock market, the pattern day trader rule applies to retail margin accounts with a balance under $25,000 and this severally limits the kinds of trades you are able to take because of the limit in the number of trades you can take in a given time period. Forget managing a multi-leg option position when the market isn't moving your direction. Under $125,000 in capital Worse margin rules. You excluded portfolio margin from your post, but it is a key part of the answer Over $1,000,000 in capital Participate in private placements, regulation D offerings reserved for accredited investors. These days, as buy and hold investments, these generally have more growth potential than publicly traded offerings. Over $5,000,000 in capital You can easily get the compliance and risk manager to turn the other way on margin rules. This is not conjecture, leverage up to infinity, try not to bankrupt yourself and the trading firm.", "A bank or credit card agency can deny your application for pretty much any reason. That said, it's extremely unlikely they'd do so for a secured credit card. This is because the credit is secured. If your sister is to get a card with, say, a $1000 limit, she will have to provide $1000 in security. This means the banks risk practically nothing. That said, I have found one reference that claims you need a score of above 600 to qualify for a secured credit card, though this is hard to believe. Secured credit cards are a reasonable way of building your credit back up. Just about the only other way for her credit rating to improve is for her history of bad debt to fall off the credit report, but that's going to take quite some time. She should be working hard to provide positive credit history to replace the old negative history, assuming her credit rating is important to her. It may not be; it's only important if she plans on taking on debt in the future. Honestly, a credit rating of around 500 is so bad that I wouldn't even worry much about lowering it. It's already low enough as to make it all but impossible to qualify for (unsecured) credit or loans. A single denial is unlikely to significantly affect the score, except in the very short term. With two bankruptcies, I encourage credit counselling for your sister. There are a number of good books available, too. Credit counselling should go into detail on credit scores, unsecured credit, proper budgeting, and all that sort of useful information.", "Because an equity option can be constructed at essentially any price by two willing counterparties on an exchange, there are not enough ISINs to represent the entire (i.e. infinite) option chain for even a single stock on a single expiration date. As a result, ISINs are not generated for each individual possible options contract. Instead the ISIN is used only to refer to the \"underlying\" symbol, and a separate formula is used to refer to the specific option contract for that symbol: So that code you pasted is not an ISIN but rather the standard US equity option naming scheme that you need to provide in addition to the ISIN when talking to your broker. Note that ISINs and formulas for referring to option contracts in other countries can behave quite differently. Also, there are many countries and markets that don't need ISINs because the products in question only exist on a single exchange. In those cases the exchange is pretty much free to make up whatever ID scheme it wants. P.S. Now I'm curious how option chains are identified for strike prices above $99,999. I looked up the only stock I can think of that trades above that price (BRK.A), but it doesn't seem to have an option chain (or at least Google doesn't show it) ...", "A moving average will act as support or resistance to a stock only when the stock is trending. The way it acts as support for instance is similar to a trend-line. Take the daily chart of CBA over the last 6 months: The first chart shows CBA with an uptrend support line. The second chart shows CBA during the same period with 50 day EMA as a support. Both can be used as support for the uptrend. Generally you can used these types of support (or resistance in a downtrend) to determine when to buy a stock and when to sell a stock. If I was looking to buy CBA whilst it was uptrending, one strategy I could use was to wait until it hit or got very close to the support trend-line and then buy as it re-bounces back up. If I already held the stock I could use a break down below the uptrend support line as a stop to exit out of the stock.", "It's the same result either way. Say the bills are $600, and you are reimbursed $400. You'd be able to write off $400 as part of the utilities that are common expenses, but then claim the $400 as income. I'd stick with that, and have contemporaneous records supporting all cash flow. You also can take 2/3 of any other maintenance costs that most homeowners can't. Like snow removal, lawn care, etc.", "Well, I am an investor/ Lessor under DHA properties. Oflate, DHA lost it identity as a Govt agency and try to imitate a worst (not the best) real eastate agent. Every year rental valuation is a drama or waste of time and money to lessor. They pull down the rent by 10 to 22% and ask for a secondary valuation for no reasons. They don't even agree with market evidence and start bullying or black mailing tactics to force you to aceept a below market rent or the threat of third review , a very expensive review shared 50% by lessor and rest the poor tax payers! The thir review also badly influenced by DHA by submitting biased valuations and thereby destroying the independence of valuation. The API appointed valuer neither follow the DHA gudie nor the API guide and also ignore the market reality and take the average rent for the area. You also losse 14 to 18% as management fees paid to DHA. Selling also a problem and its high time the CWG and the Minster in charge of the DHA must institute an independent investigation to expose the potential nexus between the valuers and the DHA and how the lessor (a self funded retiree, pensioners and others). I already lodged a complaint with Ombudsman and waiting for a reply. There are 14 Lessors all in a Private street (Only DHA leased property in that street) near 213 Ray rd Epping 2121 that are leased to DHA for more than 10 years. Please note most of those Lessors almost lost $10000 per year because DHA under cut the rent to them when they paid me the market rent for many years. DHA by mistake send the rent paid to all. We have called for the details of rent paid to all the 14 lessors in that private street from 2008 todate under the Freedom of Information Act and waiting.", "No, you can not cheat the IRS. This question is also based on the assumption that the stock will return to $1 which isn't always a safe assumption and that it will continue to cycle like that repeatedly which is also likely a false assumption." ]

[ "Is there not some central service that tracks current currency rates that banks can use to get currency data? Sure. But this doesn't matter. All the central service can tell you is how much the rate was historically. But the banks/PayPal don't care about the historical value. They want to know the price that they'll pay when they get around to switching, not the last price before the switch. Beyond that, there is a transaction cost to switching. They have to pay the clearinghouse for managing the transaction. The banks can choose to act as a clearinghouse, but that increases their risk. If the bank has a large balance of US dollars but dollars are falling, then they end up eating that cost. They'll only take that risk if they think that they'll make more money that way. And in the end, they may have to go on the currency market anyway. If a European bank runs out of US dollars, they have to buy them on the open market. Or a US bank might run out of Euros. Or Yen. Etc. Another problem is that many of the currency transactions are small, but the overhead is fixed. If the bank has to pay $5 for every currency transaction, they won't even break even charging 3% on a $100 transaction. So they delay the actual transaction so that they can make more than one at a time. But then they have the risk that the currency value might change in the meantime. If they credit you with $97 in your account ($100 minus the 3% fee) but the price actually drops from $100 to $99, they're out the $1. They could do it the other way as well. You ask for a $100 transaction. They perform a $1000 transaction, of which they give you $97. Now they have $898 ($1000 minus the $5 they paid for the transaction plus the $3 they charged you for the transaction). If there's a 1% drop, they're out $10.98 ($8.98 in currency loss plus a net $2 in fees). This is why banks have money market accounts. So they have someone to manage these problems working twenty-four hours a day. But then they have to pay interest on those accounts, further eating into their profits. Along with paying a staff to monitor the currency markets and things that may affect them." ]

[ "Well for a start funds don't pay interest. If you pick an income-paying fund (as opposed to one that automatically reinvests any income for you) you will receive periodic income based on the dividends paid by the underlying stocks, but it won't be the steady predictable interest payment you might get from a savings account or fixed-rate security. This income is not guaranteed and will vary based on the performance of the companies making up the fund. It's also quite likely that the income by itself won't cover the interest on your mortgage. The gains from stock market investment come from a mixture of dividends and capital growth (i.e. the increase in the price of the shares). So you may have to sell units now and again or cover part of the interest payments from other income. You're basically betting that the after-tax returns from the fund will be greater than the mortgage interest rate you're paying. 3 facts: If you're comfortable with these 3 facts, go for it. If they're going to keep you awake at night, you might not want to take the risk.", "Just as with any other service provider - vote with your wallet. Do not go back to that doctor's office, and make sure they know why. It's unheard of that a service provider will not disclose the anticipated charges ahead of time. A service provider saying \"we won't tell you how much we charge\" is a huge red flag, and you shouldn't have been dealing with them to begin with. Now you know. how can we ever get health care costs under control if there's so little transparency? I'm assuming you're in the US. This is not going to change, since there's no profit in not screwing the customers. As long as health-care is a for-profit industry, you should expect everyone in it being busy figuring out a way for money to move from your wallet to their. That's what capitalism is about.", "In general, buying a house will improve your net worth over the long haul, because unlike cars, houses don't suffer as much from depreciation. The problem with real property is that markets are very cyclic and aren't very liquid assets. Farmers with thousands of acres of valuable land are often cash poor for that very reason. A lot of people here are negative about housing ownership — this is illustrative of the fact that 2010 is a year where real estate is on the down-side of the cycle.", "Careful with saying \"no need\". Look careful at the cost of life insurance. That cost depends obviously on the amount, but also on the age when you start paying into the insurance. If you take out a $100,000 insurance at 20, and someone else takes it out at 30, and a third person at 50, they will pay hugely different amounts when you reach the same age. You will pay less when you are 50 then the person taking out insurance at 30 when they reach the age of 50, and less again than the person who just started with their life insurance. And as mhoran said, once you have insurance you can keep it even if you get an illness that would make you uninsurable.", "The best way to make money during a market correction is to be a financial services company handling transactions for people who think they can beat the market, and charging a percentage commission on each transaction, while keeping your own money somewhere nice and safe, stable and low-fee.", "Unless a study accounts for whether the users are following a budget or not, it is irrelevant to those who are trying to take their personal finances seriously. I can certainly believe that those who have no budget will spend more on a credit card than they will on a debit card or with cash. Under the right circumstances spending with cards can actually be a tool to track and reduce spending. If you can see on a monthly and yearly basis where all of your money was spent, you have the information to make decisions about the small expenses that add up as well as the obvious large expenses. Debit cards and credit cards offer the same advantage of giving you an electronic record of all of your transactions, but debit cards do not come with the same fraud protection that credit cards have, so I (and many people like me) prefer to use credit cards for security reasons alone. Cash back and other rewards points bolster the case for credit cards over debit cards. It is very possible to track all of your spending with cash, but it is also more work. The frustration of accounting for bad transcriptions and rechecking every transaction multiple times is worth discussing too (as a reason that people get discouraged and give up on budgeting). My point is simply that credit cards and the electronic records that they generate can greatly simplify the process of tracking your spending. I doubt any study out there accounts for the people who are specifically using those benefits and what effect it has on their spending.", "A stock dividend isn't exactly a split. Example: You have 100 shares of stock worth $5 a share (total value $500). The company wants to distribute a dividend worth 1%. You could expect a check for $5. But If they wanted to do a stock dividend they could send you 0.01 shares for every share you own, in your case you will be given a single share worth $5. Now you own 101 shares. Why a share dividend? It doesn't take cash to give the dividend. It keeps the money invested in the company. Some investors re-invest a cash dividend, some don't. A cash dividend is generally taxable income for the investor; a stock dividend isn't. Some investors prefer one over the other, but it depends on their specific financial picture. Neither a stock dividend, a cash dividend or split changes anything. The split changes the price to meet a goal. The cash dividend lowers the price by sending excess cash to the investors. The stock dividend lowers the price by creating new shares and retaining cash. It company picks the message and the method. depending on their goals and situation. Remember that a company may want to give a dividend because they have a history of doing so, but not have the cash to do so. It is like a split because the number of shares you own will go up, and the price per share will go down. But a split is generally done to bring the price of a share to within a specific range. The company sees a benefit to having a stock mid priced, instead of very high or very low.", "They don't have to take cash if they reasonably told you in advance they don't take cash, because they made fair effort to prevent you from incurring a debt. They don't have to take cash if the transaction hasn't yet happened (not a debt) or if it can be easily undone at no cost to either party - such as a newspaper subscription they can just stop delivering. Both of these reasons are limited by the rules against discrimination, see below. They don't have to take cash if it's impracticable. For instance a transit bus when fares first went to $1.00, it took years to fund new fareboxes able to take paper money. You don't have to take a mortgage payment in pennies. Liquor stores don't have to take $100 bills. (it requires them to keep too much change in the till, which makes them a robbery target). Trouble arises when it appears there's an ulterior motive for the rule. Suppose a Landlord Jim requires rent to be paid with EFT. Rent-controlled Marcie tells the judge \"It's a scheme to oust me, he knows I'm unbanked\". Jim counters \"No. I got mugged last month because criminals know when I collect cash rents.\" It will turn on whether Jim can show good-faith effort to work with his unbanked tenants to find other ways to pay. If Jim does a particularly bad job of this, he could find himself paying Marcie's legal bills! Even worse if the ulterior motive is discrimination. Chet the plumber hates Muslims. Alice the feed supplier hates the Amish. So they decide to take credit cards only, knowing those people's religions don't allow them. Their goose is cooked once they can't show any other reasonable reason to refuse cash.", "Yes, an overall $500 loss on the stock can be claimed. Since the day trader sold both lots she acquired, the Wash Sale rule has no net impact on her taxes. The Wash Sale rule would come into play if within thirty days of second sale, she purchased the stock a third time. Then she would have to amend her taxes because claiming the $500 loss would no longer be a valid under the Wash Sale rule. It would have to be added to the cost basis of the most recent purchase.", "You'd need millions of dollars to trade the number of shares it would take to profit from these penny variations. What you bring up here is the way high frequency firms front-run trades and profit on these pennies. Say you have a trade commission of $5. Every time you buy you pay $5, every time you sell you pay $5. So you need a gain in excess of $10, a 10% gain on $100. Now if you wanted to trade on a penny movement from $100 to $100.01, you need to have bought 1,000 shares totaling $100,000 for the $0.01 price movement to cover your commission costs. If you had $1,000,000 to put at risk, that $0.01 price movement would net you $90 after commission, $10,000,000 would have made you $990. You need much larger gains at the retail level because commissions will equate to a significant percentage of the money you're investing. Very large trading entities have much different arrangements and costs with the exchanges. They might not pay a fee on each transaction but something that more closely resembles a subscription fee, and costs something that more closely resembles a house. Now to your point, catching these price movements and profiting. The way high frequency trading firms purportedly make money relates to having a very low latency network connection to a particular exchange. Their very low latency/very fast network connection lets them see orders and transact orders before other parties. Say some stock has an ask at $101 x 1,000 shares. The next depth is $101.10. You see a market buy order come in for 1,000 shares and place a buy order for 1,000 shares at $101 which hits the exchange first, then immediately place a sell order at $101.09, changing the ask from $101.00 to $101.09 and selling in to the market order for a gain of $0.09 per share." ]

[ "As of this moment the DOW 30 is up 6.92% Year-to-date. Of the 30 stocks in the index 6 are in negative territory for the year. And of the 6 in negative territory 3 are farther below 0 than the average is above 0. The investors in those 3 stocks (Boeing, Goldman Sachs and Nike) would look at this year so far as a disaster. Individual stocks can move in opposite directions from the index." ]

[ "Whether an investment is pre-tax is determined by the type of account (i.e., tax-advantaged vs ordinary taxable account), but whether you can invest in individual stocks is determined by the provider (i.e., the particular bank where you have the account). These are orthogonal choices. If you want to invest in individual stocks, you need to look for a bank that offers an IRA/401k/other tax-advantaged account and allows you to invest in individual stocks with it. For example, this page suggests that Fidelity would let you do that. Obviously you should look into various providers yourself to find one that offers the mix of features you want.", "I suppose this could really depend on the part of the world you're in, but there are still many instances of \"emergencies\" that need \"cash\". You have to decide how much cash is the right amount, but I still recommend having $1,000 or so in liquid cash. It can really make a huge difference. Let me give a few examples. Bad weather. I live in Florida and after a hurricane if you want gas, food, or water, you're going to need cash. ATM networks are the last to get repaired. Same for internet. Cell services are not at the top of the list. You could be 4-5 days without access to your accounts. If you need anything in that time frame it's cash or the Red Cross. Children. As a foster parent we keep some cash on hand because as kids come in to our care we want to get them in school right away. How are they going to eat? You can't give them your plastic, you haven't had time to setup \"lunch accounts\" or the like. Cash always works. Along those same lines are bus tickets, clothes, supplies and what not. Not everywhere will take an ATM card, and if your money is tied up in a stock then what are you supposed to do for 3 days? Tell your new kid that he can't eat? Big Emergency problems. Like your car breaks down on the interstate. Sure it can get towed to the dealership, and yes they will add the tow to your bill, and sure you have a few days to pay it (while your car gets fixed), but how are you going to get around? Not all taxis take plastic around here. Almost none of the busses take plastic even though they are supposed to. Lost Wallet or ID theft. Lose your wallet, good luck getting into your bank accounts. It can take weeks to establish your ID after you lose it in some cases. You want your ID, but you need your birth certificate. You have to GO to the state of birth and request it. Oh but wait, to travel you need an ID. No problem send away for it, but wait, you need to send them money to mail it. To bad all your money is tied up. Running or Evacuating - So you need to evacuate for some reason. No big deal. But all your money is in a place you can't get to it. How do you put gas in your car. Lets stick with it and say you get to \"cash out\" an account of some kind. Guess what, they're not going to mail it to some random address. Now you're stuck fighting support centers to get them to understand that you need your funds delivered to New York even though you live in Florida. In short, you don't need $100,000 in liquid funds, but there are a few cases that you need something liquid. You also make a lot of assumptions. For example, not every one will have health insurance, or a heath problem that is covered by their insurance. Some serious home repairs are \"down payment\" upfront. Car problems like an accident that means you need a rental can totally be up front. Especially if credit cards can't be used.", "See how you can only make the premium amount but your risk is the same as holding the stock when writing a put option.", "I will definitely recommend the following books The above books will open lot of eyes to exactly know what you are doing with your personal finances in a day to day basis.These books will surely be in the top of my list which I will be giving away to my kins in my later stage. The concepts are universally the same, feel free to skip the chapters which were US based. I live in UK and I read most of the above books in late twenties, it surely made lot of changes and also drastically improved my personal finance acumen. I wish I have read these books in my early twenties.", "The initial position is worth 40000. You post 50% margin, so you deposited 20000 and borrowed 20000. 6% of 20000 is 1200.", "There is no equation. Only data that would help you come to the decision that's right for you. Assuming the 401(k) is invested in a stock fund of one sort or another, the choice is nearly the same as if you had $5K cash to either invest or pay debt. Since stock returns are not fixed, but are a random distribution that somewhat resembles a bell curve, median about 10%, standard deviation about 14%. It's the age old question of \"getting a guaranteed X% (paying the debt) or a shot at 8-10% or so in the market.\" This come up frequently in the decision to pre-pay mortgages at 4-5% versus invest. Many people will take the guaranteed 4% return vs the risk that comes with the market. For your decision, the 401(k) loan, note that the loan is due if you separate from the company for whatever reason. This adds an additional layer of risk and another data point to the mix. For your exact numbers, the savings is barely $50. I'd probably not do it. If the cards were 18%, I'd lean toward the loan, but only if I knew I could raise the cash to pay it back to not default.", "I think it is just semantics, but this example demonstrates what they mean by that: If you put $100 in a CD today, it will grow and you will be able to take out a greater amount plus the original principal at a later time. If you put $100 extra on your house payment today, you may save some money in the long run, but you won't have an asset that you wouldn't otherwise have at the end of the term that you can draw on without selling the property. But of course, you can't live on the street, so you need another house. So ultimately you can't easily realize the investment. If you get super technical, you could probably rationalize it as an investment, just like you could call clipping coupons investing, but it all comes down to what your financial goals are. What the advisers are trying to tell you is that you shouldn't consider paying down your mortgage early as an acceptable substitute for socking away some money for retirement or other future expenses. House payments for a house you live in should be considered expenses, in my opinion. So my view is that paying off a note early is just a way of cutting expenses.", "Good question, here are some possible answers: Its a Good Idea There is probably some validity to the statictics and having money invested, generally speaking, has proven far more valuable than having it sit in a savings account. It tends to reinforce strength Suppose you own two stocks, one that is a great performer, and one that isn't. Generally speaking the high performer will pay out more, and if you reinvest more into that stock, you will be wealthier if you contributed equally to both stocks. You might forget People tend to forget to do things that are not in the forefront, and reinvestment is one of those things that slip people's mind. One of the wealth building tools that people universally recommend is automation. Reinvesting is a way to automate one aspect of one's financial life. You might spend it on something else If you put the dividends into your checking account, there is a non-zero chance that it might get put towards something else. Better to have it out of sight and mind and invested. They make money Generally speaking, the more money you have in a brokerage account, the more the brokerage makes. So it is good for them, as well as yourself. While there is some attraction to being able to see a balance that is the result of dividend investments, its just far better to have them be poured right back into whatever investment seem appropriate.", "The \"hire a pro\" is quite correct, if you are truly making this kind of money. That said, I believe in a certain amount of self-education so you don't follow a pro's advice blindly. First, I wrote an article that discussed Marginal Tax Rates, and it's worth understanding. It simply means that as your income rises past certain thresholds, the tax rate also will change a bit. You are on track to be in the top rate, 33%. Next, Solo 401(k). You didn't ask about retirement accounts, but the combined situations of making this sum of money and just setting it aside, leads me to suggest this. Since you are both employer and employee, the Solo 401(k) limit is a combined $66,500. Seems like a lot, but if you are really on track to make $500K this year, that's just over 10% saved. Then, whatever the pro recommends for your status, you'll still have some kind of Social Security obligation, as both employer and employee, so that's another 15% or so for the first $110K. Last, some of the answers seemed to imply that you'll settle in April. Not quite. You are required to pay your tax through the year and if you wait until April to pay the tax along with your return, you will have a very unpleasant tax bill. (I mean it will have penalties for underpayment through the year.) This is to be avoided. I offer this because often a pro will have a specialty and not go outside that focus. It's possible to find the guy that knows everything about setting you up as an LLC or Sole Proprietorship, yet doesn't have the 401(k) conversation. Good luck, please let us know here how the Pro discussion goes for you.", "No stock is risk-free. Some of the biggest companies in the country, that seemed incredibly stable and secure, have suffered severe downturns or gone out of business. Twenty or thirty years ago Kodak ruled the camera film market. But they didn't react quickly enough when digital cameras came along and today they're a shadow of their former self. Forty years ago IBM owned like 90% of the computer market -- many people used \"IBM\" as another word for computer. Sears used to dominate the retail department store market. Etc." ]

[ "Use the Black-Scholes formula. If you know the current price, an options strike price, time until expiration, and risk-free interest rate, then knowing the market price of the option will tell you what the market's estimation of the volatility is. This does rely on a few assumptions, such as Gaussian random walk, but those are reasonable assumptions for most stocks. You can also get a list of past stock prices, put them in Excel, and ask Excel to calculate the standard deviation with stdev.s(), but that gives you the past volatility. The market's estimate of future volatility is more relevant." ]

[ "At the most basic level, the employee is getting a share of ownership in the company and would get a percentage of the sales price. That said, as littleadv alluded to, different share classes have different priorities and get paid in different orders. In a bankruptcy, for example, some classes almost never get paid in practice because they are so far down the ladder of priority. The first step you should take would be to try to clarify what you are getting with the company itself. Failing that, contact a financial professional or an attorney in your area who can read the terms and give you a better understanding of the contract before you sign.", "I'm surprised by all the pro-credit answers here, debit has some definite advantages. Most importantly, when you pay with a credit card, the merchant pays around 3% of the transaction to the credit company. In many states, they are forced to charge you the same amount, and this is frequently toted as ''consumer protection''. But consider what this means for the business: they loose money for every credit transaction, and they're legally forbidden to do anything about it. So you're taking 3% from a business and handing it over to a massive cooperation. To make matters worse, the buisness is inevitably going to have to raise their prices (albiet by a small amount), so in the end the average consumer has gained nothing. On the other hand, the credit card company wins big, and they use their profits to pay lobbyists and lawyers to keep these rules in place. To put in the worst possible light, it's essentially legal extortion, verging on corruption. As for the fraud protection offered, while it may be true that credit cards will offer a more hassle-free reimbursement (i.e. you just don't have to pay the bill) if your card is stolen, consumer protection laws also extend to debit: in many cases your bank is legally required to cut you a check for all the money you lost.", "International equity are considered shares of companies, which are headquartered outside the United States, for instance Research in Motion (Canada), BMW (Germany), UBS (Switzerland). Some investors argue that adding international equities to a portfolio can reduce its risk due to regional diversification.", "In a domestic setting, Letters of Credit are often used to build public works needed to support a development. So if you're bulldozing a few 3 story buildings to build a 50 story tower, the municipality will build appropriate water/sewer/gas/road infrastructure, and draw from the developer's letter of credit to fund it. The 'catch' to the developer is that these things usually aren't revokable -- once the city/town/etc starts work, the developer cannot cut-off the funding, even if the project is cancelled. A letter of credit definitely isn't a consumer financing vehicle. The closest equivalent is a \"line of credit\" tied to an asset like a home.", "I'd have a good look at how much anonymity an LLC offers in your state - as far as I'm aware this varies from state to state. Out here in NV an LLC owner's privacy is supposedly fairly well protected, but in other states, not quite as much. Also keep in mind that while the LLC offers some protection (and I'm a big advocate of this sort of structure if you're taking larger risks that might have a big impact on your overall personal finances), this might not apply to financing. A lot of banks tend to require an LLC's owner to guarantee loans to an LLC once they go over a certain amount or even in general. Do some research in this area because the LLC would be worth less as a protective shield to you if you're on the hook for the full amount of the loans anyway.", "You sold all shares? The potential wash sale effect goes away after 30 days from the dividend date. Selling all shares of a stock where a wash existed effectively negates the wash and you can take the loss.", "It could be a sunk cost. If you buy 5 gallons of vegetable oil it costs $50. Until you use up all the vegetable oil you dollars are tied up and cannot be spent on popcorn or any other good. So weigh if the convenience is more important than having the cash on hand for other purchases is another factor to consider", "This summer I used a loan from my 401(k) to help pay for the down payment of a new house. We planned on selling a Condo a few months later, so we only needed the loan for a short period but wanted to keep monthly payments low since we would be paying two mortgages for a few months. I also felt like the market might take a dip in the future, so I liked the idea of trying to cash out high and buy back low (spoiler alert: this didn't happen). So in July 2017 I withdrew $17,000 from my account (Technically $16,850.00 principal and $150 processing fee) at an effective 4.19% APR (4% rate and then the fee), with 240 scheduled payments of $86.00 (2 per month for 10 years). Over the lifetime of the loan the total finance charge was $3,790, but that money would be paid back into my account. I was happy with the terms, and it helped tide things over until the condo was sold a few months later. But then I decided to change jobs, and ended up having to pay back the loan ~20 weeks after it was issued (using the proceeds from the sale of the condo). During this time the market had done well, so when I paid back the funds the net difference in shares that I now owned (including shares purchased with the interest payments) was $538.25 less than today's value of the original count of shares that were sold to fund the loan. Combined with the $150 fee, the overall \"cost\" of the 20 week loan was about 4.05%. That isn't the interest rate (interest was paid back to my account balance), but the value lost due to the principal having been withdrawn. On paper, my account would be worth that much more if I hadn't withdrawn the money. Now if you extrapolate the current market return into 52 weeks, you can think of that loan having an APR \"cost\" of around 10.5% (Probably not valid for a multi year calculation, but seems accurate for a 12 month projection). Again, that is not interest paid back to the account, but instead the value lost due to the money not being in the account. Sure, the market could take a dip and I may be able to buy the shares back at a reduced cost, but that would require keeping sizable liquid assets around and trying to time the market. It also is not something you can really schedule very well, as the loan took 6 days to fund (not including another week of clarifying questions back/forth before that) and 10 day to repay (from the time I initiated the paperwork to when the check was cashed and shares repurchased). So in my experience, the true cost of the loan greatly depends on how the market does, and if you have the ability to pay back the loan it probably is worth doing so. Especially since you may be forced to do so at any time if you change jobs or your employment is terminated.", "Not unless you have something else to put up as collateral. The bank wants a basic assurance that you're not going to immediately move the money to the Caymans and disappear. 999 times out of 1000, the collateral for a home mortgage is the home itself (which you wouldn't be able to take with you if you decided to disappear), so signing up for a 30 year mortgage on a nonexistent house is probably going to get you laughed out of the bank. It's sometimes possible to negotiate something else as collateral; you may, for instance, have a portfolio of securities worth the loan principal, that you can put in escrow for the term of the loan (the securities will stay in your name and make you money, but if you default on the loan the bank goes to the escrow company and takes the portfolio for their own). The bank will consider the risk of value loss on the securities in the portfolio, and may ask for a higher collateral value or only allow a lower loan amount. In all cases, it's usually a bad idea to go into long-term personal debt just to get \"cheap money\" that you can use to beat the interest rate with some business plan or investment. If you have a business plan, take that to the bank with an LLC and ask for a business loan. The business itself, if the plan is sound, should become valuable, and the terms of business loans take that into account, allowing for a \"shrinking collateral\" transferring the initial personal risk of the loan to the business.", "The obvious answer for savings costs with a car is not to have a car. Of course that must be balanced against other expenses (bicycle, taxi, public transport) to do things. Generally speaking, if you need a car, ways to contain expense are to buy the least expensive vehicle with the most economical engine that meets your needs, keep it undercover (reduces damage or wear due to exposure), proactively maintain it (maintenance is cheaper in the long run than the costs of dealing with a breakdown and cost of repairs, and lack of maintenance accelerates depreciation), and shop around for a good mechanic who will maintain it at a fair price. If you do a lot of milage, or do a lot of towing, or drive under load, consider a diesel. A diesel engine often costs more each service, sometimes has a shorter service interval, but it also gets greater milage. There may be a differential cost of fuel (diesel is often a bit more expensive per volume). For towing, a diesel is often more economical, due to low end power (greater torque at lower revs) which does result in better fuel economy. It is no accident that most large transport vehicles consume diesel. Do the sums based on your usage before you buy. Accelerate as gently as possible to get to speed within traffic conditions (less fuel to get to a speed). Change up to higher gears as soon as possible as - at a given speed - economy will be better, as long as the engine has enough oomph to handle it (so don't try to start from stationary in a high gear). Don't drive faster than necessary, as drag increases with speed, and hurts economy. Similarly, reduce speed gradually, to reduce undue wear on breaks and reduce fuel consumption (sharp breaking with power assisted breaks does affect fuel economy). Drive close to legal limits if conditions permit. This reduces chances of annoying other drivers (who if they get impatient may throw rocks at your car, or collide, or subject you to road rage - which contribute to damage and insurance costs). It also reduces chances of being pulled over by police and fined for obstructing other traffic. Don't tailgate. This both consumes fuel in keeping up, and means needing to slow sharply. And increases chance of accident. Don't idle more than necessary. Allow stop/start systems on your car to operate - particularly if you're in stop/start traffic. However, there is a break-even point where stopping and restarting consumes more fuel than idling, so get to know your vehicle. That depends on how much the engine needs cranking to restart - which is affected both by engine design and maintenance. Maintain it yourself if you have the skills, but account for the cost of parts and equipment, to be sure it is cost effective (modern cars are software driven, so equipment to diagnose and maintain can be expensive). Combine trips (don't get into the car for every little thing - wait until you can do a few things during a single drive) and car pool. If fuel prices vary (e.g some places have regular cycles) try to refuel near the bottom of a pricing cycle. Take unnecessary weight out of the vehicle. Don't load it up with tools unless you need them frequently." ]

[ "It would have to be made as a \"gift\", and then the return would be a \"gift\" back to you, because you're not allowed to use a loan for a down payment. I see some problems, but different ones than you do: One more question: is the market really hot right now? It was quite cold for the last few years." ]

[ "I'd pile up as much cash as you can in a savings account - you will need money for the move (even if it's just gas money) and it's going to be hard to predict where house prices are going so you might or might not be underwater when it comes time to sell the house. Or you might be so deep underwater by then that the extra money doesn't make much of a difference anymore anyway. Once you're actually in the process of selling the house, you can figure out if you can (or need to) use the savings to cover the shortfall, closing costs or if you just built up a little wealth during the time you put the money aside.", "Yes, you can put assets in Canadian banks. Will it protect your wealth to a greater extent than the FDIC protection provided by the US Government? Probably not. If you do business or spend significant time in Canada, then having at least some money in Canada makes sense. Otherwise, you're trying to protect yourself against some outlying risk of a US banking collapse, while subjecting yourself to a very real currency exchange risk.", "You have to check your contract to be sure what is it you're paying for. Typically, you get some of the following features which can be unavailable to you in banks which don't charge a monthly fee: Arguably, these expenses could be paid by the interest rates your money earn to the bank. Notice how banks which don't charge a fee usually require you to have a minimum amount of cash in your account or a minimum monthly cash flow. When you pay for your bank's services in cash, there's no such restrictions. I'm not sure if typical banks in the UK would take away your credit card if you lose your job and don't qualify for that kind of card any more, but I do know banks who would. The choice is yours, and while it's indeed sad that you don't have this kind of choice in Canada, it's also not like you're paying solely for the privilege of letting them invest your money behind your back.", "I'll break it down into steps. Total gain/ loss for the whole thing is 5 CAD. You only have to worry about these calculations if you keep some USD and convert it at your leisure. Or if you have a US dollar in your wallet from your last vacation. Don't forget to subtract commissions (converted to CAD of course). *Some people just use an average exchange rate for the whole year, which you can also get from the BoC. ^There's $200 of tax free gains allowed for pure currency transactions. This allows small gains to be ignored.", "Another factor that makes Buy to let more expensive is the risk involved. With a buy to let you are dependent on finding a tenant that will keep regular payments. if the property is left empty you need to finance the mortgage yourself putting you under financial strain and raising risk. Also as Chis mentioned they are regarded as a business enterprise, If the mortgage was to be taken by a business that would be very high risk for a bank as the business could dissolve leaving the bank out of pocket. Because of this it can be very difficult to get a buy to let through a business unless you are moving from a personal portfolio. For a regular mortgage these risks don't exist so this is reflected in lower interest repayments. It's because of these differences in risk that banks created buy to let so they can better manage those risks.", "When you invest in a single index/security, you are completely exposed to the risk of that security. Diversification means spreading the investments so the losses on one side can be compensated by the gains on the other side. What you are talking about is one thing called \"risk apettite\", more formally known as Risk Tolerance: Risk tolerance is the degree of variability in investment returns that an investor is willing to withstand. (emphasis added) This means that you are willing to accept some losses in order to get a potential bigger return. Fidelity has this graph: As you can see in the table above, the higher the risk tolerance, the bigger the difference between the best and worst values. That is the variability. The right-most pie can be one example of an agressive diversified portfolio. But this does not mean you should go and buy exactly that security compostion. High-risk means playing with fire. Unless you are a professional stuntman, playing with fire usually leaves people burnt. In a financial context this usually means the money is gone. Recommended Reading: Investopedia; Risk and Diversification: The Risk-Reward Tradeoff Investopedia; How to construct a High Risk portfolio Fidelity: Guide to Diversification KPMG: Understanding and articulating Risk Appetite (pdf)", "am I comparing apples and oranges? Yes - different purposes, different laws, different regulations. One rationale could be that HSA benefits are immediate while retirement benefits are deferred, so the benefit of employer contributions are not felt until retirement and thus do not need as stringent a limit, but that's a complete guess.", "I have heard that investing more money into an investment which has gone down is generally a bad idea*. \"Throwing good money after bad\" so to speak. This is over simplified statement to explain the concept. What is essentially says is; Say I hold stocks of XYZ; 100 units worth say USD 1000. This has lost me x% [say 50%]. The general tendency is to buy 100 more units in anticipation / hope that the price will go up. This is incorrect. However on case to case basis, this maybe the right decisions. On a periodic basis [or whenever you want to invest more money]; say you have USD 1000 and did not have the stock of XYZ, will you buy this at current price and outlook of the company. If the answer is Yes, hold the stock [or buy more], if the answer is no sell the stock at current market price and take the loss. The same applies when the price has appreciated. If you have USD 1000; given the current price and future outlook, will you buy the specific stock. If yes, hold the stock [or buy more], if answer is no sell the stock and book profit. Off-course I have not overlaid the various other considerations when buying stocks like diversification, risk profiles of individual stocks / segments, tax implications etc that are also essential even if you decide to buy or sell specific stock.", "There is a possibility of misuse. Hence it should be shared judiciously. Sharing it with large / trusted organization reduces the risk as there would be right process / controls in place. Broadly these days PAN and other details are shared for quite a few transactions, say applying for a Credit Card, Opening Bank Account, Taking a Phone connection etc. In most of the cases the application is filled out and processed by 3rd party rather than the service provider directly. Creating Fake Employee records is a possibility so is the misuse to create a fake Bank account in your name and transact in that account. Since one cannot totally avoid sharing PAN details to multiple parties... It helps to stay vigilant by monitoring the Form 26AS from the Govt website. Any large cash transactions / additional salary / or other noteworthy transactions are shown here. It would also help to monitor your CIBIL reports that show all the Credit Card and other details under your name.", "If you want real no hassle, look into getting an agent: http://www.xmarks.com/topic/photographers_agents Check Problogger for blogging info: http://www.problogger.net/ Passive income takes work. Making money off writing a novel/blogging, or photography is great, but you have to write the novel or take the pictures worth buying first. I've spent the last 3 years building a student management system for martial art studios, but it's been discouraging at times and lots of extra time and effort. If you have a common ideas for making passive money, then you have to be uncommon in the implementation. Which takes work. To quote one of the comments: You will never find a \"thing\" that will generate substantial amounts of money without needing day-to-day taking care of. He's right, the key is substantial, start slow, but start. If you don't start you'll never finish. And if you do it because you love it, the money won't matter. Sorry, this isn't a good answer, but it's a question that you'll need to answer yourself. My best suggestion, find a gap and fill it." ]

[ "Try wallstreetsurvivor.com It gives you $100k of pretend money when you sign up, using which you can take various courses on the website. It will teach you how to buy/sell stocks and build your portfolio. I am not sure if they do have Options Trading specifically, but their course line up is great!" ]

[ "Merchants apply in advance for the program, and the amount is limited to less than $25.", "You are asking 'what if', do you have some anticipated answers? Having volume smaller than open interest is the norm. As far as I can tell, having only one trading day and no previous open interest only affects someone trying to sell a contract they are holding. Meaning that if you only have one day to sell your contract then you need to offer it 'at market' or at the bid price (or even lower than the bid price). If you cannot sell your contract then you have to let it expire worthless or you have to exercise it. Those are your three options: let it expire, sell it (perhaps at a loss), and exercise it. Edit: be careful about holding an in-the-money option. Many brokers will automatically exercise an in-the-money contract if you hold it till expiration date.", "Suppose that the ETF is currently at a price of $100. Suppose that the next day it moves up 10% (to a price of $110) and the following day it moves down 5% (to a price of $104.5). Over these two days the ETF has had a net gain of 4.5% from its original price. The inverse ETF reverses the daily gains/losses of the base ETF. Suppose for simplicity that the inverse ETF also starts out at a price of $100. So on the first day it goes down 10% (to $90) and on the second day it goes up 5% (to $94.5). Thus over the two days the inverse ETF has had a net loss of 5.5%. The specific dollar amounts do not matter here. The result is that the ETF winds up at 110%*95% = 104.5% of its original price and the inverse ETF is at 90%*105% = 94.5% of its original price. A similar example is given here. As suggested by your quote, this is due to compounding. A gain of X% followed by a loss of Y% (compounded on the gain) is not in general the same as a loss of X% followed by a gain of Y% (compounded on the loss). Or, more simply put, if something loses 10% of its value and then gains 10% of its new value, it will not return to its original value, because the 10% it gained was 10% of its decreased value, so it's not enough to bring it all the way back up. Likewise if it gains 10% and then loses 10%, it will go slightly below its original value (since it lost 10% of its newly increased value).", "Government default doesn't mean that all US money is immediately worthless. First, the bondholders will get stiffed. Following that, interest rates will shoot up (because the US is a bad credit risk at this point) and the government will monetize its ongoing expenses -- i.e., fire up the printing presses. If you're concerned about not having access to your money, start pulling out a little extra when you get cash at an ATM. Build it up over time until you have enough currency to weather through whatever emergency you envision with your bank account.", "When you buy a share of stock, you are almost always buying from someone who previously purchased that share and now wants to sell it. The money -- minus broker's fee -- goes to that other investor, which may be a person, a company (rarely the company that issued the stock, but that will occasionally be the case), an investment fund, the \"market maker\" for that stock (websearch for definition of that term), or anyone else. They owned a small percentage of the company; you bought it from them and gave them the money for it, just as you would buy anything else. You don't know or care who you bought from; they don't know or care who they sold to; the market just found a buyer and seller who could agree on the price. There are a very few exceptions to that. The company may repurchase some of its own shares and/or sell them again, depending on its own financial needs and obligations. For example, my own employer has to purchase its own shares periodically so it has enough on hand to sell to employees at a slight discount through the Employee Stock Ownership Program. But you generally don't know that's who you're selling to; it happens like any other transaction. And during the Initial Public Offering, if you're lucky/privileged enough to get in on the first wave of purchases, you're buying from the investment bank that's managing this process ... though that's an almost vanishingly rare case for \"retail\" investors like us; we're more likely to get the shares after someone has already pushed the price up a bit. But really, when you buy a share the money goes to whoever you bought it from, and that's all you can know or need to know.", "A person who always saves and appropriately invests 20% of their income can expect to have a secure retirement. If you start early enough, you don't need anything close to 20%. Now, there are many good reasons to save for things other than just retirement, of course. You say that you can save 80% of your income, and you expect most people could save at least 50% without problems. That's just unrealistic for most people. Taxes, rent (or mortgage payments), utilities, food, and other such mandatory expenses take far more than 50% of your income. Most people simply don't have the ability to save (or invest) 50% of their income. Or even 25% of their income.", "Cheapest is one thing. You can absolutely shop in the market and find the lowest possible price. I can think of three places to shop, each with an up and downside. I would think that what you really mean is the best price for the service. Just like shopping for a car you have to decide what you need vs what is nice to have. Decide what features you need. Do you need long distance? Do you need caller id? Do you need to call technophobic friends and family? Find out what you have available to you through associations. Often schools, work or a club you belong to have deals for service discounts. Look at your insurance plan or AAA membership for the crazy discounts. Decide what kinds of service will meet your needs. Buy the cheapest service. DO NOT ENTER A CONTRACT. Even if the price is slightly lower. At least not at first. If you try out your service and love it, enter the contract if and only if the total price measured over length of the contract is less. With cell phones especially, it is absolutely possible to save money buying month to month vs a 2 year contract. Even when you buy equipment for full price up front. Ask for the bare minimum service from your local phone company. Because phone companies are often regulated monopolies, they might have a bare minimum level of service they are required to offer by the municipality. They probably don't advertise it or push it, but it might exist if you call and ask. You basically get a dial tone. http://www.fcc.gov/guides/local-local-toll-and-long-distance-calling Price is dictated by a government board, so you don't have to worry about shopping for deals Not the cheapest possible solution This is popular plan the youth oriented market, but more and more people of all demographics are using their cellphones only. There are downsides (911, etc) and shopping for the best cell phone plan can be a full time job, but it does offer a way to save money by simply not having home phone service. Might be possible to score organizational discounts through work or groups you belong to Cellphones require batteries, and can go dead (not good for emergencies) Voice over Internet Protocol uses your existing Internet connection. You can buy a cheap regular phone and plug it into the VOIP box and use it like any other phone. VOIP can either be very inexpensive for all the features you get, or just plain inexpensive. There are providers who sell a monthly service, yearly service or no service plan at all. (You buy a device and get service as long as you own the device.) Taxes to the government are always due, so nothing is ever free. Sometimes the provider is just computer software, so a minimalist would like that. Emergency services are more reliable than cellular (if you follow extra steps to set them up) Can be confusing to buy. Some require contracts, some special devices, some require a bit of technical know how to setup. Be sure to evaluate the total cost of ownership when comparing prices", "I'm assuming the question is about how to compare two ETFs that track the same index. I'd look at (for ETFs -- ignoring index funds): So, for example you might compare SPY vs IVV: SPY has about 100x the volume. Sure, IVV has 2M shares trading, so it is liquid \"enough\". But the bigger volume on SPY might matter to you if you use options: open interest is as much as 1000x more on SPY. Even if you have no interest in options, the spreads on SPY are probably going to be slightly smaller. They both have 0.09% expense ratios. When I looked on 2010-9-6, SPY was trading at a slight discount, IVV was at a slight premium. Looking for any sort of trend is left as an exercise to the reader... Grab the prospectus for each to examine the rules they set for fund makeup. Both come from well-known issuers and have a decent history. (Rather than crazy Uncle Ed's pawn shop, or the Central Bank of Stilumunistan.) So unless you find something in the SPY prospectus that makes you queasy, the higher volume and equal expense ratios would seem to suggest it over IVV. The fact that it is at a (tiny) discount right now is a (tiny) bonus.", "The formula you're looking for is Thus, from 3% p.a. you get ca. 0.247% per month. However, as you see 0.25% is a good approximation (generally, small rates give good approximation).", "As far as I read in many articles, all earnings (capital gains and dividends) from Canadian stocks will be always tax-free. Right? There's no withholding tax, ie. a $100 dividend means you get $100. There's no withholding for capital gains in shares for anybody. You will still have to pay taxes on the amounts, but that's only due at tax time and it could be very minor (or even a refund) for eligible Canadian dividends. That's because the company has already paid tax on those dividends. In contrast, holding U.S. or any foreign stock that yields dividends in a TFSA will pay 15% withholding tax and it is not recoverable. Correct, but the 15% is a special rate for regular shares and you need to fill out a W8-BEN. Your broker will probably make sure you have every few years. But if you hold the same stock in a non-registered account, this 15% withholding tax can be used as a foreign tax credit? Is this true or not or what are the considerations? That's true but reduces your Canadian tax payable, it's not refundable, so you have to have some tax to subtract it from. Another consideration is foreign dividends are included 100% in income no mater what the character is. That means you pay tax at your highest rate always if not held in a tax sheltered account. Canadian dividends that are in a non-registered account will pay taxes, I presume and I don't know how much, but the amount can be used also as a tax credit or are unrecoverable? What happens in order to take into account taxes paid by the company is, I read also that if you don't want to pay withholding taxes from foreign > dividends you can hold your stock in a RRSP or RRIF? You don't have any withholding taxes from US entities to what they consider Canadian retirement accounts. So TFSAs and RESPs aren't covered. Note that it has to be a US fund like SPY or VTI that trades in the US, and the account has to be RRSP/RRIF. You can't buy a Canadian listed ETF that holds US stocks and get the same treatment. This is also only for the US, not foreign like Europe or Asia. Also something like VT (total world) in the US will have withholding taxes from foreign (Europe & Asia mostly) before the money gets to the US. You can't get that back. Just an honourable mention for the UK, there's no withholding taxes for anybody, and I hear it's on sale. But at some point, if I withdraw the money, who do I need to pay taxes, > U.S. or Canada? Canada." ]

[ "Western Union, Money to India, Remit to India are some of the services that specilize in remittance and would be cheaper than an International Wire. There is not tax for transfering your own money earner outside India into India. Edit: The business of Remittance is bought into the Service Tax Net by Govt. It is seen that Banks are offering this as a service and hence the tax to Banks which is passed on to customers. 0.12% of tax on the converted amount. IE if you transfer Rs 1,00,000/- you would need to pay a tax of Rs 120/-. Above Rs 1,00,000 the incremental rate is 0.06%" ]

[ "Short selling can be a good strategy to hedge, but you have almost unlimited downside. If a stock price skyrockets, you may be forced to cover your short by the brokerage before you want to or put up more capital. A smarter strategy to hedge, that limits your potential downside is to buy puts if you think the market is going down. Your downside is limited to the total amount that you purchased the put for and no more. Another way to hedge is to SELL calls that are covered because you own the shares the calls refer to. You might do this if you thought your stock was going to go down but you didn't want to sell your shares right now. That way the only downside if the price goes up is you give up your shares at a predetermined price and you miss out on the upside, but your downside is now diminished by the premium you were paid for the option. (You'd still lose money if the shares went down since you still own them, but you got paid the option premium so that helps offset that).", "I've never used them myself, but Scottrade might be something for you to look at. They do $7 internet trades, but also offer $27 broker assisted trades (that's for stocks, in both cases). Plus, they have brick-and-morter storefronts all over the US for that extra \"I gotta have a human touch\". :-) Also, they do have after hours trading, for the same commission as regular trading.", "Assuming you and your family always get along and everyone is happy with the situation... Should you become ill, die, or go on government benefits for some catastrophe, the government will look at all those funds as YOURS, and now your wonderful family is hurt by the estate tax and/or expectations of how much of the bill you handle before support kicks in. Additionally, should you ever reach a point where you are married and then facing divorce (even if no fault of your own), all that investment is now up for grabs in equitable distribution. So your family's entire investment fund is at risk.", "Companies typically release their earnings before the market opens, and then later host an analyst/investor conference call to discuss the results. Here's a link to an interesting article abstract on the subject: Disclosure Rules For Earnings Releases And Calls | Bowne Digest. Excerpt: In the aftermath of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the SEC changed regulations to bring quarterly earnings announcements in line with the generally heightened sensitivity to adequate disclosure. New regulations required that issuers file or furnish their earnings press releases on Form 8-K and conduct any related oral presentations promptly thereafter, to avoid a second 8-K. [...] Sample from a news release by The Coca Cola Company: ATLANTA, September 30, 2009 - The Coca-Cola Company will release third quarter and year-to-date 2009 financial results on Tuesday, October 20, before the stock market opens. The Company will host an investor conference call at 9:30 a.m. ( EDT ), on October 20. [...] Sample from a news release by Apple, Inc.: CUPERTINO, California—January 21, 2009—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2009 first quarter ended December 27, 2008. The Company posted record revenue of [...] Apple will provide live streaming of its Q1 2009 financial results conference call utilizing QuickTime®, Apple’s standards-based technology for live and on-demand audio and video streaming. The live webcast will begin at [...]", "If the child can take over the life insurance when they wish to get a mortgage or have their own children, there may be a case for buying insurance for the child in the event that your child's health is not good enough for them to get cover at that time. However I don’t think this type of insurance is worth having.", "It will definitely be added to your AGI, but not necessarily bump your ordinary income tax bracket. You will have to use the Capital Gains Computation worksheet (that uses the general Tax Computation Worksheet) to figure out your tax liability. You might also be subject to the AMT. See the instructions to form 1040, line 44 (page 38) and line 45.", "It looks like these types of companies have to disclose the health of their accounts to CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). That is the gist I get at least from this article about the traders that lost money due to the Swiss removing the franc’s cap against the euro. The article says about the U.S. retail FOREX brokerage: Most of FXCM’s retail clients lost money in 2014, according to the company’s disclosures mandated by the CFTC. The percentage of losing accounts climbed from 67 percent in the first and second quarters to 68 percent in the third quarter and 70 percent in the fourth quarter. Side note: The Swiss National Bank abandoned the cap on the currency's value against the euro in mid-January 2015. But above paragraph provides data on FXCM’s retail clients in 2014. It could consequently be concluded that, even without \"freak events\" (such as Switzerland removing the franc cap), it is more likely for an investor to NOT make a profit on the FOREX market. This is also in line with what \"sdfasdf\" and \"Dario Fumagalli\" say in their answers.", "Your question reminds me of a Will Rogers quote: buy some good stock, and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it. There's no way to prevent yourself from buying a stock that goes down. In fact all stocks go down at some times. The way to protect your long term investment is to diversify, which increases the chances that you have more stocks that go up than go down. So many advisors will encourage index funds, which have a low cost (which eats away at returns) and low rick (because of diversification). If you want to experiment with your criteria that's great, and I wish you luck, but Note that historically, very few managed funds (meaning funds that actively buy and sell stocks based on some set of criteria) outperform the market over long periods. So don't be afraid of some of your stocks losing - if you diversify enough, then statistically you should have more winners than losers. It's like playing blackjack. The goal is not to win every hand. The goal is to have more winning hands than losing hands.", "I think people in general tend to unnecessarily over-complicate this issue. Here's what I think you should do in any situation like this: First and foremost, put all tax considerations aside and decide whether it makes sense to sell the stock now or hold on to it for the long term based on its merits as an investment. Tax considerations have absolutely nothing to do with whether the stock is a good investment. If you consider all non-tax factors and decide to hold on to it for the long term, then you can use the tax considerations as a very minor input to how long you should hold it - in other words, don't set your time horizon to 17.5 months if waiting another 2 weeks gives you better tax treatment. You're going to pay taxes on your gains no matter what. The only difference is whether you pay capital gains tax or income tax. Granted, the income tax rate is higher, but wouldn't it suck if you pay a LOT less tax only because you have a LOT less value in your stock? So to answer your question - I would say, absolutely not, tax consequences do not make it worthwhile to hold on to your ESPP shares. If you decide to hold on to your ESPP for other reasons (and they better be good ones to put that much free profit at risk), only then should you look at the tax consequences to help fine-tune your strategy.", "Fractional shares don't occur from Dividend Reinvestment Programs - residual credit is carried over until there is enough to purchase a whole share." ]

[ "The reason a company creates more stock is to generate more capital so that this can be utilized and more returns can be generated. It is commonly done as a follow on public offer. Typically the funds are used to retire high cost debts and fund future expansion. What stops the company from doing it? Are Small investors cheated? It's like you have joined a car pool with 4 people and you are beliving that you own 1/4th of the total seats ... so when most of them decide that we would be better of using Minivan with 4 more persons, you cannot complain that you now only own 1/8 of the total seats. Even before you were having just one seat, and even after you just have one seat ... overall it maybe better as the ride would be good ... :)" ]

[ "The U.S. economy has grown at just under 3% a year after inflation over the past 50 years. (Some of this occurred to \"private\" companies that are not listed on the stock market, or before they were listed.) The stock market returns averaged 7.14% a year, \"gross,\" but when you subtract the 4.67% inflation, the \"net\" number is 2.47% a year. That gain corresponds closely to the \"just under 3% a year\" GDP growth during that time.", "Changes in implied volatility are caused by many things, of course, and it is tough to isolate the effect you are describing, but let's try to generalize for a moment. Implied volatility is generally a measure of how much expect uncertainty there is about the future price of the stock. Uncertainty generally is higher in periods including earnings announcements because it is significant new information about the company's fortunes can make for significant changes in the price. However, you could easily have the case where the earnings are good and for some reason the market is very certain that the earnings will be good and near a certain level. In that case the price would rise, but the implied volatility could well be lower because the market believes that there will be no significant new information in the earnings announcement.", "I've read the answers and respect the thought behind them. I'd like to focus on (a) the magnitude of the emergency, and (b) the saving rate of the people affected. 3-6 months is interesting. It's enough not just to fix the car, repair the A/C, etc, but more than enough to lose one's job and recover. (Let's avoid the debate of how long it take to find a job, no amount of 'emergency savings' can solve that.) If one is spending below their means, any unexpected expense that can paid off within, say 3 months, doesn't really need to tap emergency funds (EF). And, at some level of income and retirement savings, one can more easily run a much lower EF. My own situation - I had 9mo worth of expenses saved as EF. We were living well beneath our means, and I was looking at the difference between our mortgage (6%+) vs bank interest (near 0%). I used the funds to pay down principal, refinanced to a lower rate, and at the same closing got a HELOC. The psychology of this is tough, it then appears that for simple expenses, I'd be borrowing from my HELOC. On the other hand, the choice was between a known cost, the $5K/year the money was costing by sitting there plus the lower rate by going to a non-jumbo loan at the time, vs the risk of using 3% money from the HELOC. In the end, the HELOC was never tapped for more than a small portion of its line, and I never regretted the decision. Ironically, it's the person who isn't saving much that need the EF most. If you are a saver, you need to judge how long it would take to replace the funds. I offer the above not as a recommendation, but as devil's advocate to the other excellent advice here. All cash flows are a choice, $100 going here, can't go there. I'd slip in a warning that one should capture matching 401(k) contributions, if offered, before funding the EF. And pay down any high interest debt. After that, the decision of how liquid to be is a personal choice, what worked for my wife and me may not be for everyone.", "Why Stocks go up and Down by William H Pike is a great source if you are looking to interpret statements for stock analysis. This book really starts from the beginning and clearly explains with a running example of a fake company.", "I think we are mixing this up. If you invest using loan, and are paying the loan out of your pocket and leaving the loan in investment, then there is no way you are making more money. Had you directly invested the same money in market instead of EMI, you would end up gaining more. Take a Loan of 100000, Year Int say 5.00%. Total Interest Paid in 2 Yrs comes out to 5291 The Rate of Interest your investments need to make is 2.58%. Sounds to good to be true. But yes when you look at it other way round, this is right. Now if you can indeed make 2.58% from your investments, check what happens if you were to invest the EMI directly and don't take the loan. You make 7937", "No, not on schedule C, better. Its an \"above the line\" deduction (line 29 on your 1040). Here's the turbo tax article on it. The instructions for this line set certain limitations that you must take into the account, and yes - it is limited to the net profit from the business. One of the following statements must be true. You were self-employed and had a net profit for the year. You were a partner with net earnings from self-employment. You used one of the optional methods to figure your net earnings from self-employment on Schedule SE. You received wages in 2011 from an S corporation in which you were a more-than-2% shareholder. Health insurance premiums paid or reimbursed by the S corporation are shown as wages on Form W-2. The insurance plan must be established under your business. Your personal services must have been a material income-producing factor in the business. If you are filing Schedule C, C-EZ, or F, the policy can be either in your name or in the name of the business.", "Unfortunately, if your taxes are too complicated for the 1040EZ form, then your tax situation is effectively unique and you need to try both options and see for yourself which one is better. If you do your taxes yourself, you may be more likely to do a more thorough job in digging everything up. You might even find that you can deduct some things that you hadn't thought of before. On the other hand, whenever I've gone to a tax professional, it's always been pretty much an all-or-nothing proposal. You sit down with them and hand them your records, they ask a couple simple questions, and they either give you your completed tax return on-the-spot or they have you come back in a week for a brief review of the final numbers. If they don't prepare your return on-the-spot, you can usually send additional items later on if you think of something that you forgot the first time around, but for the most part it's still a one-time shot. That said, I'm beginning to think the difference in monetary cost of completing even a mildly complex tax return is going to be insignificant, and the main factors to consider are the value of your own time and how much of the tax code you want to learn (because, in my experience, the software always refers to additional IRS forms or codes that are not automated in the software). In theory, your tax return should be the same regardless of whether you have a tax professional do your taxes or, if you do them yourself, which software you use. Given the same inputs, you should get about the same outputs. Even though that theory doesn't always hold exactly true, all the options should get you in the same ballpark--close enough that it doesn't make much difference in the grand scheme of things, unless your tax return is done incorrectly (e.g., you choose the wrong filing status or forget to take a major deduction). Suppose you're married and you or your spouse is a partner in an LLC. Maybe a tax professional wants to charge you $500 for your tax return (this will vary based on your circumstances). You could alternatively buy the tax software for $40-$300 and spend 20+ hours navigating through the interviews and reviewing tax codes for the decisions and worksheets that are not automated in the software. Depending on how much time you personally have to spend on the tax return, one option might be better than the other. Maybe you have to pay your in-house accounting person to use the tax software, or you have to pay an employee to cover for you while you use the software. Keep in mind that the tax professional and the tax software are probably deductible, whereas your time may not be. In the end, even if you save money up front, it might be a wash on the following year's tax return, especially after you consider the uncompensated time that you could have spent with your family, on your business.", "Put in the maximum you can into the 401(k), the limit should be $16,500 so long as the highly compensated rules don't kick in. Since you cannot deduct the traditional IRA, it's a great option to deposit to a traditional IRA and immediately convert that balance to a Roth account. That puts you at $21,500/yr saved, nearly 18%. There's nothing stopping you from investing outside these accounts. A nice ETF with low expenses, investing in a stock index (I am thinking SPY for the S&P 500) is great to accumulate long term.", "I believe this depends on the broker's policies. For example, here is Vanguard's policy (from https://personal.vanguard.com/us/whatweoffer/stocksbondscds/brokeragedividendprogram): Does selling shares affect a distribution? If you sell the entire position two days or more before the dividend-payable date, your distribution will be paid in cash. If, however, you sell an entire position within the two day time frame of the security's payable date, the dividend will be reinvested, resulting in additional shares. Selling these subsequent shares will require another sell order, which will incur additional commission charges. Dividends which would have been reinvested into less than one whole share will be automatically liquidated into cash. If you want to guarantee you receive no fractional shares, I'd call your broker and ask whether selling stock ABC on a particular date will result in the dividend being paid in shares.", "The Securities Investor Protection Corporation is roughly analogous to the FDIC for investments. There are some important differences like a lack of 100% guarantee you get all of your funds back. The SIPC understands you invested knowing there was some risk, and therefore you take that same risk in getting your money from a failed brokerage. However there is still a level of commitment and trust that lessen the risk of investing in the wrong place. Also, do not typo the acronym at your work computer. In the US (and perhaps elsewhere) it is a racist term, and you are likely to get some bad search results. http://www.sipc.org/how/brochure.cfm" ]

[ "They don't make any money off of you personally. They make money off of the merchants per transaction when you use the card. You trigger this fee to the credit card issuer, but it doesn't come out of your pocket. (Or it shouldn't; merchants aren't allowed to pass this fee on to you.) They keep you around because you may at some point become less responsible than you already are, and it would be quite costly to get you back (a couple hundred dollars is the cost of acquiring a new credit card customer). People who are less responsible than you subsidize your free float and your rewards (if any) but the new CARD act makes it more difficult for people to use their cards irresponsibly, so these perks that you enjoy will get less perky with time." ]

[ "Given that hedge funds and trading firms employ scores of highly intelligent analysts, programmers, and managers to game the market, what shot does the average person have at successful investing in the stock market? Good question and the existing answers provide valuable insight. I will add one major ingredient to successful investing: emotion. The analysts and experts that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley or the best hedge funds employ may have some of the most advanced analytical skills in the world, but knowing and doing still greatly differ. Consider how many of these same companies and funds thought real estate was a great buy before the housing bubble. Why? FOMO (fear of missing out; what some people call greed). One of my friends purchased Macy's and Las Vegas Sands in 2009 at around $5 for M and $2 for LVS. He never graduated high school, so we might (foolishly) refer to him as below average because he's not as educated as those individuals at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc. Today M sits around $40 a share and LVS at around $70. Those returns in five years. The difference? Emotion. He holds little attachment to money (lives on very little) and thus had the freedom to take a chance, which to him didn't feel like a chance. In a nutshell, his emotions were in the right place and he studied a little bit about investing (read two article) and took action. Most of the people who I know, which easily had quintuple his wealth and made significantly more than he did, didn't take a chance (even on an index fund) because of their fear of loss. I mean everyone knows to buy low, right? But how many actually do? So knowing what to do is great; just be sure you have the courage to act on what you know.", "Here's a simple example for a put, from both sides. Assume XYZ stock trades at $200 right now. Let's say John writes a $190 out of the money put on XYZ stock and sells this put to Abby for the premium, which is say $5. Assume the strike date, or date of settlement, is 6 months from now. Thus Abby is long one put option and John is short one put option (the writer of the option is short the option). On settlement date, let's assume two different scenarios: (1) If the price of the stock decreases by $50, then the put that Abby bought is 'in the money'. Abby's profit can be calculated as being strike price 190 - current stock price 150 - premium paid 5 = $35 So not including any transaction fees, that is a $35 dollar return on a $5 investment. (2) If the price of the stock increases by $50, then the put that Abby bought is worthless and her loss was 100%, or her entire $5 premium. For John, he made $5 in 6 months (in reality you need collateral and good credit to be able to write sizable option positions).", "It sounds like you want to lock-up your money in something relatively safe, and relatively hard to touch. You may want to consider a GIC (TD has one I found in a quick search) - from what I see it's the closest thing to a US CD. You won't get much back, but if you pick a 5-year term, you can't spend it* easily. Other options might be to buy an ETF, or get into REITs - but that will depend on your risk comfort. Also - to add from the comment Rick left - be sure to pay off any high-interest debts: especially if they're on a credit card, it will help you later on. * easily .. you can withdraw, but there're generally penalties", "Your university should have a finance department which can help with payments. Speak with them and tell them you have interest in paying for at least part of your next semester in cash. From here they should be able to tell you the best method for this, though most likely cash/check will suffice. If there is no finance department, or you are still unsure, check with student services for more information.", "Is there not some central service that tracks current currency rates that banks can use to get currency data? Sure. But this doesn't matter. All the central service can tell you is how much the rate was historically. But the banks/PayPal don't care about the historical value. They want to know the price that they'll pay when they get around to switching, not the last price before the switch. Beyond that, there is a transaction cost to switching. They have to pay the clearinghouse for managing the transaction. The banks can choose to act as a clearinghouse, but that increases their risk. If the bank has a large balance of US dollars but dollars are falling, then they end up eating that cost. They'll only take that risk if they think that they'll make more money that way. And in the end, they may have to go on the currency market anyway. If a European bank runs out of US dollars, they have to buy them on the open market. Or a US bank might run out of Euros. Or Yen. Etc. Another problem is that many of the currency transactions are small, but the overhead is fixed. If the bank has to pay $5 for every currency transaction, they won't even break even charging 3% on a $100 transaction. So they delay the actual transaction so that they can make more than one at a time. But then they have the risk that the currency value might change in the meantime. If they credit you with $97 in your account ($100 minus the 3% fee) but the price actually drops from $100 to $99, they're out the $1. They could do it the other way as well. You ask for a $100 transaction. They perform a $1000 transaction, of which they give you $97. Now they have $898 ($1000 minus the $5 they paid for the transaction plus the $3 they charged you for the transaction). If there's a 1% drop, they're out $10.98 ($8.98 in currency loss plus a net $2 in fees). This is why banks have money market accounts. So they have someone to manage these problems working twenty-four hours a day. But then they have to pay interest on those accounts, further eating into their profits. Along with paying a staff to monitor the currency markets and things that may affect them.", "For small amounts I wouldn't be too concerned. There are two factors I can think of: For relatively small amounts and when dealing with reputable banking institutions there should be little concern of banking with a single bank. It's what most people do.", "The short answer to your initial question is: yes. The option doesn't expire until the close of the market on the day of expiration. Because the option is expiring so soon, the time value of the option is quite small. That is why the option, once it is 'in-the-money', will track so closely to the underlying stock price. If someone buys an in-the-money option on the day of expiration, they are likely still expecting the price to go up before they sell it or exercise it. Many brokers will exercise your in-the-money options sometime after 3pm on the day of expiration. If this is not what you desire, you should communicate that with them prior to that day.", "I still use checks to pay rent and occasionally some bills/liabilities. That said, I did notice an (elderly) lady paying by check at the supermarket a while ago. So is it really common to get a paycheck in the sense that you get a piece of paper? Yes and no. There are some people that opt for the physical paycheck. Even if they do not, there is a pay stub which serves as a record of it. My last employer went to online pay stubs and a bunch of us opted out, sticking with the good old paper in an envelope. We sure were glad of that when there were technical issues and security concerns with the online service.", "Cheapest is one thing. You can absolutely shop in the market and find the lowest possible price. I can think of three places to shop, each with an up and downside. I would think that what you really mean is the best price for the service. Just like shopping for a car you have to decide what you need vs what is nice to have. Decide what features you need. Do you need long distance? Do you need caller id? Do you need to call technophobic friends and family? Find out what you have available to you through associations. Often schools, work or a club you belong to have deals for service discounts. Look at your insurance plan or AAA membership for the crazy discounts. Decide what kinds of service will meet your needs. Buy the cheapest service. DO NOT ENTER A CONTRACT. Even if the price is slightly lower. At least not at first. If you try out your service and love it, enter the contract if and only if the total price measured over length of the contract is less. With cell phones especially, it is absolutely possible to save money buying month to month vs a 2 year contract. Even when you buy equipment for full price up front. Ask for the bare minimum service from your local phone company. Because phone companies are often regulated monopolies, they might have a bare minimum level of service they are required to offer by the municipality. They probably don't advertise it or push it, but it might exist if you call and ask. You basically get a dial tone. http://www.fcc.gov/guides/local-local-toll-and-long-distance-calling Price is dictated by a government board, so you don't have to worry about shopping for deals Not the cheapest possible solution This is popular plan the youth oriented market, but more and more people of all demographics are using their cellphones only. There are downsides (911, etc) and shopping for the best cell phone plan can be a full time job, but it does offer a way to save money by simply not having home phone service. Might be possible to score organizational discounts through work or groups you belong to Cellphones require batteries, and can go dead (not good for emergencies) Voice over Internet Protocol uses your existing Internet connection. You can buy a cheap regular phone and plug it into the VOIP box and use it like any other phone. VOIP can either be very inexpensive for all the features you get, or just plain inexpensive. There are providers who sell a monthly service, yearly service or no service plan at all. (You buy a device and get service as long as you own the device.) Taxes to the government are always due, so nothing is ever free. Sometimes the provider is just computer software, so a minimalist would like that. Emergency services are more reliable than cellular (if you follow extra steps to set them up) Can be confusing to buy. Some require contracts, some special devices, some require a bit of technical know how to setup. Be sure to evaluate the total cost of ownership when comparing prices", "All very good answers for the most part, but I have a definition for Good and Bad debt which is a little bit different from those mentioned here so far. The definitions come from Robert Kiyosaki in his book \"Rich Dad Poor Dad\", which I have applied to all my debts. Good Debt - Good Debt is debt used to fund a money making asset, an asset which puts money into your pockets (or bank account) each month. In other words the income produced by that asset is more than all the expenses (including the interest repayments on the debt) associated with the asset. Bad Debt - Bad Debt is debt used to fund both money losing assets and non-assets, where the interest repayments on the debt are more than any income (if any at all) produced by the goods or services the debt was used to purchase, so that you need to take money out of your pockets (or bank account) each month to sustain the debt. Based on this definition a mortgage used to purchase the house you live in would be classed as bad debt. Why? Because you are making interest repayments on the mortgage and you have other expenses related to the house like rates and maintenance, but you have no income being produced by the house. Even a mortgage on an investment (or rental) property where the rent is not enough to cover all the expenses is considered to be bad debt. For the debt on an investment property to be considered as good debt, the rent would have to cover the full interest payments and all other expenses. In other words it would need to be a positively geared (or a cashflow positive) asset. Why is this definition important in distinguishing between good and bad debt? Because it looks at the cashflow associated with the debt and not the profit. The main reason why most investors and businesses end up selling up or closing down is due to insufficient cashflow. It may be a profitable business, or the value of the property may have increased since you bought it, but if you don't have enough cash every month to pay the bills associated with the asset you will need to sell it. If the asset produces enough cashflow to pay for all the expenses associated with the asset, then you don't have to fund the asset through other sources of income or savings. This is important in two ways. Firstly, if you are working and suddenly lose your job you don't have to worry about paying for the asset as it is more than paying for itself. Secondly, if you don't have to dig into your other source/s of income or savings to sustain the asset, then theoretically you can buy an unlimited number of similar type assets. Just a note regarding the mortgage to buy a house you live in being classed as bad debt. Even though in this definition it is considered as bad debt, there are usually other factors which still can make this kind of debt worthwhile. Firstly, you have to live somehere, and the fact that you have to live somwhere means that if you did not buy the house you would probably be renting instead, and still be stuck with a similar monthly payment. Secondly, the house will still appreciate over the long term so in the end you will end up with an asset compared to nothing if you were renting. Just another note to mention the definition provided by John Stern \"...debt is a technology that allows borrower to bring forward their spending; it's a financial time machine...\", that's a clever way to think of it, especially when it comes to good debt." ]

[ "For a non-technical investor (meaning someone who doesn't try to do all the various technical analysis things that theoretically point to specific investments or trends), having a diverse portfolio and rebalancing it periodically will typically be the best solution. For example, I might have a long-term-growth portfolio that is 40% broad stock market fund, 40% (large) industry specific market funds, and 20% bond funds. If the market as a whole tanks, then I might end up in a situation where my funds are invested 30% market 35% industry 35% bonds. Okay, sell those bonds (which are presumably high) and put that into the market (which is presumably low). Now back to 40/40/20. Then when the market goes up we may end up at 50/40/10, say, in which case we sell some of the broad market fund and buy some bond funds, back to 40/40/20. Ultimately ending up always selling high (whatever is currently overperforming the other two) and buying low (whatever is underperforming). Having the industry specific fund(s) means I can balance a bit between different sectors - maybe the healthcare industry takes a beating for a while, so that goes low, and I can sell some of my tech industry fund and buy that. None of this depends on timing anything; you can rebalance maybe twice a year, not worrying about where the market is at that exact time, and definitely not targeting a correction specifically. You just analyze your situation and adjust to make everything back in line with what you want. This isn't guaranteed to succeed (any more than any other strategy is), of course, and has some risk, particularly if you rebalance in the middle of a major correction (so you end up buying something that goes down more). But for long-term investments, it should be fairly sound." ]

[ "I’m not an expert on the VISA/US tax or insurance, but you're making enough mistakes in terms of all the associated costs involved in owning and renting houses/apartments that this already looks potentially unwise at this stage of your investment career. Renting cheap properties/to students involves the property constantly being trashed, often being empty and requiring extremely close management (which you either have to pay someone a lot to do, or do yourself and lose other potential earning time. If doing yourself you will also make lots of mistakes in the vetting/managing/marketing process etc at first as this is a complex art in itself). Costs on this type of rental can often get as high as 25% a year depending exactly how lucky you get even if you do it all yourself, and will typically be in the 5-15% range every year once everything you have to constantly maintain, replace and redecorate is totalled up. That's all pre what you could be earning in a job etc, so if you could earn a decent clip elsewhere in the same time also have to deduct that lost potential. Send it all to third parties (so all upkeep by hired contractors, all renting by an agency) you will be lucky to even break even off ~15k a year per property rents to students. You’re not seeming to price in any transaction costs, which usually run at ~5% a time for both entrance and exit. Thats between half and one years rent gone from the ten per property on these numbers. Sell before ten is up its even more. On point three, rounding projections in house price rises to one decimal place is total gibberish – no one who actually has experience investing their own money well ever makes or relies on claims like this. No idea on Pittsburgh market but sound projections of likely asset changes is always a ranged and imprecise figure that cannot (and shouldn’t) be counted on for much. Even if it was, it’s also completely unattainable in property because you have to spend so much money on upkeep: post costs and changes in size/standard, house values generally roughly track inflation. Have a look at this chart and play around with some reasonable yearly upkeep numbers and you will see what I mean. Renting property is an absolute graveyard for inexperienced investors and if you don't know the stuff above already (and it's less than 10% of what you need to know to do this profitably vs other uses of your time), you will nearly always be better off investing the money in more passive investments like diversified bonds, REITs and Stock.", "Read \"The intelligent Investor\" book before you do anything. I started when I really didn't understand anything about stocks. I bought an internet stock for $150 per share which sold at 75cents a year later. I sold it for a profit but would've been a disaster.", "There are times when investing in an ETF is more convenient than a mutual fund. When you invest in a mutual fund, you often have an account directly with the mutual fund company, or you have an account with a mutual fund broker. Mutual funds often have either a front end or back end load, which essentially gives you a penalty for jumping in and out of funds. ETFs are traded exactly like stocks, so there is inherently no load when buying or selling. If you have a brokerage account and you want to move funds from a stock to a mutual fund, an ETF might be more convenient. With some accounts, an ETF allows you to invest in a fund that you would not be able to invest in otherwise. For example, you might have a 401k account through your employer. You might want to invest in a Vanguard mutual fund, but Vanguard funds are not available with your 401k. If you have access to a brokerage account inside your 401k, you can invest in the Vanguard fund through the associated ETF. Another reason that you might choose an ETF over a mutual fund is if you want to try to short the fund.", "You could write a personal check after the final price has been set and you're ready to purchase. Another option would be to get the final price - then walk over to your bank and get a cashier's check.", "There are a few loan programs that grant exceptions to bankruptcy requirements in the event of extenuating circumstances that can be proven to be outside of your control (i.e. massive medical bills that you used bankruptcy to settle, etc.) however, in order to make the case for this exemption, you would need to make a strong case for your solvency, shown the ability to re-establish your credit reputation since the discharge of your bankruptcy, and would almost certainly have to go through a bank that offers manual underwriting. Additionally, if you are Native American, the HUD-184 program is a great option for your situation as it allows for a wide latitude in terms of underwriter discretion and is always manually underwritten as there is no automated underwriting system developed for the loan program. There are several great lenders that offer nationwide financing (as long as you're in a HUD-184 eligible area) and would be a great potential solution if you meet the qualifying parameter of being Native American.", "The $10,000 is not taxable to either of you, but the $500 is taxable income to you - and a deductible business expense for your friend.", "The Japanese stock market offers a wide selection of popular ETFs tracking the various indices and sub-indices of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. See this page from the Japan Exchange Group site for a detailed listing of the ETFs being offered on the Tokyo exchange. As you have suggested, one would expect that Japanese investors would be reluctant to track the local market indices because of the relatively poor performance of the Japanese markets over the last couple of decades. However, this does not appear to be the case. In fact, there seems to be a heavy bias towards Tokyo indices as measured by the NAV/Market Cap of listed ETFs. The main Tokyo indices - the broad TOPIX and the large cap Nikkei - dominate investor choice. The big five ETFs tracking the Nikkei 225 have a total net asset value of 8.5Trillion Yen (72Billion USD), while the big four ETFs tracking the TOPIX have a total net asset value of 8.0Trillion Yen (68Billion USD). Compare this to the small net asset values of those Tokyo listed ETFs tracking the S&P500 or the EURO STOXX 50. For example, the largest S&P500 tracker is the Nikko Asset Management S&P500 ETF with net asset value of just 67Million USD and almost zero liquidity. If I remember my stereotypes correctly, it is the Japanese housewife that controls the household budget and investment decisions, and the Japanese housewife is famously conservative and patriotic with their investment choices. Japanese government bonds have yielded next to nothing for as long as I can remember, yet they remain the first choice amongst housewives. The 1.3% yield on a Nikkei 225 ETF looks positively generous by comparison and so will carry some temptations.", "Founder makes available 100% equity, but uses a reasonable amount of the proceeds to pay him/herself a salary (or wage) and from that salary invests in the same initial offering to acquire shares for him/herself. I see several problems. What is a reasonable salary? Also, this leaves the door open to the following scam: Founders say that they are going to follow this plan. However, instead of buying shares, they simply quit after being paid the salary. They use knowledge gained from this business to start a competitor. Investors are left holding an empty company. Tax consequences. The founder would pay income tax on the salary. By contrast, if the founder instead sells shares, that would be capital gains tax, which is lower in many countries (e.g. the United States). Why would I want to invest in a business where the founders don't believe in it enough to take a significant equity stake? Consider the Amazon.com example. Jeff Bezos makes a minimal salary, around $80,000 a year, less than many of his employees. But he has a substantial ownership position. If the company doesn't make money, he won't. Would investors really value the stocks with a P/E of 232.10 in 2016 if they didn't trust him to make the right long term decisions? It's also worth noting that most initial public offerings (IPOs) are not made when the founder is the only employee. A single employee company instead looks for private investors, often called angel investors. Companies generally don't go public until they are established in some way, often making money. Negotiating with angel investors is different from negotiating with the public. They can personally review the books and once invested tend to have input on how the money is spent. In other words, this is mostly solving the wrong problem if you talk about IPOs. This might make more sense with a crowdfunded venture, as that replaces a few angel investors with many individuals. But most crowdfunded ventures tend to approach things from the opposite direction. Instead of looking for investors, they look for customers. If they offer a useful product, they will get customers. If not, they never get the money. Beyond all this, if a founder is only going to get a fair salary some of the time, then why put in any sweat equity? This works fine if the company looks valuable after a year. What if it doesn't? The founder is out a year of sweat equity and has nothing in return. That happens now too, but the possibility of the big return offsets it. You're taking out the big return. I don't think that this is good for either founders or investors. The founder trades a potentially good or even great return for a mediocre return. The investors trade a situation where both they and the founder benefit from a successful company to one where they benefit a lot more than the founder. That's not good for either side.", "The Explanation is correct. The Traders buys the 1st call and profits linearly form 40$ onwards. At at 45 the short call kick in and neutralizes any further profit on the first call.", "There's two big problems here and they are both related to the same thing: The last line says it all: you live in California. CA is a terrible state to do business in. the taxes on this money alone are crushing. Also, while I think you need to re-visit your budget and lifestyle, the cost of living is very, very high in CA and affecting your decisions. Of course, all of this raises the question - if you can afford 12K in expenses each month, and I'm assuming you're the only source of income, then you should be able to afford funding your own game :D" ]

[ "A bond fund like VBMFX or similar I think are a good choice. Bonds are far less volatile and less risky than stocks. With your 1-2 year time frame, I say definitely stay away from stocks." ]

[ "Many online brokers have a \"virtual\" or \"paper\" trading feature to them. You can make trades in near-real time with a fake account balance and it will treat it as though you were making the trade at that time. No need to manage the math yourself - plus, you can even do more complicated trades (One-Cancels-Other/One-Triggers-Other).", "A lot of these answers are really weak. The expected value is pretty much the answer. You have to also though, especially as many many millions of tickets are purchased--make part of the valuation the odds of the jackpot being split x ways. So about 1 in 290--> the jackpot needs to be a take-home pot of $580 million for the $2 ticket. Assume the average # of winners is about 1.5 so half the time you're going to split the pot, bringing the valuation needed for the same jackpot to be $870 million. It's actually somewhat not common to have split jackpots because the odds are very bad + many people pick 'favourite numbers'.", "Just find a low cost S&P 500 index fund, and spend your time reading The Great Mutual Fund Trap instead of wasting your time and money picking actively managed funds.", "Currently the credit history are not International but are local. Many countries don't have a concept of credit history yet. Having said that, if you are moving to US, depending on your history in your country, you can ask the same bank to provide you with a card and then start building history. For example in India I had a card with Citi Bank and when I moved to US for a short period, I was given a card based on my India Card, with equivalent credit in USD. If you are moving often internationally, it would make sense to Bank with a leading bank that provide services in geographies of your interest [Citi, HSBC, etc] and then in a new country approach these institutions to get you some starting credit for you to build a history.", "Save the effort. For personal finance purpose, just use the simple tools. For example, if you like P&G very much but you want to diversify with ETF, use: http://etfdb.com/stock/PG/ https://www.etfchannel.com/finder/?a=etfsholding&symbol=PG Pick a ETF with highest weighting. Replace \"PG\" in the link with other tickers.", "Funds built of dividend-paying stocks are normally called income funds.", "Thank God you have your child back, it is so awesome that you finally found a medical treatment that worked. It must have been a truly trying time in your lives. That situation is an important template in personal finance. Through no fault of your own, a series of events occurred that caused you to spend far more money then you anticipated. Per your post this was complicated by lost income due to economic situations. What is to say that this does not happen again in the future? While we can all hope that our child does not get sick, there are other events that could also fit into this template. Because of this I hate all options you present. Per your post, you are pretty thin with free cash flow and have high income, and yet you are looking to borrow more. That is a recipe for disaster with it being made worse as you are considering putting your home at risk. The 20K per year per kid sounds like a live at the university state school; or, a close by private school. Your finances do not support either option. There are times when the word \"No\" is in order when answering questions. Doing a live at home community college to university will cost you a total of about 30K per kid rather than the 80K you are proposing. Doing this alone will greatly reduce the risk you are attempting to assume. Doing that and having your child work some, you could cash flow college. That is what I would recommend. Given that you are so thin, you will also have to put constraints on college attendance. No changing major three times, only majors with an employable skills, and studying before partying. It may be worth it to wait a year of two before attending if a decision cannot be made. I was in a similar situation when my son started college. High income, but broke. He worked and went to a community college and was able to pay for the bulk of it himself. From there he obtained a job with a healthy salary and completed his degree at the University. It took him a little longer, but he is debt free and has a fantastic work ethic.", "Assuming you have no non-public material information, it should be perfectly legal. I suspect it's not a great idea for the reasons that Joe outlined, but it should be legal.", "I have done this, and the reason is to make sure that I don't run out of money in my account to place the order if there is an unexpected upswing in price. Suppose I have $1000 in my account and I want to buy 10 shares of ABCD that are currently at $99. If the price doesn't change, then I am all set, but if the price goes up to $101 then I don't have sufficient funds to make the purchase. By placing a limit order at $100 I can ensure that I have enough money to place the order. In general, it is a rather unlikely scenario that it could happen, but placing the limit order is easy to do and it gives me peace of mind. I don't know what you mean about bypassing the queue.", "The other answers are talking about seller financing. There is another type of arrangement that might be described as \"writing your own mortgage,\" where the buyer arranges his (or her) own financing. Instead of using a bank, a buyer might find his own investor to hold the mortgage for him. An example would be if I were to buy a house that needs fixing up. I might be able to buy a house for $40,000, but after I fix it up, I believe it will sell for $100,000. Instead of going through a traditional mortgage bank, I find an investor with cash that agrees the house is a good deal, and we arrange for the investor to provide funds for the purchase of the house on a short-term basis (perhaps interest-only), during which I fix up the house and sell it. Just like a regular mortgage, the loan is backed by the house itself. I am not recommending this type of arrangement by any means, but this article does a good job of describing how this would work. It is written by a real-estate guru with lots of training courses and coaching materials that she would like to sell you. :)" ]

[ "Your arrangements with the bank are irrelevant. Whoever is named on the title of the vehicle owns it. If she is the \"primary\", then I assume her name is on the title, therefore she owns the car. If you drive off with the car and it is titled in her name, she can report it stolen and have you arrested for grand theft auto unless you have a dated and signed permission in writing from her to use the car. Point #2: If a car loan was involved, then you didn't \"purchase\" the car, the bank did. If you want to gain ownership of the car, then you need to have her name removed from the title and have yours put in its place. Since the bank has possession of the title, this will require the cooperation of both your girlfriend and the bank." ]

[ "Limit orders are generally safer than market orders. Market orders take whatever most-favorable price is being offered. This can be especially dangerous in highly volatile stocks which have a significant spread between the bid and ask. That being said, you want to be very careful that you enter the price you intend into a limit order. It is better to be a bit slower at entering your orders than it is to make a terrible mistake like the one you mention in your question.", "No, the reinvestment is done as a courtesy. Consider, one can have, say, 100 shares of a $50 stock. A 2% dividend is $100/yr or $25/quarter. It would be a pretty bad deal if brokers charged you even $5 for that trade. When cap gains and dividends are grouped as you suggest, it refers to Mutual Funds. My funds will have a year end dividend and cap gain distribution. In a non-retirement account, one has to pay the tax due, and be sure to add this to your cost basis, as it's money you are effectively adding to your account. It does not mean cap gain the same as when you sell your shares of Apple for a huge gain. Those check boxes seem to offer you a chance to put all your holding on the same reinvestment plan for div/cap gain. You should also be able to choose one by one what you'd like to do.", "Depending on the state you live in paying interest on a mortgage opens up other tax deduction options: Real estate taxes, Car tax, donations. See schedule A http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040sa.pdf The shocking bottom line is that it never works to your advantage in the short term. Owning your house: But there are big risks, ask anybody stuck with a house they can't sell. But it doesn't scale. You spend 10K more to save 2.5K in taxes. Buy because you want to, not to reduce taxes.", "A simple response is that it's a good political/strategic move. Ford have effectively said, \"We know we still have debt, but we think the long term future is so good we can go back to paying dividends.\" It builds investor confidence and attracts new money. It can also be seen as a way of Ford indicating that they believe the type of debt (regardless of the amount) is okay for them to carry.", "It is a legal issue for two reasons. In the United States if both names were on the title both people would have had to sign the paperwork in order to transfer the title. If the car was collateral for the loan, then the bank would have had to be involved in the transaction. The portion of the check need to repay the loan would have had to have been made out to the bank. If the car was sold to a dealership, then paperwork must have been forged. If the car was sold to a person then it is possible that they were too naive to know what paperwork was required, but it is likely still fraud. You need legal advice to protect your money, and your credit score. They should also be able to tell you who needs to be contacted: DMV, the police, the dealership, the bank.", "If someone gains access to these data, he could use social engineering approach to impersonate you - i.e. call the American Express and ask tell he he is you and he lost the access to the account and he needs the access to be reset and sent to certain email, and if they doubt it's you he would send them the statement data, even on company letterhead (which he would be able to fake since he has the data from the statements, and AE has no idea how the authentic letterhead looks like). He could also do the opposite trick - like calling your assistant or even yourself and saying something like \"I'm from American Express, calling about the transaction at this-and-this date and this-and-this time, this amount, please confirm you are {your name} and your address is {your address}, I need to confirm something\" - which would make it appear as he is really from AE since he knows all these details - and then ask you some detail he's missing \"for security\" - like your birth date or last digits of SSID or anything like that - and then use these details to impersonate you to AE. So putting all this info together where it can be accessed by strangers does have risks. It may not work out if both you and AE personnel are vigilant and follow instructions to the letter, but we know it not always so.", "I don't see how anyone could give you a hard-and-fast formula, unless they know where to get some applicable statistics. Because several factors here are not a straight calculation. If you don't replace the tires but keeping driving the car, what is the increased probability that you will get into an accident because of the bald tires? How much will bald tires vs new tires affect the selling price of the car? Presumably the longer you drive the car after getting new tires, the less increase this will give to the market value of the car. What's the formula for that? If you keep the car, what's the probability that it will have other maintenance problems? Etc. That said, it's almost always cheaper to keep your current car than to buy a new one. Even if you have maintenance problems, it would have to be a huge problem to cost more than buying a new car. Suppose you buy a $25,000 car with ... what's a typical new car loan these days? maybe 5 years at 5%? So your payments would be about $470 per month. If you compare spending $1000 for new tires versus paying $470 per month on a new car loan, the tires are cheaper within 3 months. The principle is the same if you buy with cash. To justify buying a new car you have to factor in the value of the pleasure you get from a new car, the peace of mind from having something more reliable, etc, mostly intangibles.", "I use and recommend barchart.com. Again you have to register but it's free. Although it's a US system it has a full listing of UK stocks and ETFs under International > London. The big advantage of barchart.com is that you can do advanced technical screening with Stochastics and RS, new highs and lows, moving averages etc. You're not stuck with just fundamentals, which in my opinion belong to a previous era. Even if you don't share that opinion you'd still find barchart.com useful for UK stocks.", "I'm going to guess that you found this because of a stock screener. This company went through a 1:20 reverse split on June 30, so every 20 shares outstanding became a single share. Where before you had 20 shares worth $100 you now have 1 share worth $100, the value of the company doesn't change because of a split. This company was never trading for $30+ per share. Reverse splits are typical of a floundering company trading on an exchange that has a minimum share price requirement. While reverse splits don't change the value of the company, just the number of shares outstanding and the price per share, no healthy company performs a reverse split. Reverse splits are generally a massive signal to jump ship... The company seems to be trading for $1 right now, why the value fell from a pre-split $1.65 ($33/20) to $1 is anyone's guess; how the company ever got to $1.65 is also anyone's guess. But looking at the most recent 10-Q there are numerous causes for concern: Note 2. Capital Stock On March 6, 2017, the Company issued as compensation for services provided a total of 650,000 common shares with a fair value of $390,000 to a third party. The fair value of the shares was based on the price quoted on the OTC pink sheets on the grant date. this indicates a share price of $0.60 ($390,000/650,000) as of 3/6/2017, just to reinforce that the google price chart doesn't show the true past but a past adjusted for the split Results of Operations The three months ended March 31, 2017 compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016 For the three months ended March 31, 2017 compared to the three months ended March 31, 2016, total revenues were $0 and $0, respectively, and net losses from operations were $414,663 and $26,260, respectively. The net losses were attributable to costs attributable to operating as a public company, in particular, common stock with a valuation of $390,000 that was issued to an investor relations firm in the first quarter of 2017. Going Concern As of March 31, 2017, there is substantial doubt regarding our ability to continue as a going concern as we have not generated sufficient cash flow to fund our proposed business. We have suffered recurring losses from operations since our inception. In addition, we have yet to generate an internal cash flow from our business operations or successfully raised the financing required to develop our proposed business. As a result of these and other factors, our independent auditor has expressed substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern. Liquidity and Capital Resources We had no cash as of the date of March 31, 2017. Additionally, since there is no balance sheet in the last 10-Q (another bad sign), the last annual report 10-K has this balance sheet: So the company: So why did the stock value plummet? It's anyones' guess but there is no shortage of ways to justify it. In fact, it's reasonable to ask how is this company still worth $3mm ($1 * 3mm shares outstanding)...", "How would gold have protected you during the 2007/8 crisis? In no way, shape or form. The ways to protect yourself at any time are: Boring, huh?" ]

[ "I don't think you need double-entry bookkeeping. To quote Robert Kiyosaki (roughly): Income is when money enters you pocket, and expenses are when money leaves your pocket. Income is an addition; expenses are subtractions. But if you want double-entry accounting, I'm not qualified to answer that. :)" ]

[ "Don't throw good money after bad. If you bought on the peak of an event like news/earnings hoping for more and ignored its value than you might be doomed. Determine the stocks value and see it as a buying opportunity if it's still sweet. If not buy more carefully. Those kinds of moves in that range you must have been involved in micro-small caps like biotechs. Thats where money goes to talk to itself and chew on its arm. You win big by finding an alien chip under your skin to reverse engineer or far more likely just wind up eating yourself. If your not holding inside info or at the higher levels of a pyramid for a pump/dump you really shouldn't let your greed take you there. I can expect and stomach w/o worry being wrong at my buy time as much as 10-15% and live with it for a year or more because I see I'm buying a quarter for a dime and will continue to buy into it without staking everything though). I bought in heavy when netflix (prior to split) was $50 or so hoping for a quick bounce and it sunk to like 20 something. No I didn't buy more, I felt like I just got my own .com bubble experience. I stopped looking at it,helpless to do anything other than eat a huge loss I adopted an out of sight out of mind thinking. I no longer wished to be in it, I felt like an ass for getting myself into it, it did NOT look good at the time and I risked a huge amount of capital for what I felt wrongly was a nice quick trade to make some thousands off. Checked it one day, must have wanted to hurt myself, and it was near $300 a share. My extreme loss had turned into something wonderful. A big tax bomb. Netflix eventually split and rose even more meteorically. I held on and only exited a while back and my worst mistake became my best success. Yet still, you trade like that, on unsound things, don't rely on getting the winning ticket because they are few and all others are losers. If your in for a penny you need to be in for the pound and help yourself immensely by sticking to sound stocks and currencies. You trade on news you may find yourself in Zimbabwe dollars with Enron stock. Bad footing, no matter the news or excitement is bad footing.", "Sheesh, are people kidding here? It's a gift. It's not fraud. Just keep in mind that, because it's a gift, you cannot get it \"back\" if you break up--you are giving it to her. If you happen to get married at some point in the future, you will then own part of the apartment, but that is a completely separate matter. Give her the money, don't expect it back. Ever.", "You don't have to wait. If you sell your shares now, your gain can be considered a capital gain for income tax purposes. Unlike in the United States, Canada does not distinguish between short-term vs. long-term gains where you'd pay different rates on each type of gain. Whether you buy and sell a stock within minutes or buy and sell over years, any gain you make on a stock can generally be considered a capital gain. I said generally because there is an exception: If you are deemed by CRA to be trading professionally -- that is, if you make a living buying and selling stocks frequently -- then you could be considered doing day trading as a business and have your gains instead taxed as regular income (but you'd also be able to claim additional deductions.) Anyway, as long as your primary source of income isn't from trading, this isn't likely to be a problem. Here are some good articles on these subjects:", "If I invest in index funds or other long term stocks that pay dividend which I reinvest, they don't need to be worth more per share for me to make a profit, right? That is, if I sell part of the stocks, it's GOOD if they're worth more than I bought them at, but the real money comes from the QUANTITY of stocks that you get by reinvesting your dividends, right? I would say it is more the other way around. It is nice to get dividends and reinvest them, but overall the main gain comes from the stocks going up in value. The idea with index funds, however, is that you don't rely on any particular stock going up in value; instead you just rely on the aggregate of all the funds in the index going up. By buying lots of stocks bundled in an index fund, you avoid being too reliant on any one company's performance. Can I invest \"small amounts\" (part of paycheck) into index funds on a monthly basis, like €500, without taking major \"transaction fees\"? (Likely to be index fund specific... general answers or specific answers using popular stocks welcomed). Yes, you can. At least in the US, whether you can do this automatically from your paycheck depends on whether you employer has that set up. I don't know that work in the Netherlands. However, at the least, you can almost certainly set up an auto-invest program that takes $X out of your bank account every month and buys shares of some index fund(s). Is this plan market-crash proof? My parents keep saying that \"Look at 2008 and think about what such a thing would do to your plan\", and I just see that it will be a setback, but ultimately irrelevant, unless it happens when I need the money. And even then I'm wondering whether I'll really need ALL of my money in one go. Doesn't the index fund go back up eventually? Does a crash even matter if you plan on holding stocks for 10 or more years? Crashes always matter, because as you say, there's always the possibility that the crash will occur at a time you need the money. In general, it is historically true that the market recovers after crashes, so yes, if you have the financial and psychological fortitude to not pull your money out during the crash, and to ride it out, your net worth will probably go back up after a rough interlude. No one can predict the future, so it's possible for some unprecedented crisis to cause an unprecedented crash. However, the interconnectedness of stock markets and financial systems around the world is now so great that, were such a no-return crash to occur, it would probably be accompanied by the total collapse of the whole economic system. In other words, if the stock market dies suddenly once and for all, the entire way of life of \"developed countries\" will probably die with it. As long as you live in such a society, you can't really avoid \"gambling\" that it will continue to exist, so gambling on there not being a cataclysmic market crash isn't much more of a gamble. Does what I'm planning have similarities with some financial concept or product (to allow me to research better by looking at the risks of that concept/product)? Maybe like a mortgage investment plan without the bank eating your money in between? I'm not sure what you mean by \"what you're planning\". The main financial products relevant to what you're describing are index funds (which you already mentioned) and index ETFs (which are basically similar with regard to the questions you're asking here). As far as concepts, the philosophy of buying low-fee index funds, holding them for a long time, and not selling during crashes, is essentially that espoused by Jack Bogle (not quite the inventor of the index fund, but more or less its spiritual father) and the community of \"Bogleheads\" that has formed around his ideas. There is a Bogleheads wiki with lots of information about the details of this approach to investing. If this strategy appeals to you, you may find it useful to read through some of the pages on that site.", "Putting money into your Amazon gift card balance is also a very convenient option, but I like these recurring Red Cross and Wikipedia ideas also.", "Insofar as a 52 week high indicates a peak, yes. However, the truth is that \"buying low and selling high\" means \"Act a Fool!\" You see, when you buy low, you are perceived to be buying total garbage - throwing your money away and conversely when selling high you are perceived to be a total idiot - selling a winner. That's how people will see you when you are in fact buying low and/or selling high, right? It's those people that (mis)value the asset, right? An asset is worth what the people will pay for it, right? ...And don't forget that holding a loser is MUCH easier than holding a winner. Good luck!", "Step back and take a deep breath. Pay your mortgage. repeat 1 and 2 monthly until equity > mortgage.", "Don't be too scared of investing in the market. It has ups and downs, but over the long haul you make money in it. You can't jump in and out, just consistently add money to investments that you 1) understand and 2) trust. When I say understand, what I mean is you can follow how the money is generated, either because a company sells products, a government promises to pay back the bond, or compounding interest makes sense. You don't need to worry about the day to day details, but if you don't understand how the money is made, it isn't transparent enough and a danger could be afoot. Here are some basic rules I try (!) to follow The biggest trick is to invest what you can, and do so consistently. You can build wealth by earning more and spending less. I personally find spending less a lot easier, but earning more is pretty easy with some simple investment tools.", "This is so very much a scam. The accepted answer already tells you the basics of it. In addition to the cheque being fake, there is also the possibility that the cheque is a legitimate cheque but has been stolen (or swindled off) from somebody else. In that case, the delay with which the cashing of the cheque will blow up can be considerably longer than the accepted answer states since it depends on the other victim noticing and reporting the fraudulent transfer. The end result is the same: you are not going to be allowed to keep the money. Report this to both your sister's bank as well as her local police. Nothing good can come off this.", "It's possible to make money in the market - even millions if you \"play your cards right\". Taking the course being offered can be educational but highly unlikely to increase your chances of making millions. Experience and knowledge of the game will make you money. The stock market is a game." ]

[ "There are some brokers in the US who would be happy to open an account for non-US residents, allowing you to trade stocks at NYSE and other US Exchanges. Some of them, along with some facts: DriveWealth Has support in Portuguese Website TD Ameritrade Has support in Portuguese Website Interactive Brokers Account opening is not that straightforward Website" ]

[ "Taking out your equity when refinancing means that you take out a new loan for the full value of your house (perhaps less 20% as a down payment on the new mortgage, otherwise you'll be paying insurance), pay off your old lender, and keep the rest for yourself. The result is much the same as using as a HELOC or home equity loan (or a second mortgage), except it's all rolled into a single new mortgage. The advantage is that the interest rate on a first mortgage is going to be lower than on HELOC or equivalent, and the equity requirements may be lower (e.g. a HELOC may only let you borrow against the amount of equity that exceeds 25% or 30%, while a new mortgage will require you only to have 20% equity). This is especially attractive to those whose homes have appreciated significantly since they bought them, especially if they have a lot of high-interest debt (e.g. credit cards) they want to pay off. Of course, rolling credit card debt into a 30-year mortgage isn't actually paying it off, but the monthly payments will be a lot lower, and if you're lucky and your home appreciates further, you can pay it off fully when you sell the property and still have paid a lot less interest. The downside is that you have turned unsecured debt into secured debt, which puts your home at risk if you find yourself unable to pay. In your case, you don't yet have even 20% equity in your home, so I wouldn't recommend this. :-) Equity is simply the difference between the amount you still owe on your home and the amount you'd get if you were to sell it. Until you do sell it, this amount is tentative, based on the original purchase price and, perhaps, an intervening appraisal that shows that the property has appreciated. That is really all that it is and there's nothing magic about it, except that since you own your home, you have equity in it, while as a renter, you would not. It used to be (decades ago, when you needed 20% down to get a mortgage) that selling was the only time you'd be able to do anything with the equity in your home. Now you can \"take it out\" as described above (or borrow against it) thanks to various financial products. It is sometimes tempting to consider equity roughly equivalent to \"profit.\" But some of it is your own money, contributed through the down payment, your monthly principal payment, and improvements you have made -- so \"cashing out\" isn't all profit, it's partly just you getting your own money back. And there are many additional expenses involved in owning a home, such as interest, property taxes, maintenance, utilities, and various fees, not to mention the commissions when you buy or sell, which the equity calculation doesn't consider. Increasing equity reflects that you own a desirable property in a desirable location, that you have maintained and maybe even improved it, that you are financially responsible (i.e., paying your mortgage, taxes, etc.), and that your financial interests are aligned with your neighbors. All those things feel pretty good, and they should. Otherwise, it is just a number that the banks will sometimes let you borrow against. :-)", "Disclaimer: My answer is based on US tax law, but I assume Australian situation would be similar. The IRS would not be likely to believe your statement that \"I wouldn't have gone to the country if it wasn't for the conference.\" A two-week vacation, with a two-day conference in there, certainly looks like you threw in the conference in order to deduct vacation expenses. At the very least, you would need a good reason why this conference is necessary to your business. If you can give that reason, it would then depend on the specifics of Australian law. The vacation is clearly not just incidental to the trip. The registration for the conference is always claimable as a business expense.", "If you're going to be a day trader, you really need to know your stuff. It's risky, to say the least. One of the most important elements to being successful is having access to very fast data streams so that you can make moves quickly as trends stat to develop in the markets. If you're planning on doing this using consumer-grade sites like eTrade, that's not a good idea. The web systems of many of the retail brokerage firms are not good enough to give you data fast enough for you to make good, timely decisions or to be able to execute trades way that day traders do in order to make their money. Many of those guys are living on very thin margins, sometimes just a few cents of movement one way or the other, so they make up for it with a large volume of trades. One of the reasons you were told you need a big chunk of money to day trade is that some firms will rent you out a \"desk\" and computer access to day trade through their systems if you're really serious about it. They will require you to put up at least a minimum amount of money for this privilege, and $25k may not be too far out of the ballpark. If you've never done day trading before, be careful. It doesn't take much to get caught looking the wrong way on a trade that you can't get out of without losing your shirt unless you're willing to hold on to the stock, which could be longer than a day. Day trading sounds very simple and easy, but it isn't. You need to learn about how it works (a good book to read to understand this market is \"Flash Boys\" by Michael Lewis, besides being very entertaining), because it is a space filled with very sophisticated, well-funded firms and individuals who spend huge sums of money to gain miniscule advantages in the markets. Be careful, whatever you do. And don't play in day trading with your retirement money or any other money you can't afford to walk away from. I hope this helps. Good luck!", "The Fed rate is so important because it sets a cost on lending institutions (banks, credit unions). It is the rate of interest that a bank gets by loaning its cash overnight to the Fed. Presumably, the Fed then loans the cash to other institutions around the world. The banks loan money to individuals at a higher rate. Savers get a rate between what the Fed gives and what the bank gets. When times are tough the Fed will lower their rate to try to increase the lending that banks do. This is called Qualitive Easing. The overnight rate is very low right now. That means that the Fed cannot lower rates to try to stimulate the economy. So to enable the Fed to do its voodoo they have to raise rates so that later they can lower them if needed.", "@bstpierre gave you an example of a portfolio similar to IFA's 70 portfolio. Please, look other variants of example portfolios there and investigate which would suit to you. Although the example portfolios are not ETF-based, required by the op, you can rather easily check corresponding components with this tool here. Before deciding your portfolio, fire up a spreadsheet (samples here) and do calculations and do not underestimate things below: Bogleheads have already answered this type of questions so why not look there? Less reinventing the wheel: google retirement portfolios site:bogleheads.org. I am not making any recommendations like other replies because financial recommendations devalue. I hope I steered you to the right track, use less time to pick individual funds or stocks and use more time to do your research.", "In my experience (in the US), the main draw of check-cashing businesses (like \"CheckN2Cash\" is that they will hold your check for a certain period of time. This is also known as a \"payday loan\". Rather than bringing them a check someone else has written you, you write them a check yourself, postdated, and they pay you the amount on the check less their fees, and agree not to cash the check until a future date. So if you don't have the money right now but you need it before your next payday, you visit a check-cashing business and get the money, and it'll be withdrawn from your account after your next paycheck.", "When there are no buyers, you can't sell your shares, and you'll be stuck with them until there is some interest from other investors. In this link describes clearly: http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/03/053003.asp", "This probably won't be a popular answer due to the many number of disadvantaged market participants out there but: Yes, it is possible to distort the markets for securities this way. But it is more useful to understand how this works for any market (since it is illegal in securities markets where company shares are involves). Since you asked about the company Apple, you should be aware this is a form of market manipulation and is illegal... when dealing with securities. In any supply and demand market this is possible especially during periods when other market participants are not prevalent. Now the way to do this usually involves having multiple accounts you control, where you are acting as multiple market participants with different brokers etc. The most crafty ways to do with involve shell companies w/ brokerage accounts but this is usually to mask illegal behavior In the securities markets where there are consequences for manipulating the shares of securities. In other markets this is not necessary because there is no authority prohibiting this kind of trading behavior. Account B buys from Account A, account A buys from Account B, etc. The biggest issue is getting all of the accounts capitalized initially. The third issue is then actually being able to make a profit from doing this at all. Because eventually one of your accounts will have all of the shares or whatever, and there would still be no way to sell them because there are no other market participants to sell to, since you were the only one moving the price. Therefore this kind of market manipulation is coupled with \"promotions\" to attract liquidity to a financial product. (NOTE the mere fact of a promotion does not mean that illegal trading behavior is occurring, but it does usually mean that someone else is selling into the liquidity) Another way to make this kind of trading behavior profitable is via the derivatives market. Options contracts are priced solely by the trading price of the underlying asset, so even if your multiple account trading could only at best break even when you sell your final holdings (basically resetting the price to where it was because you started distorting it), this is fine because your real trade is in the options market. Lets say Apple was trading at $200 , the options contract at the $200 strike is a call trading at $1 with no intrinsic value. You can buy to open several thousand of the $200 strike without distorting the shares market at all, then in the shares market you bid up Apple to $210, now your options contract is trading at $11 with $10 of intrinsic value, so you just made 1000% gain and are able to sell to close those call options. Then you unwind the rest of your trade and sell your $210 apple shares, probably for $200 or $198 or less (because there are few market participants that actually valued the shares for that high, the real bidders are at $200 and lower). This is hardly a discreet thing to do, so like I mentioned before, this is illegal in markets where actual company shares are involved and should not be attempted in stock markets but other markets won't have the same prohibitions, this is a general inefficiency in capital markets in general and certain derivatives pricing formulas. It is important to understand these things if you plan to participate in markets that claim to be fair. There is nothing novel about this sort of thing, and it is just a problem of allocating enough capital to do so.", "Banks have a financial, and regulational duty called \"Know your customer\", established to avoid a number of historical problems occurring again, such as money laundering, terrorism financing, fraud, etc. Thanks to the scale, and scope of the problem (millions of customers, billions of transactions a day), the way they're handling this usually involves fuzzy logics matching, looking for irregular patterns, problem escalation, and other warning signs. When exceeding some pre-set limit, these signal clues are then filtered, and passed on for human inspection. Needless to say, these algorithms are not perfect, although, thanks to financial pressure, they are improving. In order to understand why your trading account has been suspended, it's useful to look at the incentives: false positives -suspending your trade, and assuming you guilty until proven otherwise- could cost them merely your LTV (lifetime value of customer -how much your business brings in as profit); while false negatives -not catching you while engaging in activities listed above- might cost them multi-month investigations, penalties, and court. Ultimately, this isn't against you. I've been with the bank for 15 years and the money in the accounts has been very slowly accumulated via direct-deposit paychecks over that time. From this I gather the most likely explanation, is that you've hit somekind of account threshold, that the average credit-happy customers usually do not exceed, which triggered a routine checkup. How do you deal with it? Practice puppetry! There is only one way to survive angry customers emotionally: you have to realize that they’re not angry at you; they’re angry at your business, and you just happen to be a convenient representative of that business. And since they’re treating you like a puppet, an iconic stand-in for the real business, you need to treat yourself as a puppet, too. Pretend you’re a puppeteer. The customer is yelling at the puppet. They’re not yelling at you. They’re angry with the puppet. Your job is to figure out, \"gosh, what can I make the puppet say that will make this person a happy customer?\" In an investigation case, go with boredom: The puppet doesn't care, have no feelings, and is eternally patient. Figure out what are the most likely words that will have the matter \"mentally resolved\" from the investigator's point of view, tell them what they have to hear, and you'll have case closed in no time. Hope this helps.", "Wouldn't this be part of your investing strategy to know what price is considered a \"good\" price for the stock? If you are going to invest in company ABC, shouldn't you have some idea of whether the stock price of $30, $60, or $100 is the bargain price you want? I'd consider this part of the due diligence if you are picking individual stocks. Mutual funds can be a bit different in automatically doing fractional shares and not quite as easy to analyze as a company's financials in a sense. I'm more concerned with the fact that you don't seem to have a good idea of what the price is that you are willing to buy the stock so that you take advantage of the volatility of the market. ETFs would be similar to mutual funds in some ways though I'd probably consider the question that may be worth considering here is how much do you want to optimize the price you pay versus adding $x to your position each time. I'd probably consider estimating a ballpark and then setting the limit price somewhere within that. I wouldn't necessarily set it to the maximum price you'd be willing to pay unless you are trying to ride a \"hot\" ETF using some kind of momentum strategy. The downside of a momentum strategy is that it can take a while to work out the kinks and I don't use one though I do remember a columnist from MSN Money that did that kind of trading regularly." ]

[ "It's the buying and selling of the stock that causes the fluctuation in prices, not the news. People buy and sell all the time, and not just for newsworthy reasons. They may have to send a child to college, or fix a roof, etc. Or they may be technical traders looking for signals. All kinds of reasons." ]

[ "Reading the plan documentation, yes, that is what it means. Each purchase by bank debit, whether one-time or automatic, costs $2 plus $0.06 per share; so if you invested $50, you would get slightly less than $48 in stock as a result (depending on the per-share price). Schedule of Fees Purchases – A one-time $15.00 enrollment fee to establish a new account for a non-shareholder will be deducted from the purchase amount. – Dividend reinvestment: The Hershey Company pays the transaction fee and per share* fee on your behalf. – Each optional cash purchase by one-time online bank debit will entail a transaction fee of $2.00 plus $0.06 per share* purchased. – Each optional cash purchase by check will entail a transaction fee of $5.00 plus $0.06 per share* purchased. – If funds are automatically deducted from your checking or savings account, the transaction fee is $2.00 plus $0.06 per share* purchased. Funds will be withdrawn on the 10th of each month, or the preceding business day if the 10th is not a business day. – Fees will be deducted from the purchase amount. – Returned check and rejected ACH debit fee is $35.00.", "The average price would be $125 which would be used to compute your basis. You paid $12,500 for the stock that is now worth $4,500 which is a loss of $8,000 overall if you sell at this point.", "You'd need millions of dollars to trade the number of shares it would take to profit from these penny variations. What you bring up here is the way high frequency firms front-run trades and profit on these pennies. Say you have a trade commission of $5. Every time you buy you pay $5, every time you sell you pay $5. So you need a gain in excess of $10, a 10% gain on $100. Now if you wanted to trade on a penny movement from $100 to $100.01, you need to have bought 1,000 shares totaling $100,000 for the $0.01 price movement to cover your commission costs. If you had $1,000,000 to put at risk, that $0.01 price movement would net you $90 after commission, $10,000,000 would have made you $990. You need much larger gains at the retail level because commissions will equate to a significant percentage of the money you're investing. Very large trading entities have much different arrangements and costs with the exchanges. They might not pay a fee on each transaction but something that more closely resembles a subscription fee, and costs something that more closely resembles a house. Now to your point, catching these price movements and profiting. The way high frequency trading firms purportedly make money relates to having a very low latency network connection to a particular exchange. Their very low latency/very fast network connection lets them see orders and transact orders before other parties. Say some stock has an ask at $101 x 1,000 shares. The next depth is $101.10. You see a market buy order come in for 1,000 shares and place a buy order for 1,000 shares at $101 which hits the exchange first, then immediately place a sell order at $101.09, changing the ask from $101.00 to $101.09 and selling in to the market order for a gain of $0.09 per share.", "0% furniture loans can hurt your credit rating. I was told by a bank mortgage officer (sorry I can't cite a document) that credit rating algorithms consider \"consumer\" loans like 0% appliance loans and certain store-specific credit cards as a negative factor, lowering your overall score. The rationalization given was that that taking that type of credit is an indicator that you have zero cash reserves. The actual algorithms are proprietary, so I don't know how you could verify this. If true, it runs counter to the conventional wisdom that getting credit and then paying it off builds your credit score.", "A used luxury car coming out of lease is usually very affordable. They are usually in good condition, still look relatively new, and are within the same price range as a newer Toyota or Honda.", "A loan is not a taxable income. Neither is a gift. Loans are repaid with interest. The interest is taxable income to the lender, and may or may not be deductible to the borrower, depending on how the loan proceeds were used. Gifts are taxable to the donor (the person giving the gift) under the gift tax, they're not a taxable income to the recipient. Some gifts are exempt or excluded from gift tax (there's the annual exemption limit, lifetime exclusion which is correlated to the estate tax, various specific purpose gifts or transfers between spouses are exempt in general). If you trade for something of equal value, is that considered income? Yes. Sale proceeds are taxable income, however your basis in the item sold is deductible from it. If you borrow a small amount of money for a short time, is that considered income? See above. Loan proceeds are not income. does the friend have to pay taxes when they get back their $10? No, repayment of the loan is not taxable income. Interest on it is. Do you have to pay taxes if you are paid back in a different format than originally paid? Form of payment doesn't matter. Barter trade doesn't affect the tax liability. The friend sold you lunches and you paid for them. The friend can deduct the cost of the lunches from the proceeds. What's left - is taxable income. Everything is translated to the functional currency at the fair market value at the time of the trade. you are required to pay taxes on the gross amount Very rarely taxes apply to gross income. Definitely not the US Federal Income taxes for individuals. An example of an exception would be the California LLC taxes. The State of California taxes LLCs under its jurisdiction on gross proceeds, regardless of the actual net income. This is very uncommon. However, the IRC (the US Federal Tax Code) is basically \"everything is taxable except what's not\", and the cost of generating income is one of the \"what's not\". That is why you can deduct the basis of the asset from your gross proceeds when you sell stuff and only pay taxes on the net difference.", "To add to @keshlam's answer slightly a stock's price is made up of several components: the only one of these that is known even remotely accurately at any time is the book value on the day that the accounts are prepared. Even completed cashflows after the books have been prepared contain some slight unknowns as they may be reversed if stock is returned, for example, or reduced by unforeseen costs. Future cashflows are based on (amongst other things) how many sales you expect to make in the future for all time. Exercise for the reader: how many iPhone 22s will apple sell in 2029? Even known future cashflows have some risk attached to them; customers may not pay for goods, a supplier may go into liquidation and so need to change its invoicing strategy etc.. Estimating the risk on future cashflows is highly subjective and depends greatly on what the analyst expects the exact economic state of the world will be in the future. Investors have the choice of investing in a risk free instrument (this is usually taken as being modelled by the 10 year US treasury bond) that is guaranteed to give them a return. To invest in anything riskier than the risk free instrument they must be paid a premium over the risk free return that they would get from that. The risk premium is related to how likely they think it is that they will not receive a return higher than that rate. Calculation of that premium is highly subjective; if I know the management of the company well I will be inclined to think that the investment is far less risky (or perhaps riskier...) than someone who does not, for example. Since none of the factors that go into a share price are accurately measurable and many are subjective there is no \"right\" share price at any time, let alone at time of IPO. Each investor will estimate these values differently and so value the shares differently and their trading, based on their ever changing estimates, will move the share price to an indeterminable level. In comments to @keshlam's answer you ask if there is enough information to work out the share price if a company buys out the company before IPO. Dividing the price that this other company paid by the relative ownership structure of the firm would give you an idea of what that company thought that the company was worth at that moment in time and can be used as a surrogate for market price but it will not and cannot accurately represent the market price as other investors will value the firm differently by estimating the criteria above differently and so will move the share price based on their valuation.", "I think it is stated perfectly in the question, \"unforeseen critical needs.\" You know you will need to buy new tires for your car, they are critical but not unforeseen. However, if a tree falls on your car and you need to pay the insurance deductible for the repairs it would be unforeseen. You should budget for the expenses you can plan for in advance like car maintenance and repairs. An emergency fund is for items that are out of the ordinary.", "I'd argue the two words ought to (in that I see this as a helpful distinction) describe different activities: \"Investing\": spending one's money in order to own something of value. This could be equipment (widgets, as you wrote), shares in a company, antiques, land, etc. It is fundamentally an act of buying. \"Speculating\": a mental process in which one attempts to ascertain the future value of some good. Speculation is fundamentally an act of attempted predicting. Under this set of definitions, one can invest without speculating (CDs...no need for prediction) and speculate without investing (virtual investing). In reality, though, the two often go together. The sorts of investments you describe are speculative, that is, they are done with some prediction in mind of future value. The degree of \"speculativeness\", then, has to be related to the nature of the attempted predictions. I've often seen that people say that the \"most speculative\" investments (in my use above, those in which the attempted prediction is most chaotic) have these sorts of properties: And there are probably other ideas that can be included. Corrections/clarifications welcome! P.S. It occurs to me that, actually, maybe High Frequency Trading isn't speculative at all, in that those with the fastest computers and closest to Wall Street can actually guarantee many small returns per hour due to the nature of how it works. I don't know enough about the mechanics of it to be sure, though.", "An LLC is a very flexible company when it comes to taxation. You have three basic tax options: There are other good reasons to create an LLC (mainly to protect your personal assets) so even if you decide that you don't want to deal with the complications of an S-Corp LLC, you should still consider creating a sole proprietorship LLC." ]

[ "I do believe it comes down to listing requirements. That is getting very close to penny stock territory and typical delisting criteria. I found this answer on Ivestopedia that speaks directly the question of stock price. Another thought is that if everyone were to do it, the rules would change. The exchanges want to promote price appreciation. Otherwise, everything trades in a tight band and there is little point to the whole endeavor. Volatility is another issue that they are concerned about. At such low stock prices, small changes in stock prices are huge percentage changes. (As stated in that Ivestopedia answer, $0.10 swing in the price of a $1 stock is a 10% change.) Also, many fraudsters work in the area of penny stocks. No company wants to be associated with that." ]

[ "As i see it, with a debit card, they are taken kinda out of the game. They are not lending money, it seems really bad for them. Not exactly. It is true that they're not lending money, but they charge a hefty commission from the retailers for each swipe which is pure profit with almost no risk. One of the proposals considered (or maybe approved already, don't know) in Congress is to cap that hefty commission, which will really make the debit cards merely a service for the checking account holder, rather than a profit maker for the bank. On the other hand, it's definitely good for individuals. I disagree with that. Debit cards are easier to use than checks, but they provide much less protection than credit cards. Here's what I had to say on this a while ago, and seems like the community agrees. But, why do we really need a credit history to buy some of the more expensive stuff Because the system is broken. It rewards people in debt by giving them more opportunities to get into even more debts, while people who owe nothing to noone cannot get a credit when they do need one. With the current system the potential creditor can only asses the risk of someone who has debt already, they have no way of assessing risks of someone with no debts. To me, all this credit card system seems like an awfully nice way to make loads of money, backed by governments as well. Well, credit cards have nothing to do with it. It's the credit scores system that is broken. If we replace the \"card\" with \"score\" in your question - then yes, you're thinking correctly. That of course is true for the US, in other countries I have no knowledge on how the creditors assess the risks.", "Too long for a comment - It's great that you are saving to the match on the 401(k). Does your company offer a Roth 401(k)? If so, you might consider that, instead. From the numbers you offered, you are likely in the 15% bracket now, but will find you move to 25% in years to come. The 2014 tax rates are out and how the 15% bracket ending at $36,900. (Over $47,000 gross income). I'd rather see you pay tax at 15% now, and use pre-tax accounts as your income rises. If the Roth is available.", "Yes -- If you are prepared to own the stock and have the cash to buy it, it can be a good way to generate income. The downside is really no more than buying a stock and it goes down -- which can happen to any investment -- and you have the premium of the put. Just don't do it on any stock you would not buy outright. To the posters who say it's a bad idea, I would like some more info on why they think that. It's not more bad idea than any investment. Yes it has risk, but so does buying stocks in general, buying dividend stocks etc and since most options expire worthless the odds are more in your favor selling puts.", "You earn $75,000 yearly and saved $30,000 while living at home, for two years, rent-free. I am assuming you have been making good money for at least 2 years. How is it possible you only put away $30,000 on $150,000 of income? Were you giving something to your parents each week as rent, so they don't lose their home? Second, if you're not sure if you will be relocated in a year or two it makes no sense to buy. House prices won't spike like they have in the past any time soon. In one year, you can save another $30,000 without suffering since you live rent free. Many couples don't even make $75,000 and they got a mortgage, 2 kids and car payments.", "Try to choose less perishable items. Besides canned and bottled are adequate for some foods, and frozen foods for a wider range, such as vegetables and prepared foods. Dairy has a limited life, but some types live longer, like yogurt. Fruits like apples and oranges will last a good deal longer in the fridge (bananas too, but the peels discolor). Bread items and leafy vegetables just won't keep long for fresh use; pick them up when you're actually about to use them. (Keeping bread in the freezer for toasting works well, though.)", "The owner of a long futures contract does not receive dividends, hence this is a disadvantage compared to owning the underlying stock. If the dividend is increased, and the future price would not change, there is an arbitrage possibility. For the sake of simplicity, assume that the stock suddenly starts paying a dividend, and that the risk free rate is zero (so interest does not play a role). One can expect that the future price is (rougly) equal to the stock price before the dividend announcment. If the future price would not change, an investor could buy the stock, and short a futures contract on the stock. At expiration he has to deliver the stock for the price set in the contract, which is under the assumptions here equal to the price he bought the stock for. But because he owned the stock, he receives the announced dividend. Hence he can make a risk-free profit consisting of the divivends. If interest do play a role, the argument is similar.", "I believe no-one who's in a legal line of business would tell you to default voluntarily on your obligations. Once you get an offer that's too good to be true, and for which you have to do something that is either illegal or very damaging to you - it is probably a scam. Also, if someone requires you to send any money without a prior written agreement - its probably a scam as well, especially in such a delicate matter as finances. Your friend now should also be worried about identity theft as he voluntary gave tons of personal information to these people. Bottom line - if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is probably a duck. Your friend had all the warning signs other than a huge neon light saying \"Scam\" pointing at these people, and he still went through it. For real debt consolidation companies, research well: online reviews, BBB ratings and reviews, time in business, etc. If you can't find any - don't deal with them. Also, if you get promises for debtors to out of the blue give up on some of their money - its a sign of a scam. Why would debtors reduce the debt by 60%? He's paying, he can pay, he is not on the way to bankruptcy (or is he?)? Why did he do it to begin with?", "The short answer: zero. dg99's answer gives some good reasons why. You will basically never be able to achieve diversification with individual stocks that is anywhere close to what you can get with mutual funds. Owning individual stocks exposes you to much greater risk in that random one-off events that happen to affect one of the companies you own can have a disproportionate effect on your assets. (For instance, some sort of scandal involving a particular company can cause its stock to tank.) There are only two reasons I can see to invest in individual stocks: a. You have some unique opportunity to acquire stock that other people might not be able to get (or get at that price). This can be the case if you work for a privately-held company that allows you to buy stock (or options), or allows you to participate in its IPO. Even then, you should not go too crazy, since having too much stock in the company you work for can double your pain if the company falls on hard times (you may lose your job and your investment). b. For fun. If you like tracking stocks and trying to beat the market, you may want to test your skills at this by using a small proportion of your investable cash (no more than 10%). In this case you're not so much hoping to increase your returns as to just enjoy investing more. This can also have a psychological benefit in that it allows you to \"blow off steam\" and indulge your desire to make decisions, while allowing your passive investments (index funds) to shoulder the load of actually gaining value.", "The initial and overnight margin requirements are set by the exchanges (who calculate them using the Standard Portfolio of Analysis of Risk, or 'SPAN' system), and positions are market to market according to these at the end of the trading session. To find these margin requirements you will need to consult the website of the exchange on which the contract you are trading is issued (i.e. if you're trading on the London Metal Exchange it's no good looking at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's margin requirements as a previous answer suggests!). However, for positions entered and exited within the same day, the daytrade margin rate will apply. This is set by your broker rather than the exchange, and can be as little as 10% of the exchange requirement. You can find a useful comparison of different margin types and requirements in the article I have published here: Understanding Margin for Futures Trading.", "There is a difference between trading which is short term focussed and investing which is longterm focussed. On the long term what drives stock prices is still the overall economy and the performance of the underlying business aspects. I do not think that any trading algorithms will change this. These are more concerned with short term profits regardless of the underlying business economics. Therefore I think that longterm investing using index funds is still a viable strategy for most private investors." ]

[ "Seriously. I can't tell you how many times I hear this scenario: Kid graduates college; kid runs out and signs lease on apartment \"because that's what you do\"**; kid complains that he's in financial trouble and can't make ends meet. Housemate sharing is most famously displayed in hit shows like Big Bang Theory or New Girl. They get a much nicer place with better furnishings for way less money. (However don't hook up with close neighbors or friends of other housemates, they do it for awkward laughs but it really results in awkward departure.) It's more financially responsible. It means the rest of your financial life will have more slack. And when you move, obviously, it's no big deal, you just give all the notice you can, and go to the next town and find another housemate share. ** I suspect a very significant factor is bringing home dates. Well, there's nothing sexy about taking your date to McDonalds because you can't afford anything more. See those shows... it works fine, you just have to be sensible about housemate choices. Pick housemates who view things the same way, and who themselves are invested in making the shared space attractive, and aren't going to mind some ...activities... once in awhile." ]

[ "Small companies could have growth prospects. Large companies may not have that many. So look at ROE of companies by quatile to determine which companies have better growth.", "Your retirement plan shouldn't necessarily be dictated by your perceived employment risks. If you're feeling insecure about your short-term job longevity and mid-career prospects, you will likely benefit from a thoughtful and robust emergency fund plan. Your retirement plan is really designed to fund your life after work, so the usual advice to contribute as much as you can as early as you can applies either way. While a well-funded retirement portfolio will help you feel generally more secure in the long run (and worst case can be used earlier), a good emergency fund will do more to address your near-term concerns. Both retirement and emergency fund planning are fundamental to a comprehensive personal finance plan. This post on StackExchange has some basic info about your retirement options. Given your spare income, you should be able to fully fund an IRA and your 401K every year with some left over. Check the fees in your 401K to determine if you really want to fully fund the 401K past employer matching. There are several good answers and info about that here. Low-cost mutual funds are a good choice for starting your IRA. There is a lot of different advice about emergency funds (check here) ranging from x months salary in savings to detailed planning for each of your expenses. Regardless of which method you chose, it is important to think about your personal risk tolerance and create a plan that addresses your personal needs. It's difficult to live life and perform well at work if you're always worried about your situation. A good emergency plan should go a long way toward calming those fears. Your concern about reaching mid-life and becoming obsolete or unable to keep up in your career may be premature. Of course your mind, body, and your abilities will change over the years, but it is very difficult to predict where you will be, what you will be doing, and whether your experience will offset any potential decrease in your ability to keep up. It's good to think ahead and consider the \"what-ifs\", but keep in mind that those scenarios are not preordained. There isn't anything special about being 40 that will force you into a different line of work if you don't want to switch.", "TL;DR: The difference is $230. Just for fun, and to illustrate how brackets work, let's look at the differences you could see from changing when you're paid based on the tax bracket information that Ben Miller provided. If you're paid $87,780 each year, then each year you'll pay $17,716 for a total of $35,432: $5,183 + $12,532 (25% of $50,130 (the amount over $37,650)) If you were paid nothing one year and then double salary ($175,560) the next, you'd pay $0 the first year and $42,193 the next: $18,558 + $23,634 (28% of $84,410 (the amount over $91,150)) So the maximum difference you'd see from shifting when you're paid is $6,761 total, $3,380 per year, or about 4% of your average annual salary. In your particular case, you'd either be paying $35,432 total, or $14,948 followed by $20,714 for $35,662 total, a difference of $230 total, $115 per year, less than 1% of average annual salary: $5,183 + $9,765 (25% of $39,060 (the amount $87,780 - $11,070 is over $37,650)) $18,558 + $2,156 (28% of $7,700 (the amount $87,780 + $11,070 is over $91,150))", "Good observation. In fact, the S&P index itself is guilty of not including dividends. So when you look at the index alone, the delta between any two points in time diverges, and the 20 return observed if one fails to include dividends is meaningless, in my my humble opinion. Yahoo finance will let you look at a stock ticker and offer you an \"adjusted close\" to include the dividend effect.", "There's no \"183 days\" rule. As a US citizen you must pay taxes on all your income, where you live is irrelevant.", "Not minutes, but hours. The \"ex-dividend\" date is the deadline for acquiring a stock to receive a dividend. If you hold a stock at the beginning of this day, you will receive the dividend. So you could buy a stock right at the end of the day on the day before the ex-dividend date, and sell it the next day (on the ex-dividend date), and you would get your dividend. See this page from the SEC for more information. The problem with this strategy, however, is that the value of the stock typically drops by the same amount as the dividend on that day. If you take a look at the historical price of the stock you are interested in, you'll see this. Of course, it makes sense why: a seller knows that selling before the date results in a loss of the dividend, so they want a higher price to compensate. Likewise, a buyer on or after the date knows that the dividend is already gone, so they want to pay a lower price.", "The most likely explanation is that the calls are being bought as a part of a spread trade. It doesn't have to be a super complex trade with a bunch of buys or sells. In fact, I bought a far out of the money option this morning in YHOO as a part of a simple vertical spread. Like you said, it wouldn't make sense and wouldn't be worth it to buy that option by itself.", "a) Contracts are for future delivery of said underlying. So if you are trading CL (crude oil) futures and don't sell before delivery date, you will be contacted about where you want the oil to be delivered (a warehouse presumably). 1 contract is the equivalent of 1000 barrels. b) 600 contracts depends entirely on what you are trading and how you are trading. If you are trading ES (S&P 500 e-Mini), you can do the 600 contracts in less than a second. c) No fees does not make particular sense. It's entirely possible that you are not trading anything, it's just a fake platform so they can judge your performance. d) The catch typically is that when it's time to pay you, they will avoid you or worst case, disappear. e) Trading is a full-time job, especially for the first 4-5 years when you're only learning the basics. Remember, in futures trading you are trading against all the other professionals who do only this 24/7 for decades. If you are only risking your time with the reward being learning and possibly money, it seems like a good deal. There's typically a catch with these things - like you would have to pay for your data which is very expensive or withdrawing funds is possible only months later.", "Would you buy this used car, in its current condition but with new tires, for the price of the tires? If so, buy the tires.", "A long straddle using equity would be more akin to buying a triple leveraged ETF and an inverse triple leveraged ETF, only because one side will approach zero while the other can theoretically increase to infinity, in a short time span before time decay hits in. The reason your analogy fails is because the delta is 1.0 on both sides of your trade. At the money options, a necessary requirement for a straddle, have a delta of .5 There is an options strategy that uses in the money calls and puts with a delta closer to 1.0 to create an in the money strangle. I'm not sure if it is more similar to your strategy, an analogous options strategy would be better than yours as it would not share the potential for a margin call." ]

[ "As others have explained defined contribution is when you (or your employer) contributes a specified amount and you reap all the investment returns. Defined benefit is when your employer promises to pay you a specified amount (benefit) and is responsible for making the necessary investments to provide for it. Is one better than the other? We can argue this either way. Defined benefit would seem to be more predictable and assured. The problem being of course that it is entirely reliant upon the employer to have saved enough money to pay that amount. If the employer fails in that responsibility, then the only fallback is government guarantees. And of course the government has limitations on what it can guarantee. For example, from Wikipedia: The maximum pension benefit guaranteed by PBGC is set by law and adjusted yearly. For plans that end in 2016, workers who retire at age 65 can receive up to $5,011.36 per month (or $60,136 per year) under PBGC's insurance program for single-employer plans. Benefit payments starting at ages other than 65 are adjusted actuarially, which means the maximum guaranteed benefit is lower for those who retire early or when there is a benefit for a survivor, and higher for those who retire after age 65. Additionally, the PBGC will not fully guarantee benefit improvements that were adopted within the five-year period prior to a plan's termination or benefits that are not payable over a retiree's lifetime. Other limitations also apply to supplemental benefits in excess of normal retirement benefits, benefit increases within the last five years before a plan's termination, and benefits earned after a plan sponsor's bankruptcy. By contrast, people tend to control their own defined contribution accounts. So they control how much gets invested and where. Defined contribution accounts are always 100% funded. Defined benefit pension plans are often underfunded. They expect the employer to step forward and subsidize them when they run short. This allows the defined benefits to both be cheaper during the employment period and more generous in retirement. But it also means that employers have to subsidize the plans later, when they no longer get a benefit from the relationship with the employee. If you want someone else to make promises to you and aren't worried that they won't keep them, you probably prefer defined benefit. If you want to have personal control over the money, you probably prefer defined contribution. My personal opinion is that defined benefit plans are a curse. They encourage risky behavior and false promises. Defined contribution plans are more honest about what they provide and better match the production of employment with its compensation. Others see defined benefit plans as the gold standard of pensions." ]

[ "The downside of the store card is that the \"deal\" for using the card is typically 6-12 months of \"no payments\" or \"no interest\". In reality, the \"deal\" is deferred payments/interest. The problem is, if you miss any payment, or fail to pay the computer off in full, you'll have to pay for the accrued interest -- at a rate typically 25% or higher. That means if you buy your computer for $1,000, and pay $999 at the end of 12 months, you may have to pay $250 in accrued interest. These cards can be great deals, just be really careful!", "I have used car buying services through Costco and USAA. Twice with a Ford, and once with a Honda. In all instances I was directed to sales people that were uncommonly friendly and pleasant to work with. I was given a deep discount without any negotiation. In two of the three cases I did not have a trade. In one case I had a trade, and negotiated a deeper discount then was originally offered. Did I get a good deal? Eh, who knows? Really it depends what your goal is. If your goal is to avoid negotiation, avoid idiot salesmen, and receive a good discount then a quality car buying service may be for you. My research, a few years old, indicated Costco's program was better then the USAA one. If your goal is get a deep as a discount as possible on a new car, well then you have some work cut out for you. Keep some hand sanitizer handy when you meet one of the slime ball salesmen. Keep in mind that not everyone understand the difference between the words value and cheap. If your goal is to pay as little as possible for quality transportation. Avoid most dealers and new cars. But I don't think that is what you are looking for.", "Here are a couple of articles that can help highlight the differences between a broker and an online investment service, which seems to be part of the question that you're asking. Pay attention to the references at the end of this link. http://finance.zacks.com/online-investing-vs-personal-broker-6720.html Investopedia also highlights some of the costs and benefits of each side, broke and online investment services. http://www.investopedia.com/university/broker/ To directly answer your question, a broker may do anything from using a website to making a phone call to submitting some other form of documentation. It is unlikely that he is talking directly to someone on the trading floor, as the volume traded there is enormous.", "I've seen many people sign a restaurant credit card receipt and walk away. Easy enough for the wait staff to add a tip and total. I doubt this is a high risk area compared to others, but in general, why not take the receipt for verification, or in the case of a good that can be returned, the receipt might be needed.", "As an owner of a share of a business you also \"own\" profits made by the business. But you delegate company management to reinvest those profits, on your behalf, to make even more profits. So your share of the business is a little money-making machine that should grow, without you having to pay taxes on the dividends and without you having to decide where to reinvest your share of the profit.", "If you are trying to invest in closely held / private companies (things that don't trade on the stock market), you will run into a variety of regulatory problems. For various reasons, most private companies only raise funds with accredited investors. To be an accredited investor you basically have to have $1,000,000 in net worth - NOT including your primary residence, OR you have to make over $200,000 a year for the last two years and expect to keep making that much. This is a class distinction the Federal government created, you will see different but similar wealth and investment classes worldwide. So your best most organized opportunities are left out, unless you do qualify as an accredited investor. There are tons of other companies, things you will find locally, that will let you invest in their smaller time operations. (Think like a local yoga studio looking for $20,000 and willing to split the profits with you). But the problem here is lack of accountability, where partners skip town or just stop answering your calls, and the legal remedies cost you more than your claim. That being said there are people that provide capital to smaller publicly traded companies on the bulletin boards and pink sheets. They have opportunities do much better than the actual stock market investors in these companies, because you can negotiate contracts that let you cash out in their inevitable financing death spirals with very little risk to you. You can do these things as an individual or as a holding company, but the holding company will limit your liability to the amount your holding company invested, instead of your personal assets, in case your financing starts to incur liability with the company.", "It seems this will be very much driven by price discrimination. If there are some customers who will pay up to $100, sell at that; and if there are others who'll pay $1 sell at that price. For instance you see computer games, which have zero marginal cost of production, sold at \"normal new release\" prices, at premium prices with a special box or doo-dad, and at discount prices once the game is a bit old.", "Your goals are excellent. I really admire your thoughts and plans, and I hold you in high esteem. Good credit is indeed an important thing to have, and starting young is THE smart idea with respect to this. I see that you have as a goal the purchase of a home. Indeed, another fine ambition. (Wow, you are a different breed from what I normally encounter on the internet; that's for sure !) Since this won't happen overnight, I would encourage you to think about another option. At this point in your life you have what few people have: options, and you have lots of them. The option I would like to suggest you consider is the debt free life. This does NOT mean life without a credit card, nor does it mean living with ones parents all their days. In its simplest form, it means that you don't owe anybody anything today. An adapted form of that; with the reality of leases and so on, is that you have more immediate cash in the bank than you have contractual responsibilities to pay others. e.g., if the rent on a place is X, and the lease is 12 months, then you don't sign until you have 12X in the bank. That's the idea. If there is anything good that these past 10 years of recession and financial disasters have provided us as a nation, it is a clear picture presented to our young people that a house is not a guaranteed way to riches. Indeed, I just learned this week of another couple, forced out by foreclosure again. Yes, in the 1970s and 1980s the formula which anyone could follow was to take a mortgage on a single family house; just about any house in any community; and ten years later double your money, while (during those ten years) paying about the same (and in a few years, actually less) amount of money as you would for an apartment with about half the space. Those days were then, not now, and I seriously doubt that I will ever see them again in my lifetime. You might, at your age, one day. In the mean time, I would like to suggest that you think about that word options again; something that you have that I don't. If your mind is made up for certain that a house is the one and only thing you want, okay; this does not apply. During this time of building your credit (we're talking more than a year) I would like to encourage you to look at some of the other options that are out there waiting for you; such as... I also encourage you to take a calculator and a spreadsheet (I would be surprised if there is no freeware out there to do this with a few clicks) and compare the past 30 years of various investments. For example... It is especially educational if you can see line charts, with the ups and downs along the way. One last thing; about the stock market, you have an option (I love that word when people your age are actually thinking) called \"dollar cost averaging\". If you are not aware of this concept, just ask and I will edit this post (although I'm confident it has been explained by others far better than myself on this very site). Hit just about any solid stock market investment (plain old mutual fund, even with a load, and it will still work) and I believe you'll see what I'm trying to get across. Still, yes, you need a roof, and a young person should clearly plan on leaving parents in a healthy and happy way; so again, if the house is the one and only goal, then go for it kid (uhm, \"kid\", if you're still under 18). All the best. Do remember that you will be fixing the pipes, not the maintenance guy.", "If you have already maxed your TSP contributions, the \"401k\" for military folks, you could consider a Traditional IRA contribution. They are tax-deductible, based on some limits, so it may reduce your tax liability. Many online services (Vanguard, Fidelity, etc.) offer quick and free setup of Traditional IRA accounts. If you have already maxed the Traditional IRA as well, you could look at making taxable investments through an online service. Like homer150mw, I would recommend low-cost funds. For reasons why, see this article by John Bogle.", "Unfortunately, the money that is not vested is not yours. It belongs to your employer. They have promised to give it to you after you have been with the company for a certain length of time, but if you aren't still with the company after that time, no matter what the reason, the money never becomes yours. Sorry to hear about this. It would have been nice if your company had waived the vesting requirement like this guy's employer did, but I don't think they are required to do so, unfortunately. If it's a lot of money, you could ask an attorney, but as @JoeTaxpayer said, AT&T and IBM probably know what they are doing." ]

[ "SIPC is a corporation - a legal entity separate from its owners. In the case of SIPC, it is funded through the fees paid by its members. All the US brokers are required to be members and to contribute to SIPC funds. Can it go bankrupt? Of course. Any legal entity can go bankrupt. A person can go bankrupt. A country can go bankrupt. And so can anything in between. However, looking at the history of things, there are certain assumptions that can be made. These are mere guesses, as there's no law about any of these things (to the best of my knowledge), but seeing how things were - we can try and guess that they will also be like this in the future. I would guess, that in case of a problem for the SIPC to meet its obligation, any of the following would happen (or combinations): Too big to fail - large insurance companies had been bailed out before by the governments since it was considered that their failure would be more destructive to the economy than the bailout. AIG as an example in the US. SIPC is in essence is an insurance company. So is Lloyd's of London. Breach of trust of the individual investors that can lead to a significant market crash. That's what happened in the US to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They're now \"officially\" backed by the US government. If SIPC is incapable of meeting its obligation, I would definitely expect the US government to step in, even though there's no such obligation. Raising funds through charging other members. If the actuary calculations were incorrect, the insurance companies adjust them and raise premiums. That is what should happen in this case as well. While may not necessarily solve a cashflow issue, in the long term it will allow SIPC to balance, so that bridge loans (from the US government/Feds/public bonds) could be used in between. Not meeting obligations, i.e.: bankruptcy. That is an option, and insurance companies have gone bankrupt before. Not unheard of, but from the past experience - again, I'd expect the US government to step in. In general, I don't see any significant difference between SIPC in the US and a \"generic\" insurance coverage elsewhere. Except that in the US SIPC is mandatory, well regulated, and the coverage is uniform across brokerages, which is a benefit to the consumer." ]

[ "Seriously. I can't tell you how many times I hear this scenario: Kid graduates college; kid runs out and signs lease on apartment \"because that's what you do\"**; kid complains that he's in financial trouble and can't make ends meet. Housemate sharing is most famously displayed in hit shows like Big Bang Theory or New Girl. They get a much nicer place with better furnishings for way less money. (However don't hook up with close neighbors or friends of other housemates, they do it for awkward laughs but it really results in awkward departure.) It's more financially responsible. It means the rest of your financial life will have more slack. And when you move, obviously, it's no big deal, you just give all the notice you can, and go to the next town and find another housemate share. ** I suspect a very significant factor is bringing home dates. Well, there's nothing sexy about taking your date to McDonalds because you can't afford anything more. See those shows... it works fine, you just have to be sensible about housemate choices. Pick housemates who view things the same way, and who themselves are invested in making the shared space attractive, and aren't going to mind some ...activities... once in awhile.", "My basic rule I tell everyone who will listen is to always live like you're a college student - if you could make it on $20k a year, when you get your first \"real\" job at $40k (eg), put all the rest into savings to start (401(k), IRA, etc). Gradually increase your lifestyle expenses after you hit major savings goals (3+ month emergency fund, house down payment, etc). Any time you get a raise, start by socking it all into your employer's 401(k) or similar. And repeat the above advice.", "The stock market exists for two reasons. It lets companies raise money to invest, and it lets company owners cash out and get money instead of part-ownership of a company when they are ready to do so. But to accomplish these goals effectively, it needs many more transactions than just those kinds of transaction, because you have to be able to find a buyer when you need one and to have a market price. So there are also a lot of transactions that are just to try to make short-term profit. But we need those transactions to provide the market liquidity to let the stock market work properly for its actual purposes.", "Former financial analyst here, happy to help you. First off, you are right to not be entirely trusting of advisors and attorneys. They are usually trustworthy, but not always. And when you are new to this, the untrustworthy ones have a habit of reaching you first - you're their target market. I'll give you a little breakdown of how to plan, and a starting investment. First, figure out your future expenses. A LOT of that money may go to medical bills or associated care - don't forget the costs of modifications and customizations to items so you can have a better quality of life. Cars can be retrofit to assist you with a wheelchair, you can build a chair lift into a staircase, things like that which will be important for mobility - all depending on the lingering medical conditions. Mobility and independence will be critically important for you. Your past expenses are the best predictor of future expenses, so filter out the one-time legal and medical costs and use those to predict. Second, for investing there is a simple route to get into the stock market, and hopefully you will hear it a lot: Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). You'll hear \"The S&P 500 increased by 80 points today...\" on the news; the S&P is a combination of 500 different stocks and is used to gauge the market overall. You can buy an exchange traded fund as a stock, and it's an investment in all those components. There's an ETF for almost anything, but the most popular ones are for those big indexes. I would suggest putting a few hundred thousand into an S&P 500 indexed ETF (do it at maybe $10,000 per month, so you spread the money out and ensure you don't buy at a market peak), and then let it sit there for many years. You can buy stocks through online brokerages like Scottrade or ETrade, and they make it fairly easy - they even have local offices that you can visit for help. Stocks are the easiest way to invest. Once you've done this, you can also open a IRA (a type of retirement account with special tax benefits) and contribute several thousand dollars to it per year. I'll be happy to give more advice if/when you need it, but there are a number of good books for beginning investors that can explain it better than I. I would suggest that you avoid real estate, especially if you expect to move overseas, as it is significantly more complicated and has maintenance costs and taxes.", "Stephen's answer is the 100% correct one made with the common Economics assumption, that people are rational. A company that never has paid dividends, is still worth something to people because of its potential to start paying dividends later and it is often better to grow now and payoff later. However, the actual answer is much more disapointing, because people are not rational and the stock market is no longer about investing in companies or earning dividends. Most of the value of a stock is for the same reason that gold, stamps, coins and bitcoins, and Australian houses are worth anything, that is, because enough people say it is worth something*. Even stocks that pay dividends, very few people buy it for dividends. They buy it because they believe someone else will be willing to buy it for slightly more, shortly after. Different traders have different timeframes, ranging from seconds to months. *Houses and stock are of course partially valuable due to the fundamentals, but the major reason they are purchased is just to resell at a profit.", "To me, it depends. How much are their total assets? Having 10% of your money in something like that isn't crazy. having it all in? That IS crazy. Can they reduce their exposure to this account without paying a penalty (say pull out 10%?) The Manager should be taking direction from them. If they aren't able to get the manager to re-allocate to something more suitable, under your friends direction, they should then pursue whether or not the manager is operating lawfully.", "You are comparing a risk-free cost with a risky return. If you can tolerate that level of risk (the ups and downs of the investment) for the chance that you'll come out ahead in the long-run, then sure, you could do that. So the parameters to your equation would be: If you assume that the risky returns are normally distributed, then you can use normal probability tables to determine what risk level you can tolerate. To put some real numbers to it, take the average S&P 500 return of 10% and standard deviation of 18%. Using standard normal functions, we can calculate the probability that you earn more than various interest rates: so even with a low 3% interest rate, there's roughly a 1 in 3 chance that you'll actually be worse off (the gains on your investments will be less than the interest you pay). In any case there's a 3 in 10 chance that your investments will lose money.", "Keep in mind that you NEED to have a cash reserve. Blindly applying all stray cash to debt reduction is a bad idea. Your lenders do not care about your balance. All they care about is your NEXT payment. It is therefore imperative that you have a cash reserve that can carry these payments for several months. Having zero cash reserves puts you at high risk for such simple things as the payroll clerk at work missing the monthly deposit (Rare, but it happens.) I've also been in situations where a major client had a cash flow issue and delayed payment, and our company had to borrow to meet payroll that month. Fortunately, we were in good standing with the bank and had low debt, but it could have been catastrophic for any employees living paycheque to paycheque.", "My wife and I are paid every two weeks. I go on line see the exact deposit, add it to register, and see what checks cleared. In effect, I reconcile twice per month, and the statement can't be different that what their system tells me. Since the online site shows \"last statement balance\" I feel there's no need to bother with the paper, nothing left to reconcile.", "Legally, do I have anything to worry about from having an incorrectly filed W-4? What you did wasn't criminal. When you submitted the form it was correct. Unfortunately as your situation changed you didn't adjust the form, that mistake does have consequences. Is there anything within my rights I can do to get the company to take responsibility for their role in this situation, or is it basically my fault? It is basically your fault. The company needs a w-4 for each employee. They will use that W-4 for every paycheck until the government changes the regulation, or your employment ends, or you submit a new form. Topic 753 - Form W-4 – Employee's Withholding Allowance Certificate If an employee qualifies, he or she can also use Form W-4 (PDF) to tell you not to deduct any federal income tax from his or her wages. To qualify for this exempt status, the employee must have had no tax liability for the previous year and must expect to have no tax liability for the current year. However, if the employee can be claimed as a dependent on a parent's or another person's tax return, additional limitations may apply; refer to the instructions for Form W-4. A Form W-4 claiming exemption from withholding is valid for only the calendar year in which it is filed with the employer. To continue to be exempt from withholding in the next year, an employee must give you a new Form W-4 claiming exempt status by February 15 of that year. If the employee does not give you a new Form W-4, withhold tax as if he or she is single, with no withholding allowances. However, if you have an earlier Form W-4 (not claiming exempt status) for this employee that is valid, withhold as you did before. (I highlighted the key part) Because you were claiming exempt they should have required you to update that form each year. In your case that may not have applied because of the timing of the events. When do you submit a new form? Anytime your situation changes. Sometimes the change is done to adjust withholding to modify the amount of a refund. Other times failure to update the form can lead to bigger complication: when your marital status changes, or the number of dependents changes. In these situations you could have a significant amount of under-withheld, which could lead to a fine later on. As a side note this is even more true for the state version of a W-4. Having a whole years worth of income tax withholding done for the wrong state will at a minimum require you to file in multiple states, it could also result in a big surprise if the forgotten state has higher tax rate. Will my (now former) employee be responsible for paying their portion of the taxes that were not withheld during the 9 months I was full-time, tax Exempt? For federal and state income taxes they are just a conduit. They take the money from your paycheck, and periodically send it to the IRS and the state capital. Unless you could show that the pay stubs said taxes were being withheld, but the w-2 said otherwise; they have no role in judging the appropriateness of your W-4 with one exception. Finally, and I am not too hopeful on this one, but is there anything I can do to ease this tax burden? I understand that the IRS is owed no matter what. You have one way it might workout. For many taxpayers who have a large increase in pay from one year to the next, they can take advantage of a safe-harbor in the tax law. If they had withheld as much money in 2015 as they paid in 2014, they have reached the safe-harbor. They avoid the penalty for under withholding. Note that 2014 number is not what you paid on tax day or what was refunded, but all your income taxes for the entire year. Because in your case your taxes for the year 2014 were ZERO, that might mean that you automatically reach the safe-harbor for 2015. That makes sense because one of the key requirements of claiming exempt is that you had no liability the year before. It won't save you from paying what you owe but it can help avoid a penalty. Lessons" ]

[ "For the most part, saving money usually depends upon having a budget and being able to stick to it. The toughest part of budgeting is usually setting it up (how much do I need for X) and sticking to it each month. In regards to sticking to it, there is software that you can use that helps figure out how much you are spending and how much you have left in a given category and they all pretty much do the same thing: track your spending and how much you have left in the category. If you are good with spreadsheets you might prefer that route (cost: free) but software that you can buy usually has value in that it can also generate reports that help you spot trends that you might not see in the spreadsheet. Sticking to a budget can be tough and a lot of what people have said already is good advice, but one thing that helps for me is having \"play money\" that can be used for whatever I want. In general this should be a fairly nominal amount ($20 or $40 a week) but it is enough that if you see a new book you want or what to go out for lunch one day you can do it without impacting the overall budget in some way. Likewise, having bigger savings goals can also be useful in that if times get tough it is easier to stop putting $100 a month to the side for a vacation than it is to cut back your grocery budget." ]

[ "The best place to start looking is the companies \"Balance Sheet\" (B/S). This would show you the total shares \"outstanding.\" The quarterly B/S's arent audited but a good starting point. To use in any quant method, You also need to look a growth the outstanding shares number. Company can issue shares to any employee without making a filing. Also, YOU will NEVER know exactly the total number because of stock options that are issued to employees that are out of the money arent account for. Some companies account for these, some dont. You should also explore the concepts of \"fully dilute\" shares and \"basis\" shares. These concepts will throw-off your calc if the company has convertible bonds.", "A company's stock value is indicative of the market's collective belief of the future of the company. The relationship of between price and book value will vary according to the quality of the company, the category of stock, etc. In extreme cases, say Bank of America, the stock trades at a fraction of book, because BOA's books are a fantasy by most people's reckoning.", "Thanks for your reply. I’m not familiar with the term \"Held-For-Trading Security\". My securities are generally held as collateral against my shorts. To clarify, I am just trying to track the \"money in\" and \"money out\" entries in my account for the shorts I write. The transaction is relatively straight forward, except there is a ton of information attached! In simple terms, for the ticker CSR and short contract CSRUQ8, the relevant entries look something like this: There are no entries for expiries. I need to ensure that funds are available for future margin calls and assignments. The sale side using covered calls is as involved.", "I would recommend that go through some forums where commodities topics be discussed so that if you have some issues related any point in commodities investment you will easily get your question sort out.", "What you did is called a \"strangle.\" It's rather unlikely that both will be exercised on the same day. But yes, it can happen. That is if the market is very volatile on a given day, so that the stock hits 13 in the morning, the put gets exercised, and then hits 15 later in the day, so the call gets exercised. Or vice versa. More to the point, the prices are close enough that one might be hit on one day, and the other on a DIFFERENT day. In either case, if one side gets hit, you need to reevaluate your position in the other. But basically, any open position you have can be hit at any time. The only way to avoid this risk is not to have positions.", "I understand that if I have multiple health insurance policies, I can only make claim from only one of them if ever I incur medical expenses (I'm from the Philippines). In the US, you cannot simultaneously submit a claim for payment of a medical bill, or request reimbursement for a bill already paid, to multiple insurance companies, but if you are covered by more than one policy, then any part of a claim not paid by one company can be submitted to another company that is also covering you. In fact, if you have employer-paid or employer-provided coverage, most insurance companies will want your employer-provided insurance company to be billed first, and will cover whatever is not paid by the employer coverage. For example, if the employer coverage pays 80% of your doctor's bill, the private insurance will pay the remaining 20%. But, the private insurance policies are also quite expensive. Some professional groups in the US offer major medical coverage to their US members, and might be offering this to non-US members as well (though I suspect not). These policies have large deductibles so that coverage kicks in only when the total medical expenses in that year (whether wholly or partially reimbursed, or not reimbursed at all) exceed the large deductible. These types of policies actually pay out to only a few people - if you have more than, say, $20,000 of medical expenses in a year, you have been quite ill, and thus the premiums are usually much smaller than full-fledged coverage insurance policies which pay out much more frequently because of much smaller deductibles.", "Two more esoteric differences, related to the same cause... When you have an outstanding debit balance in a margin the broker may lend out your securities to short sellers. (They may well be able to lend them out even if there's no debit balance -- check your account agreement and relevant regulations). You'll never know this (there's no indication in your account of it) unless you ask, and maybe not even then. If the securities pay out dividends while lent out, you don't get the dividends (directly). The dividends go to the person who bought them from the short-seller. The short-seller has to pay the dividend amount to his broker who pays them to your broker who pays them to you. If the dividends that were paid out by the security were qualified dividends (15% max rate) the qualified-ness goes to the person who bought the security from the short-seller. What you received weren't dividends at all, but a payment-in-lieu of dividends and qualified dividend treatment isn't available for them. Some (many? all?) brokers will pay you a gross-up payment to compensate you for the extra tax you had to pay due to your qualified dividends on that security not actually being qualified. A similar thing happens if there's a shareholder vote. If the stock was lent out on the record date to establish voting eligibility, the person eligible to vote is the person who bought them from the short-seller, not you. So if for some reason you really want/need to vote in a shareholder vote, call your broker and ask them to journal the shares in question over to the cash side of your account before the record date for determining voting eligibility.", "The advice to pay off near-7% debt is tough to argue against. That said, I'd project out a few years to understand the home purchase. Will you plan for the 20% down John recommends? The Crazy Truth about PMI can't be ignored. The way the math works, if you put 15% down, the PMI costs you so much, it's nearly like paying 20% interest on that missing 5%. If your answer is that you intend to save for the full downpayment, 20%, and can still knock off the student loan, by all means, go for it. I have to question the validity of \"we will definitely be in a higher tax bracket when we retire.\" By definition, pretax deposits save tax at the marginal rate. i.e. If you are in the 25% bracket, a $1000 deposit saves you $250 in tax that year. But, withdrawals come at your average rate, i.e. your tax bill divided by gross income. There's the deductions for itemized deductions or the standard. Then 2 exemptions if you are married. Then the 10% bracket, etc. Today, a couple grossing $100K may be in the 25% bracket, but their average rate is 12%. I read this Q&A again and would add one more observation - Student Loans and Your First Mortgage is an article I wrote in response to a friend's similar question. With the OP having plan to buy a house, paying off the loan may be more costly in the long run. It may keep him from qualifying for the size mortgage he needs, or from having enough money to put 20% down, as I noted earlier. With finance, there are very few issues that are simply black and white. It's important to understand all aspects of one's finances to make any decision. Even if thee faster payoff is the right thing, it's not a slam-dunk, the other points should be considered.", "I have checked with Bank of America, and they say the ONLY way to cash (or deposit, or otherwise get access to the funds represented by a check made out to my business) is to open a business account. They tell me this is a Federal regulation, and every bank will say the same thing. To do this, I need a state-issued \"dba\" certificate (from the county clerk's office) as well as an Employer ID Number (EIN) issued by the IRS. AND their CHEAPEST business banking account costs $15 / month. I think I can go to the bank that the check is drawn upon, and they will cash it, assuming I have documentation showing that I am the sole proprietor. But I'm not sure.... What a racket!!", "Well it would appear that you had a wash sale that canceled out a loss position. Without seeing the entire report, I couldn't tell you exactly what was happening or how you triggered § 1091. But just from the excerpted images, it appears as though your purchase of stock was layered into multiple tranches - perhaps you acquired more of the stock in the 61-day period than you sold (possibly because of a prior holding). If in the 61-day period around the sale of stock (30 days before and 30 days after), you also acquire the same stock (including by contract or option), then it washes out your loss. If you held your stock for a while, then in a 61-day period bought more, and sold some, then any loss would be washed out by the acquisition. Of course it is also a wash sale if your purchase of the stock follows your sale, rather than precedes it. Your disallowed loss goes into the basis of your stock holding, so will be meaningful when you do have a true economic sale of that stock. From IRS Pub 550: A wash sale occurs when you sell or trade stock or securities at a loss and within 30 days before or after the sale you: Buy substantially identical stock or securities, Acquire substantially identical stock or securities in a fully taxable trade, Acquire a contract or option to buy substantially identical stock or securities, or Acquire substantially identical stock for your individual retirement account (IRA) or Roth IRA. If you sell stock and your spouse or a corporation you control buys substantially identical stock, you also have a wash sale. Looking at your excerpted account images, we can see a number of positions sold at a loss (sale proceeds less than basis) but each one is adjusted to a zero loss. I suspect the fuller picture of your account history and portfolio will show a more complicated and longer history with this particular stock. That is likely the source of the wash sale disallowed loss notations. You might be able to confirm that all the added numbers are appearing in your current basis in this stock (or were reflected upon your final exit from the stock)." ]

[ "It's not usually apparent to the average consumer, but there's actually two stages to collecting a payment, and two ways to undo it. The particular combination that occurs may lead to long refund times, on top of any human delays (like Ben Miller's answer addresses). When you pay with a credit card, it is typically only authorized - the issuing bank says \"I'm setting this money aside for this transaction\", but no money actually changes hands. You'll typically see this on your statement as a \"pending\" charge. Only later, in a process called \"settlement\", does your bank actually send money to the merchant's bank. Typically, this process starts the same day that the authorization happens (at close of business), but it may take a few days to complete. In the case of an ecommerce transaction, the merchant may not be allowed to start it until they ship whatever you ordered. On the flip side, a given transaction can be voided off or money can be sent back to your card. In the first case, the transaction will just disappear altogether; in the second, it may disappear or you may see both the payment and the refund on your statement. Voids can be as fast as an authorization, but once a transaction has started settlement, it can't be voided any more. Sending money back (a \"refund\") goes through the same settlement process as above, and can take just as long. So, to specifically apply that to your question: You get the SMS when the transaction is authorized, even though no money has yet moved. The refund money won't show up until several days after someone indicates that it should happen, and there's no \"reverse authorize\" operation to let you or your bank know that it's coming." ]

[ "I like many of the answers, but here is a summary of reasons: Almost everyone will retire, and it is almost certain that government or company pensions schemes will not alone give you a lifestyle you would like in retirement. Money invested early is worth much more in retirement than money invested late, thanks to the miracle of compound interest. In some countries there are tax advantages to investing a little bit of money every year, compared with nothing for a few years and then a lump sum later. Much investment advice is given by investment consultants, who profit when you make investments. It's always in their interests to have you invest as early and as often as possible (that doesn't invalidate the first three reasons). Having said that, it isn't always in your best interests to invest in retirement funds very heavily at the start of your career. You might want to consider paying off any debts, or saving for a house, or even having a bit of fun while you are young enough to enjoy it. That back-packing trip to Nepal is going to be a lot easier when you are 23 than when you are 40 with kids.", "Were capital gains taxes not lower, companies would have an incentive to minimize the portion of the value they create that materializes as capital gains. They would do this by using more debt financing (since interest is deductible) than equity financing. This would have a destabilizing effect on the economy. Low capital gains taxes help encourage investment over spending. This is believed to improve economic growth. Given these factors, it is generally believed that the current capital gains tax rate is very close to the optimal rate. That is, a higher tax rate would not result in greater tax revenue. Bluntly, a higher income tax rate on earned income does not really discourage people from working harder and earning more money. But a higher rate on capital gains does discourage investment. Essentially, it's because investment is more discretionary.", "There are different perspectives from which to calculate the gain, but the way I think it should be done is with respect to the risk you've assumed in the original position, which the simplistic calculation doesn't factor in. There's a good explanation about calculating the return from a short sale at Investopedia. Here's the part that I consider most relevant: [...] When calculating the return of a short sale, you need to compare the amount the trader gets to keep to the initial amount of the liability. Had the trade in our example turned against you, you (as the short seller) would owe not only the initial proceeds amount but also the excess amount, and this would come out of your pocket. [...] Refer to the source link for the full explanation. Update: As you can see from the other answers and comments, it is a more complex a Q&A than it may first appear. I subsequently found this interesting paper which discusses the difficulty of rate of return with respect to short sales and other atypical trades: Excerpt: [...] The problem causing this almost uniform omission of a percentage return on short sales, options (especially writing), and futures, it may be speculated, is that the nigh-well universal and conventional definition of rate of return involving an initial cash outflow followed by a later cash inflow does not appear to fit these investment situations. None of the investment finance texts nor general finance texts, undergraduate or graduate, have formally or explicitly shown how to resolve this predicament or how to justify the calculations they actually use. [...]", "I'm all for thrift stores and yard sales. When they're littler they're more into comfort, perhaps insisting on certain colors, but somewhere around 13 they start to become more fashion conscious. If you want name brand clothes for kids, hit yard sales or consignment stores in better neighborhoods. Other places are Ross's or Marshall's. Both carry name brands. It's just you never know what they'll have. Another stategy is to buy fewer clothes. If you do laundry twice a week, you just don't need as much. Aim for mix and match. Also have play clothes for rough and tumble wear and \"good\" clothes for school and church. All these help keep costs down. My sister and I maintained an informal exchange between the cousins. This helped a good deal. A church in our neighborhood has a yearly clothing giveaway. That kind of thing may be an option for you as well. Or you could request needed items on Yahoo's freecycle. I see alot of clothes being given or requested on that site. I had one son who ripped out knees. Double kneed pants were a great investment. It looked like a rather large patch of fusible interfacing attached to the inside knee area. So it might work if you tried that on exisitng pants. Hope these help.", "The brokerage executes the transactions you tell them to make on your behalf. Other than acting as your agent for those, and maintaining your account, and charging a fee for the service, they have no involvement -- they do not attempt to predict optimal anything, or hold any assets themselves.", "The above answers are great. I would only add to the \"rainy day\" part, that even though the cash provides a good cushion, \"a stormy day\" could mean even losing those emergency savings to the unignorable randomness that governs the world economy. Though unlikely, what happened to the russian ruble and the latest decision of the swiss cental bank are just two recent reminders that uncertainty must be treated as a constant. I would therefore advise you to invest some of the money in land capable of agriculture. How expensive is land over there in the UK?", "What you need to do is register as a sole trader. This will automatically register you for self assessment so you don't have to do that separately. For a simple business like you describe that's it. Completing your self assessment will take care of all your income tax and national insurance obligations (although as mentioned in your previous question there shouldn't be any NI to pay if you're only making £600 or so a year).", "The fiat currency is the basis for currency markets - that is, currency that is not made of precious metals. The factors that influence what the value of a fiat currency are the state of the country's economy, what the gov't says the value should be, their fiscal policies, as well as what the currency is trading at. And what the currency is trading at is a product of these factors as well as the typical factors which would affect any stock trading. eHow has a great outline, here, which describes them.", "A DRIP plan with the ETF does just that. It provides cash (the dividends you are paid) back to the fund manager who will accumulate all such reinvested dividends and proportionally buy more shares of stock in the ETF. Most ETFs will not do this without your approval, as the dividends are taxed to you (you must include them as income for that year if this is in a taxable account) and therefore you should have the say on where the dividends go.", "The short version of JB King's excellent answer is that the company will typically buy back shares from the open market at market price. Sometimes, it will specifically target larger stakeholders, even controlling interests, who are making noise that they want to divest; if such an investor were to just dump their stock on the open market, neither the investor nor the company would be very happy with the resulting price collapse. In those cases, the company may offer an incentive price above market rates. In recent times, the investor looking to divest has often been the U.S. Government, who received stock in return for bailouts, and (with notable exceptions) turned a modest profit on many of them. Not enough to break even on the entire bailout, but the Government didn't just throw $700 billion in taxpayer money down a hole as conservative pundits would have you believe. In the '80s, a specific type of buy-back was made famous, called the \"leveraged buyout\". Basically, the company took out a huge loan against itself, and used that money to buy up all the company's publicly-traded shares, essentially becoming a private company. This became a popular tool among private equity groups, for better and worse." ]

[ "Plenty of good answers here, but probably the best answer is that The Market relies on suckers...er...investors like you. The money has to come from somewhere, it might as well be you. So-called \"day traders\" or \"short-term investors\" are a huge part of the market, and they perform a vital function: they provide capital that flows to the large, well-equipped, institutional investors. Thing is, you can never be big enough, smart enough, well-informed enough, or quick enough to beat the big guys. You may have a run of good fortune, but over the long term aggregate, you're a PAYOR into the market, not a DIVIDEND reaper." ]

[ "Well, you won't be double taxed based on what you described. Partners are taxed on income, typically distributions. Your gain in the partnership is not income. However, you were essentially given some money which you elected to invest in the partnership, so you need to pay tax on that money. The question becomes, are you being double taxed in another way? Your question doesn't explain how you invested, but pretty much the options are either a payroll deduction (some amount taken out of X paychecks or a bonus) or some other payment to you that was not treated as a payroll deduction. Given that you got a 1099, that suggests the latter. However, if the money was taken out as a payroll deduction - you've already paid taxes (via your W2)! So, I'd double check on that. Regarding why the numbers don't exactly match up - Your shares in the partnership likely transacted before the partnership valuation. Let's illustrate with an example. Say the partnership is currently worth $1000 with 100 outstanding shares. You put up $1000 and get 100 shares. Partnership is now worth $2000 with 200 outstanding shares. However, after a good year for the firm, it's valuation sets the firm's worth at $3000. Your gain is $1500 not $1000. You can also see if what happened was the firm's valuation went down, your gain would be less than your initial investment. If instead your shares transacted immediately after the valuation, then your gain and your cost to acquire the shares would be the same. So again, I'd suggest double checking on this - if your shares transacted after the valuation, there needs to be an explanation for the difference in your gain. For reference: http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/incorporation-and-legal-structures/partnership-taxes.html And https://www.irs.gov/publications/p541/ar02.html Here you learn the purpose of the gain boxes on your K1 - tracking your capital basis should the partnership sell. Essentially, when the partnership is sold, you as a partner get some money. That money is then taxed. How much you pay will depend on what you received versus what the company was worth and whether your gain was long term or short term. This link doesn't go into that detail, but should give you a thread to pull. I'd also suggest reading more about partnerships and K1 and not just the IRS publications. Don't get me wrong, they're a good source of information, just also dense and sometimes tough to understand. Good luck and congrats.", "A stop order can be used to both enter or exit a position. A stop loss is used to set the price you want to get out if the price reaches that level. Whilst a stop buy or entry order is used to get into a position if the price reaches your desired level for entry. The stop order just means that you want to place your order at that level, you then need to specify if you are buying to open, selling to open, buying to close or selling to close your position at the stop level.", "If you are particularly interested in the share certificate artifacts themselves, there is a collection hobby in paper share certificates and bonds, called scripophily. This can include both active share certificates (for instance, think about giving your kid or grandkid a frameable paper share of Hasbro, Disney or McDonalds?), inactive certificates from famous bankruptcies or famous companies of the past, or just the visual interest in scrollwork and engraved vignettes.", "If I had a business and was able to claim a feature, I would. It's simple marketing. If in fact, opting out helped your score, the site would promote that feature. Soft pulls for prescreened offers are not counted. No more than my constant peek at my score through Credit Karma. Opt out, if you wish. The benefit of course is less mail, which saves trees. Less risk of identity theft, someone can take the application and try to forge from there. Less risk of an infected paper cut opening this mail (don't ask.) I am a compulsive mail shredder, so I peek and these and shred. A year ago I received an offer of $30,000 zero interest, max transfer fee $50. I sent the entire sum to my 5% mortgage. Now I refinanced and paying that back. It saved me $1500 over the year. Too much trouble for some, but how long does it take to make $1500? For 40% of this country's families, that's a week's pay. The monthly extra bill didn't bother me. This last paragraph is an anecdote, not so much addressing question. I did that first.", "The stock will slowly gain that $1 during the year. Suppose we have the highly theoretical situation that a company's stock is worth exactly $10 right after it paid its dividend, its dividend is always $1 per stock, and the company and everything else is so stable that its value never changes. Then the stock value right before the next dividend is paid will be close to $11 -- after all, it's worth a certain $1 dividend the next day, plus the $10 stock. And in between, half a year after the dividend was paid, it will be in between, say $10.50, or actually slightly less than that (because people like to buy in late so they can make money some other way with the money first). But the point holds -- the price decrease on the day that dividend is paid had been building up the whole period before that decrease. So stock dividends do make you money.", "How can people afford luxury cars? The same way they can afford anything: by finding it cheaply, saving for it, or adjusting their priorities. Company cars - either paid for by the company, or as part of a bonus/compensation/salary sacrifice scheme. I have friends who drive luxury cars, but they pay £200/month - not much more than, for example, finance on a used Honda People who have paid off their mortgage. There are people who spend a decade pouring every cent they have into a mortgage. Once paid off, they have £500-1500 a month \"spare\" People who have different priorities to you. I'm not bothered about big houses and holidays, but I love cars: I'd rather spend an extra £100/month on my car and have a holiday every 2 years, not every year People who only run one car in the family: if you're running two cars at £200/month, then discover one of you can work from home, you could have one £400 car and still be saving money on running costs. People who don't have (or want) children. Children are expensive, if they aren't part of your plans then you can save a lot of money for luxuries.", "I've never heard of an employer offering this kind of arrangement before, so my answer assumes there is no special tax treatment that I'm not aware of. Utilizing the clause is probably equivalent to exercising some of your options, selling the shares back to your employer at FMV, and then exercising more options with the proceeds. In this case if you exercise 7500 shares and sell them back at FMV, your proceeds would be 7500 x $5 = $37,500, with which you could exercise the remaining 12,500 options. The tax implications would be (1) short-term capital gains of 7500 x ($5 - $3) = $15,000 and (2) AMT income of 12,500 x ($5 - $3) = $25,000, assuming you don't sell the shares within the calendar year.", "Businesses are only required to keep receipts over $751. However for individuals, I would throw them all in a shoebox and not worry about organizing them. There's a small chance you'll need to go through them during an audit, and you can worry about reconciling all of them and putting them in order at that point. Just write 2010 on the box and keep it somewhere easy, and at the end of the year throw it in your basement (or get a scanner, and scan and trash the original).", "You're driving a car worth about $6000 which has a $12,000 loan against it. You're driving around in a nett debt of $6000. The best thing your grandfather could do for you, if possible, is to take your name off both the title and the loan, refinancing the car in his name only. If possible while still letting you drive the car. When he dies, you will be out of a car, but also out of a $12,000 debt which I'm sure you could do without. Okay, the best thing your grandfather could do, from your wallet's point of view, is paying off the loan for you and then taking his name off the title.", "The quality of the MBA is really what decides if it's worth it. You have to make sure the school where you are going to is highly regarded or even prestigious. There is a big difference between what you find prestigious and others find prestigious. The student believing it is an awesome school is not enough, the companies and recruiters must believe it too. Make sure you do your homework on the ranking of the MBA program. Additionally, your undergraduate plays a role how well your MBA is perceived. A decent undergraduate degree complemented with an MBA from a highly ranked school will put you in a trajectory for a high salary and a management position." ]

[ "Let me start with a somewhat sarcastic statement: There are probably as many things done to analyze a stock as there are people doing the analysis! That said, at a general level an analyst researches the historical performance of the company at a fairly detailed level (operations within divisions of the company, product development cycles within divisions, expenses vs income trends for each division and product, marketing costs, customer acquisition costs, etc); gathers information about what the company is doing now AND planning to do in the future -- often by a discussion with principles at the company; establishes a view on related macro-economic trends, sector and industry trends, demographic trends, etc.; and combines it all to forecast a change in revenues, margins, free cash flow, dividends, etc. over a period of time. They then apply statistics that relate those numbers to stock price in order to imply stock prices and price ranges over those same periods. Finally, depending on how those stock prices compare to the current stock price, they'll classify the stock as Buy, Sell, Hold, etc. This sounds like alot of work. And it generally is if you get detailed about it, which is what professionals or significant money managers are doing. However, there are also lots of arm-chair analysts posting their output on any number of financial sites (Seeking Alpha, Motley Fool, etc.) if you'd like to really explore the range of detail some people consider as a \"stock analysis\". That sounds more negative than I intended it to be, so let me clarify that I think some of these write-ups are really quite good IMO." ]

[ "Here is a quote from the IRS website on this topic: You may be able to deduct premiums paid for medical and dental insurance and qualified long-term care insurance for yourself, your spouse, and your dependents. The insurance can also cover your child who was under age 27 at the end of 2011, even if the child was not your dependent. A child includes your son, daughter, stepchild, adopted child, or foster child. A foster child is any child placed with you by an authorized placement agency or by judgment, decree, or other order of any court of competent jurisdiction. One of the following statements must be true. You were self-employed and had a net profit for the year reported on Schedule C (Form 1040), Profit or Loss From Business; Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040), Net Profit From Business; or Schedule F (Form 1040), Profit or Loss From Farming. You were a partner with net earnings from self-employment for the year reported on Schedule K-1 (Form 1065), Partner's Share of Income, Deductions, Credits, etc., box 14, code A. You used one of the optional methods to figure your net earnings from self-employment on Schedule SE. You received wages in 2011 from an S corporation in which you were a more-than-2% shareholder. Health insurance premiums paid or reimbursed by the S corporation are shown as wages on Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement. The insurance plan must be established, or considered to be established as discussed in the following bullets, under your business. For self-employed individuals filing a Schedule C, C-EZ, or F, a policy can be either in the name of the business or in the name of the individual. For partners, a policy can be either in the name of the partnership or in the name of the partner. You can either pay the premiums yourself or your partnership can pay them and report the premium amounts on Schedule K-1 (Form 1065) as guaranteed payments to be included in your gross income. However, if the policy is in your name and you pay the premiums yourself, the partnership must reimburse you and report the premium amounts on Schedule K-1 (Form 1065) as guaranteed payments to be included in your gross income. Otherwise, the insurance plan will not be considered to be established under your business. For more-than-2% shareholders, a policy can be either in the name of the S corporation or in the name of the shareholder. You can either pay the premiums yourself or your S corporation can pay them and report the premium amounts on Form W-2 as wages to be included in your gross income. However, if the policy is in your name and you pay the premiums yourself, the S corporation must reimburse you and report the premium amounts on Form W-2 as wages to be included in your gross income. Otherwise, the insurance plan will not be considered to be established under your business. Medicare premiums you voluntarily pay to obtain insurance in your name that is similar to qualifying private health insurance can be used to figure the deduction. If you previously filed returns without using Medicare premiums to figure the deduction, you can file timely amended returns to refigure the deduction. For more information, see Form 1040X, Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. Amounts paid for health insurance coverage from retirement plan distributions that were nontaxable because you are a retired public safety officer cannot be used to figure the deduction. Take the deduction on Form 1040, line 29.", "I have researched this question extensively in previous years as we have notoriously high taxes in California, while neighboring a state that has zero corporate income tax and personal income tax. Many have attempted pull a fast one on the California taxation authorities, the Franchise Tax Board, by incorporating in Nevada or attempting to declare full-year residence in the Silver State. This is basically just asking for an audit, however. California religiously examines taxpayers with any evidence of having presence in California. If they deem you to be a resident in California, and they likely will based on the fact that you live in California (physical presence), you will be subject to taxation on your worldwide income. You could incorporate in Nevada or Bangladesh, and California will still levy its taxation on any business income (Single Member LLCs are disregarded as separate corporate entities, but still taxed at ordinary income rates on the personal income tax basis). To make things worse, if California examines your Single Member LLC and finds that it is doing business in California, based on the fact that its sole owner is based in California all year long, you could feasibly end up with additional penalties for having neglected to file your LLC in California (California LLCs are considered domestic, and only file in California unless they wish to do business in other states; Nevada LLCs are considered foreign to California, requiring the owner to file a domestic LLC organization in Nevada and then a foreign LLC organization in California, which still gets hit with the minimum $800 franchise fee because it is a foreign LLC doing business in California). Evading any filing responsibility in California is not advisable. FTB consistently researches LLCs, S-Corporations and the like to determine whether they've been organized out-of-state but still principally operated in California, thus having a tax nexus with California and the subsequent requirement to be filed in California and taxed by California. No one likes paying taxes, and no one wants to get hit with franchise fees, especially when one is starting a new venture and that minimum $800 assessment seems excessive (in other words, you could have a company that earns nothing, zero, zip, nada, and still has to pay the $800 minimum fee), but the consequences of shirking tax laws and filing requirements will make the franchise fee seem trivial in comparison. If you're committed to living in California and desire to organize an LLC or S-Corp, you must file with the state of California, either as a domestic corporation/LLC or foreign corporation/LLC doing business in California. The only alternatives are being a sole proprietor (unincorporated), or leaving the state of California altogether. Not what you wanted to hear I'm sure, but that's the law.", "Yes, you can deduct from your taxable profits (almost) any expenses incurred in the course of your business. See here for HMRC's detailed advice on the subject. The fact that you have salaried PAYE employment as well makes no difference.", "For starters, that site shows the first 5 levels on each side of the book, which is actually quite a bit of information. When traders say the top of the book, they mean just the first level. So you're already getting 8 extra levels. If you want all the details, you must subscribe to the exchange's data feeds (this costs thousands of dollars per month) or open an account with a broker who offers that information. More important than depth, however, is update frequency. The BATS site appears to update every 5 seconds, which is nowhere near frequently enough to see what's truly going on in the book. Depending on your use case, 2 levels on each side of the book updated every millisecond might be far more valuable than 20 levels on each side updated every second.", "You could look into an index fund or ETF that invests primarily in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT's). An REIT is any corporation, trust or association that acts as an investment agent specializing in real estate and real estate mortgages Many investment firms offer an index fund or ETF like this. For example, Vanguard and Fidelity have funds that invest primarily in real estate markets. You could also invest in a home construction ETF, like iShares' ITB, which invests in companies related to home construction. This ETF includes more companies than just REITs, so for example, Home Depot is included.", "I would not claim to be a personal expert in rental property. I do have friends and family and acquaintances who run rental units for additional income and/or make a full time living at the rental business. As JoeTaxpayer points out, rentals are a cash-eating business. You need to have enough liquid funds to endure uncertainty with maintenance and vacancy costs. Often a leveraged rental will show high ROI or CAGR, but that must be balanced by your overall risk and liquidity position. I have been told that a good rule-of-thumb is to buy in cash with a target ROI of 10%. Of course, YMMV and might not be realistic for your market. It may require you to do some serious bargain hunting, which seems reasonable based on the stagnant market you described. Some examples: The main point here is assessing the risk associated with financing real estate. The ROI (or CAGR) of a financed property looks great, but consider the Net Income. A few expensive maintenance events or vacancies will quickly get you to a negative cash flow. Multiply this by a few rentals and your risk exposure is multiplied too! Note that i did not factor in appreciation based on OP information. Cash Purchase with some very rough estimates based on OP example Net Income = (RENT - TAX - MAINT) = $17200 per year Finance Purchase rough estimate with 20% down Net Income = (RENT - MORT - TAX - MAINT) = $7500 per year", "Pitfalls of paying plastic That being said, you can also find cards that have better than the 1% it looks like you are getting. I have a card that gives 2% cash back on Gas Stations, Utilities (including stuff like AT&T) and Food Stores (Walmart included). There are also limited time deals from cards - my fiance's discover has 5% cash back Oct/Nov/Dec on Online purchases. Make sure to remain diligent, keep your balances low and don't get hit with interest rates or fees (I had HORRIBLE credit and I refused to get a card with an annual fee). Why pay full price with cash, when you can get 2-5% cash back?", "Figure out how much money you earn, what you spend it on, and how that will change when you have kids (will one of you stay at home? if not, how much will daycare cost and how do you finance the first few month when your child is still too young for daycare?) You will usually plan to spend your current Kaltmiete (rent without utilities) on your mortgage (the Darlehen that is secured by your house) - keep in mind though that a house usually has a higher utility cost than an appartment. When you've figured out what you can save/pay towards a house now and how that will change when you have kids, you can go on to the next step. If you don't want to buy now but want to commit to saving up for a house and also want to secure today's really low interest rates, consider getting a \"Bausparvertrag\". I didn't find a good translation for Bausparvertrag, so here is a short example of how it works: You take a building saving sum (Bausparsumme) of 150000€ with a savings goal (Sparziel) of 50000€ (the savings goal is usually between 20% and 50% of the sum) and then you make monthly payments into the Bausparvertrag until you reach the savings goal at which point you can take out your savings and a loan of 100000 € (or whatever your difference between the Bausparsumme and Sparziel is). If you're living in an expenisve area, you're likely to need more than 150000 but this is just an example. Upsides: Downsides: If you decide to buy sooner, you can also use your Bausparvertrag to refinance later. If you have a decent income and a permanent job, then ask your bank if they would consider financing your house now. To get a sense of what you'll be able to afford, google \"wie viel Haus kann ich mir leisten\" and use a few of the many online calculators. Remember that these websites want to sell you on the idea of buying a house instead of paying rent, so they'll usually overestimate the raise in rents - repeat the calculation with rent raise set to 0% to get a feeling for how much you'll be able to afford in today's money. Also, don't forget that you're planning to get children, so do the calculation with only one income, not two, and add the cost of raising the kids to your calculation. Once you've decided on a property, shop around a bit at different banks to get the best financing. If you decide to buy now (or soon), start looking at houses now - go to model homes (Musterhäuser) to find out what style of house you like - this is useful whether you want to buy an existing house or build a new one. If buying an existing house is an option for you, start visiting houses that are on sale in your area in order to practice what to ask and what to look for. You should have a couple of visits under your belt before you really start looking for the one you want to buy. Once you're getting closer to buying or making a contract with a construction company, consider getting an expert \"Bausachverständiger\". When buying an existing house they can help you estimate the price and also estimate the renovation cost you'll have to factor in for a certain house (new heating, better insulation, ...). When building a new house they can advise you on the contract with the construction company and also examine the construction company's work at each major step (Zwischenabnahme). Source: Own experience.", "Also note that a share of voting stock is a vote at the stockholder's meeting, whether it's dividend or non-dividend. That has value to the company and major stockholders in terms of protecting their own interests, and has value to anyone considering a takeover of the company or who otherwise wants to drive the company's policy. Similarly, if the company is bought out, the share will generally be replaced by shares in whatever the new owning company is. So it really does represent \"a slice of the company\" in several vary practical ways, and thus has fairly well-defined intrinsic value linked to the company's perceived value. If its price drops too low the company becomes more vulnerable to hostile takeover, which means the company itself will often be motivated to buy back shares to protect itself from that threat. One of the questions always asked when making an investment is whether you're looking for growth (are you hoping its intrinsic value will increase) or income (are you hoping it will pay you a premium for owning it). Non-dividend stocks are a pure growth bet. Dividend-paying stocks are typically a mixture of growth and income, at various trade-off points. What's right for you depends on your goals, timeframe, risk tolerance, and what else is already in your portfolio.", "I would go with the family route if I was you. And i think many other people would if they were fortunate to have such a great option. This will allow you to move faster when your trying to buy a new house because you can easily get a mortage if you see a stellar deal. Also you can establish credit in much cheaper ways than paying the 4% or so on a mortgage. finance a car that you have the money to buy because the interest rates are much lower .9% and you build the credit while paying less interest. Or even better, try and make most of your purchases on a 0 fee credit card and every 6-8 months get a new credit card to have multiple lines of ongoing credit. to use the mortage to establish credit isnt worth the 4% hit in wealth that it offers. now mind you if your options were to buy the house with your own money outright or get a mortgage i would say get the mortgage because the added leverage would help your investments beat the market most years . figure if you get 6% an average portfolio each year and you can write off the taxes on your mortgage you will be ahead by more than 2%" ]

[ "You have a job \"lined up\". What if it falls through? Then you have to sell your fancy car, and you are back to scare, apart from the dough you owe your dad. For consumption items, live within your means. A cheap first car is just fine. Spend cash where it brings you more cash." ]

[ "You need to get the current tax software, the 2013 filing software is out already, even though it needs to update itself before filing, as the final forms aren't ready yet. Then you will look carefully at Schedule E to understand what gets written off. I see you are looking at the $2200 rent vs your own rent of $2100, but of course, the tax form doesn't care about your rent. You offset the expenses of that house against the income. The expenses are the usual suspects, mortgage interest, property tax, repairs, etc. But there's one big thing new landlords are prone to forgetting. Depreciation. It's not optional. Say the house cost you $400K. This is your basis. You need to separate the value of land which is not depreciated. For a condo with no land it can be as little as 10%, when we bought our house, for insurance purposes, the land was nearly 40% of the full value. Say you do the research and decide 30% (for land), then 70% = $280K. Depreciation is taken each year over a 27.5 year period, or just over $10,000 per year. (Note, the forms will help you get your year 1 number, as you didn't have a full year.) This depreciation helps with your cash flow during the year (as you should do the math, and if you keep the house, adjust your W4 withholdings for 2014, that lump sum you'll get in April won't pay the bills each month) but is 'recaptured' on sale. At some point in the future, you may save enough to buy a house where you wish to live, but need to sell the rental. Consider a 1031 Exchange. It's a way to sell a rental and buy a new one without triggering a taxable event. What I don't know is how long the new house must be a rental before the IRS would then allow you to move in. The same way you turned your home into a rental, a rental can be turned back to a primary residence. I just doubt you can do it right after the purchase. As fellow member @littleadv would advise, \"get professional advice.\" And he's right. I've just offered what you might consider. The first year tax return with that Schedule E is the toughest as it's brand new. The next year is simple in comparison. The question of selling immediately is tough. Only you can decide whether the risk of keeping it is too great. You're saying you don't have the money to cover two month's vacancy. That scares me. I'd focus on beefing up the emergency account. And securing a credit line. You mentioned the tax savings. My opinion is that for any investment,the tax tail should never wag the investing dog. Buy or sell a stock based on the stock, not the potential tax bill for the sale. In your situation, the rent and expenses will cancel each other, and the depreciation is a short term loan, from a tax perspective. If you sold today, what do you net? If you analyzed the numbers now, what is your true income from the property each year? Is that return worth it? A good property will provide cash flow, principal reduction each year, and normal increase in value. This takes a bit of careful looking at the numbers. You might feel you're just breaking even, but if the principal is $12K less after a year, that's something you shouldn't ignore. On the other hand, an exact 'break-even' with little equity at stake offered you a leveraged property where any gains are a magnified percentage of what you have at risk. Last - welcome to Money.SE - consider adding some more details to your profile.", "Can you isolate the market impact to just the Fed's quantitative easing? Can you rule out the future economic predictions of low growth and that there are reasons why the Fed has kept rates low and is trying its best to stimulate the economy? Just something to consider here. The key is to understand what is the greater picture here as well as the question of which stock market index are you looking at that has done so badly. Some stocks may be down and others may be up so it isn't necessarily bad for all equally.", "Apparently box 39 does not receive half of box 38 if \"The price of the share or unit is less than its fair market value when the agreement was made.\" - the last point in paragraph 110(1)(d): *http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/pyrll/bnfts/fnncl/scrty/stckpt03-eng.html#dspst The employee can claim a deduction under paragraph 110(1)(d) of the Income Tax Act if all of the following conditions are met:", "(This answer refers to the US investment landscape) I'm not sure your classification of funds as direct and regular accurately reflects the nature of the mutual fund industry. It's not the funds themselves that are \"direct\" or \"regular.\" Rather it's the way an investor chooses to invest in them. If you make the investment yourself through your brokerage account, you may say it's a direct investment. If you pay a financial advisor to do this for you, it's \"regular.\" For a given fund, you could make the investment yourself or you could use an advisor. Note that many funds have various share classes. Share classes may be accessed in different ways. The institutional class may be accessible through your 401(k) or perhaps not even there, for example. The premium class may require a certain minimum investment. Some classes will have a front-end-load or back-end-load. Each of these will have a different expense ratio and fees even though the money ends up in the same portfolio. These expenses are, by law, publicly available in the prospectus and in numerous other places. Share classes with higher fees will earn less each year after fees, just as you suggest. Your intuition is correct on this point. Now, there is one fee to be aware of that funds either have or do not have. That's a 12b-1 fee. This fee is a kickback to financial advisors who funnel your money into their fund. If you use a financial advisor, he or she will likely put your money into these funds because they have a financial incentive to do so. That way they get paid twice: once by you and once by the mutual fund. It has been robustly shown in the finance academic literature that funds without this fee dominate (are better in some ways and in no ways worse than) funds with this fee. I suppose you could say that funds and share classes with a 12b-1 fee were designed for \"regular\" investment and those without were designed for \"direct\" but that doesn't mean you can't invest in a 12b-1 fee fund directly nor that you can't twist your advisor's arm into getting you into a good fund without a 12b-1. Unfortunately, if you have this level of knowledge, then you probably don't need a financial advisor.", "The answer is in your question: derivatives are contracts so are enforced in the same way as any other contract. If the counterparty refuses to pay immediately they will, in the first instance be billed by any intermediary (Prime Broker etc.) that facilitated the contract. If they still refuse to pay the contract may stipulate that a broker can \"net off\" any outstanding payments against it or pay out using deposited cash or posted margins. The contract will usually include the broker as an interested party and so they can, but don't need to, report a default (such that this is) to credit agencies (in some jurisdictions they are required to by law). Any parties to the trade and the courts may use a debt collection agency to collect payments or seize assets to cover payment. If there is no broker or the counterparty still has not paid the bill then the parties involved (the party to the trade and any intermediaries) can sue for breach of contract. If they win (which would be expected) the counterparty will be made to pay by the legal system including, but not limited to, seizure of assets, enforced bankruptcy, and prison terms for any contempts of court rulings. All of this holds for governments who refuse to pay derivatives losses (as Argentina did in the early 20th century) but in that case it may escalate as far as war. It has never done so for derivatives contracts as far as I know but other breaches of contract between countries have resulted in armed conflict. As well as the \"hard\" results of failing to pay there are soft implications including a guaranteed fall in credit ratings that will result in parties refusing to do business with the counterparty and a separate loss of reputation that will reduce business even further. Potential employees and funders will be unwilling to become involved with such a party and suppliers will be unwilling to supply on credit. The end result in almost every way would be bankruptcy and prison sentences for the party or their senior employees. Most jurisdictions allow for board members at companies in material breach of contract to be banned from running any company for a set period as well. edit: netting off cash flows netting off is a process whereby all of a party's cash flows, positive and negative, are used to pay each other off so that only the net change is reflected in account balances, for example: company 1 cash flows netting off the total outgoings are 3M + 500k = 3.5M and total incomings are 1.2M + 1.1M + 1.2M = 3.5M so the incoming cash flows can be used to pay the outgoing cash flows leaving a net payment into company1's account of 0.", "At the time of the auction android was just vaporware but many companies were restricting the phones that they allowed on their networks so that they could control what the phones were being used for. The big guys (AT&T, Verison, and Sprint) feared that being forced to allow phones that could do things they did not have control over would cost them money(Especially since they charged for every little feature they added). They also wanted to prevent their phones (which they subsidize to their customers in to reap long term profits) from being taken to other networks. Goggle saw the potential for the largest chunk of bandwidth available to the telco's to be restricted to services of one company and their strangle hold over the phones and services that were allowed to use it. They manuvered the bidding to ensure that this did not happen. There are many who believe that Verison bought the spectrum more to prevent anyone from competeing with them than because they actually wanted to use it. But at least they are forced to allow other parties in to compete even if it is on their playground.", "Market Capitalization is the equity value of a company. It measures the total value of the shares available for trade in public markets if they were immediately sold at the last traded market price. Some people think it is a measure of a company's net worth, but it can be a misleading for a number of reasons. Share price will be biased toward recent earnings and the Earnings Per Share (EPS) metric. The most recent market price only reflects the lowest price one market participant is willing to sell for and the highest price another market participant is willing to buy for, though in a liquid market it does generally reflect the current consensus. In an imperfect market (for example with a large institutional purchase or sale) prices can diverge widely from the consensus price and when multiplied by outstanding shares, can show a very distorted market capitalization. It is also a misleading number when comparing two companies' market capitalization because while some companies raise the money they need by selling shares on the markets, others might prefer debt financing from private lenders or sell bonds on the market, or some other capital structure. Some companies sell preferred shares or non-voting shares along with the traditional shares that exist. All of these factors have to be considered when valuing a company. Large-cap companies tend to have lower but more stable growth than small cap companies which are still expanding into new markets because of their smaller size.", "I'd like to suggest a plan. First, I know you want to buy a house. I get that, and that is an awesome goal to work for. You need to really sit down and decide why you want a house. People often tell we that they want a house because they are throwing their money away renting. This is just not true. There is a cost of renting, that is true, but there is also a cost of owning. There are many things with a house that you will have to pay for that will add little or no equity/value. Now that equity is nice to have, but make no mistake under no circumstance does every dime you put into your house increase its value. This is a huge misconception. There is interest, fees, repairs, taxes, and a bunch of other stuff that you will spend money on that will not increase the value of your home. You will do no harm, waiting a bit, renting, and getting to a better place before you buy a house. With that out of the way, time for the plan. Note: I'm not saying wait to buy a house; I am saying think of these as steps in the large house buying plan. Get your current debt under control. Your credit score doesn't suck, but it's not good either. It's middle of the road. Your going to want that higher if you can, but more importantly than that, you want to get into a pattern of making debt then honoring it. The single best advise I can give you is what my wife and I did. Get a credit card (you have one; don't get more) and then get into a habit of not spending more on that credit card than you actually have in the bank. If you have $50 in the bank, only spend that on your credit card. Then pay it in full, 100%, every payday (twice a month). This will improve your score quite a bit, and will, in time, get you in the habit of buying only what you can afford. Unless there has been an emergency, you should not be spending more on credit than you actually have. Your car loan needs to get under control. I'm not going to tell you to pay it off completely, but see point 2. Your car debt should not be more than you have in the bank. This, again is a credit building step. If you have 7.5k in the bank and own 7.5k on your car, your ability to get a loan will improve greatly. Start envelope budgeting. There are many systems out there, but I like YNAB a lot. It can totally turn your situation around in just a few months. It will also allow you to see your \"house fund\" growing. Breaking Point So far this sounds like a long wait, but it's not. It also sounds like I am saying to wait to actually buy a house, and I'm not. I am not saying get your debt to 0, nor do I think you should wait that long. The idea is that you get your debt under control and build a nice solid set of habits to keep it under control. A look at your finances at this point Now, at this point you still have debt, but your credit cards are at 0 and have been, every payday for a few months. Your car loan still exists, but you have money in the bank to cover this debt, and you could pay it off. It would eat your nest egg, but you could. You also have 15k set aside, just for the house. As you take longer looking for that perfect house, that number keeps growing. Your bank account now has over $25,000 in it. That's a good feeling on its own, and if you stick with your plan, buy your house and put down $15k, you still have plenty of wiggle room between credit cards that are not maxed out, and a $7.5k \"padding\" in case the roof falls in. Again it sounds like I'm saying wait. But I'm not, I'm saying plan better. All of these goals are very doable inside one year, a rough year to be sure, but doable. If you want to do it comfortably, then take two years. In that time you're looking, searching and learning.", "If you are looking for a European financials ETF to short, you could take a look at the iShares EURO STOXX Banks, which is traded on a a few German stock exchanges (Frankfurt etc.): iShares Euro Stoxx Banks Website You find its current holdings here: holdings.", "Yes, you would. You owe it to the person you borrowed the shares from. (source)" ]

[ "Remember that risk should correlate with returns, in an investment. This means that the more risk you take on, the more return you should be receiving, in an efficient marketplace. That's why putting your money in a savings account might earn you <1% interest right now, but putting money in the stock market averages ~7% returns over time. You should be very careful not to use the word 'interest' when you mean 'returns'. In your post, you are calling capital gains (the increase in value of owned property) 'interest'. This may be understating in your head the level of risk associated with property ownership. In the case of the bank, they are not in the business of home construction. Rather than take that risk themselves, they would rather finance many projects being done by construction companies that know the business. The bank has a high degree of certainty of getting its money back, because its mortgages are protected by the value of the property. Part of the benefit of an efficient marketplace is that risk gets 'bought' by individuals who want it. This means that people with a low-risk tolerance (such as banks, people on fixed incomes, seniors, etc.) can avoid risk, and people with a high risk tolerance (stock investors, young people with high income, etc.) can take on that risk for higher average returns. The bank's reasoning should remind you of the risk associated with property ownership: increases in value are not a sure thing. If you do not understand the risk of your investment, you cannot be certain that you are being well compensated for that risk. Note also that most countries place regulations on their banks that limit the amount of their funds that can be placed in 'higher risk' asset classes. Typically, this something along the lines of \"If someone places a deposit with your bank, you can only invest that deposit in a low-risk debt-based asset [ie: you can take money deposited by customer A and use it to finance a mortgage for customer B]\". This is done in an attempt to prevent collapse of the financial sector, if risky investments start failing." ]

[ "Indeed the IRS publication references the 3-6 year time span. And no limit for fraud. But. I get a notice that some stock I owned 10 years ago has a settlement pending, and the records of this stock purchase and sale would potentially get me back some money. I get my Social Security statement (the one they stopped sending, but this was before then) and I see the 1995 income shows zero. Both of these were easily resolved with my returns going all the way back, and my brokerage statement as well. For the brokerage, I recently started downloading all statements as PDFs, and storing a copy away from home. Less concerned about the bank statements as I've never had an issue where I'd need them.", "Anthony Russell - I agree with JohnFx. Petroleum is used in making many things such as asphalt, road oil, plastic, jet fuel, etc. It's also used in some forms of electricity generation, and some electric cars use gasoline as a backup form of energy, petrol is also used in electricity generation outside of cars. Source can be found here. But to answer your question of why shares of electric car companies are not always negatively related to one another deals with supply and demand. If investors feel positively about petroleum and petroleum related prospects, then they are going to buy or attempt to buy shares of \"X\" petrol company. This will cause the price of \"X\", petrol company to rise, ceteris paribus. Just because the price of petroleum is high doesn't mean investors are going to buy shares of an electric car company. Petrol prices could be high, but numerous electric car companies could be doing poorly, now, with that being said you could argue that sales of electric cars may go up when petrol prices are high, but there are numerous factors that come into play here. I think it would be a good idea to do some more research if you are planning on investing. Also, remember, after a company goes public they no longer set the price of the shares of their stock. The price of company \"X\" shares are determined by supply and demand, which is inherently determined by investors attitudes and expectations, ultimately defined by past company performance, expectations of future performance, earnings, etc.. It could be that when the market is doing well - it's a good sign of other macroeconomic variables (employment, GDP, incomes, etc) and all these factors power how often individuals travel, vacation, etc. It also has to deal with the economy of the country producing the oil, when you have OPEC countries selling petrol to the U.S. it is likely much cheaper per barrel than domestic produced and refined petrol because of the labor laws, etc. So a strong economy may be somewhat correlated with oil prices and a strong market, but it's not necessarily the case that strong oil prices drive the economy..I think this is a great research topic that cannot be answered in one post.. Check this article here. From here you can track down what research the Fed of Cleveland has done concerning this. My advice to you is to not believe everything your peers tell you, but to research everything your peers tell you. With just a few clicks you can figure out the legitimacy of many things to at least some degree.", "I have used car buying services through Costco and USAA. Twice with a Ford, and once with a Honda. In all instances I was directed to sales people that were uncommonly friendly and pleasant to work with. I was given a deep discount without any negotiation. In two of the three cases I did not have a trade. In one case I had a trade, and negotiated a deeper discount then was originally offered. Did I get a good deal? Eh, who knows? Really it depends what your goal is. If your goal is to avoid negotiation, avoid idiot salesmen, and receive a good discount then a quality car buying service may be for you. My research, a few years old, indicated Costco's program was better then the USAA one. If your goal is get a deep as a discount as possible on a new car, well then you have some work cut out for you. Keep some hand sanitizer handy when you meet one of the slime ball salesmen. Keep in mind that not everyone understand the difference between the words value and cheap. If your goal is to pay as little as possible for quality transportation. Avoid most dealers and new cars. But I don't think that is what you are looking for.", "Insiders (those who are aware of non-public material information, not necessarily employees) are the ones who actually cannot sell once they learned about whatever, by law. Martha Stewart went to jail for that. Any such deviation from the norm triggers abnormal response and avalanche of rumors, so by default investors assume something bad and try to minimize the loss. When dealing with a tiny company (market cap of less than 15M) with a tiny market volume (6.2M), the swings can be very significant. For such a small company, it is safe to assume that something happened that lead them to delay the conference call, and since they didn't tell what happen, investors assume the worst. It might end up as the CEO and CFO having bad stomach after celebrating 100% growth in revenue they were going to announce, but you'll have to wait and see....", "I'm afraid your best recourse may be legal. I don't know that internet is a necessity, but the court would frown upon anyone paying $4K for rent but not being able to afford to heat the water or turn the lights on. $48K a year net should be enough for her to at least keep the kids with these things. I don't know that you can educate her. Her issue is very deep-seated and far beyond a good financial planning type session.", "You can use Google Finance Stock Screener for screening US stocks. Apparently it doesn't have the specific criterion (Last Price % diff from 52 week low) you are (were!) looking for. I believe using its api you can get it, although it won't exactly be a very direct solution.", "You or your girlfriend might also consider one of the myriad home \"franchises\" available (Pampered Chef, Thirty-One, etc). The real question, in my mind, though, is how much do you need to add to your monthly income? Is it $50, or $500? Might moving to a smaller apartment/house work?", "Facebook the company is probably better understood as a capital good - it is a collection of software and servers and a well-known brand name with a snazzy network effect under reasonably competent corporate governance that can produce final goods and services (mostly services) that actually have value. A share of Facebook stock is a share of ownership in that capital. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_good which makes some concessions for the difference between capital goods and capital services, so it's kind of a fuzzy thing.", "Out of the money options often have the biggest changes in value, when the stock moves upward. This person could also gain, by the implied (underlying) volatility of the stock rising if it moves erratically to either side. Still seems to be a very risky game, given only 4 days to expiry.", "You're not missing anything. Consumer protection in the US is very basic and limited, if at all. So if someone claims you owe them something, it would be really hard for you to prove otherwise unless you actually drag them to court. Especially if there actually was a relationship, and there probably is some paperwork to substantiate the claim. I suggest talking to a consumer issues attorney." ]

[ "Wikipedia has a good summary: Historically, branch banking in the United States - especially interstate branch banking - was viewed unfavorably by regulatory authorities, and this was codified with the enactment of the McFadden Act of 1927, which specifically prohibited interstate banking. Over the next few decades, some banks attempted to circumvent McFadden's provisions by establishing bank holding companies that operated so-called independent banks in multiple states. To address this, The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 prohibited bank holding companies headquartered in one state from having branches in any other state. Most interstate banking prohibitions were repealed by the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994. Research has also found that anticompetitive state provisions restricted out-of-state growth when those provisions were more restrictive than the provisions set by the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act or by neighboring states. Some states have also had restrictive bank branch laws; for example, Illinois outlawed branches (other than the main office) until 1967, and did not allow an unlimited number until 1993." ]

[ "Because US bonds have had the prior impression of absolute invincibility and safety that has helped the dollar become the world's reserve currency and the United States borrow essentially at will. For the people that care what S&P says, the aura of invincibility is broken and it is conceivable, in SOME universe, for the US to default on its debt. This is of little practical importance on its own, but it's yet another signpost on the road to Chinese or European economic hegemony.", "The article John cites says no correlation, but this chart from the article says otherwise; One sees the rate drop from 14% to 4% and housing rise from an index of 50 to near 190. (reaching over to my TI BA-35 calculator) I see that at 14%, $1000/mo will buy $84,400 worth of mortgage, but at 4%, it will buy $209,500. 2-1/2 times the borrowing power for the same payment. But wait, my friends at West Egg tell me that inflation means I can't compare $1000 in 1980 to the same $1000 in 2010. The $1,000 inflates to $2611 (i.e. an income rising only with inflation, no more) and that can fund a mortgage for $546,900. This is 6.5 times the original borrowing power, yet the housing index 'only' rose 3.8X. See that crazy chart? Housing actually got cheaper from 1980 to the peak. Statistics can say whatever you wish. Interest rate change drove all the change in housing prices, but not quite as much as it should have. To answer your question - I expect that when rates rise (and they will) housing prices will take a hit. In today's dollars, a current $1000 borrows (at 4%) nearly $210K, but at 6%, just $167K. If rates took a jump from these record lows, that's the nature of the risk you'd take.", "You know how when people called in on the Car Talk radio show (Click and Clack, I miss those guys), and while the caller asked a question about his car, really he needed marital advice? And the hosts would pounce on the part about the disagreement with family member and provide an unexpected answer (\"Yeah, the trick to a using a clutch is [...], but really, if you want to learn to drive a stick shift, get your dad out of the car!\") So I'm pouncing on the part about the spouse. It sounds like you and your spouse don't always agree on saving and spending, and you want to find a way to agree on saving and spending. If you can find a coach or planner or counselor that you both like and both trust, then go for it. You're looking more for the right personality than a precise job description. Start with exploring what you do agree on: we agree we need to save money, we agree we need to have a spending plan and budget, etc. The right coach will help you get to more agreement -- the job title is less important.", "Different stocks balance dividend versus growth differently. Some have relatively flat value but pay a strong dividend -- utility stocks used to be examples of that model, and bonds are in some sense an extreme version of this. Some, especially startups, pay virtually no dividends and aim for growth in the value of the stock. And you can probably find a stock that hits any point between these. This is the \"growth versus income\" spectrum you may have heard mentioned. In the past, investors took more of their return on investment as dividends -- conceptually, a share of the company's net profits for the year reflecting the share's status as partial ownership. If you wanted to do so, you could use the dividend to purchase more shares (via a dividend reinvestment plan or not), but that was up to you. These days, with growth having been strongly hyped, many companies have shifted much more to the growth model and dividends are often relatively wimpy. Essentially, this assumes that everyone wants the money reinvested and will take their profit by having that increase the value of their shares. Of course that's partly because some percentage of stockholders have been demanding growth at all costs, not always realistically. To address your specific case: No, you probably aren't buying Microsoft because you like its dividend rate; you're buying it in the hope it continues to grow in stock value. But the dividend is a bit of additional return on your investment. And with other companies the tradeoff will be different. That's one of the things, along with how much you believe in the company, that would affect your decision when buying shares in specific companies. (Personally I mostly ignore the whole issue, since I'm in index funds rather than individual stocks. Picking the fund sets my overall preference in terms of growth versus income; after that it's their problem to maintain that balance.)", "Definitely don't grocery shop when you're hungry. Also, watch for sales, and then buy in bulk and freeze it.", "With the Employee Stock Purchase Plan stock, if you sell it in less than 18 months from exercise, the discount you bought it at (normally 15%) becomes taxable income and included in your W-2.", "The answer is actually very simple: the cost of data. Seriously. Call the CBOE tomorrow and ask yourself. They have two big programs: 1) the penny pilot program, where options trade at penny increments instead of 5 cent increments. This is only extended to a select few symbols because of the amount of data this can generate is too much for the data vendors. Data vendors store and sell historical data. The exchanges themselves often have a big data vending business too. 2) the weekly options program, where only select symbols get these chains because of the amount of data they will generate. Liquidity and demand are factors in determining if the CBOE will consider enabling those series on new issues. (although they have to give the list of which symbols are on these programs to the SEC)", "1st question: If I bought 1 percent share of company X, but unfortunately it closed down because of some reason as it was 1 million in debt. Since I had 1 percent of it shares, does it mean I also have to pay the 1 percent of it's debt? Stock holders are not liable for anything more than their current holdings. In cases of Ch11 bankruptcy stock holders usually get nothing. In Ch7 the holdings will be severely hit but one may get 10% of pre-bk prices. I would strongly recommend against investing in bankrupt companies. A seasoned trader can make plenty off short term trades. The payoff structure is usually: 2nd question: Is there an age requirements to enter the stock market? I am 15 years old this year. Yes it is generally 18, but some firms offer a joint option that your parents can open.", "My personal rule is to not loan money (or co-sign) for any amount that I am not willing to give away. It can go wrong in so many ways, and having a family or friend involved means making a \"business\" decision is difficult. If a bank won't loan the person the money, why should I? Being a co-signer is the same as borrowing the money in my name and giving it right over to the borrower. There might be great reasons to do it. I would probably sign a loan to keep my family alive or healthy, but no other reason. There are many ways to help without signing a loan. Give a room and a place to live, loan a car. The other thing is if you really truly believe in the borrower, it won't do long term damage to your credit or your financial goals, and you are the only resort; go ahead. I am thinking about helping a teenager afford their first car or student loans.", "Start with his website, specifically his seven steps. Most everything else is around motivating people to actually do the plan. As he often says personal finance is 80% personal and 20% finance, by which he means that things that make sense financially (paying off high interest debt first) don't necessarily motivate action (so instead pay off the smallest debt first to get motivation). Really the rest is details around those seven concepts. On his site there is a link to a free one-hour podcast for the iPod, and you can pay for the full three hours of his radio show on podcast. He started on radio, and it is probably his best format. The reason Dave Ramsey has limited appeal beyond the US is that he is explicitly evangelical. He views his system as an extension of his Christian beliefs. That sells very well in parts of the US, but doesn't port very well. There is actually nothing religious in his program, other than the occasional reference to biblical verses in an attempt to tie his program into his religion, but people who are really interested and want to teach his program, not just practice it, are going to find they need to be an Evangelical (or at least a Christian) to fit in. Addendum: I should mention that Dave Ramsey is changing the FPU program (and I expect it will trickle into other things) to be more explicitly (although apparently not overtly) religious and have a stronger emphasis on budgeting. See here." ]

[ "If You use the car regulary, I don't think that driving on the bald tires for 3 years is a reasonable option. Have You considered buying used tires? Those will be cheaper and will last till You get to replace the car." ]

[ "You pay tax on the entire amount, not just the capital gains. When cashing out such a plan you would pay the top marginal tax rate on the full amount plus another 10% in penalties. It is very likely that the additional income, of the balance withdrawal, will increase your top marginal rate. It is impossible to come up with a precise answer as we don't know the following: However, you can take a concept away from this that is important: You will be taxed and penalized on the entire 401K balance, not just the capital gain. In the \"best case\" scenario, that is you had little or no income in a given year. Under current tax law you would owe about 31% of your 401K balance in taxes. As this is such an inefficient use of money most authors recommend against it except in the case of extreme circumstances.", "$600 a month is high, but may be the best you can do. When I moved from UK to Canada my first insurance quote was $3000 a year, but that was 20 years ago and I was older than 27. The rates go down substantially after you have had a local license for a few years. Best tips for minimising this:", "If we assume constant volatility, gamma increases as the stock gets closer to the strike price. Thus, delta is increasing at a faster rate as the stock reaches closer to ITM because gamma is the derivative of delta. As the stock gets deeper ITM, the gamma will slow down as delta reaches 1 or -1 (depends if a call or a put). Thus, the value of the option will change depending upon the level of the delta. I am ignoring volatility and time for this description. See this diagram from Investopedia: Gamma", "There are tax strategies you could take advantage of if you own the property. Find local real estate investors that like 'buy and hold'. Additional strategy is to buy a property and sell it with owner financing (you use a Residential Mortgage Loan Officer to facilitate.) What is great is you can get a great % real return on your money without being a landlord.", "The answer to this question will vary considerably by state and how utilities are regulated in your area. In New York, ESCOs (Energy Supply Companies) are almost always a ripoff for consumers versus the old-style regulated utility (in NY the utility supply markups are tightly regulated, but ESCOs are less regulated). You also need to really understand the marketplace rules for \"locking in\" a price. If you can lock in the July price for natural gas for a year, that rocks. There are other factors as well. But even then its a real bet, since weather and supply factors can have a dramatic effect on gas prices in the winter. IMO, the best bet is to run with the market rates and bank the efficiency improvements that you build into your home over time. Some utilities offer \"budget plans\" that smooth out your payments without interest -- I'd recommend that route if predictable bills are your goal.", "For an American it nearly impossible to open a Swiss bank account. Even a Swiss person want to open a bank account, we have to fill out a document, which asks us if we have a greencard or other relationships with the united states. Some Swiss banks have transferred the money of Americans to Singapore to protect their clients. So you see, the Swiss banks do very much for their clients. And yes, we don't ask very much about money ;) And we are a politically neutral country, but we like the United States more than Russia and of course we have enemies, like the ISIS", "I'm in a similar situation, but I live in a state that doesn't allow mortgagees to \"walk away\" without recourse. I would consider a short sale or otherwise abandoning the property if: At the end of the day, real estate is an investment, and you don't realize gains or losses until you close the position. The \"ra, ra\" crowd that thought that real estate was going to boom forever in 2006 was just as wrong as the \"bad news bears\" crowd that thinks that real estate will never recover either. Investments rise and fall. Many people who bought houses in the 1980's boom (recall the S&L crisis) were underwater for years until prices started rising in the mid-90's. You haven't lost money until you realize that loss.", "I've had a MF Stock Advisor for 7 or 8 years now, and I've belong to Supernova for a couple of years. I also have money in one of their mutual funds. \"The Fool\" has a lot of very good educational information available, especially for people who are new to investing. Many people do not understand that Wall Street is in the business of making money for Wall Street, not making money for investors. I have stayed with the Fool because their philosophy aligns with my personal investment philosophy. I look at the Stock Advisor picks; sometimes I buy them, sometimes I don't, but the analysis is very good. They also have been good at tracking their picks over time, and writing updates when specific stocks drop a certain amount. With their help, I've assembled a portfolio that I don't have to spend too much time managing, and have done pretty well from a return perspective. Stock Advisor also has a good set of forums where you can interact with other investors. In summary, the view from the inside has been pretty good. From the outside, I think their marketing is a reflection of the fact that most people aren't very interested in a rational & conservative approach to investing in the stock market, so MF chooses to go for an approach that gets more traffic. I'm not particularly excited about it, but I'm sure they've done AB testing and have figured out what way works the best. I think that they have had money-back guarantees on some of their programs in the past, so you could try them out risk free. Not sure if those are still around.", "You can keep the cash in your account as long as you want, but you have to pay a tax on what's called capital gains. To quote from Wikipedia: A capital gain is a profit that results from investments into a capital asset, such as stocks, bonds or real estate, which exceeds the purchase price. It is the difference between a higher selling price and a lower purchase price, resulting in a financial gain for the investor.[1] Conversely, a capital loss arises if the proceeds from the sale of a capital asset are less than the purchase price. Thus, buying/selling stock counts as investment income which would be a capital gain/loss. When you are filing taxes, you have to report net capital gain/loss. So you don't pay taxes on an individual stock sale or purchase - you pay tax on the sum of all your transactions. Note: You do not pay any tax if you have a net capital loss. Taxes are only on capital gains. The amount you are taxed depends on your tax bracket and your holding period. A short term capital gain is gain on an investment held for less than one year. These gains are taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. A long term capital gain is gain on an investment held for more than one year. These gains are taxed at a special rate: If your income tax rate is 10 or 15%, then long term gains are taxed at 0% i.e. no tax, otherwise the tax rate is 15%. So you're not taxed on specific stock sales - you're taxed on your total gain. There is no tax for a capital loss, and investors sometimes take profits from good investments and take losses from bad investments to lower their total capital gain so they won't be taxed as much. The tax rate is expected to change in 2013, but the current ratios could be extended. Until then, however, the rate is as is. Of course, this all applies if you live in the United States. Other countries have different measures. Hope it helps! Wikipedia has a great chart to refer to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United_States.", "I am very surprised no one mentioned the Stock Repair Option Strategy which has real benefits and is one of the mainstream Option Strategies. Quote: Who Should Consider Using the Stock Repair Strategy? In a nutshell, you are buying call options with current strike price (at-the-money) and sell call options with higher strike price (out-of-the-money), all with the same expiry dates. The only reason to also sell call options here is to recover your premium paid for the other call options. If you are comfortable paying that premium, you just buy the call options without selling the others. In case your stock will rise moderately to a price between the two strike prices, your call option will rise together with your stock, so you will be faster to recover your money. This is the main reason it is called Repair. If you have sold any call options, as the price rises, you have to be careful when it reaches the strike price of the options sold, as from there on you will begin incurring losses. It is however exactly the lucky outcome you were hoping for, your stock is higher, and you can buy back those loss making options - then or shortly before. If you didn't sell any options and payed your premium, you don't need to worry at all at this stage. WARNING It should be noted that the Stock Repair Strategy offers no protection for your stock price further falling down. In that case all those options will expire worthless or you can sell back the ones your bought but likely not for much. In order to have the downside protection for your stock, there are other strategies, the simplest one being buying a Put Option at-the-money or slightly lower. That will effectively cut your possible losses to the Option Premium (which is the main use of that option). Again, if you hate to pay that premium, you can offset it by selling other options that you either hope won't be exercised or take steps to protect you against those." ]

[ "This seemed very unrealistic, I mean who would do that? But to my immense surprise the market price increased to 5.50$ in the following week! Why is that? This is strange. It seems that people mistakenly [?] believe that the company should be at 5.5 and currently available cheap. This looks like irrational behaviour. Most of the past 6 months the said stock in range bound to 4.5 to 5. The last time it hit around 5.5 was Feb. So this is definitely strange. If the company had set a price of 6.00$ in the rights offering, would the price have increased to 6$? Obviously the company thinks that their shares are worth that much but why did the market suddenly agree? Possibly yes, possible no. It can be answered. More often the rights issue are priced at slight discount to market price. Why did this happen? Obviously management thinks that the company is worth that much, but why did the market simply believe this statement without any additional information? I don't see any other information; if the new shares had some special privileges [in terms of voting rights, dividends, etc] then yes. However the announcements says the rights issues is for common shares." ]

[ "This site shows a list of (mostly) industrial uses of gold: http://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml If you ignore the first two uses, jewelry and coinage, there remains aerospace, computers, electronics, dentistry and medicine. It's worth noting that gold comes in the same chemical family as both copper and silver, meaning that gold can serve most of their uses, although not as well.", "No, there isn't. There are a number of reasons that institutions buy these bonds but as an individual you're likely better off in a low-yield cash account. By contrast, there would be a reason to hold a low-yield (non-zero) bond rather than an alternative low-yield product.", "If you intend to do business \"outside the country\", why establish an LLC \"here\" at all? You should establish a business in your home country if you desire business organization for sequestering liabilities or something. With or without a business organization, you will presumably be taxed for domestic income \"there\", wherever that is.", "I don't think the advice to take lots more risk when young makes so much sense. The additional returns from loading up on stocks are overblown; and the rocky road from owning 75-100% stocks will almost certainly mess you up and make you lose money. Everyone thinks they're different, but none of us are. One big advantage of stocks over bonds is tax efficiency only if you buy index funds and don't ever sell them. But this does not matter in a retirement account, and outside a retirement account you can use tax-exempt bonds. Stocks have higher returns in theory but to have a reasonable guarantee of higher returns from them, you need around a 30-year horizon. That is a long, long time. Psychologically, a 60/40 stocks/bonds portfolio, or something with similar risk mixing in a few more alternative assets like Swenson's, is SO MUCH better. With 100% stocks you can spend 10 or 15 years saving money and your investment returns may get you nowhere. Think what that does to your motivation to save. (And how much you save is way more important than what you invest in.) The same doesn't happen with a balanced portfolio. With a balanced portfolio you get reasonably steady progress. You can still have a down year, but you're a lot less likely to have a down decade or even a down few years. You save steadily and your balance goes up fairly steadily. The way humans really work, this is so important. For the same kind of reason, I think it's great to buy one fund that has both stocks and bonds in there. This forces you to view the thing as a whole instead of wrongly looking at the individual asset class \"buckets.\" And it also means rebalancing will happen automatically, without having to remember to do it, which you won't. Or if you remember you won't do it when you should, because stocks are doing so well, or some other rationalization. Speaking of rebalancing, that's where a lot of the steady, predictable returns come from if you have a nice balanced portfolio. You can make money over time even if both asset classes end up going nowhere, as long as they bounce around somewhat independently, so you'll buy low and sell high when you rebalance. To me the ideal is an all-in-one fund that aims for about 60/40 stocks/bonds level of risk, somewhat more diversified than stocks/bonds is great (international stock, commodities, high yield, REIT, etc.). You can just buy that at age 20 and keep it until you retire. In beautiful ideal-world economic theory, buy 90% stocks when young. Real world with human brain involved: I love balanced funds. The steady gains are such a mental win. The \"target retirement\" funds are not a bad option, but if you buy the matching year for your age, I personally wish they had less in stocks. If you want to read more on the \"equity premium\" (how much more you make from owning stocks) here are a couple of posts on it from a blog I like: Update: I wrote this up more comprehensively on my blog,", "There have been many interesting and correct answers but to give a direct answer to your first question, dividend yield is simply dividend over current share price. So, if the share price drops, your dividend yield increases proportionately. Dividend yield is not something one should use as the only source of information of whether a stock is a good/bad buy. It does not show many important factors: the riskiness of the company business, its financial position, profitability, ability to generate cash. Furthermore, dividend yield is just a snapshot of an income gain at a given point in time. It does not mean that this very dividend policy is going to continue in the future (especially not so if the company finances this dividend payments using not its own cash reserves but outside capital by issuing debt securities, which is unsustainable).", "In this type of strategy profit is made when the shares go down as your main position is the short trade of the common stock. The convertible instruments will tend to move in about the same direction as the underlying (what it can be converted to) but less violently as they are traded less (lower volatility and lower volume in the market on both sides), however, they are not being used to make a profit so much as to hedge against the stock going up. Since both the bonds and the preference shares are higher on the list to be repaid if the company declares bankruptcy and the bonds pay out a fixed amount of interest as well, both also help protect against problems that may occur with a long position in the common stock. Essentially the plan with this strategy is to earn fixed income on the bonds whilst the stock price drops and then to sell both the bonds and buy the stock back on the market to cover the short position. If the prediction that the stock will fall is wrong then you are still earning fixed income on the debt and are able to convert it into stock at the higher price to cover the short sale eliminating, or reducing, the loss made on the short sale. Effectively the profit here is made on the spread between the price of the bond, accounting for the conversion price, and the price of the stock and that fixed income is less volatile (except usually in the junk market) than stock.", "That's not especially high income, and while I can't speak for Canadians, most of us south of the border just pay the tax. There are tax-advantged retirement savings plans, and charitable donations are often offset by a tax credit, and there are some tax incentives for mortgages, and so on.. but generally the right answer is to just accept that the income tax money was never yours to begin with.", "The original post's $16 has two errors: Here is the first scenario: . Tax Liability($) on Net . Cash # of Price Paper Realized Value Time: ($) Shares ($/sh) Profits Profits ($) 1. Start with: 100 - n/a - - 100 2. After buy 10@10$/sh: - 10 10 - - 100 3. Before selling: - 10 12 (5) - 115 4. After sell 10@12$/sh: 120 - n/a - (5) 115 5. After buy 12@10$/sh: - 12 10 - (5) 115 6. Before selling: - 12 12 (6) (5) 133 7. After sell 12@12$/sh: 144 - n/a - (11) 133 8. After buy 14@10$/sh: 4 14 10 - (11) 133 9. Before selling: 4 14 12 (7) (11) 154 10.After sell 14@12$/sh: 172 - n/a - (18) 154 At this point, assuming that all of the transactions occurred in the same fiscal year, and the realized profits were subject to a 25% short-term capital gains tax, you would owe $18 in taxes. Yes, this is 25% of $172 - $100.", "Index funds can be a very good way to get into the stock market. It's a lot easier, and cheaper, to buy a few shares of an index fund than it is to buy a few shares in hundreds of different companies. An index fund will also generally charge lower fees than an \"actively managed\" mutual fund, where the manager tries to pick which stocks to invest for you. While the actively managed fund might give you better returns (by investing in good companies instead of every company in the index) that doesn't always work out, and the fees can eat away at that advantage. (Stocks, on average, are expected to yield an annual return of 4%, after inflation. Consider that when you see an expense ratio of 1%. Index funds should charge you more like 0.1%-0.3% or so, possibly more if it's an exotic index.) The question is what sort of index you're going to invest in. The Standard and Poor's 500 (S&P 500) is a major index, and if you see someone talking about the performance of a mutual fund or investment strategy, there's a good chance they'll compare it to the return of the S&P 500. Moreover, there are a variety of index funds and exchange-traded funds that offer very good expense ratios (e.g. Vanguard's ETF charges ~0.06%, very cheap!). You can also find some funds which try to get you exposure to the entire world stock market, e.g. Vanguard Total World Stock ETF, NYSE:VT). An index fund is probably the ideal way to start a portfolio - easy, and you get a lot of diversification. Later, when you have more money available, you can consider adding individual stocks or investing in specific sectors or regions. (Someone else suggested Brazil/Russia/Indo-China, or BRICs - having some money invested in that region isn't necessarily a bad idea, but putting all or most of your money in that region would be. If BRICs are more of your portfolio then they are of the world economy, your portfolio isn't balanced. Also, while these countries are experiencing a lot of economic growth, that doesn't always mean that the companies that you own stock in are the ones which will benefit; small businesses and new ventures may make up a significant part of that growth.) Bond funds are useful when you want to diversify your portfolio so that it's not all stocks. There's a bunch of portfolio theory built around asset allocation strategies. The idea is that you should try to maintain a target mix of assets, whatever the market's doing. The basic simplified guideline about investing for retirement says that your portfolio should have (your age)% in bonds (e.g. a 30-year-old should have 30% in bonds, a 50-year-old 50%.) This helps maintain a balance between the volatility of your portfolio (the stock market's ups and downs) and the rate of return: you want to earn money when you can, but when it's almost time to spend it, you don't want a sudden stock market crash to wipe it all out. Bonds help preserve that value (but don't have as nice of a return). The other idea behind asset allocation is that if the market changes - e.g. your stocks go up a lot while your bonds stagnate - you rebalance and buy more bonds. If the stock market subsequently crashes, you move some of your bond money back into stocks. This basically means that you buy low and sell high, just by maintaining your asset allocation. This is generally more reliable than trying to \"time the market\" and move into an asset class before it goes up (and move out before it goes down). Market-timing is just speculation. You get better returns if you guess right, but you get worse returns if you guess wrong. Commodity funds are useful as another way to diversify your portfolio, and can serve as a little bit of protection in case of crisis or inflation. You can buy gold, silver, platinum and palladium ETFs on the stock exchanges. Having a small amount of money in these funds isn't a bad idea, but commodities can be subject to violent price swings! Moreover, a bar of gold doesn't really earn any money (and owning a share of a precious-metals ETF will incur administrative, storage, and insurance costs to boot). A well-run business does earn money. Assuming you're saving for the long haul (retirement or something several decades off) my suggestion for you would be to start by investing most of your money* in index funds to match the total world stock market (with something like the aforementioned NYSE:VT, for instance), a small portion in bonds, and a smaller portion in commodity funds. (For all the negative stuff I've said about market-timing, it's pretty clear that the bond market is very expensive right now, and so are the commodities!) Then, as you do additional research and determine what sort investments are right for you, add new investment money in the places that you think are appropriate - stock funds, bond funds, commodity funds, individual stocks, sector-specific funds, actively managed mutual funds, et cetera - and try to maintain a reasonable asset allocation. Have fun. *(Most of your investment money. You should have a separate fund for emergencies, and don't invest money in stocks if you know you're going need it within the next few years).", "I would not be concerned about the impact to your credit rating. You already have an excellent credit score, and the temporary change to your utilization will have minimal impact to your score. If you really need to make this $2500 purchase and you have the money in the bank to pay for it, I would not recommend borrowing this money. Only put it on the credit card if you plan on paying it off in full without paying interest. Let me ask you this: Why do you want to keep this $2500 in the bank? It certainly isn't earning you anything significant. My guess is that you'd like to keep it there for an emergency. Well, is this $2500 purchase an emergency? If it is necessary, then spend the money. If not, then save up the money until you have enough to make the purchase. It doesn't make sense to keep money for an emergency in the bank, but then when one comes up, to leave the money in the bank and pay interest on your emergency purchase. If you make this emergency purchase and another emergency comes up, you can always (if necessary) borrow the money at that time. It doesn't make sense to borrow money before you need it. That having been said, I would encourage you to build up your emergency fund so that you have enough money in there to handle things like this without completely depleting your savings account. 3 to 6 months of expenses is the general recommendation for your emergency fund. Then if something unplanned comes up, you'll have the money in the bank without having to borrow and pay interest." ]

[ "I wouldn't go into a stock market related investment if you plan on buying a house in 4-5 years, you really need to tie money up in stocks for 10 years plus to be confident of a good return. Of course, you might do well in stocks over 4-5 years but historically it's unlikely. I'd look for a safe place to save some money for the deposit, the more deposit you can get the better as this will lower your loan to valuation (LTV) and therefore you may find you get a better interest rate for your mortgage. Regards the pension, are you paying the maximum you can into the company scheme? If not then top that up as much as you can, company schemes tend to be good as they have low charges, but check the documentation about that and make sure that is the case. Failing that stakeholder pension schemes can also have very low charges, have a look at what's available." ]

[ "Congratulations! I would start with an attorney. As a 17 year old, you legally cannot sign contracts, so you're going to have to setup some sort of structure with your parents first. Get attorney references -- your parents can ask around at work, if you're friendly with any business owners, ask them, etc. Talk to a few and pick someone who you are comfortable with. Ask your attorney for advice re: sole proprietor/S-Corp/LLC. You have assets, and your parents presumably have some assets, so you need advice about isolating your business from the rest of your life. Do the same thing for accountant references, but ask your attorney for a reference as well.", "Is this legal? Why not? But you might have trouble deducting losses on your taxes, especially if you sell to someone related to you in some way (which is indeed what you're doing). See the added portion below regarding dealing with \"related person\" (which a sibling is). The state of Maryland has a transfer/recordation tax of 1.5% for each, the buyer and seller. Would this be computed on the appraised or sale value? You should check with the State. In California property taxes are assessed based on sale value, but if the sale value is bogus the assessors have the right to recalculate. Since you're selling to family, the assessors will likely to intervene and set a more close to \"fair market\" value on the transaction, but again - check the local law. Will this pose any problem if the buyer needs financing? Likely, banks will be suspicious.Since you're giving a discount to your sibling, it will likely not cause a problem for financing. If it was an unrelated person getting such a discount, it would likely to have raised some questions. Would I be able to deduct a capital loss on my tax return? As I said - it may be a problem. If the transaction is between related people - likely not. Otherwise - not sure. Check with a professional tax adviser (EA or CPA licensed in Maryland). You mentioned in the comment that the buyer is a sibling. IRS Publication 544 has a list of what is considered \"related person\", and that includes siblings. So the short answer is NO, you will not be able to deduct the loss. The tax treatment is not trivial in this case, and I suggest to have a professional tax adviser guide you on how to proceed. Here's the definition of \"related person\" from the IRS pub. 544: Members of a family, including only brothers, sisters, half-brothers, half-sisters, spouse, ancestors (parents, grandparents, etc.), and lineal descendants (children, grandchildren, etc.). An individual and a corporation if the individual directly or indirectly owns more than 50% in value of the outstanding stock of the corporation. Two corporations that are members of the same controlled group as defined in section 267(f) of the Internal Revenue Code. A trust fiduciary and a corporation if the trust or the grantor of the trust directly or indirectly owns more than 50% in value of the outstanding stock of the corporation. A grantor and fiduciary, and the fiduciary and beneficiary, of any trust. Fiduciaries of two different trusts, and the fiduciary and beneficiary of two different trusts, if the same person is the grantor of both trusts. A tax-exempt educational or charitable organization and a person who directly or indirectly controls the organization, or a member of that person's family. A corporation and a partnership if the same persons own more than 50% in value of the outstanding stock of the corporation and more than 50% of the capital interest or profits interest in the partnership. Two S corporations if the same persons own more than 50% in value of the outstanding stock of each corporation. Two corporations, one of which is an S corporation, if the same persons own more than 50% in value of the outstanding stock of each corporation. An executor and a beneficiary of an estate unless the sale or exchange is in satisfaction of a pecuniary bequest. Two partnerships if the same persons directly or indirectly own more than 50% of the capital interests or profits interests in both partnerships. A person and a partnership if the person directly or indirectly owns more than 50% of the capital interest or profits interest in the partnership.", "Fake stock market trading may teach you about trading, which isn't necessarily the same thing as investing. I think you need to understand how things work and how to read financial news and statistics before you start trading. Otherwise, you're just going to get frustrated when you mysteriously win and lose funny money. I'd suggest a few things: Also, don't get into individual stocks until you have at least $5k to invest -- focus on saving and use ETFs or mutual funds. You should always invest in around a half dozen diversified stocks at a time, and doing that with less than $1,000 a stock will make it impossible to trade and make money -- If a $100 stock position goes up 20%, you haven't cleared enough to pay your brokerage fees.", "When you say \"promptly paying off the outstanding balance\", do you mean you pay it off literally as soon as you have incurred the debt? It is important to actually let the debt post on a statement before you pay it off. If you pay it off before the statement posts then this won't help your credit at all. Once the statement posts you can pay the entire balance off before the due date and you will still pay no interest. Assuming you are allowing the balance to actually post on your statements, you can simply continue to do this and your credit score will improve over time as your account(s) get older and you show that you are reliable. The only other way to improve your credit score is to open more accounts. In the short term this will actually hurt your score, as it will decrease your average age of account and add an inquiry. However in the mid-long term, this will improve your score as having more accounts of a variety of types is better for your score. Having an installment loan such as an auto loan or home loan is good for your score as it is different from a credit card - however you should definitely not engage in one of these unless it makes financial sense for other reasons. Don't add debt just to build your credit score. You could just open more credit cards. Like I said it will hurt your score in the short term but improve it in the mid-long term. Open cards with a variety of benefits so you can use them for different things to get better rewards.", "A few ideas. I suggest it would wise to consider what lesson is learned as a result of any resolution of a financial issue. Is it a lesson of responsibility and of the importance of keeping one's word, or of getting away with whatever happens (poorly planned business) with no adverse consequences. \"No\" consequences (e.g. forgiven loan) is also a consequence, and it sends a message. Sounds like paying the loan from your savings automatically means it's deducted from inheritance, since the savings are part of that inheritance. This may seem like a square deal if we ignore inflation. Assuming Today the $54K is worth much more than, unless it is adjusted for inflation, the same $54K will be worth (i.e. will allow to buy) a few decades from now, when the inheritance materializes. So this option means your son is foregoing a significantly smaller financial loss in the future in exchange for foregoing his debt completely today. This is like borrowing $54K from a bank now, and only having to forego the same amount decades in the future when it is in fact worth much less. What borrower would not be happy with such arrangement, and what lender would do it? Only one's own loving parents :) You are in charge of what life lessons your son will walk away with from this situation. Good luck!", "You can, in theory, have the stock price go up without any trading actually occurring. It depends on how the price is quoted. The stock price is not always quoted as the last price someone paid for it. It can also be quoted as the ask price, which is the price a seller is willing to sell at, and the price youd pay if you bought at market. If I am a seller, I can raise the asking price at any time. And if there are no other sellers, or at least none that are selling lower than me, it would look like the price is going up. Because it is, it now costs more to buy it. But no trading has actually occurred.", "The point of buying an index fund is that you don't have to pick winners. As long as the winners are included in the index fund (which can include far more than 500 stocks), you benefit on average because of overall upward historical market performance. Picking only the top 50 capitalized stocks in the S&P 500 does not guarantee you will successfully track the S&P 500 index because the stocks in the tail can account for an outsized amount of overall growth; the top 50 stocks by market capitalization change over time, and these stocks are not necessarily the stocks that perform better. As direct example, the 10 year average annual return for the S&P top 50 is 4.52%, while the 10 year average annual return for the S&P 500 is 5.10%. Issues of trading and balancing to maintain these aside, these indices are not the same.", "This is in the balance sheet, but the info is not usually that detailed. It is safe to assume that at least some portion of the cash/cash equivalents will be in liquid bonds. You may find more specific details in the company SEC filings (annual reports etc).", "Firstly, good on you for thinking about it before you commit to it. Next. Chelonian provides lots of detail. Read that answer. Consider the cost of going. Use your local community college. Use a state school. Get a job as an intern or another entry level position, with an employer that will reimburse you for education. Consider the military in the United State. Consider not going. That last one sounds rough, but do you have a very clear idea in your mind what you want to do for a living? I would suggest that at today's costs, figuring out what you want to do should be done before you commit to school.", "Let's ask another question: Why do you buy X at price $Y? Here are some answers: Now, another question: Are you guaranteed to get at least $Y worth of value when you buy X? Of course not! A lot of things can happen. Your car can be a lemon. Your pedigreed Dachshund can get run over by a snowblower. Or, the prices of the underlying commodity or security can go against your futures contract. You can raise your chances of getting appropriate value out of X by doing your homework and hedging your risk. The more homework you do, the less of a gamble you're taking." ]

[ "When inflation is high or is rising generally interest rates will be raised to reduce people spending their money and slow down the rate of inflation. As interest rates rise people will be less willing to borrow money and more willing to keep their money earning a good interest rate in the bank. People will reduce their spending and invest less into alternative assets but instead put more into their bank savings. When inflation is too low and the economy is starting to slow down generally interest rates will be raised to encourage more spending to restart the economy again. As interest rates drop more will take their saving out of their bank accounts as is starts to earn very little in interest rate and more will be willing to borrow as it becomes cheaper to borrow. People will start spending more and investing their money outside of bank savings." ]

[ "Yes, it can buy back the call, but much before stock hits the $30 mark. Let us say you got 1$ from selling the call. So the total money in your account is 4$ + 1 $ = 5 $. When stock hits 10$ (your strike), the maintenance margin is 5$. As soon as stock goes past 10, your maintenance margin is violated. So broker will buy back your call (at least IB does that, it does not wait for a margin call). Now if the stock gapped up from 8 to 30,then yes, broker will buy it back at 30, so your account will have a negative balance. Assume the call cost 20$ when stock hit 30, your balance is: 5 - (30-10) = -15. Depending on broker, I suppose they will ask you to bring your account balance back up to positive. If they don't do that, they risk going out of business.", "You tagged with S-Corp, so I assume that you have that tax status. Under that situation, you don't get taxed on distributions regardless of what you call them. You get taxed on the portion of the net income that is attributable to you through the Schedule K that the S-Corp should distribute to you when the S-Corp files its tax return. You get taxed on that income whether or not it's distributed. If you also work for the small business, then you need to pay yourself a reasonable wage. The amount that you distribute can be one factor in determining reasonableness. That doesn't seem to be what you asked, but it is something to consider.", "This is basically what financial advisers have been saying for years...that you should invest in higher risk securities when you are young and lower risk securities when you get older. However, despite the fact that this is taken as truth by so many financial professionals, financial economists have been unable to formulate a coherent theory that supports it. By changing the preferences of their theoretical investors, they can get solutions like putting all your investments in a super safe asset until you get to a minimum survival level for retirement and then investing aggressively and many other solutions. But for none of the typically assumed preferences does investing aggressively when young and becoming more conservative as you near retirement seem to be the solution. I'm not saying there can be no such preferences, but the difficulty in finding them makes me think maybe this idea is not actually correct. Couple of problems with your intuition that you should think about: It's not clear that things \"average out\" over time. If you lose a bunch of money in some asset, there's no reason to think that by holding that asset for a while you will make back what you lost--prices are not cyclical. Moreover, doesn't your intuition implicitly suggest that you should transition out of risky securities as you get older...perhaps after having lost money? You can invest in safe assets (or even better, the tangency portfolio from your graph) and then lever up if you do want higher risk/return. You don't need to change your allocation to risky assets (and it is suboptimal to do so--you want to move along the CAL, not the curve). The riskiness of your portfolio should generally coincide (negatively) with your risk-aversion. When you are older and more certain about your life expectancy and your assets, are you exposed to more or less risks? In many cases, less risks. This means you would choose a more risky portfolio (because you are more sure you will have enough to live on until death even if your portfolio takes a dive). Your actual portfolio consists both of your investments and your human capital (the present value of your time and skills). When you are young, the value of this capital changes significantly with market performance so you already have background risk. Buying risky securities adds to that risk. When you are old, your human capital is worth little, so your overall portfolio becomes less risky. You might want to compensate by increasing the risk of your investments. EDIT: Note that this point may depend on how risky your human capital is (how likely it is that your wage or job prospects will change with the economy). Overall the answer to your question is not definitively known, but there is theoretical evidence that investing in risky securities when young isn't optimal. Having said that, most people do seem to invest in riskier securities when young and safer when they are older. I suspect this is because with life experience people become less optimistic as they get older, not because it is optimal to do so. But I can't be sure.", "why can't I just use the same trick with my own shares to make money on the way down? Because if you sell shares out of your own portfolio, by definition, you are not selling short at all. If you sell something you own (and deliver it) - then there is no short involved. A short is defined as a net negative position - i.e. you sell shares you do not have. Selling shares you own is selling shares you own - no short involved. You must borrow the shares for a short because in the stock market, you must DELIVER. You can not deliver shares you do not own. The stock market does not work on promises - the person who bought the shares expects ownership of them with all rights that gives them. So you borrow them to deliver them, then return them when you buy them back.", "In addition to the choice that saving for retirement affords - itself a great comfort - the miracle of compounding is so great that even if you chose to work in old age, having set aside sums of money that grow will itself help your future. The are so many versions of the \"saving money in your 20s\" that equals millions of dollars that the numbers aren't worth showing here. Still, any time value of money example will illustrate the truth. That said, time value of money does start with the assumption that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. Inflation, after all, eats away at the value of a dollar. It's just that compounding so outshines inflation that any mature person who is willing to wait, should be convinced. Until you work the examples, however, it's not at all obvious. It took my daughter years to figure out that saving her allowance let her get way better stuff. The same is true of everyone.", "I think that is the wrong approach. You certainly need to teach the value of work, but you cannot tie it to income levels as a hard and fast rule. If you do, how do you then explain athletes making millions per year and only 'working' half a year, at most. And, then comparing that person to a person working hard in a factory, 40-50 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, bringing home $50K per year? I've always taught my kids to work hard and with integrity. And, most importantly, you better enjoy the work you do because no matter how much money you make, if you dread getting up in the morning to go to work, your money won't make you happy. I've never focused on the amount of money they should be making.", "The main reason for paying your mortgage off quickly is to reduce risk should a crisis happen. If you don't have a house payment, you have much higher cash flow every month, and your day-to-day living expenses are much lower, so if an illness or job loss happens, you'll be in a much better position to handle it. You should have a good emergency fund in place before throwing extra money at the mortgage so that you can cover the bigger surprises that come along. There is the argument that paying off your mortgage ties up cash that could be used for other things, but you need to be honest with yourself: would you really invest that money at a high enough rate of return to make up your mortgage interest rate after taxes? Or would you spend it on other things? If you do invest it, how certain are you of that rate of return? Paying off the mortgage saves you your mortgage interest rate guaranteed. Finally, there is the more intangible aspect of what it feels like to be completely debt free with no payments whatsoever. That feeling can be a game-changer for people, and it can free you up to do things that you could never do when you're saddled with a mortgage payment every month.", "Others have tip-toed around this, but I'll just come out and say it. The amount of money you're giving to the church is bordering on irresponsible given that you're just barely breaking even yourself. The best thing you can do if you want to have children is to stop paying such a high amount to the church, and redirect most, if not all, of that money to your savings account.", "Sounds like baloney to me. HELOCs are variable rate, so you are paying down the principal of a fixed rate loan with a variable rate loan. If you want to pay the mortgage down faster, make two half payments per month, and/or add a little extra to each payment (make sure with the bank that any extra will automatically go to principal).", "When you start to buy stock, don't buy too little of it! Stocks come at a cost (you pay a commission), and you need to maintain a deposit, you have to take these costs into account when buying to calculate your break even point for selling. Don't buy stock for less than 1.500€ Also, diversify. Buy stock from different sectors and from different geographies. Spread your risks. Start buying 'defensive' stocks (food, pharma, energy), then move to more dynamic sectors (telecom, informatics), lastly buy stock from risky sectors that are not mature markets (Internet businesses). Lastly, look for high dividend. That's always nice at the end of the year." ]

[ "It's generally a bad idea to use low-risk credit (low-risk in sense you're practically guaranteed to be forced to pay it off) to buy high-risk shares. In optimistic scenario, the profit from shares would be higher than your credit percentages. In less optimistic scenario you come with nothing. In worse scenario you have worthless shares and another credit to pay. If your only problem is the non-profitable property, you can always sell it and get rid of negative cash flow. It won't affect your quality of life negatively. In your high-risk scenario you trade the opportunity for a bit better life with for a risk of turning it into disaster for you and your family." ]

[ "Use VTIVX. The \"Target Retirement 2045\" and \"Target Retirement 2045 Trust Plus\" are the same underlying fund, but the latter is offered through employers. The only differences I see are the expense ratio and the minimum investment dollars. But for the purposes of comparing funds, it should be pretty close. Here is the list of all of Vanguard's target retirement funds. Also, note that the \"Trust Plus\" hasn't been around as long, so you don't see the returns beyond the last few years. That's another reason to use plain VTIVX for comparison. See also: Why doesn't a mutual fund in my 401(k) have a ticker symbol?", "Honestly? The maximum number really doesn't matter. If you're investing long-term, you buy in when it looks like an OK deal (still undervalued but looks like it'll grow), and you sell when it looks like the stock has reached a peak it won't reach again for a while if ever. However many stocks you can keep track of on those kinds of terms is how many stocks should be in your portfolio.", "If you're worried about investing all at once, you can deploy your starting chunk of cash gradually by investing a bit of it each month, quarter, etc. (dollar-cost averaging). The financial merits and demerits of this have been debated, but it is unlikely to lose you a lot of money, and if it has the psychological benefit of inducing you to invest, it can be worth it even if it results in slightly less-than-optimal gains. More generally, you are right with what you say at the end of your question: in the long run, when you start won't matter, as long as you continue to invest regularly. The Boglehead-style index-fund-based theory is basically that, yes, you might save money by investing at certain times, but in practice it's almost impossible to know when those times are, so the better choice is to just keep investing no matter what. If you do this, you will eventually invest at high and low points, so the ups and downs will be moderated. Also, note that from this perspective, your example of investing in 2007 is incorrect. It's true that a person who put money in 2007, and then sat back and did nothing, would have barely broken even by now. But a person who started to invest in 2007, and continued to invest throughout the economic downturn, would in fact reap substantial rewards due to continued investing throughout the post-2007 lows. (Happily, I speak from experience on this point!)", "Dividends are normally paid in cash, so don't generally affect your portfolio aside from a slight increase to 'cash'. You get a check for them, or your broker would deposit the funds into a money-market account for you. There is sometimes an option to re-invest dividends, See Westyfresh's answer regarding Dividend Re-Investment Plans. As Tom Au described, the dividends are set by the board of directors and announced. Also as he indicated just before the 'record' date, a stock which pays dividends is worth slightly more (reflecting the value of the dividend that will be paid to anyone holding the stock on the record date) and goes down by the dividend amount immediately after that date (since you'd now have to hold the stock till the next record date to get a dividend) In general unless there's a big change in the landscape (such as in late 2008) most companies pay out about the same dividend each time, and changes to this are sometimes seen by some as 'indicators' of company health and such news can result in movement in the stock price. When you look at a basic quote on a ticker symbol there is usually a line for Div/yeild which gives the amount of dividend paid per share, and the relative yeild (as a percentage of the stock price). If a company has been paying dividends, this field will have values in it, if a company does not pay a dividend it will be blank or say NA (depending on where you get the quote). This is the easiest way to see if a company pays a dividend or not. for example if you look at this quote for Google, you can see it pays no dividend Now, in terms of telling when and how much of a dividend has been paid, most financial sites have the option when viewing a stock chart to show the dividend payments. If you expand the chart to show at least a year, you can see when and how much was paid in terms of dividends. For example you can see from this chart that MSFT pays dividends once a quarter, and used to pay out 13 cents, but recently changed to 16 cents. if you were to float your mouse over one of those icons it would also give the date the dividend was paid.", "If I were in your shoes I would concentrate now on investing in yourself. Your greatest wealth building tool is your income. Going to school is great, make sure you can finish. Also is there additional coursework you can obtain that might help boost your salary? I would look for course in the following areas that might be outside your core competency: After that I would concentrate on some books that will help you in your journey. However, I would not start investing until you have a well paying full time job: That will get you started.", "I recommend that people think for themselves and get a multitude of counselors. The more you understand about what drives the prices of various assets, the better. Getting to good advice for a particular person depends on the financial picture for that person. For example, if they have a lot of consumer debt, then they probably would be better off paying off the debt before investing, as earning 5% (say) in the stock market year over year will be eaten up by the 18%+ they may be paying on their credit cards. Here's a starter list of the types of information that would be better to have in order to get fair investment advice.", "Wikipedia has a detailed article explaining this. A standard, commercial letter of credit (LC) is a document issued mostly by a financial institution, used primarily in trade finance, which usually provides an irrevocable payment undertaking. So yes, they are primarily for use by businesses. If you will read the article stating the terms and conditions for payment and shipment you will realize that such model won't be of much value to and will create many hurdles for a typical consumer. Yes, you can cash a letter of credit but only once the conditions in the letter have been met (e.g., delivery/shipment of goods/services). An array of documents need to be presented as well. Whether it is easy or not is a very subjective question. A bank will issue a letter of credit only when it is reasonably sure that its risk is covered --either backed by a bank deposit or by conditions in the letter itself. Obviously derivatives on these letters have evolved as well.", "The standard interpretation of \"can I afford to retire\" is \"can I live on just the income from my savings, never touching the principal.\" To estimate that, you need to make reasonable guesses about the return you expect, the rate of inflation, your real costs -- remember to allow for medical emergencies, major house repairs, and the like when determining you average needs, not to mention taxes if this isn't all tax-sheltered! -- and then build in a safety factor. You said liquid assets, and that's correct; you don't want to be forced into a reverse mortgage by anything short of a disaster. An old rule of thumb was that -- properly invested -- you could expect about 4% real return after subtracting inflation. That may or may not still be correct, but it makes an easy starting point. If we take your number of $50k/year (today's dollars) and assume you've included all the tax and contingency amounts, that means your nest egg needs to be 50k/.04, or $1,250,000. (I'm figuring I need at least $1.8M liquid assets to retire.) The $1.5M you gave would, under this set of assumptions, allow drawing up to $60k/year, which gives you some hope that your holdings would mot just maintain themselves but grow, giving you additional buffer against emergencies later. Having said that: some folks have suggested that, given what the market is currently doing, it might be wiser to assume smaller average returns. Or you may make different assumptions about inflation, or want a larger emergency buffer. That's all judgement calls, based on your best guesses about the economy in general and your investments in particular. A good financial advisor (not a broker) will have access to better tools for exploring this, using techniques like monte-carlo simulation to try to estimate both best and worst cases, and can thus give you a somewhat more reliable answer than this rule-of-thumb approach. But that's still probabilities, not promises. Another way to test it: Find out how much an insurance company would want as the price of an open-ended inflation-adjusted $50k-a-year annuity. Making these estimates is their business; if they can't make a good guess, nobody can. Admittedly they're also factoring the odds of your dying early into the mix, but on the other hand they're also planning on making a profit from the deal, so their number might be a reasonable one for \"self-insuring\" too. Or might not. Or you might decide that it's worth buying an annuity for part or all of this, paying them to absorb the risk. In the end, \"ya pays yer money and takes yer cherce.\"", "Risks:", "Regarding the mortgage company, they will want to know where the down payment came from, and as long as you are honest about it, there is no fraud. It's possible that the mortgage company may have some reservations about the deal now that they know where the down payment came from, but that will depend on the size of the deal and other factors. If everyone involved has decent credit, and this is a fairly standard mortgage, it will probably have no impact at all." ]

[ "The complete opposite of \"sunk cost\" is the term \"unrealized gain\"; until you sell it, then it is a \"realized gain\". There is also a term \"paper profit\" to point out the ephemeral nature of some of these unrealized gains." ]

[ "Absolute scam. Any time anyone asks you to open a bank account so they can send you money and then you have to send some portion of it back to them, it's a guarantee that it's a scam. What happens is that your dad will deposit the check and transfer it to this woman, then the check will bounce (or turn out to be fake altogether) and your dad will be on the hook for the money to the bank. These schemes are dependent on the fact that people want hope and believe in quick, easy money, and it works as long as the con artists are able to get the 'mark' (the person who deposits the check and sends them the money) to send the money before the check (always drawn on some obscure foreign bank) has a chance to clear. This is another variation of a long-running type of bank scam, and if you get involved, you'll regret it. I hope you can keep your dad from getting involved, because it will create a financial mess and affect his credit as well. The basic premise of this scam is this: In the interests of providing good customer service, most banks will make some or all of a deposit available right away, even though the check hasn't cleared. The scammer has you withdraw the money (either a cashier's check, have you send a wire transfer, etc) immediately and send it to them. Eventually the check is returned because it is The bank charges the check back against your account, often imposing pretty substantial penalties and fees, so you as the account holder are left without the money you sent the scammer and all of the fees. This is the easy version of events. You could end up in legal trouble, depending on the nature of the scam and what they determine your involvement to be. It will certainly badly affect your banking history (ChexSystems tracks how we all treat bank accounts, much like the credit agencies do with our credit), so you may have trouble opening bank accounts. So there are many consequences to this to think about, and it's why you JUST SAY NO!! Don't walk away from this -- RUN!!!", "I am not sure about transferwise and how they work, but generally when I had to transfer money across countries, I ended up using a foreign currency/transfer company who needed the destination account details i.e. a GBP account in the UK in your case, and money from the source account. Basically that means your father would need to open an EUR account, probably in an EU country (is this an option?) but may be in the UK is fine too depending on transfer fees. And a GBP account in the UK, perhaps see if there is a better business account than HSBC around, I have used them as well as Santander before. The only FX transaction done in this straightforward set up is the one performed by the specialised company (there are a few) - and their spread (difference between interbank i.e. \"official\" and your price) is likely to be around 1.0 - 1.5%. The other expenses are transfer fees to the FX company account, say a flat fee of $25 for the SWIFT payment. The full amount less the spread above then goes to your UK GBP account. There are still the running costs of both EUR and GBP accounts of course, but here the advice would be just to shop around for offers/free banking periods etc. Point being, given the saving in FX conversion, it might still be a better overall deal than just letting HSBC deal with it all.", "Depends on the country, whether its a currency issuer with floating exchange rate, and what the debt is denominated in. For instance, the US has no real debt, b/c its all in US dollars and can be printed at any time. It has no need to borrow anything, it issues its own currency. It used to be different 4 decades ago, on the gold standard, so in general people still think currency issuers need to borrow (or earn) to spend. Just a relic in thinking. But when the country does not issue its own currency, then it does need to earn or borrow in order to spend. In this case, it could borrow from anywhere that will lend it money. In US, a state would fit this description. Or Greece, as it borrowed Euros, for which it is not an issuer of. EDIT: just came across this blog http://pragcap.com/where-does-the-money-come-from Its title, \"Where does the money come from\". Maybe he saw this question. Anyway, the US does not need to borrow money. Why would it borrow what it creates? From the video: \"Thinking is hard, that's why we don't do it a lot\". Great line.", "Assuming here that you're talking about deducting your tuition as a below the line deduction as a business expense or similar, then it depends. Per 1.162-5, if the education: Then it qualifies as a legitimate business expense and is deductible. If not - if you're going to school for a different career, such as someone employed as a waiter but going to school to get a degree in nursing, or someone employed as a teacher getting a law degree - then it's not; you'd have to qualify under one of the other (simpler, but lesser) credits. Read more on this topic at Tax topic 513. Note that the other most commonly applicable deduction - the above the line Tuition and Fees deduction - expired in 2016 and is not applicable (yet?) in 2017, and further would not require most of what you describe as it only counts tuition and fees paid directly to the institution and required as a condition of attendance, so books, parking, etc. don't count.", "I'm not good at persuasion, and I'm not an expert at any of this, but here's what I've been thinking. Rather than telling him that he shouldn't rack up more debt, I'd ask him whether he's planning for his debt levels to increase, remain static, or decrease over the next five years. Try to make it feel like he's the one reaching the conclusion that he should be decreasing his debt load. If he says that he's fine with his debt levels remaining static or increasing, then I don't have any further advice. If he says he's trying to decrease his debt level, but it's actually increasing, then maybe he's in denial.", "I assume that when you say 'the DOW' that you actually mean the general market. The ticker symbol for the general market is SPY (called a 'Spider'). The ticker symbol for Nasdaq is QQQ. SPY currently pays 2.55% in dividends in a year. QQQ currently pays 1.34% in dividends in a year.", "I think that people only use the phrase \"only spend what you can afford to lose\" when they are talking about the most risky or speculative investments, or even gambling. When talking about gambling, the following quote is a bottom line: The speculative investment that brought me to this question via google is how much should I invest in Bitcoin? I was tempted to put in 10% of my investments, not including the 6 month safety fund and not including equity in my home. Now thinking about this question, it seems that it depends on your income as a percentage of your investment income (which should grow in proportion to the whole over time). For example: Early stage of career, not much investment income: 20% Mid career: 5% Mid-late career, moving to more safe investments: 5% Late career, retirement: 1% Another way to calculate would be as a percentage of the amount you put into retirement savings per year. Maybe 10% of this figure when you're young and 1% nearer to retirement.", "There's not quite enough to answer the question in full. For the two years of non-payment, were there any penalties, or just accrued interest? If no penalties, this is a 3 step time-value-of-money calculation. First, take the terms of the loan and figure out the balance after 5 years. Second, for two years, increase the balance by the monthly interest rate. Last, calculate a new payment with a 13 year duration. Excel or any business calculator can handle this.", "For an RRSP, you do not have to pay taxes on money or investments until you withdraw the money. If you do not reinvest the dividends but instead, take them out as cash, that would be withdrawing the money. For mutual funds, you would normally reinvest the dividends if holding the investment inside an RRSP. For stocks, I believe the dividends would end up sitting in the cash part of your RRSP account (and you'd probably use the money to buy more stocks, though would not be required to do so). Either way, you do not pay tax on this investment income unless you withdraw it from your RRSP. For example, you invest $10,000 inside your RRSP. You get the tax benefit from doing so. You get dividends of $1,000 (hey, it was a good year), and use these to buy more stock. As the money never left your RRSP account, you are considered to have invested only your initial $10,000. If instead, you withdraw the $1,000 in dividends, you are taxed on $1000 income. TFSA are slightly more complicated. You don't get a tax benefit from your initial contribution, but then do not pay tax when you withdraw from the TFSA. Your investment income is still tax-free, and you are (generally) much more limited in how much you can contribute. For example, you invest $10,000 inside your TFSA. You get dividends of $1,000, and use these to buy more stock. Your total contributions to your TFSA remains at $10,000 as the money never left your account. You could instead withdraw the $1000 from your TFSA and would not pay tax on it. In the next calendar year (or later) after the withdrawal, you could \"repay\" the $1000 you took out without suffering an overcontribution penalty. This makes TFSA an excellent place to park emergency funds, as you can withdraw and subsequently replace the investment while continuing to get the tax benefits on your investment income. RRSPs are better for retirement or for the home buyers plan. In general, you should not be withdrawing money from either your TFSA or RRSP, except in emergencies, when retiring, or when purchasing a home. I prefer indexed mutual funds or money market accounts for both my RRSP and TFSA rather than individual stocks, but that's up to you.", "I agree with the other posters that you will need to seek the advice of a tax attorney specializing in corporate taxation. Here is an idea to investigate: Could you sell the company, and thereby turn the profits that are taxed as ordinary income into a long-term capital gain (taxed at 15%, plus state income tax, if any)? You can determine the value of a profitable business using discounted cash flow analysis, even if you expect that the revenue stream will dry up due to product obsolescence or expiry of licensing agreements. To avoid the capital gains taxes (especially if you live in a high-tax state like California), you could also transfer the stock to a Charitable Remainder Trust. The CRT then sells the shares to the third-party acquirer, invests the proceeds and pays you annual distributions (similar to an annuity). The flip side of a sale is that now the acquiring party will be stuck with the taxes payable on your company's profits (while being forced to amortize the purchase price over multiple years -- 15, if I recall correctly), which will factor into the valuation. However, it is likely that the acquirer has better ways to mitigate the tax impact (e.g. the acquirer is a company currently operating at a loss, and therefore can cancel out the tax liabilities from your company's profits). One final caveat: Don't let the tax tail wag the business dog. In other words, focus your energies on extracting the maximum value from your company, rather than trying to find convoluted tax saving strategies. You might find that making an extra dollar in profits is easier than saving fifty cents in taxes." ]

[ "Regarding auto insurance, you have to look at the different parts. In the United Sates most states do require a level of specific coverage for all drivers. That is to make sure that if you are at fault there is money available to pay the victims. That payment may be for damage to their car or other property, but it also covers medical costs. Many policies also cover you if the other driver doesn't have insurance. The policy that covers the loss of the vehicle is required if you have a loan or are leasing the car. Somebody else owns it while there is a loan, so they can and do require you to pay to protect the vehicle. If there i no loan you don't have to have that portion of a policy. Other parts such as towing, roadside assistance, and rental cars replacement may be required by the insurance standards for your state, or might be almost impossible to drop because all insurance companies include it to stay competitive with their competition. Dropping the non-required parts of the coverage is acceptable when you don't have a loan. Some people do drop it to save money. But that does mean you are self insuring. If you can afford to self insure a new car, great. The interesting thing is that some people have more than enough assets to self inure the non-required part of auto insurance. But then they realize that they do need to up their umbrella liability insurance. This is to protect them from somebody deciding that their resources make them a tempting target when they are involved in a collision." ]

[ "Yes, you can do this buy placing a conditional order to buy at market if the price moves to 106 or above. Once the price hits 106 your market order will hit the market and you will purchase the stock at 106 or above. You can also place a tack profit order at 107 linked to your initial conditional buy order, so that once you buy order is executed and you buy at 106, a take profit order will be executed only if the price reaches 107 or above. If the price never reaches 106, neither your market buy order or take profit order will hit the market and you won't buy or sell anything.", "One way to \"get into the real estate market\" is to invest your money in a fund which has its value tied to real estate. For example, a Real Estate Investment Trust. This fund would fluctuate largely inline with the property values in the area(s) where the fund puts its money. This would have a few (significant) changes from 'traditional' real estate investing, including:", "There is no free ride at most brokers. You will likely be charged a margin fee for that trade even though you only held the margin shares for part of one day. The margin fee would be the annual margin interest rate calculated down to a one day holding period,so it would be smaller. Check your broker's policies but most work like this.", "You realize that most of the money raised through the IPO process doesn't go into the company's bank account? Those shares were shares that were held by the investors and original owners and it's those prior pre-IPO shareholders that got their money back along with a tidy profit. The cash on its books was there before the IPO, and after. The IPO process was more about a change in stock owners ship than anything else. Edit - as the SEC disclosure mentioned in comments below states, the Facebook IPO raised $6.7B for facebook's use, the rest of the transaction was from the investors selling their shares. Mark Zuckerberg still owns more than 55% of shares outstanding. The $6.7B is still about 10% of the company value. Nothing to ignore, but clearly, 'most' of the money from the IPO didn't go to the company.", "I do know that a blank check has all the information they need for the electronic transfer. They probably add it as a customer service to streamline future payments. Though I don't think automatically adding it makes good business sense. It is possible that the form used to submit the check included a line to added the account to the list of authorized accounts. He might have been lucky he didn't set up a recurring payment. I would check the website to see if there is a tool to remove the account info from the list of payment options. There has to be a way to edit the list so that if you change banks you can update the information, yet not keep the old accounts on the list. Talk to customer service if the website doesn't have a way of removing the account. Tell them that you have to edit the account information. And give them your info. If they balk at the change tell them that they could be committing fraud if the money is pulled from an unauthorized account.", "There are a lot of moving parts, individual premiums and annual increases have little to do with employer premiums and annual increases and vice versa. Most people think of XYZ insurer as a single company with a single pool of insured folks. This common knowledge isn't accurate. Insurers pool their business segments separately. This means that Individual, small business, mid-size business, and large business are all different operating segments from the viewpoint of the insurer. It's possible to argue that because so many people are covered by employer plans that individual plans have a hard time accumulating the required critical mass of subscribers to keep increases reasonable. Age banded rating: Individual coverage and small group coverage is age rated, meaning every year you get older. In addition to your age increase, the premium table for your plan also receives an increase. Employers with 100+ eligible employees are composite rated (in general), meaning every employee costs the same amount. The 18 year old employee costs $500 per month, the 64 year old costs $500 per month. Generally, the contributions an employee pays to participate in the plan are also common among all ages. This means that on a micro level increases can be more incremental because the employer is abstracting the gross premium. Composite rating generally benefits older folks while age rating generally benefits younger folks. Employer Morale Incentive: Generally the cost to an employee covered by an employer plan isn't directly correlated to the gross premium, and increases to the contribution(s) aren't necessarily correlated to the increases the employer receives. Employers are incentivised by employee morale. It's pretty common for employers to shoulder a disproportionate amount of an increase to keep everyone happy. Employers may offset the increase by shopping some ancillary benefit like group life insurance, or bundling the dental program with the medical carrier. Remember, employees don't pay premiums they pay contributions and some employers are more generous than others. Employers are also better at budgeting for planned increases than individuals are. Regulators: In many of the states that are making the news because of their healthcare premium increases there simply isn't a regulator scrutinizing increases. California requires all individual and small group premiums to be filed with the state and increases must be justified with some sort of math and approved by a regulator. Without this kind of oversight insurers have only the risk of subscriber flight to adjust plan provisions and press harder during provider contract negotiations. Expiring Transitional Reinsurance Fee and Funds: One of the fees introduced by healthcare reform paid by insurers and self-insured employers established a pot of money that individual plans could tap to cope with the new costs of the previously uninsurable folks. This fee and corresponding pot of money is set to expire and can no longer be taken in to account by underwriters. Increased Treatment Availability: It's important that as new facilities go online, insurer costs will increase. If a little town gets a new cancer clinic, that pool will see more cancer treatment costs simply as a result of increased treatment availability. Consider that medical care inflation is running at about 4.9% annually as of the most recent CPI table, the rest of the increases will result from the performance of that specific risk pool. If that risk pool had a lot of cancer diagnoses, you're looking at a big increase. If that risk pool was under priced the prior year you will see an above average increase, etc.", "Glad my question got bumped. I took it as a sign to get a solid answer out of Schwab. First the rep gave me the same line that it was impossible to provide paperless statements for a 401(k) plan because of \"regulations\". I pressed the issue and got this from the rep: I just spoke with our dedicated small business plan team. They told me that there are regulations that state that a Qualified Plan, such as this, require to have a statement sent. It is a Schwab policy that we have decided to only allow paper statements for this account type. So to clarify, it is a Schwab business decision to have the statements available only by mail. Hope someone from Schwab with some authority sees this post and is pushed toward helping change their policy. I can't imagine what a colossal waste of paper, postage, and hassle it is for everyone involved.", "Your financial advisor got a pretty good commission for selling you the annuity is what happened. As for transferring it over to Vanguard (or any other company) and investing it in something else, go to Vanguard's site, tell them that you want to open a new Roth IRA account by doing a trustee-to-trustee transfer from your other Roth IRA account, and tell them to go get the funds for you from your current Roth IRA trustee. You will need to sign some papers authorizing Vanguard to go fetch, make sure all the account numbers and the name of the current trustee (usually a company with a name that includes Trust or Fiduciary as shown on your latest statement) are correct, and sit back and wait while your life improves.", "If you've been paying on the car for three years, it's possible that your credit is in a place where you don't need a co-signer any more. See if your bank will re-fi with you as the sole debtor. If they won't do it, find another institution who will. The re-fi will take your grandpa off the loan, and whichever institution that does the re-fi will still have a lien on the title until you pay it off. Then, if you can do this soon enough, figure out if grandpa can sign you off the title.", "As a TL;DR version of JAGAnalyst's excellent answer: the buying company doesn't need every last share; all they need is to get 51% of the voting bloc to agree to the merger, and to vote that way at a shareholder meeting. Or, if they can get a supermajority (90% in the US), they don't even need a vote. Usually, a buying company's first option is a \"friendly merger\"; they approach the board of directors (or the direct owners of a private company) and make a \"tender offer\" to buy the company by purchasing their controlling interest. The board, if they find the offer attractive enough, will agree, and usually their support (or the outright sale of shares) will get the company the 51% they need. Failing the first option, the buying company's next strategy is to make the same tender offer on the open market. This must be a public declaration and there must be time for the market to absorb the news before the company can begin purchasing shares on the open market. The goal is to acquire 51% of the total shares in existence. Not 51% of market cap; that's the number (or value) of shares offered for public trading. You could buy 100% of Facebook's market cap and not be anywhere close to a majority holding (Zuckerberg himself owns 51% of the company, and other VCs still have closely-held shares not available for public trading). That means that a company that doesn't have 51% of its shares on the open market is pretty much un-buyable without getting at least some of those private shareholders to cash out. But, that's actually pretty rare; some of your larger multinationals may have as little as 10% of their equity in the hands of the upper management who would be trying to resist such a takeover. At this point, the company being bought is probably treating this as a \"hostile takeover\". They have options, such as: However, for companies that are at risk of a takeover, unless management still controls enough of the company that an overruling public stockholder decision would have to be unanimous, the shareholder voting body will often reject efforts to activate these measures, because the takeover is often viewed as a good thing for them; if the company's vulnerable, that's usually because it has under-performing profits (or losses), which depresses its stock prices, and the buying company will typically make a tender offer well above the current stock value. Should the buying company succeed in approving the merger, any \"holdouts\" who did not want the merger to occur and did not sell their stock are \"squeezed out\"; their shares are forcibly purchased at the tender price, or exchanged for equivalent stock in the buying company (nobody deals in paper certificates anymore, and as of the dissolution of the purchased company's AOI such certs would be worthless), and they either move forward as shareholders in the new company or take their cash and go home." ]

[ "I held shares in BIND Therapeutics, a small biotechnology company on the NASDAQ that was liquidated on the chapter 11 auction block in 2016. There were sufficient proceeds to pay the debts and return some cash to shareholders, with payments in 2016 and 2017. (Some payments have yet to occur.) The whole process is counter-intuitive and full of landmines, both for tax preparation & planning and receiving payments: Landmine 0: Some shareholders will sell in a panic as soon as the chapter 11 is announced. This would have been a huge mistake in the case of BIND, because the eventual liquidation payments were worth 3 or so times as much as the share price after chapter 11. The amount of the liquidation payments wasn't immediately calculable, because the company's intellectual property had to be auctioned. Landmine 1: The large brokerages (Vanguard, Fidelity, TDA, and others) mischaracterized the distributions to shareholders on form 1099, distributed to both shareholders and the IRS. The bankruptcy trustee considered this to be their responsibility. According to the tax code and to the IRS website, the liquidation is taxed like a sale of stock, rather than a dividend. \"On the shareholder level, a complete liquidation can be thought of as a sale of all outstanding corporate stock held by the shareholders in exchange for all of the assets in that corporation. Like any sale of stock, the shareholder receives capital gain treatment on the difference between the amount received by the shareholder in the distribution and the cost or other basis of the stock.\" Mischaracterizing the distributions as dividends makes them wrongly ineligible to be wiped out by the enormous capital loss on the stock. Vanguard's error appeared on my own 1099, and the others were mentioned in an investor discussion on stocktwits. However, Geoffrey L Berman, the bankruptcy trustee stated on twitter that while the payments are NOT dividends, the 1099s were the brokers' responsibility. Landmine 2: Many shareholders will wrongly attempt to claim the capital loss for tax year 2016, or they may have failed to understand the law in time for proper tax planning for tax year 2016. It does not matter that the company's BINDQ shares were cancelled in 2016. According to the IRS website \"When a shareholder receives a series of distributions in liquidation, gain is recognized once all of the shareholder's stock basis is recovered. A loss, however, will not be recognized until the final distribution is received.\" In particular, shareholders who receive the 2017 payment will not be able to take a capital loss for tax year 2016 because the liquidation wasn't complete. Late discovery of this timing issue no doubt resulted in an end-of-year underestimation of 2016 overall capital gains for many, causing a failure to preemptively realize available capital losses elsewhere. I'm not going to carefully consider the following issues, which may or may not have some effect on the timing of the capital loss: Landmine 3: Surprisingly, it appears that some shareholders who sold their shares in 2016 still may not claim the capital loss for tax year 2016, because they will receive a liquidation distribution in 2017. Taken at face value, the IRS website's statement \"A loss, however, will not be recognized until the final distribution is received\" appears to apply to shareholders of record of August 30, 2016, who receive the payouts, even if they sold the shares after the record date. However, to know for sure it might be worth carefully parsing the relevant tax code and treasury regs. Landmine 4: Some shareholders are completely cut out of the bankruptcy distribution. The bankruptcy plan only provides distributions for shareholders of record Aug 30, 2016. Those who bought shares of BINDQ afterwards are out of luck. Landmine 5: According to the discussion on stocktwits, many shareholders have yet to receive or even learn of the existence of a form [more secure link showing brokers served here] required to accept 2017 payments. To add to confusion there is apparently ongoing legal wrangling over whether the trustee is able to require this form. Worse, shareholders report difficulty getting brokers' required cooperation in submitting this form. Landmine 6: Hopefully there are no more landmines. Boom. DISCLAIMER: I am not a tax professional. Consult the tax code/treasury regulations/IRS publications when preparing your taxes. They are more trustworthy than accountants, or at least more trustworthy than good ones." ]

[ "Varying the amount to reflect income during the quarter is entirely legitimate -- consider someone like a salesman whose income is partly driven by commissions, and who therefore can't predict the total. The payments are quarterly precisely so you can base them on actual results. Having said that, I suspect that as long as you show Good Intent they won't quibble if your estimate is off by a few percent. And they'll never complain if you overpay. So it may not be worth the effort to change the payment amount for that last quarter unless the income is very different.", "I guess the answer lies in your tax jurisdiction (different countries tax capital gains and income differently) and your particular tax situation. If the price of the stock goes up or down between when you buy and sell then this counts for tax purposes as a capital gain or loss. If you receive a dividend then this counts as income. So, for instance, if you pay tax on income but not on capital gains (or perhaps at a lower rate on capital gains) then it would pay you to sell immediately before the stock goes ex-dividend and buy back immediately after thereby making a capital gain instead of receiving income.", "That is a loaded question but I'll give it a shot. First things first you need to determine if you are ready to invest in stocks. If you have a lot of high interest debt you would be much better served paying that off before investing in stocks. Stocks return around 8%-10% in the long run, so you'd be better off paying off any debt you have that is higher than 8%-10%. Most people get their start investing in stocks through mutual funds in their 401k or a Roth IRA. If you want to invest in individual stocks instead of mutual funds then you will need to do a lot of reading and learning. You will need a brokerage account or if you have a stock in mind they might have a dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP) that you could invest in directly with the company. You will have to compare the different brokerage firms to determine which is best for you. Since you seem to be internet savvy, I suggest you use a discount brokerage that let's you buy stocks online with cheaper commissions. A good rule of thumb is to keep commissions below 1% of the amount invested. Once you have your online brokerage account open with money in there the process of actually buying the stock is fairly straightforward. Just place an order for the amount of shares you want. That order can be a market order which means the purchase will occur at the current market price. Or you can use a limit order where you control at what price your purchase will occur. There are lots of good books out there for beginners. Personally I learned from the Motley Fool. And last but not least is to have fun with it. Learn as much as you can and welcome to the club.", "A futures contract is based upon a particular delivery date. In the case of a stock index futures contract is a cash settled futures contract based upon the stock index value at a particular point in time (i.e. this is when the final settlement is determined). In your example, the S&P 500 (SPX) is a price return index - that is, it is not affected by dividends and therefore dividends are not incorporated into the index value. Dividends will affect the price of the constituent stocks (not necessarily by the same amount as the dividend) so they do have influence on the stock index value. Since the dividends are known ahead of time (or at least can be estimated), this has already been factored into the futures price by the market. In terms of the impact of a dividend by AAPL, AAPL is approximaetely 3.6% of the index. Apple pays out dividends 4 times a year (currently paying out $0.52 dividends). Assuming the market is otherwise steady and AAPL drops by $0.52 due to the dividend and Apple is priced at around $105, this would result in a drop in the index of 0.0178% or around 0.35 points. Interesting fact: There are some futures contracts that are based upon Total Return indexes, such as the German DAX and the above logic would need to be reversed.", "quid's answer explains the settlement period well. However, it should be noted that you can avoid the settlement period by opening a margin account. Any specific broker like Schwab may or may not offer margin accounts. Margin accounts allow you to borrow money to avoid the settlement period or to buy more securities than you can actually afford. Note that if you buy more securities than you can afford using margin, you expose yourself to losses potentially larger than your initial investment. If you fund your account with $50,000 and use margin to purchase $80,000 of stock which then drops in value by 80% you will have lost $64,000 and owe the broker $14,000 plus fees.", "I'm not sure what you mean by \"writing off your time,\" but to answer your questions: Remember that, essentially, you are a salaried employee of a corporation. So if you are spending time at your job, even if you are not billing anything to a client, you are earning your salary. If there are costs involved with these activities (maybe class fees, a book purchase, or travel expenses), the corporation should be paying the costs as business expenses. However, the logistics of this, whether the corporation writes a business check to the vendor directly, or you put the expenses on a personal credit card and are reimbursed with an expense check from the corporation, don't matter. Your accountant can show you the right way to do this.", "Depends on how you value your time. These programs do not say they will get you the lowest basement price; they say you get a reasonable price without negotiation. This is true. Use a service. Pick out the car you want and spend less than an afternoon picking up your vehicle. You don't have to fret or do all of the price research or comparison shopping because that is what the service does for you. Since you have to pick a make and model before you begin AND because you need to arrange your financing at a credit union before you being (regardless of a buying service) I don't think they actually work out financially for most folks. My anecdote: Because we were buying an already inexpensive new car, the Costco pre-negotiated discount was just a few hundred bucks. The discount is different for each car (naturally). Our base model was terrific in consumer reports, but the sticker price doesn't leave dealerships a lot of room for profit to start with. We ended up saving a couple thousand dollars by skipping the Costco program and following these tips from JohnFX: What are some tips for getting the upper hand in car price negotiations? But we did it all over email. We emailed any dealership we could find online that was in driving distance. (There were literally dozens of dealerships to choose from.) We made a new, throw away email address and starting to ask for a lower price. Whenever we got a lower price, we simply asked the others to beat it. All over email. It only took a few days, we know we got a low price and the stress really wasn't a factor. (A couple of the salespeople got a little rude, but it was over the email so we didn't care or fret.) I had time to kill, and the extra hassle and effort saved me much more money.", "In your comment in response to this answer, you said that your biggest issue is oversight, which you can do by checking your online bank account regularly. Mint.com looks good but you're in Australia? Easy, check out getpocketbook.com. Using it and love it, helps a lot to track your tracking, and it's a god-send during tax time.", "A couple ways, but its not a guarantee. You have to have special charts. Instead of each tick being 1 min, 5 min, or whatever, it is a set number of trades. Say 2000. Since retail investors only buy and sell in small amounts, there will be small volume per tick. An institutional investor, however, would have a much much higher trade lot size, even if using an algo. Thus, large volume spikes in such a chart would signal institutional activity over retail. Similarly, daily charts showing average trade size can help you pick out when institutional activity is highest, as they have much larger trade sizes. You could also learn how the algos work and look for evidence one is being used. ie every time price hits VWAP a large sell order goes through would indicate an institutional investor is selling, especially if it happens multiple times in a row.", "The option commissions with IB for trading in the US market are between $0.25 to $0.70 per contract. However if you are looking to trade in Canada, where you are from, their option commission for Canada are $1.50 per contract (as you mention in your question). Note that each contract is for 100 shares, so if you wanted to trade the equivalent of 1000 shares, you would need to trade 10 contracts, so you would have to multiply the above commissions by 10 to get your final costs. (i.e. $2.50 to $7.00 in the US and $15.00 in Canada)." ]

[ "First off, you should phone your broker and ask them just to be 100% certain. You will be exercised on the short option that was in the money. It is irrelevant that your portfolio does not contain AAPL stock. You will simply be charged the amount it costs to purchase the shares that you owe. I believe your broker would just take this money from your margin/cash account, they would not have let you put the position on if your account could not cover it. I can't see how you having a long dated 2017 call matters. You would still be long this call once assignment of the short call was settled." ]

[ "Over time, fees are a killer. The $65k is a lot of money, of course, but I'd like to know the fees involved. Are you doubling from 1 to 2%? if so, I'd rethink this. Diversification adds value, I agree, but 2%/yr? A very low cost S&P fund will be about .10%, others may go a bit higher. There's little magic in creating the target allocation, no two companies are going to be exactly the same, just in the general ballpark. I'd encourage you to get an idea of what makes sense, and go DIY. I agree 2% slices of some sectors don't add much, don't get carried away with this.", "Current evidence is that, after you subtract their commission and the additional trading costs, actively managed funds average no better than index funds, maybe not as well. You can afford to take more risks at your age, assuming that it will be a long time before you need these funds -- but I would suggest that means putting a high percentage of your investments in small-cap and large-cap stock indexes. I'd suggest 10% in bonds, maybe more, just because maintaining that balance automatically encourages buy-low-sell-high as the market cycles. As you get older and closer to needing a large chunk of the money (for a house, or after retirement), you would move progressively more of that to other categories such as bonds to help safeguard your earnings. Some folks will say this an overly conservative approach. On the other hand, it requires almost zero effort and has netted me an average 10% return (or so claims Quicken) over the past two decades, and that average includes the dot-bomb and the great recession. Past results are not a guarantee of future performance, of course, but the point is that it can work quite well enough.", "I disagree with the other respondents. If your tenant is an individual, renting in their individual capacity, there is no reason they need your SSN. They will not be sending a 1099 to you. If your tenant is a business, then your property is not a residential property. It is at least a \"corporate housing\", and you would have noticed that the contract was signed by a company representative in the capacity of being a company representative, not an individual person. In that case, that representative would also ask you to fill a form W9, on which your tax ID should be reported. I would suggest let the tenant figure out their tax avoidance issues without you being involved.", "In general What does this mean? Assume 10 holidays and 2 weeks of vacation. So you will report to the office for 240 days (48 weeks * 5 days a week). If you are a w2 they will pay you for 260 days (52 weeks * 5 days a week). At $48 per hour you will be paid: 260*8*48 or $99,840. As a 1099 you will be paid 240*8*50 or 96,000. But you still have to cover insurance, the extra part of social security, and your retirement through an IRA. A rule of thumb I have seen with government contracting is that If the employee thinks that they make X,000 per year the company has to bill X/hour to pay for wages, benefits, overhead and profit. If the employee thinks they make x/hour the company has to bill at 2X/hour. When does a small spread make sense: The insurance is covered by another source, your spouse; or government/military retirement program. Still $2 per hour won't cover the 6.2% for social security. Let alone the other benefits. The IRS has a checklist to make sure that a 1099 is really a 1099, not just a way for the employer to shift the costs onto the individual.", "Be very careful about buying property because it has been going up quickly in recent years. There are some fundamental factors that limit the amount real-estate can appreciate over time. In a nutshell, the general real-estate market growth is supported by the entry-level property market. That is, when values are appreciating, people can sell and use the capital gains to buy more valuable property. This drives up the prices in higher value properties whose owners can use that to purchase more expensive properties and so on and so forth. At some point in a rising market, the entry-level properties start to become hard for entry-level buyers to afford. The machine of rising prices throughout the market starts grinding to a halt. This price-level can be calculated by looking at average incomes in an area. At some percentage of income, people cannot buy into the market without crazy loans and if those become popular, watch out because things can get really ugly. If you want an example, just look back to the US in 2007-2009 and the nearly apocalyptic financial crisis that ensued. As with most investing, you want to buy low and sell high. Buying into a hot market is generally not very profitable. Buying when the market is abnormally low tends to be a more effective strategy.", "In this case, it looks like the interest is simply the nominal daily interest rate times number of days in the period. From that you can use a spreadsheet to calculate the total payment by trial and error. With the different number of days in each period, any formula would be very complicated. In the more usual case where the interest charge for each period is the same, the formula is: m=P*r^n*(r-1)/(r^n-1) where * is multiplication ^ is exponentiation / is division (Sorry, don't know if there's a way to show formulas cleanly on here) P=original principle r=growth factor per payment period, i.e. interest rate + 100% divided by 100, e.g. 1% -> 1.01 n=number of payments Note the growth factor above is per period, so if you have monthly payments, it's the rate per month. The last payment may be different because of rounding errors, unequal number of days per period, or other technicalities. Using that formula here won't give the right answer because of the unequal periods, but it should be close. Let's see: r=0.7% times an average of 28.8 days per period gives 20.16% + 1 = 1.2016. n=5 P=500 m=500*1.2016^5*(1.2016-1)/(1.2016^5-1) =167.78 Further off than I expected, but ballpark.", "A friend of mine has two credit cards. He has specifically arranged with the card issuers so that the billing cycles are 15 days out of sync. He uses whichever card has more recently ended its billing cycle, which gives him the longest possible time between purchase and the due date to avoid interest.", "Central banks don't generally post exchange rates with other currencies, as they are not determined by central banks but by the currency markets. You need a source for live exchange rate data (for example www.xe.com), and you need to calculate the prices in other currencies dynamically as they are displayed -- they will be changing continually, from minute to minute.", "First, point: The CRA wants you to start a business with a \"Reasonable expectation of profit\". They typically expect to see a profit within 5 years, so you may be inviting unwanted questions from future auditors by using a breakeven strategy. Second point: If the goal is to pay as little tax as possible, you may want to consider having the corporation pay you as little as possible. Corporate income taxes are much lower than personal income taxes, according to these two CRA links: How it works is that your company pays you little as an outright salary and offers you perks like a leased company car, expense account for lunch and entertainment, a mobile phone, computer, etc. The company owns all of this stuff and lets you use it as part of the job. The company pays for all this stuff with corporate pre-tax dollars as opposed to you paying for it with personal after-tax dollars. There are specifics on meals & entertainment which modify this slightly (you can claim 50%) but you get the idea. The actual rate difference will depend on your province of residence and your corporate income level. There is also a requirement for \"Reasonable Expenses\", such that the expenses have to be in line with what you are doing. If you need to travel to a conference each year, that would be a reasonable expense. Adding your family and making it a vacation for everyone would not. You can claim such expenses as a sole proprietor or a corporation. The sole-proprietorship option puts any after-expense profits into your pocket as taxable income, where the corporate structure allows the corporation to hold funds and limit the amount paid out to you. I've seen this strategy successfully done first-hand, but have not done it myself. I am not a lawyer or accountant, consult these professionals about this tax strategy before taking any action.", "As far as I know, the answer to this is generally \"no.\" The closest thing would be to identify the stock transfer company representing the company that you want to hold and buy through them. (I have held this way, but I don't know if it's available on all stocks.) This eliminates the broker, but there's still a \"middle man\" in the transfer company. Note this section from the Stock transfer agent Wikipedia article: A public company usually only designates one company to transfer its stock. Stock transfer agents also run annual meetings as inspector of elections, proxy voting, and special meetings of shareholders. They are considered the official keeper of the corporate shareholder records. The decision to have a single transfer company is a practical one, ensuring that there is one entity responsible for recording this data - Hence even if you could buy stock \"directly\" from the company that you want to own, it would likely still get routed through the transfer company for recording." ]

[ "Assuming a USA taxable account: Withdrawing funds from a brokerage account has nothing to do with taxes. Taxes are owed on the profit when you sell a stock, no matter what you do with the funds. Taxes are owed on any dividends the stock produces, no matter what you do with the dividend. The brokerage sends you a form 1099 each year that shows the amounts of dividends and profits. You have to figure out the taxes from that." ]

[ "If you are comfortable with the risk etc, then the main thing to worry about is diversity. For some folks, picking stocks is beyond them, or they have no interest in it. But if it's working for you, and you want to keep doing it, more power to you. If you are comfortable with the risk, you could just as well have ALL your equity position in individual stocks. I would offer only two pieces of advice in that respect. 1) no more than 4% of your total in any one stock. That's a good way to force diversity (provided the stocks are not clustered in a very few sectors like say 'financials'), and make yourself take some of the 'winnings off the table' if a stock has done well for you. 2) Pay Strong attention to Taxes! You can't predict most things, but you CAN predict what you'll have to pay in taxes, it's one of the few known quantities. Be smart and trade so you pay as little in taxes as possible 2A)If you live someplace where taxes on Long term gains are lower than short term (like the USA) then try really really hard to hold 'winners' till they are long term. Even if the price falls a little, you might be up in the net compared to paying out an extra 10% or more in taxes on your gains. Obviously there's a balancing act there between when you feel something is 'done' and the time till it's long term.. but if you've held something for 11 months, or 11 months and 2 weeks, odds are you'd be better off to hold till the one year point and then sell it. 2B) Capture Losses when you have them by selling and buying a similar stock for a month or something. (beware the wash sale rule) to use to offset gains.", "Your first scenario, involving shareholders in a private corp being limited by a contractual agreement, is common in practice. Frequent clauses include methods of valuing the shares if someone wants to sell, first right of refusal [you have to attempt to sell to the other shareholders, before you can sell to a 3rd party], and many others. These clauses are governed by contract law [ie: some clauses may be illegal in contract law, and therefore couldn't be applied here]. A Universal Shareholders' Agreement is just the same as the above, but applied to more people. You would never get an already public company to convert to a universal shareholders' agreement - because even 1 share voting 'no' would block it [due to corporate law limiting the power of a corporation from abusing minority shareholder value]. In practice, these agreements universally exist at the start of incorporation, or at least at the first moment shares become available. An example is the Canadian mega-construction company PCL*, which is employee-owned. When the original owner transferred the corporation to his employees, there was a USA in place which still today governs how the corporation operates. In theory you could have a 'public company' where most shares are already owned by the founders, and 100% of remaining shares are owned by a specific group of individuals, in which case you may be able to get a USA signed. But it wouldn't really happen in practice. *[Note that while PCL is broadly owned by a large group of employees, it is not a 'public company' because any random schmuck can't simply buy a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange. I assume most exchanges would prevent corporations from being listed if they had ownership restrictions like this].", "Let me restate question for clarity. Facts: Question: Are there any taxes for this transaction? Answer: (Added improvements provided by Eric) Generally No. Generally, it is not considered income until you sell and the sale price is greater than the purchase price. But with currency differences, there is an additional complication, section 988 rules apply. It could result in ordinary income or loss.", "Well, you probably already know this, but no-one can guarantee you results...in any economic climate. Even traditionally low risk investments now seem higher risk to people when the economic forecasts are grim. That being said, 0.5% is pretty low. So, where does that leave you? Why not start with a risk tolerance analysis for yourself. There's a bunch on them on the internet if you google it. Here's one: Rutgers Financial Risk Tolerance Quiz Based on the result you get back, and whether you agree with it or not, this may give you a starting point for determining if entering the stock market is right for you. I'm guessing you can get better than 0.5% return over 10 years pretty easily though.", "Better in terms of what? less taxes paid? or more money to save for retirement? In terms of retirement, it would be better for you to keep the condo you currently have for at least two reasons: You wouldn't incur the penalties and fees from buying and selling a home. Selling and buying a home comes with a multitude of fees and expenses that aren't included in your estimation. You aren't saddled with a mortgage payment again. You aren't paying a mortgage payment right now. If you set aside the amount you would be paying towards that, it more than covers your taxes, with plenty left over to put towards retirement.", "http://finance.yahoo.com/stock-alerts/stock-watch/add/?.done=/stock-alerts/ You will have to have a yahoo account. If you want to provide an alternative delivery email address, visit the URL above. Click \"Stocks Watch\", enter ticker(s) and price(s) at which you want alerts, then at the bottom select the \"email\" radio button. If your preferred email address is not listed, click the \"Add an email address\" link and follow the instructions. I don't know what their limit is, but I currently have three addresses set up -- two to non-@yahoo addresses -- and it works fine.", "No. Credit scores are primarily built by doing the following: To build credit, get a few major credit cards and a couple of store cards. Use one of them to make routine purchases like gas and groceries. Pay them on time every month. You're good to go. I would hate to sell stocks to pay off a loan -- try finding a better loan. If you financed through the dealer, try joining a credit union and see if you can get a better rate.", "Write off the entire asset class of corporate bonds? Finance theory says yes, the only two asset classes that you need are stocks and treasury bills (very short-term US government bonds). See the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM).", "The word you are looking for is \"budget\" You can't pay off debt if you are spending more than you earn. Therefore, start a budget that you both work on at the same time, and both agree 100% with. Evaluate your progress on that budget on a regular basis. From your question, you understand what your obligations are and you seem to manage money pretty well. Therefore your key to retirement is just the ticket you need. As newlyweds, you both have to be VERY aware that the main reason a marriage fails in the US is money issues. Starting out with a groundwork where you both agree to your budget and can keep it will help you a lot in your upcoming life. Then, for some details Sprinkle your charitable donations anywhere in the list where you feel it is important.", "The United States Federal Reserve has decided that interest rates should be low. (They think it may help the economy. The details matter little here though.) It will enforce this low rate by buying Treasury bonds at this very low interest rate. (Bonds are future money, so this means they pay a lot of money up front, for very little interest in the future. The Fed will pay more than anyone who offers less money up front, so they can set the price as long as they're willing to buy.) At the end of the day, Treasury bonds pay nearly no interest. Since there's little money to be made with Treasuries, people who want better-than-zero returns will bid up the current-price of any other bonds or similar loan-like instruments to get what whatever rate of return that they can. There's really no more than one price for money; you can think of the price of those bonds as basically (Treasury rate + some modifier based on the risk) percent. I realize thinking about bond prices is weird and different than other prices (you're measuring future-money using present-money and it's easy to be confused) and assure you it ultimately makes sense :) Anyway. Your savings account money has to compete with everyone else willing to lend money to banks. Everyone-else lends money for peanuts, so you get peanuts on your savings account too. Your banking is probably worth more to your bank on account of your check-card payment processing fees (collected from the merchant) than from the money they make lending out your savings (notice how many places have promotional rates if you make your direct deposits or use your check card to make a purchase N times a month). In Europe, it's similar, except you've got a different central bank. If Europe's bank operated radically differently for an extended period of time, you'd expect to see a difference in the exchange rates which would ultimately make the returns from investing in those currencies pretty similar as well. Such a change may show up domestically as inflation in the country with the loose-money policy, and internationally as weakness against other currencies. There's really only one price for money around the entire world. Any difference boils down to a difference in (perceived) risk." ]

[ "Context is key here. Futures don't really have to do with a time in the future in this context. Futures are a capital market (futures market), just like Stocks are a market (stock market). Both capital markets have the ability to affect each other. Up until 30 years ago there was a separate use for the futures market, but in the days since they are MOSTLY used for stock derivatives (financial futures are the most widely traded contracts since 1980, hugely eclipsing the commodity futures that the market was designed for.) So there is overlap and one affect the other, I'm not going to go into too much detail here but basically the futures market trades 24 hours a day, 6.5 days of the week and the stock market trades 8-12 hours a day, 5 days a week. So when the stock market closes, the futures market is still running will react and effect the broad stock market. Hope that gets you started in your research" ]

[ "Interestingly, ancient Judaism and Christianity held a Jubilee year every 50 years in which all debts were forgive, slaves were freed, etc. \"The land must not be sold permanently, for the land belongs to me. You are only foreigners, my tenant farmers.\" -Leviticus 25:23 Jubilee would more resemble \"the government declares all mortgages and credit card debts void\" with FDIC caping the payouts when banks fell into receivership, not simply \"the government pays off all mortgages\". Yet, it still demonstrates that primitive societies employed tools similar to what you describe. There is surely all manor of interesting analysis of the economic impacts of Jubilee by Jewish religious historians. You might even find arguments that communism was invented because Western Judeo-Christian societies abandoned Jubilee. As an aside, I'm surprised that nobody here directly discussed the velocity of money. If you wipe out a mortgage, you might convert a spender into a saver, especially during a recession, meaning you've injected slow money. Conversely, anyone too poor for a mortgage probably spends all their money, meaning giving them a job injects faster money. In addition, it's much cheaper to hire tons of poor people to do useful things, like repairing bridges.", "with me and my wife coming from different countries, and us both living in a non-native country, we have very little clue where we will eventually settle down. The answer depends on where you reside currently, tax rules and ability to move funds. As well as where you plan to settle down and the tax rules there. From what I understand, once you eventually retire and take an annuity from your pension you are then taxed on it as income anyway? Yes and No. For example if you move from US to India, stay in India for 7 years. You then move your retirement funds from US to India the entire amount would be taxable in India. but would this 'freedom' would come with significant costs in terms of savings at retirement? The cost would be hard to predict. It depends on the tax treatments in the respective countries on the retirement kitty. It also depends on whether the country you are staying in will allow complete withdrawal and transfer of retirement funds without penalty.", "I do not think banks have an obligation to report any deposits to the IRS, however, they probably have an obligation to report deposits exceeding certain threshold amounts to FinCEN. At least that's how it works in Canada, and we're known to model our Big Brother-style activities after our neighbour to the South.", "Hmm... Well there are several ways to do that: Go to any bank (or at the very least major ones). They can assist you with buying and/or selling stocks/shares of any company on the financial market. They keep your shares safe at the bank and take care of them. The downside is that they will calculate fees for every single thing they do with your money or shares or whatever. Go to any Financial broker/trader that deals with the stock market. Open an account and tell them to buy shares from company \"X\" and keep them. Meaning they won't trade with them if this is what you want. Do the same as point 2, but on your own. Find a suitable broker with decent transaction fees, open an account, find the company's stock code and purchase the stocks via the platform the broker uses.", "From the message you report, it sounds like you are trying to sell the same shares twice, you have two open sell orders for the same shares. Either you have accidentally entered two sell orders, or the web site is having a technical problem. I'm not a customer of Fidelity so I can't say what their web site looks like, but there should be some screen that shows your open orders. If looking there doesn't resolve the issue, call customer service.", "For every buyer there is a seller. That rule refers to actual (historical) trades. It doesn't apply to \"wannabees.\" Suppose there are buyers for 2,000 shares and sellers for only 1,000 at a given price, P. Some of those buyers will raise their \"bid\" (the indication of the price they are willing to pay) above P so that the sellers of the 1000 shares will fill their orders first (\"sold to the highest bidder\"). The ones that don't do this will (probably) not get their orders filled. Suppose there are more sellers than buyers. Then some sellers will lower their \"offer\" price to attract buyers (and some sellers probably won't). At a low enough price, there will likely be a \"match\" between the total number of shares on sale, and shares on purchase orders.", "As many people here have pointed out, a CFD is a contract for difference. When you invest in stock at eToro, you buy a CFD reflecting a bid on the price movement of the underlying stock, however, you do not actually own the stock or hold any rights shareholders have. The counterparty to the CFD is eToro. When you close your position, eToro shall pay you the amount representing the difference between your buy and sell price for each stock. I suggest you read the following article about CFDs, it explains everything clearly and thoroughly: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/09/trade-a-cfd.asp#axzz2G9ZsmX3A As some of the responders have pointed out, and as is mentioned in the article, a broker can potentially misquote the prices of underlying assets in order to manipulate CFDs to their advantage. However, eToro is a highly reputable broker, with over 2 million active accounts, and we guarantee accurate stock quotes. Furthermore, eToro is regulated in Europe (Germany, UK, France, etc.) by institutions that exact strict regulations on the CFD trading sector, and we are obligated to comply with these regulations, which include accurate price quoting. And of course, CFD trading at eToro has tremendous benefits. Unlike a direct stock investment, eToro allows you to invest as much or as little as you like in your favorite stocks, even if the amount is less than the relevant stock price (i.e. fraction stocks). For example: if you invest $10 in Microsoft, and on the day of execution eToro’s average aggregated price was $30 after a spread of 0.1%, you will then have a CFD representing 0.33 stocks of Microsoft in your eToro account. In addition, with eToro you can invest in stock in the context of a social trading network, meaning that you can utilize the stock trading expertise of other trader to your advantage by following them, learning their strategies, and even copying their stock investments automatically. To put it briefly, you won’t be facing the stock market alone! Before you make a decision, I suggest that you try stock trading with an eToro demo account. A free demo account grants you access to all our instruments at real market rates, as well as access to our social network where you can view and participate in trader discussions about trading stocks with eToro, all without risking your hard earned money. Bottom line – it’s free, there are no strings attached, and you can get a much firmer idea of what trading stocks with eToro is like. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us through our site: www.etoro.com.", "If you don't have the time or interest to manage investments, you need a financial advisor. Generally speaking, you're better served by an advisor who collects an annual fee based on a percentage of your account value. Advisors who are compensated based on transactions have a vested interest to churn your account, which is often not in your best interest. You also need to be wary of advisors who peddle expensive mutual funds with sales loads (aka kick-backs to the advisor) or annuities. Your advisor's compensation structure should be transparent as well.", "I have had my card blocked at home only rarely. One occasion comes to mind - I had bought something fairly large online late at night. No sooner had I clicked Purchase than my phone rang - the bank was asking had I actually just spent [$amount] at [$online store]? I said yes and that was that. A little later I made another purchase late at night on a different card. It went through, but when I tried to use the card the next day for something small in a store, it was declined. Embarrassed, I used a different card then called the bank. They said they had put the card on hold because of the online purchase for a large amount, even though they had let the purchase go through. They hadn't called me because it was late at night, and they hadn't given themselves any reasonable mechanisms to compensate for that (like calling me the next morning, emailing me, or the like) they'd just blocked the card. We had what you might call a frank and open exchange of views on the matter. Not all banks use the same strategies or software. I suggest: Far and away the simplest thing is just to have more than one card so that these declines are a momentary hiccup you might forget by the time you and your Rolex are out of the store.", "Stock has value to the buyer even if it does not currently pay dividends, since it is part ownership of the company (and the company's assets). The owners (of which you are now a part) hire managers to make a \"dividend policy decision.\" If the company can reinvest the profits into a project that would earn more than the \"minimum acceptable rate of return,\" then they should do so. If the company has no internal investment opportunities at or above this desired rate, then the company has an obligation to declare a dividend. Paying out a dividend returns this portion of profit to the owners, who can then invest their money elsewhere and earn more. For example: The stock market currently has, say, a 5% rate of return. Company A has a $1M profit and can invest it in a project with an expected 10% rate of return, so they should do so. Company B has a $1M profit, but their best internal project only has an expected 2% rate of return. It is in the owners' best interest to receive their portion of their company's profit as a dividend and re-invest it in other stocks. (Others have pointed out the tax deferrment portion of dividend policy, so I skipped that)" ]

[ "Here in Germany there is a special case. I am studying (and working a little on the side) and still receiving child benefits from the state which is like 190€/m. Because I am getting this I don't have to pay tuition which is 1k/y. If my side income would get over the boundary (which is like 9k/y) I would lose those benefits (~3.3k) and would have to pay insurance myself (I dont know how much that would be. 50-100/m I guess.) So getting a raise from 8k to 10k sounds nice as it is a 25% raise, but it actually means getting less." ]

[ "The price at which a stock was purchased is a sunk cost--that is, you cannot go back in time and reverse the decision you made to purchase that stock. Another example of a sunk cost would be purchasing a non-refundable, non-transferable movie ticket. Sunk costs have the tendency to create a cognitive bias in which we feel that the amount we paid at some point in the past should have some sort of bearing on the decision we make now--the purchaser of the ticket feels he must go see the movie even if he no longer wishes too, lest the ticket \"go to waste\"... the investor hopelessly clings to a battered stock for that tiny chance that just maybe some day it will return to its former glory. This is referred to as the \"sunk cost fallacy\" and is considered to be irrational behavior by economists. Keeping this in mind, your hopes and dreams for the stock at the time you purchased it should have no bearing on the decision you make now. Similarly, whether the stock has risen or fallen in price since your purchase date should have no bearing. Instead, you must consider what you expect the stock to do from this very moment on into the future--that is, you must act at the margin. You've indicated that you are faced with two choices--sell the stock now, incur the loss, but benefit from the tax break (Option A). This benefit is quite easily quantifiable--it is your marginal tax rate multiplied by the additive inverse of the loss (assuming you have/will have other gains to offset). Let's just assume that you incurred a $1000 loss, at a marginal tax rate of 20%, which means your tax benefit for the loss is $200. The second choice--to hold the stock in hopes of it rising in price (Option B)--is a bit harder to quantify. You must assume that today is day zero, and that every cent in price the stock rises is a gain to you, and every cent in price the stock looses is a loss to you. If you believe that the stock will rise to a price that will net your more than your tax benefit from option A, then holding the stock is more favorable than selling it at a loss today. Conversely, if you believe this stock will fall even further in the future, or not rise enough to net you $200 (per the example), then Option A is preferable. Granted, there are some additional complications that play into your decision. By selling the stock today, you not only get a tax benefit from the loss, but you've also freed up the funds previously used to purchase that stock to be invested elsewhere (in hopefully a better performing asset). If you choose to stick with your current stock, then the gains you may have netted elsewhere must be considered as an opportunity cost associated with Option B. Finally, the tax benefit is essentially guaranteed (so in our example, a $200 risk free return), while sticking with the stock in Option B still comes with some risk.", "Unfortunately, my taxes tend to be complicated This. In and of itself, is a greater reason to keep the documents. The other answer offered a good summary, but keep in mind, if the IRS decides you fraudulently withheld claiming income, they can go back 7 years. I bought a rental property in 1987, and sold it in 2016. In that case, keeping the returns seemed the right thing to do to have the paper trail for basis, else I could claim anything, and hope for the best. I have all my tax returns since my first tax return, 1980. It's one drawer of a file cabinet. Not too great a burden.", "You can place the orders like you suggested. This would be useful in a market that is moving quickly where you want to be reasonably sure of execution but don't want the full exposure of a market order. This won't jump your spot in the queue though in the sense that you won't get ahead of other orders that are \"ready\" for execution just because you have crossed the spread aggressively.", "How to find good divided stocks? Research and read. Google, Yahoo, and most likely your broker offer some sort of stock screener tool where you can look for stocks with given P/E ratios, dividend payouts, pricing, and any of a number of other filters. When you've found some that appeal to you, read what others are saying on stock talk websites like Vantagewire and Stockhouse. Read what each company is putting out as news and look at their quarterly reports. In Canada you can find a company's reports for free on Sedar. I'm afraid I don't know the U.S. equivalent. Reuters will be of help. Finding a good dividend-paying stock is the same as finding a good growth or value stock; research the company and the sector as if you were buying it to take the company over.", "Why do all this work yourself? Pay a modest price to have a professional do this for you. Look at the tickers PUTX, PUTW.", "Don't forget inflation. With a Roth 401k (or IRA), you don't pay any taxes on inflationary or real gains. You pay taxes at the beginning and then no more taxes (unless you invest money after you distributed from it). With a regular, taxable investment account (not a 401k or IRA), you pay taxes on the initial amount. And then you pay taxes on the gains, both inflationary and real. So you effectively pay taxes on the inflated principal twice. Once at initial earning and once when it shows up as inflationary gains. I'll give an example later. With a traditional 401k (or IRA), you pay no taxes on the initial amount. You pay taxes on the distributed amount. That includes taxes on gains, but it only taxes them once, not twice. All the taxes are paid at distribution time. Here's a semirealistic example. This is not a real example with real numbers, but the numbers shouldn't be ridiculously off. They could happen. I'm going to ignore variation and pretend that all the numbers will be the same each year so as to simplify the math. So you pay a 25% marginal tax rate and want to invest $12,000 plus any tax savings. Roth: $12,000 principal Traditional IRA (Trad): $16,000 principal with $4000 in tax savings Taxable Investment Account (TIA): $12,000 principal Let's assume that you make an 8% rate of return and inflation is 3%. Both numbers are possible, although higher and lower numbers have occurred in the past. That gives you returns of $960 for the Roth and TIA cases and a return of $1280 for the Trad case. Pay no annual taxes on the Roth or Trad cases. Pay 25% marginal tax on the TIA case, that's $240. Balances after one year: Roth: $12,960 Trad: $17,280 TIA: $12,720 Inflation decreases the value of the Roth and TIA cases by $360 in the Roth and TIA cases. And by $480 in the Trad case. Ten years of inflationary gains (cumulative): Roth: $5354 Trad: $7138 TIA: $4872 Net buildup (including inflationary gains): Roth: $25,907 Trad: $34,543 TIA: $23,168 Real value (minus inflation to maintain spending power): Roth: $20,554 Trad: $27,405 TIA: $18,109 Now take out $3000 per year, after taxes. That's $3000 in the the Roth and TIA cases, as you already paid the taxes. In the Trad case, that's $4000 because you have to pay 25% tax which will cost $1000. Do that for five years and the new balances are Roth: $9931 Trad: $13,241 TIA: $5973 The TIA will run out in the 8th year. The Roth and Trad will both run out in the 9th year. So to summarize. The Traditional IRA initially grows the most. The TIA grows the least. The TIA is tax-advantaged over the Traditional IRA at that point, but it still runs out first. The Roth IRA grows about the same as the Traditional after taxes are included. Note that I left out the matching contribution from a 401k. That would help both those options. I assumed that the marginal tax rate would be 25% on the Traditional IRA distributions. It might be only 15%, which would increase the advantage of the Traditional IRA. I assumed that the 15% rate on capital returns would still be true for the entire period. If that is increased, the TIA option gets a lot worse. Inflation could be higher or lower. As stated earlier, the TIA account is hit the worst by inflation.", "Yes, if they meet the ATO's criteria. Books, periodicals and digital information If the item cost less than $300 you can claim an immediate deduction where it satisfies all of the following requirements: http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Income-and-deductions/Deductions-you-can-claim/Other-deductions/Books,-periodicals-and-digital-information/ Alternatively They may be a self-education expense http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Income-and-deductions/Deductions-you-can-claim/Self-education-expenses/ A Further Alternative They could fall into the tool, equipment or other asset category if they are for a professional library (this can include a home office). http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Income-and-deductions/Deductions-you-can-claim/Tools,-equipment-and-other-assets/ I understand this is an old question although given the dead link in the above answer and the new resources this answer might prove helpful for others coming across this question.", "In general, investors with a long period of time until they would need to withdraw the cash are best off holding mostly equities. While the dividends that equities would return are less than the interest you would get in peer-to-peer lending, over long periods of time not only do you get the dividends from equity investment but the value of the stock will grow faster than interest on loans. The higher returns from stocks, however, comes with more risk of big downturns. Many people pull their investments out of stocks right after crashes which really hurts their long term returns. So, in order to get the benefit of investing in stocks you need to be strong enough to continue to hold the stocks through the crash and into the recovery. As for which stocks to invest in, generally it is best to invest in low-fee index funds/etfs where you own a broad collection of stocks so that if (when) any one stock goes bust that your portfolio does not take much damage. Try to own both international and domestic stocks to get good diversification. The consensus recommends adding just a little bit of REITs and bonds to your investments, but for someone at 25 it might not be worth it yet. Warren Buffett had some good thoughts on index investing.", "You say you have 90% in stocks. I'll assume that you have the other 10% in bonds. For the sake of simplicity, I'll assume that your investments in stocks are in nice, passive indexed mutual funds and ETFs, rather than in individual stocks. A 90% allocation in stocks is considered aggressive. The problem is that if the stock market crashes, you may lose 40% or more of your investment in a single year. As you point out, you are investing for the long term. That's great, it means you can rest easy if the stock market crashes, safe in the hope that you have many years for it to recover. So long as you have the emotional willpower to stick with it. Would you be better off with a 100% allocation in stocks? You'd think so, wouldn't you. After all, the stock market as a whole gives better expected returns than the bond market. But keep in mind, the stock market and the bond market are (somewhat) negatively correlated. That means when the stock market goes down, the bond market often goes up, and vice versa. Investing some of your money in bonds will slightly reduce your expected return but will also reduce your standard deviation and your maximum annual loss. Canadian Couch Potato has an interesting write-up on how to estimate stock and bond returns. It's based on your stocks being invested equally in the Canadian, U.S., and international markets. As you live in the U.S., that likely doesn't directly apply to you; you probably ignore the Canadian stock market, but your returns will be fairly similar. I've reproduced part of that table here: As you can see, your expected return is highest with a 100% allocation in stocks. With a 20 year window, you likely can recover from any crash. If you have the stomach for it, it's the allocation with the highest expected return. Once you get closer to retirement, though, you have less time to wait for the stock market to recover. If you still have 90% or 100% of your investment in stocks and the market crashes by 44%, it might well take you more than 6 years to recover. Canadian Couch Potato has another article, Does a 60/40 Portfolio Still Make Sense? A 60/40 portfolio is a fairly common split for regular investors. Typically considered not too aggressive, not too conservative. The article references an AP article that suggests, in the current financial climate, 60/40 isn't enough. Even they aren't recommending a 90/10 or a 100/0 split, though. Personally, I think 60/40 is too conservative. However, I don't have the stomach for a 100/0 split or even a 90/10 split. Okay, to get back to your question. So long as your time horizon is far enough out, the expected return is highest with a 100% allocation in stocks. Be sure that you can tolerate the risk, though. A 30% or 40% hit to your investments is enough to make anyone jittery. Investing a portion of your money in bonds slightly lowers your expected return but can measurably reduce your risk. As you get closer to retirement and your time horizon narrows, you have less time to recover from a stock market crash and do need to be more conservative. 6 years is probably too short to keep all your money in stocks. Is your stated approach reasonable? Well, only you can answer that. :)", "Market makers, traders, and value investors would be who I'd suspect for buying the stock that is declining. Some companies stocks can come down considerably which could make some speculators buy the stock at the lower price thinking it may bounce back soon. \"Short sellers\" are out to sell borrowed stocks that if the stock is in free fall, unless the person that shorted wants to close the position, they would let it ride. Worthless stocks are a bit of a special case and quite different than the crash of 1929 where various blue chip stocks like those of the Dow Jones Industrials had severe declines. Thus, the companies going down would be like Apple, Coca-Cola and other large companies that people would be shocked to see come down so much yet there are some examples in recent history if one remembers Enron or Worldcom. Stocks getting delisted tend to cause some selling and there are some speculators may buy the stock believing that the shares may be worth something only to lose the money possibly as one could look at the bankrupt cases of airlines and car companies to study some recent cases here. Circuit breakers are worth noting as these are cases when trading may be halted because of a big swing in prices that it is believed stopping the market may cause things to settle down." ]

[ "A falling exchange rate is an indication of falling confidence in a currency. Countries like Iran or Venezuela, with a managed exchange rate, set their exchange rates at a higher value than the market accepts. Such market expectations may be influenced by poor government management, interventions into markets (such as nationalising businesses) or general instability / scarcity. The governments act to manage that uncertainty by limiting the availability of foreign exchange and pegging the exchange rate. Since there is an inadequate supply of trusted foreign currency people turn to informal exchanges in order to hedge their currency risk. This creates a negative feedback loop. People in government who have access to foreign exchange start to trade on informal markets, pocketing the difference in the official and unofficial rates. The increasing gap between the two rates drives increasing informal market exchange and can result in speculative bubbles. Driving instability (or economic contradiction) is that the massive and increasing difference between the official and market exchange rates becomes a powerful form of rent for government officials. This drives further state-led rent-seeking behaviour and causes the economy to become even more unstable. If you're interested in a more formal academic study of how such parallel markets in currency arise, \"Zimbabwe’s Black Market for Foreign Exchange\" by Albert Makochekanwa at the University of Pretoria is a useful source." ]

[ "The answer is just close your eyes and ignore it (in your words). I'm right there with you, the amount of detail that I track in my personal finances would be called obscene by some people. But as you look at these features in any accounting application, you need to ask the question \"What does this information represent?\" In the case of your bank and credit card accounts, the reconciliation marker represents that you have received documentation from the issuing institution which you have verified against your accounts. Marking them off confirms that you have reviewed the information, and that you checked for errors. These markers exist on all transactions, whichever end of the splits you are looking at. When reviewing the Expense side of the transaction, it might make less sense to see these reconciliation markers, because as you stated, nobody receives documentation related to their expenses. However, if you itemized your expenses and kept a separate log of certain transactions (like a notebook where you track gasoline and/or mileage on your car), it might be useful to 'reconcile' your records once a month. Checking off individual transactions, and verifying a new 'balance' in terms of gas consumed or miles driven, would allow you to identify any inconsistencies in your records. Not everyone would find such an activity useful, thus the reconciliation markers are present everywhere but required nowhere.", "I have in the last few years purchased several used cars from dealers. They have handled it two different ways. They accepted a small check ~$1,000 now, and then gave me three business days to bring the rest as a cashiers check. They also insisted that I submit a application for credit, in case I needed a loan. They accepted a personal check on the spot. Ask them before you drive to the dealer. Of course they would love you to get a loan from them.", "However what actually appears to happen is that the 100k is invested into the company to fund some growth plan. So is it actually the case that E's company is worth 400k only AFTER the transaction? Is the 100k added to the balance sheet as cash and would the other 300k be listed as an IP asset? The investor gets 25% of the shares of the company and pays $100k for them, so Owner's Equity increases by $100k, and the company gets $100k more in cash. The $400k number is an implicit calculation: if 25% of the company is worth $100k, 100% of the company is worth $400k. It's not on the books: the investor is just commenting that they feel that they are being over-charged.", "At least in the US, a Cashier's Check is just like a regular personal check - only it's guaranteed by the bank itself, so the person accepting it can be pretty certain the check won't be returned for insufficient funds...if the check is genuine! Most banks therefore have a policy for cashier's checks that is very similar to their policies on regular checks and money orders: if you are a member with an account in good standing, they'll make all or part of the money available to you according to their fund availability policy, which is usually anywhere from \"immediately\" to 7-10 days. With amounts over $5,000, banks will tend to put a hold on the funds to ensure it clears and they get their money. If you are not a member then many banks will refuse to cash the check at all, unless the cashier's check is drawn on on that brand of bank. So if the cashier's check is issued by, say, Chase Bank, Chase banks will usually be willing to cash out the entire check to you immediately (with properly provided ID). Because the bank is guaranteed by them they are able to check their system and ensure the check is real and can clear the check instantly. This policy isn't just up to individual banks entirely, as it is defined by United States federal banking policies and federal regulations on availability of funds. If you really must cash the check without a holding period and won't/can't have a bank account of your own to perform this, then you will generally need to go into a branch of the bank that is guaranteeing the check to be able to cash it out fully right away. Note that since the check might be issued by a bank with no branch near you, you should have a back-up plan. Generally banks will allow you to setup a special/limited savings-only account to deposit your check, even if you don't have a checking account, so if no other option works you might try that as well. The funds availability policies are the same, but at least you'll be able to cash it generally in 10 days time (and then close the account and withdraw your money).", "Sorry, no, any time you sell for a profit you owe tax.", "There is certainly an obligation in some cases of a company to distribute profit, either as dividend or a stock buy back. Activist investors frequently push for one or the other when a company is doing well - sometimes to the detriment of future growth, in some eyes - and can even file shareholder lawsuits (saying the company is not doing its duty to its shareholders by simply holding onto cash). Apple famously held out from doing either for years under Steve Jobs, and only in the last few years started doing both - a large dividend and a share buy-back which increases the value of remaining shares (as EPS then goes up with fewer shares out there). Carl Icahn for example is one of those investors in Apple's case [and in many cases!] who put significant pressure, particularly when they were sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars. Ultimately, a (for-profit) corporation's board is tasked with maximizing its shareholder's wealth; as such, it can buy back shares, pay dividends, sell the company, liquidate the company, or expand the company, at its discretion, so long as it can justify to its shareholders that it is still attempting to maximize the value of their holdings. Companies in their growth phase often don't return any money and simply reinvest - but the long-term hope is to either return money in the form of dividends on profits, or the sale of the company.", "You can't be doing it yourself. Only your employer can do it. If the employer doesn't provide the option - switch employers. The only way for you to do it yourself is if you're the employer, i.e.: self-employed.", "For me, it is mostly for the fraud protection. If I have a debit card and someone makes a fraudulent charge the money is removed from my bank account. From my understanding, I can then file a fraud complaint with the bank to recover my money. However, for some period of time, the money is missing from my bank account. I've heard conflicting stories of money being returned quickly while the complaint is undergoing investigation as well as money being tied up for several days/weeks. It may depend on the bank. With a credit card, it is the banks money that is tied up.", "TL;DR: Get a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) for tax issues, and a lawyer for the Operating Agreement, labor law and contract related issues. Some things are not suitable for DIY unless you know exactly what you're doing. We both do freelance work currently just through our personal names. What kind of taxes are we looking into paying into the business (besides setup of everything) compared to being a self proprietor? (I'm seeing that the general answer is no, as long as income is <200k, but not certain). Unless you decide to have your LLC taxed as a corporation, there's no change in taxes. LLC, by default, is a pass-through entity and all income will flow to your respective tax returns. From tax perspective, the LLC will be treated as a partnership. It will file form 1065 to report its income, and allocate the income to the members/partners on schedules K-1 which will be given to you. You'll use the numbers on the K-1 to transfer income allocated to you to your tax returns and pay taxes on that. Being out of state, will she incur more taxes from the money being now filtered through the business? Your employee couldn't care less about your tax problems. She will continue receiving the same salary whether you are a sole proprietor or a LLC, or Corporatoin. What kind of forms are we looking into needing/providing when switching to a LLC from freelance work? Normally we just get 1099's, what would that be now? Your contract counterparts couldn't care less about your tax problems. Unless you are a corporation, people who pay you more than $600 a year must file a 1099. Since you'll be a partnership, you'll need to provide the partnership EIN instead of your own SSN, but that's the only difference. Are LLC's required to pay taxes 4 times per year? We would definitely get an accountant for things, but being as this is side work, there will be times where we choose to not take on clients, which could cause multiple months of no income. Obviously we would save for when we need to pay taxes, but is there a magic number that says \"you must now pay four times per year\". Unless you choose to tax your LLC as a corporation, LLC will pay no taxes. You will need to make sure you have enough withholding to cover for the additional income, or pay the quarterly estimates. The magic number is $1000. If your withholding+estimates is $1000 less than what your tax liability is, you'll be penalized, unless the total withholding+estimates is more than 100% of your prior year tax liability (or 110%, depending on the amounts). The LLC would be 50% 50%, but that work would not always be that. We will be taking on smaller project through the company, so there will be times where one of us could potentially be making more money. Are we setting ourselves up for disaster if one is payed more than the other while still having equal ownership? Partnerships can be very flexible, and equity split doesn't have to be the same as income, loss or assets split. But, you'll need to have a lawyer draft your operational agreement which will define all these splits and who gets how much in what case. Make sure to cover as much as possible in that agreement in order to avoid problems later.", "During the course of the year, the S&P individual stocks will have some dividends. Not every last stock but a good number of them. Enough that the average dividend for the S&P has been about 2% recently. So if the S&P index goes up, say 10%, an S&P fund should go up closer to 12%. For a fund holder, you'd normally see a declared dividend and cap gain distribution toward the end of each year. When you hold shares in a 401(k), dividends are reinvested into the fund, usually with no involvement from the members." ]

[ "They don't need to accept deposits from normal persons, but that's how they make lots of money. Banks make money off the fees they charge retailers when those folks swipe their debit cards at the retailer. It's their bread and butter. In order to facilitate you accruing swipe fees for them, they need to allow you to make deposits, on which they can charge the retailers swipe fees." ]

[ "What asset allocation is right for you (at the most basic the percentage if stocks vs bonds; at the advanced level, percentage of growth vs value, international vs domestic etc) is a function of your age, retirement goals, income stability and employment prospects until retirement. Roth IRA is orthogonal to this. Now, once you have your allocation worked out there are tactical tax advantage decisions available: interest income, REIT and MLP dividends are taxed at income and not capital gains rate, so the tactical decision is to put these investments in tax advantage accounts like Roth and 401ks. Conversely, should you decide to buy and hold growth stocks there are tactical advantages to keeping them in a taxable account: you get tax deferment until the year you choose to sell (barring a takeover), you get the lower lt cap gains rate, and you can employ tax loss harvesting.", "Yes. If I own a call, an American call option can be exercised at my wish. A European call can only be exercised at expiration, by the way. Your broker doesn't give you anything but a current quote for a given strike price. There are a number of good option related questions here. A bit of searching and reading will help you understand the process.", "Your friend is investing time & money in a business that does not list an address or phone number on its website, not even in its 'press kit'. Even when they make a press release about moving into a new building, it does not list the address or even the street! C'mon, this is obviously a scam. No real business acts like this.", "My broker collates the order book by price and marketplace, displaying the number of shares available at each level, sorted as in Victor's screencap. You can glean information from not just a snapshot of the order book but also by watching how it changes over time. Although it's not always a complete picture -- many brokers hold limit orders internally until the market is close, at which point they'll route to an exchange or trade internally. And of course skilled market participants know that there's people out there looking to glean information from the order book and will act to confuse the picture. The order book can show you: Combined with a list of trades (price & size, and whether it was a buy or sell), you can get a much more complete picture of what's going on with a stock than by looking at charts alone.", "The company was paying \"only\" $1 a share in dividends, compared to $10 a share in earnings. That is a so-called payout ratio of 10%, which is low. A more normal payout ratio would be 40%, something like $4 a share. If a $13 stock had a $4 dividend, the dividend yield would be about 30%, which would be \"too high,\" meaning that the price would go up to drive down the resulting yield. Even $1 a share on a $13 stock is a high dividend of about 7%, allowing for appreciation to say, the $20-$25 range. Graham was a great believer in the theory that management should pay out \"most\" of its earnings in dividends. He believed that by holding dividends so far below earnings, the company was either being \"stingy,\" or signalling that the $10 a share of earnings was unsustainable. Either of these would be bad for the stock. For instance, if $1 a share in dividends actually represented a 40% payout ratio, it would signal management's belief that they could normally earn only $2.50 a year instead of $10.", "For case 1, there is no tax due as you sold the book for less than your cost basis. If you had sold for more than $100, then you would have had a profit. For case 2, that depends on the value of the gift card with respect to the value of your fare. Most likely that gift card is less than the cost of the fare. And in that case it would generally be treated as a reduction in the purchase price. The same way that rebates and cash back on credit card are treated. Note if for some reason a 1099 was generated that would change the situation and you would need to consult a tax professional. Since that would indicate that the other party to the transaction had a different view of the situation.", "You also might want to see what sort of documentation the credit card company has. Companies can get pretty lazy sometimes about recordkeeping; there have been cases where banks tried to foreclose on a property but weren't able to produce documents establishing the mortgage. With your father dead, is there anything other than the credit card company's word that the debt is valid?", "A falling exchange rate is an indication of falling confidence in a currency. Countries like Iran or Venezuela, with a managed exchange rate, set their exchange rates at a higher value than the market accepts. Such market expectations may be influenced by poor government management, interventions into markets (such as nationalising businesses) or general instability / scarcity. The governments act to manage that uncertainty by limiting the availability of foreign exchange and pegging the exchange rate. Since there is an inadequate supply of trusted foreign currency people turn to informal exchanges in order to hedge their currency risk. This creates a negative feedback loop. People in government who have access to foreign exchange start to trade on informal markets, pocketing the difference in the official and unofficial rates. The increasing gap between the two rates drives increasing informal market exchange and can result in speculative bubbles. Driving instability (or economic contradiction) is that the massive and increasing difference between the official and market exchange rates becomes a powerful form of rent for government officials. This drives further state-led rent-seeking behaviour and causes the economy to become even more unstable. If you're interested in a more formal academic study of how such parallel markets in currency arise, \"Zimbabwe’s Black Market for Foreign Exchange\" by Albert Makochekanwa at the University of Pretoria is a useful source.", "An example, where I live. When you buy a house, the seller wants 'black' money. This is because that way the seller pays less taxes. However, it's not smart for the buyer to pay in black, as the tax reductions are lower. Eventually, when the buyer tries to sell the house, he has to declare the difference, so a higher buy price should not have affected... apart from the notary minutes.", "You say \"it's expensive\". I'm going to interpret this as \"the monthly payments are too high\". Basically, you need to get your old loan paid off, presumably by selling the car you have now. This is the tough part. If you sold the car now, how much would you get for it? You can use Kelley Blue Book to figure out what the car is roughly worth. That's not a guarantee that it will actually sell for that much. Look in your local classifieds to see what similar cars are selling for. (Keep in mind that you will usually get less for your old car if you trade it in versus sell it yourself.) Now, if you owe more than your car is worth, you're in a really tight spot. If you don't get enough money when you sell it, you are still stuck with the remainder of the loan. In that case, it is usually best to just stick with the car you have, and be more cautious about payments and loan length the next time you finance a car. Penalties: Most car loans don't have any kind of early repayment penalty. However, you should check your loan paperwork just to make sure." ]

[ "If you selected a mortgage that allows additional payments to be credited against the principal rather than as early payment of normal installments, them yes, doing so will reduce the actual cost of the loan. You may have to explicitly instruct the bank to use the money this way each time, if prepay is their default assumption. Check with your lender, and/or read the terms of your mortgage, to find out if this is allowed and how to do it. If your mortgage doesn't allow additional payments against the principal, you may want to consider refinancing into a mortgage which does, or into a mortgage with shorter term and higher monthly payments, to obtain the same lower cost (modulo closing costs on the new mortgage; run the numbers.)" ]

[ "BIC and IBANN are used in EU (and some other OECD countries) for inter bank transfers. SWIFT is used everywhere for interbank transfers. In the US - IBAN system is not (yet, hopefully) available, so you have to use SWIFT. The codes may look the same, but these are different systems. More details here.", "You expect interest because you forgo the opportunity of using the money as well as the risk of losing the money if the borrower can not pay you back. This is true also with gold - you would expect interest if you loaned someone your gold for a time period. When you deposit your money in the bank you are loaning your money to the bank who then loans the money to others. This is how the bank is able to pay interest on your accounts.", "Yes, if it's an American style option. American style options may be exercised at any time prior to expiration (even if they're not in-the-money). Generally, you are required to deliver or accept delivery of the underlying by the beginning of the next trading day. If you are short, you may be chosen by the clearinghouse to fulfill the exercise (a process called \"assignment\"). Because the clearinghouse is the counter-party to every options trade, you can be assigned even if the specific person who purchased the option you wrote didn't exercise, but someone else who holds a long position did. Similarly, you might not be assigned if that person did exercise. The clearinghouse randomly chooses a brokerage to fulfill an assignment, and the brokerage will randomly choose an individual account. If you're going to be writing options, especially using spreads, you need to have a plan ahead of time on what to do if one of your legs gets assigned. This is more likely to happen just before a dividend payment, if the payment is more than the remaining time value.", "The key phrase in your post is that the options are \"in a good position now\". They may be worthless in three months or a year. If I was you I would cash in the options and pay off the debt. Cash in enough to also cover taxes. You may want to cash them all in.", "In a secular bull market, strong investor sentiment drives prices higher, as participants, over time, are net buyers. Secular markets are typically driven by large-scale national and worldwide events... demographic/ population shifts, governmental policies... bear market periods occur within the longer interval, but do not reverse the trend. There are still many reasons to buy the long bond, despite the lack of yield (nearly flat term structure of interest rates). Despite the recent credit ratings agency downgrades of U.S. sovereign risk, the T-bond offers greater relative security than many alternatives. If Germany were NOT part of the EU, its government bonds would be issued by the Bundesbank, denominated in Deutsche Marks. German government bonds would probably be a better choice than the U.S. Treasury's 30-year bond. Long-term maturity U.S. Treasuries are in demand by investment and portfolio managers because:", "Those choices aren't mutually exclusive. Yes, most discussion of the mortgage interest deduction ignores the fact that for a standard itemizer, much, if not all of this deduction can be lost. For 2011, the std deduction for a single is $5,800. It's not just mortgage interest that's deductible, state income tax, realestate tax, and charitable contributions are among the other deductions. If this house is worth $350K, the property tax is about $5K, and since it's not optional, I'd be inclined to assume that it's the deduction that offsets the std deduction. Most states have an income tax, which tops off the rest. You are welcome to toss this aside as sophistry, but I view it as these other deductions as 'lost' first. I'm married, and our property tax is more than our standard deduction, so when doing the math, the mortgage is fully deductible, as are our contributions. In your case, the numbers may play out differently. No state tax? Great, so it's the property tax and deductions you'd add up first and decide on the value the mortgage deduction brings. Last, I don't have my mortgage for the deduction, I just believe that long term my other investments will exceed, after tax, the cost of that mortgage.", "As per Wikipedia of right now, here are unemployment figures for Switzerland and surrounding countries: Liechtenstein, unfortunately, does not have a large job market, given its total population of about 37,000 people. And note that the German figure of 4.5% is the lowest it has been for decades - I'd expect this number to go up and the Swiss one to stay constant. Bottom line: you will have an easier time finding a job in Switzerland. (Plus all the other good points the other answers raised: great mountains, great chocolate, low taxes, clean streets etc.)", "The key here is that you are defacto running your own company no matter if you acknowledge it or not. In the end these questions have the goal of deciding if you can and will repay the loan. Presumably you filed taxes on your income. These can be shown to the loan officer as proof you have the ability to repay your loan. Running your freelancing as a business has advantages of being able to deduct normal expenses for running the business from your revenue. I am not sure how business cards improves your credit worthiness as they can be had for $10 in about an hour.", "It may have been the standard practice for a long time, and indeed it still is the common practice for my credit union to apply all excess payment directly to the principal. At the risk of sounding a little cynical, I will suggest that there is a profit motive in the move to not applying excess payments to principal unless directly instructed to do so. Interest accrued isn't reduced until the principal is reduced, so it benefits the creditor to both have the money in advance and to not apply it to the principal. You should probably move forward with the expectation that all of your creditors are adversarial even if only in a passive-aggressive manner.", "As I recall, the gain for ISOs is considered ordinary income, and capital losses can only negate up to $3000 of this each year. If you exercised and held the stock, you have ordinary income to the exercise price, and cap gain above that, if you hold the stock for two years. EDIT - as noted below, this answer works for USians who found this question, but not for the OP who is Canadian, or at least asked a question at it relates to Canada's tax code." ]

[ "The correlation I heard most about in economics/finance was that stock prices and bond yields were negatively correlated; as the stock market does better, bond yields fall (company's doing well as evidenced by stocks, so it's a good credit risk, so YTM of its bonds on the market goes down). The correlation, if any, between the stock and futures market should be visible in the actual price histories. Index prices may be useful, but what's more likely is that various future prices have correlation with various companies' stocks. Where the future reflects the price of a raw material that is a significant cost of goods sold for a company, you'll see these two move inversely to each other in the short term. I think that if there is a causative relationship here, its that futures prices influence stock prices, not the other way around. The futures market generally represents the cost side of a consumer goods producer's bottom line. The stock market represents its profits. As futures go up, profit expectations go down, putting pressure on stock prices. Industries that deal in services, or in other types of goods, can still be affected because a rise in the cost of something consumers need will cause them to spend less on other things which affects margins in those other areas. So, in the short and medium term, when the futures market goes up the stock market sees a dip, and vice versa. However, companies adapt; they can put upward pressure on prices for their goods to restore their desired margins, usually by slowly increasing them to prevent sticker shock (though elasticity of demand plays a part; the more we need something no matter what it costs, the faster prices can increase). To maintain costs, they can make things cheaper using less expensive materials (more plastic, less steel). They can restructure production processes (translated: move factories offshore, or at least to \"right-to-work\" states with less union strength) to save costs elsewhere. All of these reduce costs and thus increase profits, but take time to implement. Many of these things reduce direct costs, reducing demand for the commodity and causing the futures prices to go back down. So, over the long term, these differences even out, and it's down to the things that affect the entire market (inflation, consumer/investor confidence, monetary policy)." ]

[ "Similar to what Adam F says above, except instead of just transfering the amount you spend on the credit card into the high interest account, why not keep the majority of your funds (apart from a small amount, say a couple of hundred for emergencies) in the high interest account until the credit card needs to be paid off. Even better, if you have a mortgage with an 100% offset account keep all your funds in this, and pay off your credit card in full from it on or before the due date. Being a 100% offset to your mortgage interest rate you will be saving at a higher rate than a high interest rate savings account, and you will be able to do all your normal banking from it unlike a high interest account which you usually have to link to an additional account to deposit and withdrawl money to and from. If you are to use a credit card keep these simple rules in mind: Hope this has helped, Regards Victor", "Do not give them any money until you have a signed contract that releases your liability completely. It's imperative that this contract be drafted correctly. The contract needs proper consideration (money in exchange for release of liability), among other things. In other words, talk to a lawyer if you want to go this route. If you just cut them a check, there's nothing stopping them from taking your money and making an insurance claim anyway, or taking your money and then suing for \"whiplash\" or some other fake injury. The best way is just to go through insurance. It might cost a bit more, but you're covered in case they sue.", "The shareholders can't all re-invest their dividends -- it's not possible. Paying a dividend doesn't issue any new shares, so unless some of the existing shareholders sell their shares instead of re-investing, there aren't any shares available for the shareholders to re-invest in.", "Rule of thumb: Invest in a tax deferred account only if your marginal tax rate is higher now than it will be in retirement. If you plan on making more taxable income in retirement than you do right now, then you should invest outside a tax deferred account.", "Rebalancing your portfolio doesn't have to include selling. You could simply adjust your buying to keep your portfolio in balance. If you portfolio has shifted from 50% stocks and 50% bonds to 75% stocks and 25% bonds, you can just only use new savings to buy bonds, until you are back at 50-50. Remember to take into account taxes if you are thinking of selling to rebalance in taxable accounts. The goal of rebalancing is to keep your exposures the way that you want them. Assuming that you had a good reason to have a portfolio of 50% stocks and 50% bonds, you probably want to keep your portfolio similar in the future. If you end up with a portfolio of 75% stocks and 25% bonds due to stock market fluctuations, the exposure and the risk / return profile of your portfolio will have changed, and it's probably not something that you want. You don't want to rebalance just for the sake of rebalancing either. There can be costs to rebalancing (taxes, transaction fees, etc...) and these aren't always worth the effort. That's why you don't need to rebalance every month or if your portfolio has shifted from 50/50 to 51/49. I take a look at my portfolio once a year, and adjust my automated investments so that by the end of the next year I'm back to the ratio I want.", "The key word you forgot to include from Slide 29 is: Free-Riding Investopedia defines free-riding as: In the context of a brokerage firm, a free rider problem refers to a situation where a client has been allowed to purchase shares without actually paying for them, and then subsequently sells the shares (ideally for profit). The problem with this scenario is that the client, if allowed to free ride, can profit from a stock trade without actually using any of his or her own capital. This is illegal. I have not heard of any issues with this type of action being a problem with trading accounts in Australia, nor have I been able to find any such rules on the ASX website or any of by brokers websites. So I think this may be an issue in the USA but not Australia. You should check the rules in any other countries you wish to trade in.", "Never ever use a giant monster mega bank for home loans. I am sure you probably didn't and they bought your loan from someone else. You have no legal options. What you should do Is look at getting a new loan maybe a 15 year loan. Your payment might be the same with no PMI. I would check with a relator to see what they think your home is worth. Also if you have any money you can always pay extra to the principle and get yourself to 20% based on the next appraisal. You might have a legal option regarding what they say you need in value 350k is what it should appraise to for you to get rid of pmi when you owe 280k Remember Citibank is a publicly traded company and their goal is to make more money. The CEO has a fiduciary relationship with stock holders not customers. They seriously have board meetings to figure out what charges they can invent to screw their customers and make shitloads of money. There is no incentive for them to let you get out of your PMI.", "If markets were perfectly efficient, the price should reflect everything that is currently known about the future of a commodity. If it is known that silver is currently under-valued, then investors would be buying it -- driving the price up. Conversely, if silver is currently over-valued, then investors would be selling and the price would be going down. Added to that is emotion. If the price is currently trending up, then people expect it to keep going up, and the price continues to rise. Until enough people think it can't go any higher and start selling, which drives the price down. Since this is driven by emotion, it cannot be predicted when this will happen.", "I don't know too much about the kelly criterion, but going by the other answers it sounds like it could be quite risky depending how you use it. I have been taught the first thing you do in trading is protect your existing capital and any profits you have made, and for this reason I prefer and use Position Sizing (PS). The concept with PS is that you only risk a small % of your capital on every trade, usually not more than 1%, however if you want to be very aggressive then not more than 2%. I use 1% of my capital for every trade. So if you are trading with an account of $40,000 and your risk R on every trade is 1%, then R = $400. As an example, say you decide to buy a stock at $10 and you work out your initial stop to be at $9.50, then our maximum risk R of $400 is divided by the stop distance of $0.50 to get your PS = $400/$0.50 = 800 shares. If the price then drops after your purchase, your maximum loss (subject to no slippage) would be $400. If the price moves up you would raise your stop until your potential loss becomes smaller and smaller and then becomes a gain once your stop moves above your initial purchase price. The aim is to make your gains be larger than your losses. So if your average loss is kept to 1R or less then you should aim to get your average gains to 2R, 3R or more. This would be considered a good trading system where you will make regular profits even with a win ratio of 50%.", "You could buy debt/notes or other instruments that pay out periodically. Some examples are If there is an income stream you can discount the present value and then buy it/own the rights to income stream. Typically you pay a discounted price for the face value and then receive the income stream over time." ]

[ "You haven't seen one because you haven't looked for one properly. You can set a google alert for stock split and get information about major issues splitting their stocks quite regularly, as well as a daily dose of recommendations from people without a say in the matter for big companies to split their stock. Stock splits are announced in advance by company management." ]

[ "I just switched (from the abandoned, but good MS Money) to Moneydance 2010", "If you can get into the top school, it's a no-brainer to go that route. An MBA at a top school will not only give you an education taught by world-renowned professors but also a large network of students and alumni.", "If you are able to buy a 150K home for 50K now that would be a good deal! However, you can't you have to borrow 100K in order to make this deal happen. This dramatically increases the risk of any investment, and I would no longer classify it as passive income. The mortgage on a 150K place would be about 710/month (30 year fixed). Reasonably I would expect no more than 1200/month in rent, or 14,400. A good rule of thumb is to assume that half of rental revenue can be counted as profit before debt service. So in your case 7200, but you would have a mortgage payment of 473/month. Leaving you a profit of 1524 after debt service. This is suspiciously like 2K per year. Things, in the financial world, tend to move toward an equilibrium. The benefit of rental property you can make a lot more than the numbers suggest. For example the home could increase in value, and you can have fewer than expected repairs. So you have two ways to profit: rental revenue and asset appreciation. However, you said that you needed passive income. What happens if you have a vacancy or the tenant does not pay? What happens if you have greater than expected repairs? What happens if you get a fine from the HOA or a special assessment? Not only will you have dip into your pocket to cover the payment, you might also have to dip into your pocket to cover the actual event! In a way this would be no different than if you borrowed 100K to buy dividend paying stocks. If the fund/company does not pay out that month you would still have to make the loan payment. Where does the money come from? Your pocket. At least dividend paying companies don't collect money from their shareholders. Yes you can make more money, but you can also lose more. Leverage is a two edged sword and rental properties can be great if you are financial able to absorb the shocks that are normal with ownership.", "I disagree strongly with chasing expenses. Don't chase pennies until your are comfortable with an allocation that makes sense to you. Focus on building a diversified portfolio. Look at all of the funds, and put them in a portfolio in a tool like Google finance. Screen out funds with 1-3 stars. Search around on this site for questions about portfolios -- there's good advice there. If you're still not comfortable, look for a fee-based advisor.", "Every financial services company (and cellphone provider, cable and broadband provider, private energy supplier, and so on and so forth - it's turtles all the way down in a market economy) spends \"something\" to acquire a new customer. Paying attractive college students minimum wage to hand out brochures and branded fidget toys costs money. A 1 million piece postal mailing for a 1% response rate costs money. A TV ad or billboard costs money. A signup enticement of cash or airplane miles costs money. The question is, what does an organization spend per new customer? The amount a company wants to spend has to do with their medium term outlook and overall margins, so it will vary with the business cycle, but a rule of thumb is $100-200 spent for each customer who signs up. The advantage to this particular offer is that it may involve some payments to Amazon, but it includes less labor or cost-per-wasted-contact than alternatives. So there's more in the budget to entice the prospect. Recall, it's a one-time cost, and you gain a relationship where you get 2% of credit processing turnover for the duration of the account; a chance at 19.99% APR financing or other fees; and an opportunity to upsell a mortgage or life insurance or IRA accounts, etc to a known customer.", "Why would I want to approve an increase in the number of authorized shares? Because you trust management to use those shares wisely. What it comes down to is, management is asking for money. While it may not be cash they're asking for, it has the same effect. Before you approve this, you have to evaluate the request (similarly to how a bank would evaluate a loan request), and ask if you approve of their reasons for needing the money, and if you think that it will be used to increase the value of the company (making your shares more valuable in the process).", "remember that IV is literally the volatility that would be present to equate to the latest price of a particular option contract, assuming the Black-Scholes-Merton model. Yahoo's free finance service lists the IV for all the options that it tracks.", "I am in the process of writing an article about how to maximize one's Social Security benefits, or at least, how to start the analysis. This chart, from my friends at the Social Security office shows the advantage of waiting to take your benefit. In your case, you are getting $1525 at age 62. Now, if you wait 4 years, the benefit jumps to $2033 or $508/mo more. You would get no benefit for 4 years and draw down savings by $73,200, but would get $6,096/yr more from 64 on. Put it off until 70, and you'd have $2684/mo. At some point, your husband should apply for a spousal benefit (age 66 for him is what I suggest) and collect that for 4 years before moving to his own benefit if it's higher than that. Keep in mind, your generous pensions are likely to push you into having your social security benefit taxed, and my plan, above will give you time to draw down the 401(k) to help avoid or at least reduce this.", "I would recommend that go through some forums where commodities topics be discussed so that if you have some issues related any point in commodities investment you will easily get your question sort out.", "While we're not supposed to make direct recommendations, and I am in no way advising anything, USO an ETF that buys light sweet crude oil futures with the intention of mirroring the price movements of oil." ]

[ "I think that people only use the phrase \"only spend what you can afford to lose\" when they are talking about the most risky or speculative investments, or even gambling. When talking about gambling, the following quote is a bottom line: The speculative investment that brought me to this question via google is how much should I invest in Bitcoin? I was tempted to put in 10% of my investments, not including the 6 month safety fund and not including equity in my home. Now thinking about this question, it seems that it depends on your income as a percentage of your investment income (which should grow in proportion to the whole over time). For example: Early stage of career, not much investment income: 20% Mid career: 5% Mid-late career, moving to more safe investments: 5% Late career, retirement: 1% Another way to calculate would be as a percentage of the amount you put into retirement savings per year. Maybe 10% of this figure when you're young and 1% nearer to retirement." ]

[ "Rebates are a great way to give discounts to customers who are cost sensitive. A long time ago, I worked for a retailer that extensively used rebates as a marketing tool. From my point of view, about 90% of the complaints that I investigated were a result of people not following directions. Biggest single thing was not sending original documentation when it was called for.", "What is the right way to handle this? Did you check the forms? Did the form state $0 tax due on the FTB LLC/Corp form (I'm guessing you operate as LLC/Corp, since you're dealing with the Franchise Tax)? The responsibility is ultimately yours. You should cross check all the numbers and verify that they're correct. That said, if the CPA filled the forms incorrectly based on your correct data - then she made a mistake and can be held liable. CPA filing forms from a jurisdiction on the other end of the country without proper research and knowledge may be held negligent if she made a grave mistake. You can file a law suit against the CPA (which will probably trigger her E&O insurance carrier who'll try to settle if there's a good chance for your lawsuit to not be thrown away outright), or complain to the State regulatory agency overseeing CPAs in the State of her license. Or both. Am I wrong for expecting the CPA should have properly filled out and filed my taxes? No, but it doesn't shift the responsibility from you. How can I find out if the CPA has missed anything else? Same as with doctors and lawyers - get a second opinion. Preferably from a CPA licensed in California. You and only you are responsible for your taxes. You may try to pin the penalties and interest on the CPA if she really made a mistake. California is notorious for very high LLC/Corp franchise tax (cost of registering to do business in the State). It's $800 a year. You should have read the forms and the instructions carefully, it is very prominent. It is also very well discussed all over the Internet, any search engine would pop it up for you with a simple \"California Franchise Tax for LLC/Corp\" search. CA FTB is also very aggressive in assessing and collecting the fee, and the rules of establishing nexus in CA are very broad. From your description it sounds like you were liable for the Franchise tax in CA, since you had a storage facility in CA. You may also be liable for sales taxes for that period.", "I want to elaborate on some of the general points made in the other answers, since there is a lot that is special or unique to the biotech industry. By definition, a high P/E ratio for an industry can stem from 1) high prices/demand for companies in the industry, and/or 2) low earnings in the industry. On average, the biotech industry exhibits both high demand (and therefore high prices) and low earnings, hence its average P/E ratio. My answer is somewhat US-specific (mainly the parts about the FDA) but the rest of the information is relevant elsewhere. The biotech industry is a high-priced industry because for several reasons, some investors consider it an industry with significant growth potential. Also, bringing a drug to market requires a great deal of investment over several years, at minimum. A new drug may turn out to be highly profitable in the future, but the earliest the company could begin earning this profit is after the drug nears completion of Phase III clinical trials and passes the FDA approval process. Young, small-cap biotech companies may therefore have low or negative earnings for extended periods because they face high R&D costs throughout the lengthy process of bringing their first drug (or later drugs) to market. This process can be on the order of decades. These depressed earnings, along with high demand for the companies, either through early investors, mergers and acquisitions, etc. can lead to high P/E ratios. I addressed in detail several of the reasons why biotech companies are in demand now in another answer, but I want to add some information about the role of venture capital in the biotech industry that doesn't necessarily fit into the other answer. Venture capital is most prevalent in tech industries because of their high upfront capital requirements, and it's even more important for young biotech companies because they require sophisticated computing and laboratory equipment and highly-trained staff before they can even begin their research. These capital requirement are only expected to rise as subfields like genetic engineering become more widespread in the industry; when half the staff of a young company have PhD's in bioinformatics and they need high-end computing power to evaluate their models, you can see why the initial costs can be quite high. To put this in perspective, in 2010, \"venture capitalists invested approximately $22 billion into nearly 2,749 companies.\" That comes out to roughly $7.8M per company. The same year (I've lost the article that mentioned this, unfortunately), the average venture capital investment in the biotech industry was almost double that, at $15M. Since many years can elapse between initial investment in a biotech company and the earliest potential for earnings, these companies may require large amounts of early investment to get them through this period. It's also important to understand why the biotech industry, as a whole, may exhibit low earnings for a long period after the initial investment. Much of this has to do with the drug development process and the phases of clinical trials. The biotech industry isn't 100% dedicated to pharmaceutical development, but the overlap is so significant that the following information is more than applicable. Drug development usually goes through three phases: Drug discovery - This is the first research stage, where companies look for new chemical compounds that might have pharmaceutical applications. Compounds that pass this stage are those that are found to be effective against some biological target, although their effects on humans may not be known. Pre-clinical testing - In this stage, the company tests the drug for toxicity to major organs and potential side effects on other parts of the body. Through laboratory and animal testing, the company determines that the drug, in certain doses, is likely safe for use in humans. Once a drug passes the tests in this stage, the company submits an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the FDA. This application contains results from the animal/laboratory tests, details of the manufacturing process, and detailed proposals for human clinical trials should the FDA approve the company's IND application. Clinical trials - If the FDA approves the IND application, the company moves forward with clinical trials in human, which are themselves divided into several stages. \"Post-clinical phase\" / ongoing trials - This stage is sometimes considered Phase IV of the clinical trials stage. Once the drug has been approved by the FDA or other regulatory agency, the company can ramp up its marketing efforts to physicians and consumers. The company will likely continue conducting clinical trials, as well as monitoring data on the widespread use of the drug, to both watch for unforeseen side effects or opportunities for off-label use. I included such detailed information on the drug development process because it's vitally important to realize that each and every step in this process has a cost, both in time and money. Most biopharm companies won't begin to realize profits from a successful drug until near the end of Phase III clinical trials. The vast R&D costs, in both time and money, required to bring an effective drug through all of these steps and into the marketplace can easily depress earnings for many years. Also, keep in mind that most of the compounds identified in the drug discovery stage won't become profitable pharmaceutical products. A company may identify 5,000 compounds that show promise in the drug discovery stage. On average, less than ten of these compounds will qualify for human tests. These ten drugs may start human trials, but only around 20% of them will actually pass Phase III clinical trials and be submitted for FDA approval. The pre-clinical testing stage alone takes an average of 10 years to complete for a single drug. All this time, the company isn't earning profit on that drug. The linked article also goes into detail about recruitment delays in human trials, scheduling problems, and attrition rates for each phase of the drug development process. All of these items add both temporal and financial costs to the process and have the potential to further depress earnings. And finally, a drug could be withdrawn from the market even after it passes the drug development process. When this occurs, however, it's usually the fault of the company for poor trial design or suppression of data (as in the case of Vioxx). I want to make one final point to keep in mind when looking at financial statistics like the P/E ratio, as well as performance and risk metrics. Different biotech funds don't necessarily represent the industry in the same way, since not all of these funds invest in the same firms. For example, the manager of Fidelity's Select Biotechnology Portfolio (FBIOX) has stated that he prefers to weight his fund towards medium to large cap companies that already have established cash flows. Like all biopharm companies, these firms face the R&D costs associated with the drug development process, but the cost to their bottom line isn't as steep because they already have existing cash flows to sustain their business and accumulated human capital that should (ideally) make the development process more efficient for newer drugs. You can also see differences in composition between funds with similar strategies. The ishares Nasdaq Biotech Index Fund (IBB) also contains medium to large cap companies, but the composition of its top 10 holdings is slightly different from that of FBIOX. These differences can affect any metric (although some might not be present for FBIOX, since it's a mutual fund) as well as performance. For example, FBIOX includes Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (IRWD) in its top 10 holdings, while IBB doesn't. Although IBB does include IRWD because it's a major NASDAQ biotech stock, the difference in holdings is important for an industry where investors' perception of a stock can hinge on a single drug approval. This is a factor even for established companies. In general, I want to emphasize that a) funds that invest more heavily in small-cap biotech stocks may exhibit higher P/E ratios for the reasons stated above, and b) even funds with similar mixes of stocks may have somewhat different performance because of the nature of risk in the biotech industry. There are also funds like Vanguard's Healthcare ETF (VHT) that have significant exposure to the biotech industry, including small-cap firms, but also to major players in the pharmaceutical market like Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, etc. Since buyouts of small-cap companies by large players are a major factor in the biotech industry, these funds may exhibit different financial statistics because they reflect both the high prices/low earnings of young companies and the more standard prices/established earnings of larger companies. Don't interpret anything I stated above as investment advice; I don't want anything I say to be construed as any form of investment recommendation, since I'm not making one.", "My sister had a similar problem and went to an actual lawyer, not a \"credit repair agency\". The lawyers settled her debt for a lot less than she owed, and she also got a bonus: one of the creditors called her repeatedly, even after her lawyers had told them not to. The lawyers ended up getting her an extra $40,000. Combined with the debt settlement, she actually came out ahead. Of course, her credit score went down, but it recovered in a couple of years.", "You mention you have an LDD. If your income is below a certain threshold (as of today, 19 255 € a year for a single person; quite likely if you're just a student), then you can open a Livret d'épargne populaire (in short, LEP). It works almost exactly the same as a Livret A / LDD, except that: Just like a Livret A / LDD: You should fill it up first before putting money in your LDD (assuming your Livret Jeune is maxed out, they have typically a higher rate than the LEP). If your bank is anything like mine, the very existence of the LEP is not very well-advertised, and I found that not many people are even aware that they exist. PS: The French administration's website has a whole section dedicated to financial matters. It's usually very clear and detailed. I advise you to check it out.", "Initially, Each company has 10k shares. Company B has $500k money and possibly other assets. Every company has stated purpose. It can't randomly buy shares in some other firm. Company A issued 5k new shares, which gives it $500k money. Listed companies can't make private placements without regulatory approvals. They have to put this in open market via Public issue or rights issue. Company B does the same thing, issuing 5k shares for $500k money. Company A bought those 5k shares using the $500k it just got There is no logical reason for shareholder of Company B to raise 5K from Company A for the said consideration. This would have to increase.", "No, I think you are misunderstanding the Math. Stock splits are a way to control relatively where the price per share can be for a company as companies can split or reverse split shares which would be similar to taking dimes and giving 2 nickels for each dime, each is 10 cents but the number of coins has varied. This doesn't create any additional value since it is still 10 cents whether it is 1 dime or 2 nickels. Share repurchase programs though are done to prevent dilution as executives and those with incentive-stock options may get shares in the company that increase the number of outstanding shares that would be something to note.", "Businesses are only required to keep receipts over $751. However for individuals, I would throw them all in a shoebox and not worry about organizing them. There's a small chance you'll need to go through them during an audit, and you can worry about reconciling all of them and putting them in order at that point. Just write 2010 on the box and keep it somewhere easy, and at the end of the year throw it in your basement (or get a scanner, and scan and trash the original).", "How you should record the mortgage payments depends on if you are trying to achieve correct accounting, according to the standards, or if you are just tracking everything for you and your friends. If you're just keeping track for personal reasons, I'd suggest that you set up your check (or journal entry, your preference) how you'd like it to be recorded. Then, memorize that transaction. This allows you to use it as many times as you need to, without having to set it up each time. (Also note: there is no way to record a transaction that decreases cash and increases equity.) If you're trying to keep track of everything according to accounting standards, which it should be if you've set up an official business, then you have a lot more tracking to do with each payment. Mortgage payments technically do not affect the equity accounts of the owners. Each mortgage payment should decrease the bank balance, increase interest expense and decrease the mortgage balance, not to mention tracking any escrow account you may have. The equity accounts would be affected if the owners are contributing funds to the bank account, but equity would increase at the time the funds are deposited, not when the mortgage payments are made. Hope this helps!", "A security is a class of financial instrument you can trade on the market. A share of stock is a kind of security, for example, as is a bond. In the case of your mortgage, what happens: You take out a loan for $180k. The loan has two components. a. The payment stream (meaning the principal and the interest) from the loan b. The servicing of the loan, meaning the company who is responsible for accepting payments, giving the resulting income to whomever owns it. Many originating banks, such as my initial lender, do neither of these things - they sell the payment stream to a large bank or consortium (often Fannie Mae) and they also sell the servicing of the loan to another company. The payment stream is the primary value here (the servicing is worth essentially a tip off the top). The originating bank lends $180k of their own money. Then they have something that is worth some amount - say $450k total value, $15k per year for 30 years - and they sell it for however much they can get for it. The actual value of $15k/year for 30 years is somewhere in between - less than $450k more than $180k - since there is risk involved, and the present value is far less. The originating bank has the benefit of selling that they can then originate more mortgages (and make money off the fees) plus they can reduce their risk exposure. Then a security is created by the bigger bank, where they take a bunch of mortgages of different risk levels and group them together to make something with a very predictable risk quotient. Very similar to insurance, really, except the other way around. One mortage will either default or not at some % chance, but it's a one off thing - any good statistician will tell you that you don't do statistics on n=1. One hundred mortgages, each with some risk level, will very consistently return a particular amount, within a certain error, and thus you have something that people are willing to pay money on the market for." ]

[ "I would always recommend the intelligent investor by Benjamin Graham the mentor of warren buffet once you have a basic knowledge ie what is a share bond guilt etc In terms of pure investment the UK is fairly similar the major difference is the simpler tax structure, ISA allowance and the more generous CGT regime." ]

[ "Your best bet is to talk with a banker about your specific plans. One of the causes of the housing crash was an 80/20 loan. There you would get a first for 80% of the value of a home and 20% on a HELOC for the rest. This would help the buyer avoid PMI. Editorially, the reason this was popular was because the buyer could not afford the home with the PMI and did not have a down payment. They were simply cutting things too close. Could you find a banker willing to do something like this, I bet you could. In your case it seems like you are attempting to increase the value of your home by using money to do an improvement so the situation is better. However, sizable improvements rarely return 100% or more on investments. Typically, I would think, the bank would want you to have some money invested too. So if you wanted to put in a pool, a smart banker would have you put in about 60% of the costs as pools typically have a 40% ROI. However, I bet you can find a banker that would loan you 100%. You don't seem to be looking for advice on making a smart money decision, and it is difficult to render a verdict as very little detail is supplied about your specific situation. However, while certain decisions might look very profitable on paper, they rarely take into consideration risk.", "So My question is if I purchased the shares on 03-08-15 then will I get the dividend? Yes if you purchase on 3-Aug, the shares will actually get credited to your account on 5-Aug and hence you will hold the shares on 6-Aug, the record date.", "A tenant is a tenant regardless of your relationship to them, and as long as the property is classified as an investment property, you can claim depreciation and regular business losses just as you would on any property with any tenant.", "Exercising an option early if you can't sell the underlying stock being purchased is generally not advisable. You're basically locking in the worst price you can possibly pay, plus you're losing the time value on your money (which is, admittedly fairly low right now, but still). Let's say you have a strike price of $50. I get that you believe the stock to be worth more than $50. Let's assume that that's probably, but not certainly right. Whether it's worth $51, $151, or $5,100 when your options are going to expire, you still get the profit of $1, $101, or $5,050 if you wait until expiration and exercise then. By exercising now, you're giving up two things: The interest on the money you pay to exercise from now until expiration. The guarantee that you can't lose anything. If you buy it now, you get all the upside above your strike, but have all the downside below it. If you buy it later (at expiration), you still have all the upside above your strike, but no downside - in the (assumed to be unlikely) event that it's worth less than the strike you can simply do nothing, instead of having something you bought at the strike that's worth less now and taking that loss. By exercising early, you take on that loss risk, and give up the interest (or \"carry\" on the money you spend to exercise) for no additional updside. It's possible that there are tax benefits, as other posters mention, but the odds that \"starting the clock\" for LTCG is worth as much as the \"optionality\", or loss protection, plus the \"carry\", or interest that you're giving up is fairly unlikely.", "Also you would need to consider any taxation issues. As he will be paying you rent you will need to include this as income, plus any capital gains tax on the re-sale of the property may need to be paid.", "Depending on how marketable your degree is, in the long run you may be better aquiring some student debt rather than slowing down your studies. For example finishing finance, medicine, or engineering a year later would mean one less year of your life that you are earning substantial income. The only situation where slowing down your studies is of benefit is if your savings plus interest would be greater than the income you are giving up by taking longer. Live frugally, take whatever work you can without hurting your studies, don't stress if you can't get this to balance perfectly. I speak from experience on this. Screwing around with working through school cost me 2.5 years of earning potential ($120,000+).", "You avoid pattern day trader status by trading e-mini futures through a futures broker. The PDT rules do not apply in the futures markets. Some of the markets that are available include representatives covering the major indices i.e the YM (DJIA), ES (S&P 500) and NQ (Nasdaq 100) and many more markets. You can take as many round-turn trades as you care to...as many or as few times a day as you like. E-mini futures contracts trade in sessions with \"transition\" times between sessions. -- Sessions begin Sunday evenings at 6 PM EST and are open through Monday evening at 5 PM EST...The next session begins at 6 pm Monday night running through Tuesday at 5 PM EST...etc...until Friday's session close at 5 PM EST. Just as with stocks, you can either buy first then sell (open and close a position) or short-sell (sell first then cover by buying). You profit (or lose) on a round turn trade in the same manor as you would if trading stocks, options, ETFs etc. The e-mini futures are different than the main futures markets that you may have seen traders working in the \"pits\" in Chicago...E-mini futures are totally electronic (no floor traders) and do not involve any potential delivery of the 'product'...They just require the closing of positions to end a transaction. A main difference is you need to maintain very little cash in your account in order to trade...$1000 or less per trade, per e-mini contract...You can trade just 1 contract at a time or as many contracts as you have the cash in your account to cover. \"Settlement\" is immediate upon closing out any position that you may have put on...No waiting for clearing before your next trade. If you want to hold an e-mini contract position over 2 or more sessions, you need to have about $5000 per contract in your account to cover the minimum margin requirement that comes into play during the transition between sessions... With the e-minis you are speculating on gaining from the difference between when you 'put-on' and \"close-out\" a position in order to profit. For example, if you think the DJIA is about to rise 20 points, you can buy 1 contract. If you were correct in your assessment and sold your contract after the e-mini rose 20 points, you profited $100. (For the DJIA e-mini, each 1 point 'tick' is valued at $5.00)", "So far buying of own by own companies like Apple, is concerned it will surely raise the price of the script. At some level, the share prices are a factor of supply and demand at a given price. Apple being a very demanded script, its supply in the market goes down with the buy back. After a while, this will surely make the script price rise. It also depends at what price the buy back is affected. If the buy back is done at a right price, it will help the existing shareholder. If a very high price is paid, it will erode shareholders wealth. Hence each buy back needs to be studies separately. There are several and at times complex variables which determines if the buy back is good for continuing shareholders or not.", "Note that we do not comment on specific stocks here, and have no place doing so. If your question is only about that specific stock then it is off topic. I have not tried to answer that part below. The key to valuation is predicting the net present value of all of a company's cash flows; i.e. of their future profits and losses. Through a number of methods to long to explain here investment banks and hedge funds work out what they expect the company's cash flows to be and trade so that these future profits, losses etc. are priced into the stock price. Since future cash flows, profits or whatever you want to call them are priced in, the price of a stock shouldn't move at all on an earnings statement. This begs the question \"why do some stock prices move violently when they announce earnings?\" The models that the institutional investors use are not perfect and cannot take into account everything. An unexpected craze for a product or a supply chain agreement breaking down on not being as good as it seems will not be factored into this pricing and so the price will move based on the degree to which expectation is missed or exceeded. Since penny socks are speculative their value is based far more on the long term expected cash flows and less on the short run cash flows. This goes a long way to explaining why some of the highest market capitalisation penny stocks are those making consistent losses. This means that they can be far less susceptible to price movements after an earnings announcement even if it is well out of the consensus range. Higher (potential) future value comes with the higher risks of penny stocks which discounts current value. In the end if people's expectation of the company's performance reflects reality then the profitability is priced in and there will be no price movement. If the actuality is outside of the expected range then there will be a price movement.", "So you are in IT, that is great news because you can earn a fabulous income. The part time is not great, but you can use this to your advantage. You can get another job or three to boost your income in the short term. In the long term you should be able to find a better paying job fairly easily. There is one way to never deal with creditors again: never borrow money again. Its pretty damn simple and from the suggestions of your post you don't seem to be very good at handling credit. This would make you fairly normal. 78% of US households don't have $1000 saved. How are they going to handle a brake job/broken dryer/emergency room visit? Those things happen. Cut your lifestyle to nothing, earn money and save it. Say you have 2000 saved up. Then a creditor calls saying you owe 5K. Tell me you are willing to settle for the 2K you have saved. If they don't, hang up. If they are willing getting it writing and pay by a method that insulates you from further charges. Boom one out of the way and keep going. You will be 1099'd for some income, but it is a easy way to \"earn\" extra money. This will all work if you commit yourself to never again borrowing money." ]

[ "Options or Shares vest by date they are granted. It would strike me as odd for anyone to say their shares were given with 4 year vesting, but the clock was pre-started years prior. In my opinion, you have nothing to complain about." ]

[ "They can rebalance and often times at a random manager's discretion. ETF's are just funds, and funds all have their own conditions, read the prospectus, thats the only source of truth.", "An LLC is a pass-through entity in the USA, so profits and losses flow through to the individual's taxes. Thus an LLC has a separate TIN but the pass-through property greatly simplifies tax filings, as compared to the complicated filings required by C-corps.", "Good tax people are expensive. If you are comfortable with numbers and computers, you can do it better yourself.", "This will probably require asking the SO to sign a quitclaim and/or to \"sell\" him her share of the vehicle's ownership and getting it re-titled in his own name alone, which is the question you actually asked. To cancel the cosigner arrangement, he has to pay off the loan. If he can't or doesn't want to do that in cash, he'd have to qualify for a new loan to refinasnce in his name only, or get someone else (such as yourself) to co-sign. Alternatively, he might sell the car (or something else) to pay what he still owes on it. As noted in other answers, this kind of mess is why you shouldn't get into either cosigning or joint ownership without a written agreement spelling out exactly what happens should one of the parties wish to end this arrangement. Doing business with friends is still doing business.", "You may want, or at least be thinking of, the annualized method described in Pub 505 http://www.irs.gov/publications/p505/ch02.html#en_US_2015_publink1000194669 (also downloadable in PDF) and referred to in Why are estimated taxes due \"early\" for the 2nd and 3rd quarters only? . This doesn't prorate your payments as such; instead you use your income and deductions etc for each of the 3,2,3,4-month \"quarters\" to compute a prorated tax for the partial year, and pay the excess over the amount already paid. If your income etc amounts are (nearly) the same each month, then this computation will result in payments that are 3,2,3,4/12ths of 90% of your whole-year tax, but not if your amounts vary over the year. If you do use this method (and benefit from it) you MUST file form 2210 schedule AI with your return next filing season to demonstrate that your quarterly computations, and payments, met the requirements. You need to keep good per-period (or per-month) records of all tax-relevant amounts, and don't even try to do this form by hand, it'll drive you nuts; use software or a professional preparer (who also uses software), but I'd expect someone in your situation probably needs to do one of those anyway. But partnership puts a wrinkle on this. As a partner, your taxable income and expense is not necessarily the cash you receive or pay; it is your allocated share of the partnership's income and expenses, whether or not they are distributed to you. A partnership to operate a business (like lawyers, as opposed to an investment partnership) probably distributes the allocated amounts, at least approximately, rather than holding them in the partnership; I expect this is your year-end draw (technically a draw can be any allowed amount, not necessarily the allocated amount). In other words, your husband does earn this money during the year, he just receives it at the end. If the year-end distribution (or allocation if different) is significant (say more than 5% of your total income) and the partnership is not tracking and reporting these amounts (promptly!) for the IRS quarters -- and I suspect that's what they were telling you \"affects other partners\" -- you won't have the data to correctly compute your \"quarterly\" taxes, and may thus subject yourself to penalty for not timely paying enough. If the amount is reasonably predictable you can probably get away with using a conservative (high-side) guess to compute your payments, and then divide the actual full-year amounts on your K-1 over 12 months for 2210-AI; this won't be exactly correct, but unless the partnership business is highly seasonal or volatile it will be close enough the IRS won't waste its time on you. PS- the \"quarters\" are much closer to 13,9,13,17 weeks. But it's months that matter.", "Even Gold lost 1/2 of it's value between 1980 and 2000. You would not have fared well if you retired during that period heavily invested in Gold. http://www.usagold.com/reference/prices/history.html You said yourself that one can not foresee what the future will bring. At least IRA's force you to into dollar cost averaging, whereas if your money was outside of a retirement account, you might be tempted to speculate. -Ralph Winters", "Do mutual funds edit/censor underperforming investments to make their returns look better, and if so, is there any way one can figure out if they are doing it? No, that's not what the quote says. What the quote says is that the funds routinely drop investments that do not bring the expected return, which is true. That's their job, that is what is called \"active management\". Obviously, if you're measuring the fund by their success/failure to beat the market, to beat the market the funds must consistently select over-performers. No-one claims that they only select over-performers, but they select enough of them (or not...) for the average returns to be appealing (or not...) for the investors.", "You are in luck, I have an ANZ credit card as well. I have just checked my paper statement with online, and was able to find a matching online statement in less than a minute. You simply click on your credit card account from the list of accounts. Under Date Range it will have the Current incomplete statement period. You simply click on the down arrow and select the last complete date range ending sometime in late April (depending on your credit card cycle). You then press on View next to the drop down box. This should provide you with a list of purchases and payment/credits for that period, followed by a line with your Credit Limit, Available Funds and Closing Balance. The line below that then shows your Due Date, and Overdue/Overlimit, the Minimum Payment and Amount Due Now If you are after paying only the minimum amount then you pay this amount by the due date (you will be charged interest if you only pay this amount). If, on the otherhand, you wish to avoid paying any interest then you need to pay the full Closing Balance before the due date. You should also be able to get electronic statements sent to your email address.", "The problems with ratings and the interpretation of ratings is that they are retrospective, and most people read them as prospective. They basically tell you that debtor is solvent right now. What does that mean? It means that the ratings are based on the audited financial statements of a company, government or other organization issuing debt. So, in the best case scenario where the rating agency is acting properly, they are still dependent on folks with fiduciary responsibility telling the truth. And even if they are telling the \"truth\", accounting rules make it possible to obscure problems for years in some cases. Municipal goverments are a great example of this... the general obligation bonds cities and even states with deep structural budget problems still get good ratings, because they are solvent and have sufficient operating cash to meet obligations today. But towards the end of a 30-year bond's life, that may not be the case anymore unless they dramatically alter their budgets. At the end of the day, ratings are one aspect of due diligence. They are useful screening devices, but you need to understand who you are lending money to by purchasing bonds and diversify your holdings to protect your wealth. The problem, of course, is when the trustees of your pension fund invests in garbage assets after getting a sales pitch on the beach in Hawaii, then conveniently place all of the blame for that bad investment on the rating agency. You unfortunately have zero control over that.", "(a) you give away your money - gift tax The person who receives the gift doesn't owe any tax. If you give it out in small amounts, there will be no gift tax. It could have tax and Estate issues for you depending on the size of the gift, the timing, and how much you give away in total. Of course if you give it away to a charity you could deduct the gift. (b) you loan someone some money - tax free?? It there is a loan, and and you collect interest; you will have to declare that interest as income. The IRS will expect that you charge a reasonable rate, otherwise the interest could be considered a gift. Not sure what a reasonable rate is with savings account earning 0.1% per year. (c) you pay back the debt you owe - tax free ?? tax deductible ?? The borrower can't deduct the interest they pay, unless it is a mortgage on the main home, or a business loan. I will admit that there may be a few other narrow categories of loans that would make it deductible for the borrower. If the loan/gift is for the down payment on a house, the lender for the rest of the mortgage will want to make sure that the gift/loan nature is correctly documented. The need to fully understand the obligations of the homeowner. If it is a loan between family members the IRS may want to see the paperwork surrounding a loan, to make sure it isn't really a gift. They don't look kindly on loans that are never paid back and no interest collected." ]

[ "Most bank registers (where you write down entries) show deposits (+) to account as a CREDIT. Payments, fees, and withdrawals are DEBITs to your bank accounnt. On loans such as credit card accounts, a credit to your loan account is a payment or other reductions of the amount you owe. A charge to your account is a DEBIT to you loan account. They did this just to confuse us!" ]

[ "You quote a rate (2.75%) and then quote a margin (1.75%). The margin is usually an addition to some base rate. How is the margin expressed in the figures you have? Is it included in the rate, or in addition to it? As for the other stuff, it looks like the rate can go up at most 1% per year, up to a maximum of 5% increase. The first adjustment cap is also 1%. That just says that your first rate increase is capped the same as subsequent increases. If the margin is already included, and the increases are based on your initial rate, then this puts you at a maximum of 7.75%. You must verify this. I don't have your loan documents. And again, why would you want to risk an increase at all? You have a decent fixed-rate mortgage already. That still doesn't make sense to me. Going from 2.75% to 7.75% as above can increase your monthly payment by over 40%.", "First, you are not exactly \"giving\" the brokerage $2000. That money is the margin requirement to protect them in the case the stock price rises. If you short 200 shares as in your example and they are holding $6000 from you then they are protected in the event of the stock price increasing to $30/share. Sometime before it gets there the brokerage will require you to deposit more money or they will cover your position by repurchasing the shares for your account. The way you make money on the short sale is if the stock price declines. It is a buy low sell high idea but in reverse. If you believe that prices are going to drop then you could sell now when it is high and buy back later when it is lower. In your example, you are selling 200 shares at $20 and later, buying those at $19. Thus, your profit is $200, not counting any interest or fees you have paid. It's a bit confusing because you are selling something you'll buy in the future. Selling short is usually considered quite risky as your gain is limited to the amount that you sold at initially (if I sell at $20/share the most I can make is if the stock declines to $0). Your potential to lose is unlimited in theory. There is no limit to how high the stock could go in theory so I could end up buying it back at an infinitely high price. Neither of these extremes are likely but they do show the limits of your potential gain and loss. I used $20/share for simplicity assuming you are shorting with a market order vs a limit order. If you are shorting it would be better for you to sell at 20 instead of 19 anyway. If someone says I would like to give you $20 for that item you are selling you aren't likely to tell them \"no, I'd really only like $19 for it\"", "but I can't help but feel that these low rates are somehow a gimmick to trick people into taking out loans Let me help you: it's not a feeling. That's exactly what it is. Since the economy is down, people don't want to jeopardize what they have, and keep the cash in their wallets. But, while keeping the money safe in the pocket, it makes the economy even worse. So in order to make people spend some money, the rates go down so that the cost of money is lower. It also means that the inflation will be on the rise, which is again a reason not to keep money uninvested. So yes, the rates are now very low, and the housing market is a buyers' market, so it does make sense to take out a loan at this time (provided of course that you can actually repay it over time, and don't take loans you can't handle). Of course, you shouldn't be taking loans just because the rates are low. But if you were already planning on purchasing a house - now would be a good time to go on with that.", "The logic \"the interest rate on the mortgage was so low it didn't make sense not to buy\" is one reason the housing bubble happened. The logic was that it made the house affordable even at high prices. Once the prices collapsed people still had affordable payments, but were unable to sell because they were upside down on the mortgage. If you can refinance to a 15-year mortgage, or from a adjustable mortgage to a fixed rate mortgage. it can make sense. You can save on the monthly payment, and on the total cost of the mortgage. But don't buy to take advantage of rates; or to save on taxes; or to build a guaranteed equity. These can be false economies or things that can't be gaurenteed. Of course if nobody spends money, the economy will stay poor. As to hidden details. Only purchase housing you want to own for the long haul. If you expect to flip it in a few years, you might not be able to. You might end up stuck as a long distance landlord.", "The word bespoke means made to order. Bespoke insurance means non-cookie cutter. That mean the thing your are trying to protect, or the risk to that item is not normally covered; so you need a non-standard type of policy. Your neighborhood insurance company doesn't handle a bespoke policy. There are companies that do. Reinsurance is insurance on insurance. Company X has a risk they want to insure, so they go to insurance company A. After a while insurance company A realizes that they have sold a few of these policies and they have a risk if they guessed wrong. So they take out a policy with insurance company B to protect themselves if more than some percentage of their policies go bad. That policy takes bespoke reinsurance.", "I find the question interesting, but it's beyond an intelligent answer. Say what you will about Jim Cramer, his advice to spend \"an hour per month on each stock\" you own appears good to me. But it also limits the number of stocks you can own. Given that most of us have day jobs in other fields, you need to decide how much time and education you can put in. That said, there's a certain pleasure in picking stocks, buying a company that's out of favor, but your instinct tells you otherwise. For us, individual stocks are about 10% of total portfolio. The rest is indexed. The amount that \"should be\" in individual stocks? None. One can invest in low cost funds, never own shares of individual stocks, and do quite well.", "The short answer: it depends. The long answer.. Off the top of my head, there are quite a number of factors that an analyst may look at when analyzing a stock, to come up with a recommendation. Some example factors to look at include: The list goes on. Quite literally, any and all factors are fair game for a recommendation. So, the question isn't really what analysts do with financial data, it is what do analysts do with financial data that meets your investment needs? As an example, if you have two analysts, one who is focused on growth stocks, and one who is focused on dividend growth, they may have completely different views on a company. If both analysts were to analyze Apple (AAPL) 5 years ago, the dividend analyst would likely say SELL or at the most HOLD, because back then Apple did not have a dividend. However, an analyst focused on growth would likely have said BUY, because Apple appeared to be on a clear upward trend in terms of growth. Likewise, if you have analysts who are focused on shorting stocks, and ones who are focused on deep value investing, the sell analyst may be selling SELL because they are confident the stock will go down in price, so you can make money on the short position. Conversely, the deep value investor may be saying BUY, because they believe that based on the companies strong balance sheet, and recent shake-ups in management the stock will eventually turn around. Two completely different views for the same company: the analyst focused on shorting is looking to make money by capitalizing on falling share price, while the analyst focused on deep value is looking for unloved companies in a tailspin whom s/he believe will turn around, the thesis being that if you dollar-cost-average as the price drops, when it corrects, you'll reap the rewards. That all said, to answer the question about what analysts look for: So really, you should be looking for analysts who align with your investment style, and use those recommendations as a starting point for your own purchases. Personally, I am a dividend investor, so I have passed many BUY recommendations from analysts and my former broker because those were based on growth stories. That does not mean that the analysts, my former broker, or myself, are wrong. But we were all incorrect given the context of how I invest, and what they recommend.", "I'm not aware of any method to own US stocks, but you can trade them as contract for difference, or CFDs as they are commonly known. Since you're hoping to invest around $1000 this might be a better option since you can use leverage.", "I recently bought a stock - which was priced exactly as your question ponders, to the 1/100 cent. I happened to buy 2000 shares, but just a round lot of 100 would be enough to create no need for rounding. It's common for industry to price this way as well, where an electronic component purchased by the thousands, is priced to the tenth or hundredth of a cent. There's nothing magic about this, and you'll have more to ponder when your own lowest unit of currency is no longer minted. (I see you are in UK. Here, in the US, there's talk of dropping our cent. A 5 cent piece to be the smallest value coin. Yet, any non-cash transactions, such as checks, credit card purchases, etc, will still price to the penny.) To specifically answer the question - it's called decimal currency. 1/10, 1/100 of a cent.", "To answer your original question: There is proof out there. Here is a paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that might be worth a read. It has a lot of references to other publications that might help answer your question(s) about TA. You can probably read the whole article then research some of the other ones listed there to come up with a conclusion. Below are some excerpts: Abstract: This article introduces the subject of technical analysis in the foreign exchange market, with emphasis on its importance for questions of market efficiency. \"Technicians\" view their craft, the study of price patterns, as exploiting traders’ psychological regularities. The literature on technical analysis has established that simple technical trading rules on dollar exchange rates provided 15 years of positive, risk-adjusted returns during the 1970s and 80s before those returns were extinguished. More recently, more complex and less studied rules have produced more modest returns for a similar length of time. Conventional explanations that rely on risk adjustment and/or central bank intervention do not plausibly justify the observed excess returns from following simple technical trading rules. Psychological biases, however, could contribute to the profitability of these rules. We view the observed pattern of excess returns to technical trading rules as being consistent with an adaptive markets view of the world. and The widespread use of technical analysis in foreign exchange (and other) markets is puzzling because it implies that either traders are irrationally making decisions on useless information or that past prices contain useful information for trading. The latter possibility would contradict the \"efficient markets hypothesis,\" which holds that no trading strategy should be able to generate unusual profits on publicly available information—such as past prices—except by bearing unusual risk. And the observed level of risk-adjusted profitability measures market (in)efficiency. Therefore much research effort has been directed toward determining whether technical analysis is indeed profitable or not. One of the earliest studies, by Fama and Blume (1966), found no evidence that a particular class of TTRs could earn abnormal profits in the stock market. However, more recent research by Brock, Lakonishok and LeBaron (1992) and Sullivan, Timmermann an d White (1999) has provided contrary evidence. And many studies of the foreign exchange market have found evidence that TTRs can generate persistent profits (Poole 6 (1967), Dooley and Shafer (1984), Sweeney (1986), Levich and Thomas (1993), Neely, Weller and Dittmar (1997), Gençay (1999), Lee, Gleason and Mathur (2001) and Martin (2001))." ]

[ "It would be nice if the broker could be instructed to clear out the position for you, but in my experience the broker will simply give you the shares that you can't afford, then freeze your account because you are over your margin limit, and issue a margin call. This happened to me recently because of a dumb mistake: options I paid $200 for and expected to expire worthless, ended up slightly ITM, so they were auto-exercised on Friday for about $20k, and my account was frozen (only able to close positions). By the next Monday, market news had shifted the stock against me and I had to sell it at a loss of $1200 to meet the margin call. This kind of thing is what gives option trading a reputation for danger: A supposedly max-$200-risk turned into a 6x greater loss. I see no reason to ever exercise, I always try to close my positions, but these things can happen." ]

[ "Perhaps the real question you are asking is \"How can the tax code be fixed to make it simple for everyone (including me), and what would it take to effect those changes\"? There are really two causes for the complexity of the tax code. Many of those who enter Government hold a desire for power, and Government uses the tax code as one lever of power to distribute largess to their supporters, and to nudge everyone to behaviors which they favor. The current system enables incumbents to spend taxpayer money to reward those they favor, and thus they accumulate power and security. Those who enter Government also love to spend money (especially other people's money), and their rapacious behavior recognizes no boundaries. They will spend money without control until the taxpayers yank them to a brutal stop. They enact complex rules which are used to ease the (tax) burden for some, which buys their support (with taxpayer money), and they spend money to benefit those which they favor. The system of lobbyists and contributors exists to entice Government to treat them and the causes they support favorably. This system enables incumbents to spend taxed money to reward those they favor, and to tax those they disfavor. Thus their greed is satisfied, and their power is increased. The freedom you seek is not available, although you can minimize the effort required for compliance. You can take the standard deduction, and use nothing but the W-2 provided by your employer, and unless you are subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax, you will find that the tax software will do most of the work for you. Do you want to approach the Nirvana of minimal effort to appease your tax collectors? Avoid starting your own business, charitable donations, investment income, 1099 income, and you will need minimal paperwork. Avoid earning enough to risk the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax). Refuse to take the mortgage interest deduction, tax credits for electric vehicles, tax credits for high-efficiency appliances and air conditioners, tax credits for residential solar panel installations. Do not own investments which pay interest, or own stocks where you need to track the \"basis\" (purchase price) of the stocks, nor buy and then sell valuable items that might gain value (where you would need to track the purchase price, the \"basis\"). Avoid owning and leasing a rental home for income, deducting businesses expenses and mileage for business purposes, contributions to a retirement plan (outside an employer plan) -- all complicate your tax filing. The solution you truly desire is either a \"Flat Tax\" or the \"Fair Tax\". These solutions would effect either a single tax rate (with no deductions or adjustments to income, yeah right), or a national retail sales tax, which would tax the money spent in the economy regardless of the source of the money (legal, gifts, crime) and there would be no need to report income, or classify it. The largest objection to either is that the tax code might become less \"progressive\" (increasing tax rate with increasing income). Good Luck!", "Buy a rental property instead. You get tax benefits as well as passive income. And it pays for itself", "You should not look at volume in isolation but look at it together with other indicators and/or the release of news (good or bad). When there is lower than average volume this could be an indication that the stock is in a bit of a holding pattern, possibly waiting for some company or economic news to come out (especially when accompanied by small changes in price). It could also mean that trading in a certain direction is drying up and the trend is about to end (this could be accompanied with a large move in price). When there is higher than average volume (2 to 3 times more or higher), this could be due to the release of company results, company or economic news, or the start or end of a trend (especially if accompanied by a gap). A large increase in volume accompanied by a large fall in price (usually a gap down) may also be an indication the stock has gone ex-dividend. There could be a range of reasons for variations in volume to the average volume. That is why you need to look at other indicators, company reporting and news, and economic news in combination with the volume changes to get a grasp of what is really happening.", "I'll take an alternate route: honesty + humor. Say something like this with a smile and a laugh, like you know they're crazy, but they maybe don't know it yet. \"Are you crazy? Co-signing a loan can put us both in a lot of potential danger. First, you shouldn't get a loan that you can't afford/attain on your own, and second, I'd be crazy to agree to be liable for a loan that someone else can't get on their own. You want something bad enough, you get your credit rating in order, or you save up the money - that's how I bought (my car/house/trip to Geneva). I'd be happy to point you in the right direction if you want to put a plan together.\" You're offering help, but not the kind that puts you in danger. Declining to co-sign a loan can't damage your relationship with this person as much as failure to pay will.", "As I tell all my clients... remember WHY you are investing in the first. Make a plan and stick to it. Find a strategy and perfect it. A profit is not a profit until you take it. the same goes with a loss. You never loose till you sell for less than what you paid. Stop jumping for one market to the next, find one strategy that works for you. Making money in the stock market is easy when you perfect your trading strategy. As for your questions: Precious metal... Buying or selling look for the trends and time frame for your desired holdings. Foreign investments... They have problem in their economy just as we do, if you know someone that specializes in that... good for you. Bonds and CD are not investments in my opinion... I look at them as parking lots for your cash. At this moment in time with the devaluation of the US dollar and inflation both killing any returns even the best bonds are giving out I see no point in them at this time. There are so many ways to easily and safely make money here in our stock market why look elsewhere. Find a strategy and perfect it, make a plan and stick to it. As for me I love Dividend Capturing and Dividend Stocks, some of these companies have been paying out dividends for decades. Some have been increasing their payouts to their investors since Kennedy was in office.", "American options (like those on ADBE) can be exercised by the holder anytime before expiration. They will be exercised automatically at expiration if they are in the money. However, if there is still time before expiration (as in this case), and they are not extremely in the money, there is probably extrinsic value to the option, and you should sell it, not exercise it. European options are only automatically exercised at expiration, and only if they are in the money. These are usually cash settled on products like SPX or VIX. They can not be exercised before expiration, but can be sold anytime.", "The insurance company issued the check. I'd contact the insurance company to have the current check voided and a new one issued to the pharmacy.", "When I look at debt I try to think of myself as a corporation. In life, you have a series of projects that you can undertake which may yield a positive net present value (for simplicity, let's define positive net present value as a project that yields more benefit than its cost). Let's say that one of the projects that you have is to build a factory to make clothing. The factory will cost 1 million dollars and will generate revenue of 1.5 million dollars over the next year, afterwhich it wears out. Although you have the knowledge to build this wonderful factory, you don't have a million bucks laying around, so instead, you go borrow it from the bank. The bank charges you 10% interest on the loan, which means that at the end of the year, the project has yielded a return of 400k. This is an extremely simplified example of what you call \"good\" debt. It is good if you are taking the debt and purchasing something with a positive value. In reality, this should be how people should approach all purchases, even if they are with cash. Everything that you buy is an investment in yourself - even entertainment and luxury items all could be seen as an investment in your happiness and relaxation. If more people approached their finances in this way, people would have much more money to spend, William", "I guess the opposite of being hedged is being unhedged. Typically, a hedge is an additional position that you would take on in order to mitigate the potential for losses on another position. I'll give an example: Say that I purchase 100 shares of stock XYZ at $10 per share because I believe its price will increase in the future. At that point, my full investment of $1000 is at risk, so the position is not hedged. If the price of XYZ decreases to $8, then I've lost $200. If the price of XYZ increases to $12, then I've gained $200; the profit/loss curve has a linear relationship to the future stock price. Suppose that I decide to hedge my XYZ position by purchasing a put option. I purchase a single option contract (corresponding to my 100 shares) with a strike price of $10 and an expiration date in January 2013 for a price of $0.50/share. This means that until the contract expires, I can always sell my XYZ shares for a minimum of $10. Therefore, if the price of XYZ decreases to $8, then I've only lost $50 (the price of the option contract), compared to the $200 that I would have lost if the position was unhedged. Likewise, however, if the price increases to $12, then I've only gained a net total of $150 due to the money I spent on the hedge. (the details of how much money you would actually lose in the hedged scenario are simplified out above; even out-of-the-money options retain some value before expiration, but pricing of options is outside of the scope of this post) So, as a more pointed answer to your question, I would say that the hedged/unhedged status of a position can be characterized by its potential for loss. If you don't have any other assets that will increase in value to offset losses on your position of interest, I would call it unhedged.", "There's no tax difference between using AirBnB or Craigslist or any other method to find tenants. The rules relating to occupancy and frequency may be different for some purposes if you go from yearly or monthly tenants to daily-rate tenants. Your state and local authorities may in the future try to consider you a motel or Bed n Breakfast equivalent, and subject you to various regulations and business taxes. But the method of finding customers itself is probably not meaningful for tax purposes." ]

[ "Go on a website that has real estate listings. Find similar homes in the same neighborhood and list out the prices. Once you have prices, pick out two with different prices and call the realtor of the more expensive listing. Tell that realtor about the other listing and ask why their listing is more expensive. Compare their answer to the home that you are considering buying. For example, they may say that their house has a newly remodeled kitchen. Does the house you are considering have a newly remodeled kitchen? If so, then use the higher priced listing and throw out the cheaper one. If not, use the cheap listing and throw out the expensive one. Or they might say that the expensive house is in a better location than the cheaper house. Further away from traffic. Easier to get to the highway or public transportation. If so, ask how the location compares to the house you are actually considering. The realtor will tell you if the listings are comparable. When I talk about \"similar homes,\" I mean homes that are similar in square footage, number of bedrooms, and number of bathrooms. Generally real estate sites will allow you to search by all of these as well as location. After all this, the potential seller may still turn you down. If he really wanted to sell, he'd have suggested a price. He may just be seeing if you're willing to overpay. If so, he could turn down an otherwise reasonable offer. How much he is willing to take is up to him. Note that this would all be easier if you just bought a house the normal way. Then the realtors would do the comparables portion of the work. You might be able to find a realtor or appraiser who would do the work for a set fee. Perhaps your bank would help you with that, as they have to appraise the property to offer a mortgage. You asked if you can buy out a mortgaged house with a mortgage. Yes, you can. That's a pretty normal occurrence. Normally the realtors would make all the necessary arrangements. I'm guessing that a title transfer company could handle that." ]

[ "I don't know Australian law, but I will give my US perspective here. The custom in the US is for officers and directors to be indemnified by the corporation, and that LLCs have an even broader power to indemnify (even to remove the duty of loyalty!). Moreover, directors will typically be able to purchase D&O insurance to protect them from loss in the event of liability. For US corporations (not LLCs), the duty of care (prudence) requires that directors behave responsibly in weighing major decisions, and consult experts and specialists before coming to rash decisions. It usually becomes a court case in the context of a large public company in the midst of an acquisition event. The only people with standing (in the US) are shareholders. If all the other shareholders are directors, then it may be hard for them to blame you. Additionally, if you are concerned about the propriety of your actions, there may be sources to rely on. First, discussion with your fellow directors can be a helpful guide (though will not usually immunize you from any accusation of wrongdoing), and disclosure tends to cure almost any accusation of breaching the duty of loyalty. Second, boards often secure the advice of legal counsel, and sometimes bring on lawyers as members or will outright hire counsel for the board. Third, there may be services that will provide you with generic advice (e.g. UK Companies House and US-based IOD), which might set you at ease a little bit. I don't know the details of Australian law, as I say. But my sense of common law countries is that, like the US, they are primarily concerned about negligence (incompetently or imprudently neglecting to understand the business and make informed decisions), disloyalty (fraudulently engaging in self-interested transactions that either hurt the company or should have been offered to the company), and recklessness (not bothering to seek out information). As long as you are active, informed, engaged, and not engaging in secret deals outside the company (especially deals where either side is competing with the company), then that would be more than sufficient under the US standard. If you are concerned about liability, then inquire into indemnifications by the company (in the US, the company can usually pay all legal costs of directors), insurance, and legal counsel. I imagine your business partners are no more savvy than you are. My impression is you are overreacting to relatively rare and exotic expression of corporate law (at least in the US). But I'll close by repeating that I don't know Australian corporate law.", "In a nutshell, not really. That's the risk you take when you co-sign for someone. The lender only made the loan because of the strength of your brother's credit, not your mother's, so his reputation (in the form of his credit rating) is going to take the hit because of his mother's behaviors. The one thing he can do is this: The credit bureaus allow you to add a comment or explanation to your credit file which may be helpful, provided potential creditors read it, which is never a guarantee. It's worth trying though, so suggest to him to look into it. Here's a link for him/you/anyone to look at that can help explain how this works and what effects it can have: Adding a comment to your credit file for negative items I hope this helps. Good luck!", "If you are paid by foreigners then it is quite possible they don't file anything with the IRS. All of this income you are required to report as business income on schedule C. There are opportunities on schedule C to deduct expenses like your health insurance, travel, telephone calls, capital expenses like a new computer, etc... You will be charged both the employees and employers share of social security/medicare, around ~17% or so, and that will be added onto your 1040. You may still need a local business license to do the work locally, and may require a home business permit in some cities. In some places, cities subscribe to data services based on your IRS tax return.... and will find out a year or two later that someone is running an unlicensed business. This could result in a fine, or perhaps just a nice letter from the city attorneys office that it would be a good time to get the right licenses. Generally, tax treaties exist to avoid or limit double taxation. For instance, if you travel to Norway to give a report and are paid during this time, the treaty would explain whether that is taxable in Norway. You can usually get a credit for taxes paid to foreign countries against your US taxes, which helps avoid paying double taxes in the USA. If you were to go live in Norway for more than a year, the first $80,000/year or so is completely wiped off your US income. This does NOT apply if you live in the USA and are paid from Norway. If you have a bank account overseas with more than $10,000 of value in it at any time during the year, you owe the US Government a FinCEN Form 114 (FBAR). This is pretty important, there are some large fines for not doing it. It could occur if you needed an account to get paid in Norway and then send the money here... If the Norwegian company wires the money to you from their account or sends a check in US$, and you don't have a foreign bank account, then this would not apply.", "When economies are strong, it is particularly alluring to have a single currency as it makes trade and tourism simpler and helps reduce costs. The problem comes when individual member economies get into trouble. Because the Eurozone is a loose grouping of nations, there is no direct equivalent of the US Federal government to coordinate a response, there is instead an odd mixture of National and Central government that makes it harder to get a unified approach to the economy (OK, it's maybe not so different to the US in reality). This lack of flexibility means that some of the key levers of international finance are compromised, for example a weak economy can't float its currency to improve exports. Similarly individual country's interest rates can't be adjusted to balance spending. I suspect the main reason though is political and based on concepts of sovereignty and national pride. The UK does the majority of its trade with the Eurozone, so the pros would possibly outweigh the cons, but the UK as a whole (and some of our papers in particular) have always regarded Europe with suspicion. Most Brits only speak English and find France and Germany a strange and obtuse place. The (almost) common language makes it easier to relate to the US and Canada than our near neighbours. It seems the perception amongst the political establishment is that any attempt to join the Euro is political suicide, while that is the case it is unlikely to happen. Purely from a personal perspective, I'd welcome the Euro except it means a lot of the products I routinely buy would become a lot more expensive if price is 'harmonised'. For an example compare the price of the iPod Touch in the UK (£209.99) to France(€299). The French pay £262 at the current exchange rate, which is close to 25% more. Ouch. See also my question about Canada adopting the US Dollar", "For a retail investor who isn't a Physics or Math major, the \"Beta\" of the stock is probably the best way to quantify risk. Examples: A Beta of 1 means that a stock moves in line with the market. Over 1 means that you would expect the stock to move up or down faster than the market as a whole. Under 1 means that you would expect the stock to move slower than the market as a whole.", "I think the part of your question about not wanting to \"mess up more\" is the most important element. You say you know someone with good credit who is willing to co-sign for you, but let's be honest -- your credit isn't bad for no reason. Your credit's bad because you have a history of not paying on your obligations. Putting someone else's credit at risk, even though they may be willing to try and help, could be doing exactly what you said you're trying to avoid -- messing up more. This person's heart is in the right place, but you really have to ask yourself if you should put them in jeopardy by agreeing to guarantee your debts. So the vehicle you bought is older and has a lot of miles -- you knew that when you bought it. So you're paying a high interest rate because of your bad credit history -- you knew that when you bought it. Why you think the vehicle's only going to last another year is what confuses me. There are many vehicles out there with much higher mileage that are still on the road, and with proper preventative maintenance there's no reason your truck can't do the same. The fact is, you just don't like what you're paying or what you're driving (even though you were good with both when someone was willing to extend you credit), so now you see this other person's willingness to co-sign for you as your ticket out of a situation you no longer want to be in. My suggestion is that you stay with the loan you have, take care of the vehicle to make it last, and prove that you can pay your obligations. Hopping from loan to loan isn't going to do your credit any favors. One of the big factors for your credit score is the average age of accounts. Going and signing a new loan now will only drag that number down and hurt your score, not help it. And there's no guarantee the next car you buy with your friend's help is going to last the length of that loan either. I would be careful about this \"grass is greener on the other side\" attitude and just bear through your situation, if only to prove to yourself that you can do it. There's nothing saying your friend won't still be willing to co-sign for you later on down the line of something does happen to the truck, but you can show them that you're trying to be responsible in the meantime by following through on what you already agreed to.", "All but certainly, Mitsubishi is selling so cheaply because of the fuel scandal. It has been providing false fuel efficiency data for decades. As a result, it may face significant penalties and may have lost the trust of consumers, who will now be less likely to purchase a Mitsubishi vehicle. Nissan is taking a controlling stake in Mitsubishi. This is important news for the company, too. The stock price reflects the consensus of investors on how significant these issues are. It's quite possible the stock will recover over the next few years, in which case it's a bargain at the moment. On the other hand, it's quite possible the company will never recover.", "Fairly straightforward to match the result from the calculator soup link. There is a formula to calculate n from the future value s (using natural logs) In Excel This was derived as shown To calculate n from the inflation-adjusted future value si requires using a solver since an algebraic formula cannot be formulated. As demonstrated Calculations done using Mathematica 7.", "You mentioned depositing the check and then sending a personal check. Be sure to account for time, since any deposit over $10,000 the money will be made available in increments, so it may take 10-14 days to get the full amount in your account before you could send a personal check. I would not recommend this option regardless, but if you do, just a heads up.", "Banks are in it to make money. But they're expected to provide a social good which powers our economy: secure money storage (bank accounts) and cashless transactions (credit/debit cards). And the government does not subsidize this. In fact, banks are being squeezed. Prudent customers dislike paying the proper cost of their account's maintenance (say, a $50/year fee for a credit card, or $9/month for a checking account) - they want it free. Meanwhile government is pretty aggressive about preventing \"fine print\" trickery that would let them recover costs other ways. However there isn't much sympathy for consumers who make trivial mistakes - whether they be technical (overdraft, late fee) or money-management mistakes (like doing balance transfers or getting fooled by promotional interest rates). So that's where banks are able to make their money: when people are imprudent. The upshot is that it's hard for a bank to make money on a prudent careful customer; those end up getting \"subsidized\" by the less-careful customers who pay fees and buy high-margin products like balance transfers. And this has created a perverse incentive: banks make more money when they actively encourage customers to be imprudent. Here, the 0% interest is to make you cocky about running up a balance, or doing balance transfers at a barely-mentioned fee of 3-5%. They know most Americans don't have $500 in the bank and you won't be able to promptly pay it off right before the 0% rate ends. (or you'll forget). And this works - that's why they do it. By law, you already get 0% interest on purchases when you pay the card in full every month. So if that's your goal, you already have it. In theory, the banks collect about 1.5% from every transaction you do, and certainly in your mind's eye, you'd think that would be enough to get by without charging interest. That doesn't work, though. The problem is, such a no-interest card would attract people who carry large balances. That would have two negative impacts: First the bank would have to spend money reborrowing, and second, the bank would have huge exposure to credit card defaults. The thing to remember is the banks are not nice guys and are not here to serve you. They're here to use you to make money, and they're not beneath encouraging you to do things that are actually bad for you. Caveat Emptor." ]

[ "The other person has to decide that they want to be wholly responsible for the loan, and they have to be able to qualify for the loan. They are in essence purchasing the car from you with the sale price being the remaining balance of the loan. You will then use the processed from the new loan to pay the old loan off completely. They will then take the bill of sale to the state DMV/MVA to register the car in their name. You should have them start with their bank for a new car loan." ]

[ "I assume that mutual funds are being discussed here. As Bryce says, open-ended funds are bought from the mutual fund company and redeemed from the fund company. Except in very rare circumstances, they exist only as bits in the fund company's computers and not as share certificates (whether paper or electronic) that can be delivered from the selling broker to the buying broker on a stock exchange. Effectively, the fund company is the sole market maker: if you want to buy, ask the fund company at what price it will sell them to you (and it will tell you the answer only after 4 pm that day when a sale at that price is no longer possible unless you committed to buy, say, 100 shares and authorized the fund company to withdraw the correct amount from your bank account or other liquid asset after the price was known). Ditto if you want to sell: the mutual fund company will tell you what price it will give you only after 4 pm that day and you cannot sell at that price unless you had committed to accept whatever the company was going to give you for your shares (or had said \"Send me $1000 and sell as many shares of mine as are needed to give me proceeds of $1000 cash.\")", "Don't ever quantify a stock's preference/performance just based on the dividend it is paying out Volatility defined by movements in the the stock's price, affected by factors embedded in the stock e.g. the corporation, the business it is in, the economy, the management etc etc. Apple wasn't paying dividends but people were still buying into it. Same with Amazon, Berkshire, Google. These companies create value by investing their earnings back into their company and this is reflected in their share prices. Their earnings create more value in this way for the stockholders. The holding structures of these companies also help them in their motives. Supposedly $100 invested in either stocks. For keeping things easy, you invested at the same time in both, single annual dividend and prices more or less remain constant. Company A: $5/share at 20% annual dividend yield. Dividend = $20 Company B: $10/share at 20% annual dividend yield Dividend = $20 You receive the same dividend in both cases. Volatility willn't affect you unless you are trading, or the stock market tanks, or some very bad news comes out of either company or on the economy. Volatility in the long term averages out, except in specific outlier cases e.g. Lehman bankruptcy and the financial crash which are rare but do happen. In general case the %price movements in both stocks would more or less follow the markets (not exactly though) except when relevant news for either corporations come out.", "What you are doing is neither one. You are simply watching to make sure you don't overdraw, which itself suggests you might be living hand to mouth and not saving. Keeping track of your money and budgeting are useful tools which help people get on top of their money. Which tends to have the effect of allowing you to save. How much did you spend on groceries last month? Eating out? Gas? If you were \"keeping track of your money\", you could say immediately what you spent, and whether that is above or below average, and why. How much do you plan to spend in the next 3 months on gas, groceries, eating out? If you knew the answer to that question, then you would have a \"budget\". And if those months go by, and your budget proves to have been accurate, or educates you as to what went wrong so you can learn and fix it... then your budget is a functioning document that is helping you master your money. Certainly the more powerful of the two is the \"keeping track\", or accounting of what has happened to you so far. It's important that you keep track of every penny without letting stuff \"slip through the cracks\". Here you can use proper accounting techniques and maybe accounting software, just like businesses do where they reconcile their accounting against their bank statements and wallet cash. I shortcut that a little. I buy gift cards for McDonalds, Panera, Starbucks, etc. and buy my meals with those. That way, I only have one transaction to log, $40 - McDonalds gift card instead of a dozen little meals. It works perfectly fine since I know all that money went to fast food. A little more dangerous is that I treat wallet cash the same way, logging say two monthly entries of $100 to cash rather than 50 little transactions of left $1 tip at restaurant. This only works because cash is a tiny part of my overall expenditures - not worth accounting. If it added up to a significant part, I'd want accounting on that.", "Emergency Account Vault (Windows) I use it to store info about all of my accounts/assets in an encrypted document. It's more for keeping track of everything that is in your name than managing money. Good for situations when you need to quickly look up info about a specific account you own.", "I actually didn't do the math with your numbers, but I recall Sal from Khan Academy did a nice video about your question, challenging the notion that it is always better to buy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL10H_EcB-E", "Not a lot, directly. Your biggest direct risk is that you could buy the debt, and buy it at too high a price (i.e. too low an interest rate) and not make as much money as you ought (and maybe not enough to cover inflation, especially if you buy long-term bonds at low interest rates.) The indirect risks are mostly that the debt could weigh on economic growth: There is also a question of monetary policy, inflation, and interest rates set by the Federal Reserve. Theoretically the government could be tempted to keep interest rates low (to save money) and buy its own bonds (\"printing money\"), which could cause inflation. Theoretically, they shouldn't, as price stability is one of the Fed's primary mandates. But if they did, inflation makes everything less predictable and is generally obnoxious, which makes everything more risky and drags on the economy. Also, if the nominal value of an asset rises due to inflation, you will likely need to pay taxes on that at some point if you sell it, even though its real value is the same.", "Be aware that ATM withdrawals often generate hidden fees, which are not obviously declared. Many banks operate e.g. with a currency exchange fee, giving you an exchange rate some 1-2% lower than actually applicable. If you withdraw larger amounts, such a currency exchange fee easily adds up to what you would have paid for a wire transfer, where you would get a better exchange rate. Although it's probably much hassle for you to change banks, another option may be to find a bank which operates both in France and the US. Banks with different national branches often offer cheap and fast wire transfers between same-bank accounts in different countries. E.g. Citibank used to offer such services, but I am not sure if they still serve private customers in France.", "Gold's value starts with the fact that its supply is steady and by nature it's durable. In other words, the amount of gold traded each year (The Supply and Demand) is small relative to the existing total stock. This acting as a bit of a throttle on its value, as does the high cost of mining. Mines will have yields that control whether it's profitable to run them. A mine may have a $600/oz production cost, in which case it's clear they should run full speed now with gold at $1200, but if it were below $650 or so, it may not be worth it. It also has a history that goes back millennia, it's valued because it always was. John Maynard Keynes referred to gold as an archaic relic and I tend to agree. You are right, the topic is controversial. For short periods, gold will provide a decent hedge, but no better than other financial instruments. We are now in an odd time, where the stock market is generally flat to where it was 10 years ago, and both cash or most commodities were a better choice. Look at sufficiently long periods of time, and gold fails. In my history, I graduated college in 1984, and in the summer of 82 played in the commodities market. Gold peaked at $850 or so. Now it's $1200. 50% over 30 years is hardly a storehouse of value now, is it? Yet, I recall Aug 25, 1987 when the Dow peaked at 2750. No, I didn't call the top. But I did talk to a friend advising that I ignore the short term, at 25 with little invested, I only concerned myself with long term plans. The Dow crashed from there, but even today just over 18,000 the return has averaged 7.07% plus dividends. A lengthy tangent, but important to understand. A gold fan will be able to produce his own observation, citing that some percent of one's holding in gold, adjusted to maintain a balanced allocation would create more positive returns than I claim. For a large enough portfolio that's otherwise well diversified, this may be true, just not something I choose to invest in. Last - if you wish to buy gold, avoid the hard metal. GLD trades as 1/10 oz of gold and has a tiny commission as it trades like a stock. The buy/sell on a 1oz gold piece will cost you 4-6%. That's no way to invest. Update - 29 years after that lunch in 1987, the Dow was at 18448, a return of 6.78% CAGR plus dividends. Another 6 years since this question was asked and Gold hasn't moved, $1175, and 6 years' worth of fees, 2.4% if you buy the GLD ETF. From the '82 high of $850 to now (34 years), the return has a CAGR of .96%/yr or .56% after fees. To be fair, I picked a relative high, that $850. But I did the same choosing the pre-crash 2750 high on the Dow.", "First of all, Dilip's answer explains well how the business deductions generally work. For most (big) expenses you depreciate it. However, in some cases you need to capitalize it, which is another accounting method. When you capitalize your expense, it becomes part of the basis of the product you're creating. Since you're an engineer, this might be relevant for you. Talk to your tax adviser. How exactly you deduct/depreciate/capitalize things, and what expense goes which way depends greatly on the laws and jurisdictions. Even in the US, different states have different laws, and the IRS and State laws don't have to conform (unfortunately). For example, the limitations on Sec. 179 deduction in 2010-2011 were 20 times higher on Federal level than in the State of California. This could have lead to cases where you fully deducted your expense on your Federal tax return, but need to continue and depreciate it on your State return (or vice versa). Good tax adviser is crucial to avoid or manage these cases.", "Firstly, good on you for thinking about it before you commit to it. Next. Chelonian provides lots of detail. Read that answer. Consider the cost of going. Use your local community college. Use a state school. Get a job as an intern or another entry level position, with an employer that will reimburse you for education. Consider the military in the United State. Consider not going. That last one sounds rough, but do you have a very clear idea in your mind what you want to do for a living? I would suggest that at today's costs, figuring out what you want to do should be done before you commit to school." ]

[ "Most millionaires became millionaires by being very frugal and living well below their means, all the time." ]

[ "You didn't give enough information. What is your goal? What is your financial situation? A discount to buy company stock can seem very tempting. I was tempted by it myself, gee, almost 20 years ago. I still own some of the stock. But I held mutual funds first. There are two disadvantages that have disuaded me from partaking in the ESPP of my subsequent employers (one of which was a spin-out company of the stock-issuing company, the other having bought the spin-out). First, putting a bunch of money in a single stock is rather risky. single stocks will drop dramatically due to market conditions. Generally market conditions don't act so dramatically on all stock. Second, is it wise to put not only your salary but also your saved wealth all in one basket? It worked out reasonably well for me. The stock doubled right before my division was spun out -- I sold half of my position. And the resulting stock has continued to provide opportunities to diversify. However, it could have just as easily dropped in half instead of doubled. What is your timeline for holding the stock -- for realizing any gain? Can you afford patience if the stock value should drop in half? I have co-workers who continue to invest through our new company's ESPP. At least one co-worker has the stated goal to sell after every purchase -- he holds the stock long enough to make a long-term gain instead of short term, but he sells after every purchase. And it seems to him that the stock always drops right when he wants to sell.", "Most likely, this will not work they way you think. First things first, to get a loan, the bank needs to accept your collateral. Note that this is not directly related to the question what you plan to do with the loan. Example: you have a portfolio of stocks and bonds worth USD 2 million. The bank decides to give you a loan of USD 1 million against that collateral. The bank doesn't care if you will use the loan to invest in foreign RE or use it up in a casino, it has your collateral as safety. So, from the way you describe it, I take it you don't have the necessary local collateral but you wish to use your foreign investments as such. In this case it really doesn't matter where you live or where you incorporate a company, the bank will only give you the loan if it accepts the foreign collateral. From professional experience with this exact question I can tell you, there are very few banks that will lend against foreign property. And there are even less banks, if any, that will lend against foreign projects. To sum it up: Just forget banks. You might find a private lender to help you out but it will cost you dearly. The best option you have is to find a strategic partner who can cough up the money you need but since he is taking the bigger risk, he will also take the bigger profit share.", "10 year US Treasury bonds are currently yielding 3.46%. If you're offered an investment that looks better than that, you should ask yourself why big investors are putting their money in US Treasuries instead of what you've been offered. And obviously at 3.46% per year, you're not going to get rich quick -- it will take you over twenty years to double your money, and that's without allowing for inflation.", "Ask for at least 10 references. Ask for 10 because it will be harder for them to refer you to ringer references like their family or friends.", "With Mint you are without a doubt telling a third party your username and password. If mint gets compromised, or hires a bad actor, technically there isn't anything to stop shenanigans. You simply must be vigilant and be aware of your rights and the legal protections you have against fraud. For all the technical expertise and careful security they put in place, we the customers have to know that there is not, nor will there ever be, a perfectly secure system. The trade off is what you can do for the increased risk. And when taken into the picture of all the Other* ways you banking information is exposed, and how little you can do about it, mint.com is only a minor increase in risk in my opinion. *See paypal, a check's routing numbers, any e-commerce site you shop at, every bank that has an online facing system, your HR dept's direct deposit and every time you swipe your debit / credit card somewhere. These are all technically risks, some of which are beyond your control to change. Short of keeping your money in your mattress you can't avoid risk. (And then your mattress catches fire.)", "Assuming you are paying into and eligible to collect regular Employment Insurance benefits for the job in question, I don't see how owning a side business would, by itself, affect your ability to participate in the workshare program. Many people own dormant businesses ($0 revenue / $0 income), or businesses with insignificant net income (e.g. a small table at the flea market, or a fledgling web-site with up-front costs and no ad revenue, yet ;-) I think what matters is if your side business generated income substantial enough to put you over a certain threshold. Then you may be required to repay a portion of the EI benefits received through the workshare program. On this issue, I found the following article informative: How to make work-sharing work for you, from the Globe & Mail's Report on Business site. Here's a relevant quote: \"[...] If you work elsewhere during the agreement, and earn more than an amount equal to 40% of your weekly benefit rate, that amount shall be deducted from your work sharing benefits payable that week. [...]\" The definitive source for information on the workshare program is the Service Canada web site. In particular, see the Work-Sharing Applicant Guide, which discusses eligibility criteria. Section IV confirms the Globe article's statement above: \"[...] Earnings received in any week by a Work-Sharing participant, from sources other than Work-Sharing employment, that are in excess of an amount equal to 40% or $75 (whichever is greater) of the participant's weekly benefit rate, shall be deducted from the Work-Sharing benefits payable in that week. [...]\" Finally, here's one more interesting article that discusses the workshare program: Canada: Employment Law @ Gowlings - March 30, 2009.", "The only valid reason from a financial point of view is if the raise is a promotion or comes with conditions that are unacceptable to you. You may not want added supervisory responsibilties, for example. You need to use discretion when refusing advancement though, at places where I have worked, declining a raise or promotion is seen as a career killer for some circumstances.", "A \"sunk cost\" is a cost that you have already incurred, and won't get back. The \"sunk cost fallacy,\" as you described, is when you make a bad decision based on your sunk cost. When you identify a sunk cost, you realize that the money has been spent, and the decision is irreversible. Future decisions should not take this cost into account. When you commit the \"sunk cost fallacy,\" you are keeping something that is bad simply because you spent a lot of money on it. You are failing to identify the correct current value of something based on its high cost to you in the past. The other fallacy you describe, the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy, is when you get rid of something that is good simply because you spent little on it. As before, you are also failing to correctly identify the correct current value of something, but in this case, you are assigning too little a value based on the low cost in the past. You could call this a type of \"opportunity cost,\" a loss of future benefits due to a mistake made today. It seems reasonable to describe this type of fallacy as an \"opportunity cost fallacy.\"", "As your question appears in the second half, so will my answer. Like you, I will provide some background. I remember buying gasoline for $1.759 per gallon. I am so old that I remember buying gasoline for $0.759 per gallon. I recently paid $2.759 per gallon. You claim that your relative is not getting a very good return. Some would suggest that, at $2.759 per gallon, I am not getting a very good price on gasoline. Rates, yields, returns and the price of gas are not what they once were. It is actually difficult to get a pretty bad return relative to the current market. I suspect your relative is no longer getting what he used to get but he is getting a fair return. About record keeping. Your Uncle Sam benefits at your expense when you keep poor records. There are substantial penalties for failing to report everything. Most high school graduates can manage one checking account, one savings account, several charge cards and about 20 CDs and stocks at different institutions with little more than the following: a) a wall calendar b) a shoe box and c) a stack of 3 by 5 cards. Don't misplace the shoe box. If you can use a spreadsheet, it is even easier. Backup your data. There are a several reasons why you shouldn't consolidate all his cash and put it in a single mutual fund account and then put together a mix of investments that work well for him. - you are doing it backwards 1st put together a mix of investments that work well for him 2nd consolidate the assets. Your phrasing suggests a general lack of understanding - most CDs have penalties for early withdrawal. - while you enjoy managing your 401K in a single online account, your older relative might not be as comfortable with a lack of paper statements (see shoe box above) Let me tell you a little about my 401K. x% blue chip, y% small cap, z% bonds, w% foreign stock. Once a quarter, I change my current contribution to re-balance current value towards my target percentages. Every 30 months or so, I consider changing my asset allocation. The allocation considers my age, my spouses age, our childrens ages, my risk tolerance and my intermediate view of the markets. Your mileage my vary. to recap", "You can make a start to learn how to make better investing decisions by learning and understanding what your current super funds are invested in. Does the super fund give you choices of where you can invest your funds, and how often does it allow you to change your investment choices each year? If you are interested in one area of investing over others, eg property or shares, then you should learn more on this subject, as you can also start investing outside of superannuation. Your funds in superannuation are taxed less but you are unable to touch them for another 30 to 35 years. You also need to consider investing outside super to help meet your more medium term goals and grow your wealth outside of super as well. If you are interested in shares then I believe you should learn about both fundamental and technical analysis, they can help you to make wiser decisions about what to invest in and when to invest. Above is a chart of the ASX200 over the last 20 years until January 2015. It shows the Rate Of Change (ROC) indicator below the chart. This can be used to make medium to long term decisions in the stock market by investing when the ROC is above zero and getting out of the market when the ROC is below zero. Regarding your aggressiveness in your investments, most would say that yes because you are still young you should be aggressive because you have time on your side, so if there is a downturn in your investments then you still have plenty of time for them to recover. I have a different view, and I will use the stock market as an example. Refer back to the chart above, I would be more aggressive when the ROC is above zero and less aggressive when the ROC is below zero. How can you relate this to your super fund? If it does provide you to change your investment choices, then I would be invested in more aggressive investments like shares when the ROC crosses above zero, and then when the ROC moves below zero take a less aggressive approach by moving your investments in the super fund to a more balanced or capital guaranteed strategy where less of your funds are invested in shares and more are invested in bonds and cash. You can also have a similar approach with property. Learn about the property cycles (remember super funds usually invest in commercial and industrial property rather than houses, so you would need to learn about the commercial and industrial property cycles which would be different to the residential property cycle). Regarding your question about SMSFs, if you can increase your knowledge and skills in investing, then yes switching to a SMSF will give you more control and possibly better returns. However, I would avoid switching your funds to a SMSF right now. Two reasons, firstly you would want to increase your knowledge as mentioned above, and secondly you would want to have at least $300,000 in funds before switching to a SMSF or else the setup and compliance costs would be too high as a percentage of your funds at the moment ($70,000). You do have time on your side, so whilst you are increasing your funds you can use that time to educate yourself in your areas of interest. And remember a SMSF is not only an investment vehicle whilst you are building your funds during your working life, but it is also an investment vehicle when you are retired and it becomes totally tax free during this phase, where any investment returns are tax free and any income you take out is also tax free." ]

[ "It's simply supply and demand. First, demand: If you're an importer trying to buy from overseas, you'll need foreign currency, maybe Euros. Or if you want to make a trip to Europe you'll need to buy Euros. Or if you're a speculator and think the USD will fall in value, you'll probably buy Euros. Unless there's someone willing to sell you Euros for dollars, you can't get any. There are millions of people trying to exchange currency all over the world. If more want to buy USD, than that demand will positively influence the price of the USD (as measured in Euros). If more people want to buy Euros, well, vice versa. There are so many of these transactions globally, and the number of people and the nature of these transactions change so continuously, that the prices (exchange rates) for these currencies fluctuate continuously and smoothly. Demand is also impacted by what people want to buy and how much they want to buy it. If people generally want to invest their savings in stocks instead of dollars, i.e., if lots of people are attempting to buy stocks (by exchanging their dollars for stock), then the demand for the dollar is lower and the demand for stocks is higher. When the stock market crashes, you'll often see a spike in the exchange rate for the dollar, because people are trying to exchange stocks for dollars (this represents a lot of demand for dollars). Then there's \"Supply:\" It may seem like there are a fixed number of bills out there, or that supply only changes when Bernanke prints money, but there's actually a lot more to it than that. If you're coming from Europe and want to buy some USD from the bank, well, how much USD does the bank \"have\" and what does it mean for them to have money? The bank gets money from depositors, or from lenders. If one person puts money in a deposit account, and then the bank borrows that money from the account and lends it to a home buyer in the form of a mortgage, the same dollar is being used by two people. The home buyer might use that money to hire a carpenter, and the carpenter might put the dollar back into a bank account, and the same dollar might get lent out again. In economics this is called the \"multiplier effect.\" The full supply of money being used ends up becoming harder to calculate with this kind of debt and re-lending. Since money is something used and needed for conducting of transactions, the number of transactions being conducted (sometimes on credit) affects the \"supply\" of money. Demand and supply blur a bit when you consider people who hoard cash. If I fear the stock market, I might keep all my money in dollars. This takes cash away from companies who could invest it, takes the cash out of the pool of money being used for transactions, and leaves it waiting under my mattress. You could think of my hoarding as a type of demand for currency, or you could think of it as a reduction in the supply of currency available to conduct transactions. The full picture can be a bit more complicated, if you look at every way currencies are used globally, with swaps and various exchange contracts and futures, but this gives the basic story of where prices come from, that they are not set by some price fixer but are driven by market forces. The bank just facilitates transactions. If the last price (exchange rate) is 1.2 Dollars per Euro, and the bank gets more requests to buy USD for Euros than Euros for USD, it adjusts the rate downwards until the buying pressure is even. If the USD gets more expensive, at some point fewer people will want to buy it (or want to buy products from the US that cost USD). The bank maintains a spread (like buy for 1.19 and sell for 1.21) so it can take a profit. You should think of currency like any other commodity, and consider purchases for currency as a form of barter. The value of currency is merely a convention, but it works. The currency is needed in transactions, so it maintains value in this global market of bartering goods/services and other currencies. As supply and demand for this and other commodities/goods/services fluctuate, so does the quantity of any particular currency necessary to conduct any of these transactions. A official \"basket of goods\" and the price of those goods is used to determine consumer price indexes / inflation etc. The official price of this particular basket of goods is not a fundamental driver of exchange rates on a day to day basis." ]

[ "Yes, it is unreasonable and unsustainable. We all want returns in excess of 15% but even the best and richest investors do not sustain those kinds of returns. You should not invest more than a fraction of your net worth in individual stocks in any case. You should diversify using index funds or ETFs.", "Foreign stocks have two extra sources of risk attached to them; exchange rate and political. Exchange rate risk is obvious; if I buy a stock in a foreign currency and there is a currency movement that makes that investment worth less I lose money no matter what the stock does. This can be offset using exchange rate swaps. (This is ceteris paribus, of course; changes in exchange rate can give a comparative advantage to international and exporting companies that will improve the fundamentals and so increase the price of the stock relative to a local firm. The economics of the firms in particular are not explored in this answer as it would get too complicated and long if I did.) Political risk relates not only to the problems surrounding international politics such as a country deciding that foreign nationals may no longer own shares in their national industries or deciding to seize foreign nationals' assets as happens in some areas. Your home country may also decide to apply sanctions to the country in which you are invested thus making it impossible to get your money back even though the foreign country will allow you to redeem them or sell. Diplomatic relations and trade agreements tend to be difficult. There are further problems in lack of understanding of foreign countries' laws, tax code, customs etc. relating to investments and the necessity to find legal representation in a country you may never have visited if there are issues. There is also a hidden risk in that, as an individual investor, you are not likely to be reading the local financial news for that country regularly enough to spot company specific issues arising. By the time these issues get into international media its far too late as all of the local investors have sold out of their positions already. The risks are probably no different if you have the time to monitor international relations and the foreign country's news, and have FX swaps in place to counteract FX risk as the funds and investment banks do but as an individual investor the time required is not feasible.", "Never ever use a giant monster mega bank for home loans. I am sure you probably didn't and they bought your loan from someone else. You have no legal options. What you should do Is look at getting a new loan maybe a 15 year loan. Your payment might be the same with no PMI. I would check with a relator to see what they think your home is worth. Also if you have any money you can always pay extra to the principle and get yourself to 20% based on the next appraisal. You might have a legal option regarding what they say you need in value 350k is what it should appraise to for you to get rid of pmi when you owe 280k Remember Citibank is a publicly traded company and their goal is to make more money. The CEO has a fiduciary relationship with stock holders not customers. They seriously have board meetings to figure out what charges they can invent to screw their customers and make shitloads of money. There is no incentive for them to let you get out of your PMI.", "This may be a good or a bad deal, depending on the fair market value (FMV) of the stock at the time of exercise. Let's assume the FMV is $6, which is the break even point. In general this would probably be treated as two transactions. So overall you would be cash neutral, but your regular tax income would be increased by $30,000 and your AMT income by $60,000.", "Your broker likely didn't close your position out because it is a covered position. Why interfere with a trade that has no risk to it, from their perspective? There's no risk for the broker since your account holds the shares available for delivery (definition of covered), for if and when the options you wrote (sold) are exercised. And buyers of those options will eventually exercise the options (by expiration) if they remain in-the-money. There's only a chance that an option buyer exercises prematurely, and usually they don't because there's often time value left in the option. That the option buyer has an (ahem) \"option\" to exercise is a very key point. You wrote: \"I fully expected my position to be automatically liquidated by whoever bought my call\". That's a false assumption about the way options actually work. I suggest some study of the option exercise FAQs here: Perhaps if your position were uncovered – i.e. you wrote the call without owning the stock (don't try this at home, kids!) – and you also had insufficient margin to cover such a short position, then the broker might have justifiably liquidated your position. Whereas, in a covered call situation, there's really no reason for them to want to interfere – and I would consider that interference, as opposed to helpful. The situation you've described is neither risky for them, nor out of the ordinary. It is (and should be) completely up to you to decide how to close out the position. Anyway, your choices generally are:", "The difference between a hobby and a business is income. Yes, every country I know of allows you to do something as a hobby until it becomes profitable and then change it into a business once it becomes likely to turn a profit. There's usually a limit in terms of how much profit or revenue you can make before it must be declared as business. I'm sure someone else will mention the exact numbers for the UK.", "Securities or quite a few negotiable instruments can change title of ownership without any issue. Many at times the owner ship in implicit if you are holding a certain instrument. So for example in Stock its a fractional ownership in a company, this ownership transfers to the buyer from the seller without requiring any permission from the company. In case of say Loans, One cannot transfer the loan to some one else without the Banks permission.", "An emergency fund is your money, sitting in a bank, that you can use for emergency purposes. A line of credit is somebody else's money, that they've provisionally promised to let you borrow. But they can change their mind at any time.", "I have done this, and the reason is to make sure that I don't run out of money in my account to place the order if there is an unexpected upswing in price. Suppose I have $1000 in my account and I want to buy 10 shares of ABCD that are currently at $99. If the price doesn't change, then I am all set, but if the price goes up to $101 then I don't have sufficient funds to make the purchase. By placing a limit order at $100 I can ensure that I have enough money to place the order. In general, it is a rather unlikely scenario that it could happen, but placing the limit order is easy to do and it gives me peace of mind. I don't know what you mean about bypassing the queue.", "As Sean pointed out they usually mean LIBOR or the FFR (or for other countries the equivalent risk free rate of interest). I will just like to add on to what everyone has said here and will like to explain how various interest rates you mentioned work out when the risk free rate moves: For brevity, let's denote the risk free rate by Rf, the savings account interest rate as Rs, a mortgage interest rate as Rmort, and a term deposit rate with the bank as Rterm. Savings account interest rate: When a central bank revises the overnight lending rate (or the prime rate, repo rate etc.), in some countries banks are not obliged to increase the savings account interest rate. Usually a downward revision will force them to lower it (because they net they will be paying out = Rf - Rs). On the other hand, if Rf goes up and if one of the banks increases the Rs then other banks may be forced to do so too under competitive pressure. In some countries the central bank has the authority to revise Rs without revising the overnight lending rate. Term deposits with the bank (or certificates of deposit): Usually movements in these rates are more in sync with Rf than Rs is. The chief difference is that savings account offer more liquidity than term deposits and hence banks can offer lower rates and still get deposits under them --consider the higher interest rate offered by the term deposit as a liquidity risk premium. Generally, interest rates paid by instruments of similar risk profile that offer similar liquidity will move in parallel (otherwise there can be arbitrage). Sometimes these rates can move to anticipate a future change in Rf. Mortgage loan rates or other interests that you pay to the bank: If the risk free rate goes up, banks will increase these rates to keep the net interest they earn over risk free (= Δr = Rmort - Rf) the same. If Rf drops and if banks are not obliged to decrease loan rates then they will only do so if one of the banks does it first. P.S:- Wherever I have said they will do so when one of the banks does it first, I am not referring to a recursion but merely to the competitive market theory. Under such a theory, the first one to cut down the profit margin usually has a strong business incentive to do so (e.g., gain market share, or eliminate competition by lowering profit margins etc.). Others are forced to follow the trend." ]

[ "You should speak to a good tax adviser. The less documentation you have the more problems IRS are going to cause you. Generally you can deduct business losses (in the year they occurred, which is 2011), but you have to show that that was a valid business, not just a way to reduce your tax bill with personal expenses. Thus lack of documentation reduces your ability to prove that you're entitled to the deduction. The burden of proof is generally on you. You can not deduct it from 2012 taxes, but you can still amend 2011. Keep in mind though that amended returns have higher chance of audit, and a significant business loss on a business that only existed that year is a major red flag which will raise the probability of an audit to very high percentage. Theoretically, if the business was real and just failed - you can definitely deduct this. But practically, lack of documentation may cause too big a problem, and a tax adviser might suggest you giving it up if he doesn't think you have a real chance to convince the IRS. Definitely don't do that without a professional advice. It is worth fighting for, its quite a loss, but don't do it on your own as you will definitely lose." ]

[ "I (and probably most considering trading) had a similar thought as you. I thought if I just skimmed the peaks and sold before the troughs, perhaps aided by computer, I'd be able to make a 2% here, 2% there, and that would add up quickly to a nice amount of money. It almost did seem \"foolproof\". Then I realized that sometimes a stock just slides...down...and there is no peak higher than what I bought it for. \"That's OK,\" I'd think, \"I'm sure it will recover and surpass the price I bought it for...so now I play the waiting game.\" But then it continues sliding, and my $10k is now worth $7k. Do I sell? Did I build a stop loss point into my computer program? If so, what is the right place to put that stop? What if there is a freak dip down and it triggers the stop loss but THEN my stock recovers? I just lost $14,000 like this last week--luckily, only virtually! The point is, your idea only has half a chance to work when there is a mildly volatile stock that stays around some stable baseline, and even then it is not easy. And then you factor in fees as others mentioned... People do make money doing this (day traders), and some claim you can use technical analysis to time orders well, so if you want to try that, read about technical analysis on this site or elsewhere.", "Actually the extra payment comes off the back end of the mortgage. So technically the mortgage is ony reduced one month. However, banks always recalculate the amortization table when the last payment is paid or a payoff amount is requested. There is a difference between the two situations but that is a minor amount. The 30 year note offers flexibility that the 15 does not. Pick one, save money-15 year, get flexibility-30 year.", "There is no requirement to open a company. You can work as freelancer. You need to report income and file returns. If your income is more than exempt limit, pay taxes. Apply for a PAN number if you don't have one yet.", "It's probably a scam or maybe some amateur agency trying to put pressure on their target. Normal garnishment goes through the court system. Just ignore it. Tell your employer they obviously have the wrong person since the SS is wrong. Suing clowns like this is not worth it. Just to clarify this some more for you: Trying to collect on a random person with the same name is called \"tagging\" in the collection industry. Before 2010 it was common because it was actually easier to legally bully the wrong person (who had money) than the right person who does not have money. That was then, this is now. Various federal and state laws have been passed since that time to prevent identity theft and these laws create big liabilities for debt collectors that try to bully the wrong person. Therefore, it rarely happens anymore, though of course sometimes agencies will still call you if they think they have a soft target. That's what the call to your employer is, just a test. A pro collector (like a law firm) would never call an employer, because they could get sued for doing that, but some amateur working out of his basement might. That's what you are dealing with: some joker in a basement. Such people never sue, they just buy old debt for pennies on the dollar and try random harassing phone calls. Ignore it and he will move on to the next \"John Smith\" on his list. A lot of lawyers will advise you to \"talk\" to the collector, correcting their misinformation, blah blah. Lawyers like talking, because the more talk there is, the more money they make. In the real legal world: never talk to your enemy or give them information. The way real courts and judges work is that they don't like plaintiffs who sue the wrong person. In fact, they do not like it VERY MUCH. Very bad things happen in courtrooms to people who sue the wrong person. Judges have VERY short patience in general and they DO NOT LIKE IT when somebody wastes their time by suing the wrong person. Basically what this means is: ignore the guy and he will go away.", "I traded futures for a brief period in school using the BrokersXpress platform (now part of OptionsXpress, which is in turn now part of Charles Schwab). They had a virtual trading platform, and apparently still do, and it was excellent. Since my main account was enabled for futures, this carried over to the virtual account, so I could trade a whole range of futures, options, stocks, etc. I spoke with OptionsXpress, and you don't need to fund your acount to use the virtual trading platform. However, they will cancel your account after an arbitrary period of time if you don't log in every few days. According to their customer service, there is no inactivity fee on your main account if you don't fund it and make no trades. I also used Stock-Trak for a class and despite finding the occasional bug or website performance issue, it provided a good experience. I received a discount because I used it through an educational institution, and customer service was quite good (probably for the same reason), but I don't know if those same benefits would apply to an individual signing up for it. I signed up for top10traders about seven years ago when I was in secondary school, and it's completely free. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and the interface was poorly designed and slow. Furthermore, at that time, there were no restrictions that limited the number of shares you could buy to the number of outstanding shares, so you could buy as many as you could afford, even if you exceeded the number that physically existed. While this isn't an issue for large companies, it meant you could earn a killing trading highly illiquid pink sheet stocks because you could purchase billions of shares of companies with only a few thousand shares actually outstanding. I don't know if these issues have been corrected or not, but at the time, I and several other users took advantage of these oversights to rack up hundreds of trillions of dollars in a matter of days, so if you want a realistic simulation, this isn't it. Investopedia also has a stock simulator that I've heard positive things about, although I haven't used it personally.", "+1 for YNAB. I used to use MS Money until it was decommissioned. I used that to historically record my spending and investing, and plot my net worth. Whilst YNAB will do that, it is actually geared towards forward planning much more so. In this area, it is fantastic. I like that there are mobile apps for it too.", "+1 to YosefWeiner. Let me add: Legally, technically, or at least theoretically, when you buy stock through a broker, you own the stock, not the broker. The broker is just holding it for you. If the broker goes bankrupt, that has nothing to do with the value of your stock. That said, if the broker fails to transfer your shares to another broker before ceasing operation, it could be difficult to get your assets. Suppose you take your shoes to a shoe repair shop. Before you can pick them up, the shop goes bankrupt. The shoes are still rightfully yours. If the shop owner was a nice guy he would have called you and told you to pick up your shoes before he closed the shop. But if he didn't, you may have to go through legal gyrations to get your shoes back. If as his business failed the shop owner quit caring and got sloppy about his records, you might have to prove that those shoes are yours and not someone else's, etc.", "According to LegalZoom: If your debtor is unwilling to pay and you know they have the means, it's time to use your local sheriff. You have three options to collect: a bank levy, wage garnishment, or a real estate lien. It sounds like you'll need to reach out to your local police/sheriff's department and they can further help you out and get you your money.", "Keep track of everything you buy. Write it down and be accountable. Try not to buy anything on credit cards, if the money is not in your account now then you can't afford it. Ask yourself whether what you're buying is a \"need\" or a \"want\". If you find that you are buying things because you are bored and you like shopping then try taking up a (cheap) hobby that fills that void and is something you enjoy doing.", "A common rule of thumb is the 28/36 ratio. It's described here. In your case, with a gross (?) salary of £50,000, that means that you should spend no more than 28% of it, or £1,167 per month on housing. You may be able to swing a bit more because you have no debts and a modest amount in your savings. The 36% part comes in as the amount you can spend servicing all your debt, including mortgage. In your case, based on a gross (?) salary of £50,000, that'd be £1,500 per month. Again, that is to cover your housing costs and any additional debt you are servicing. So, you need to figure out how much you could bring in through rent to make up the rest. As at least one other person has commented, the rule of thumb is that your mortgage should be no more than 2.5 - 3 times your income. I personally think you are not a good candidate for a mortgage of the size you are discussing. That said, I no longer live in England. If you could feel fairly secure getting someone to pay you enough in rent to bring down your total mortgage and loan repayment amounts to £1,500 or so a month, you may want to consider it. Remember, though, that it may not always be easy to find renters." ]

[ "The product descriptions for FFA swaps and options can be found here: http://www.lchclearnet.com/freight/ffas/products.asp The index (e.g. the BFA) is based on the settlement prices of the P2, P2A, and C4 contracts and the panamax TC routes. As such it's just a performance index and replicates the returns you'd get from holding a portfolio of the constituents. I think from the clearing descriptions everything should be clear. The wording in the link on the Baltic Exchange website is a bit nebulous. I think they mean standardised instead of specified. Because that's what sets the FFABA apart from OTC agreements or OTC spot markets. Edit: For more information on financial instruments in general see the Handbook of Financial Instuments. I haven't got the latest edition but I doubt he will mention FFAs, CFSAs, or anything that's specific to maritime markets but after all they're just plain forward agreements over a not-so-common underlying." ]

[ "So here are some of the risks of renting a property: Plus the \"normal\" risk of losing your job, health, etc., but those are going to be bad whether you had the rental or not, so those aren't really a factor. Can you beat the average gain of the S&P 500 over 10 years? Probably, but there's significant risk that something bad will happen that could cause the whole thing to come crashing down. How many months can you go without the rental income before you can't pay all three mortgages? Is that a risk you're willing to take for $5,000 per year or less? If the second home was paid for with cash, AND you could pay the first mortgage with your income, then you'd be in a much better situation to have a rental property. The fact that the property is significantly leveraged means that any unfortunate event could put you in a serious financial bind, and makes me say that you should sell the rental, get your first mortgage paid down as soon as possible, and start saving cash to buy rental property if that's what you want to invest in. I think we could go at least 24 months with no rental income Well that means that you have about $36k in an emergency fund, which makes me a little more comfortable with a rental, but that's still a LOT of debt spread across two houses. Another way to think about it: If you just had your main house with a $600k mortgage (and no HELOC), would you take out a $76k HELOC and buy the second house with a $200k mortgage?", "As I'm sure you are reading in Hull's classic, the basic valuation of bonds depends on the chance of entity defaulting on those bonds. Let's start with just looking at the US. The United States has a big advantage over corporations in issuing debt as it also prints the same currency that the debt is denominated in. This makes it much easier not to default on your debt as you can always print more money to pay it. Printing too much currency would cause inflation lowering the value of debt, but this would also lower the value of US corporate debt as well. So you can think of even the highest rated corporate bonds as having the same rate as government debt plus a little extra due to the additional default risk of the corporation. The situation with other AA rated governments is more complicated. Most of those governments have debt denominated in their local currency as well so it may seem like they should all have similar rates. However, some governments have higher and some actually have lower rates than the United States. Now, as above, some of the difference is due to the possible need of printing too much currency to cover the debt in crisis and now that we have more than one country to invest in the extra risk of international money flowing out of the country's bonds. However, the bigger difference between AA governments rates depends more on money flow, central banks and regulation. Bonds are still mostly freely traded instruments that respond to supply and demand, but this supply and demand is heavily influenced by governments. Central banks buy up large portions of the debt raising demand and lowering rates. Regulators force banks to hold a certain amount of treasuries perhaps inflating demand. Finally, to answer your question the United States has some interesting advantages partially just due to its long history of stability, controlled inflation and large economy making treasuries valuable as one of the lowest risk investments. So its rates are generally on the low end, but government manipulation can still mean that it is not necessarily the lowest.", "Yahoo Finance provides the proper closing price. HP's historical data around the split date can be found here. The open, high and low of the day are wrong prior the split, but the closing price is right and for HP, it was $26.96 USD. The next day the closing price was $13.83 USD.", "The best answer to your question would to be what the interest rates are like in Australia itself. The Reserve Bank sets the target ‘cash rate’, which is the market interest rate on overnight funds. It uses this as the instrument for monetary policy, and influences the cash rate through its financial market operations. Decisions regarding the cash rate target are made by the Reserve Bank Board and explained in a media release announcing the decision at 2.30 pm after each Board meeting. (Prior to December 2007, media releases were issued only when the cash rate target was changed.) From Investopedia: How Rates Are Calculated Each central bank's board of directors controls the monetary policy of its country and the short-term prime interest rate that banks use to borrow from each other. When the economy is doing well, interest rates are hiked in order to curb inflation and when times are tough, cut rates to encourage lending and inject money into the economy. Have a look at this from graph from http://www.rba.gov.au/monetary-policy/int-rate-decisions/ I would then go to a website that allows you to compare, graphically, whichever interest rate you want.(Or you could get the raw data and run some analysis, to each his own) FYI, this topic (FX) is incredibly complex and I hope my answer satisfies your needs.Otherwise, talk to a quant. You will need a ton of data inputs to model the entire economy of Australia to try and predict what the central bank will do, which is what people try and do everyday. Best of luck!", "Define \"risk-sensitive\": The point is, define Your risk, and your choices will narrow. Some investors worry more about what next months statement will show & lose sleep over it; some investors do not want to miss the average historical rates of return for equities (stocks) and are willing to tolerate fluctuations in monthly statements.", "@Victor above has provided a very good answer, I shall try and highlight some differences. The differences are specific to a country, however, it does offer some insight regarding the difference between investing in retirement fund vis-a-vis investing in stock directly: In many countries the retirement fund is mandated by the govt. and has to be invested in (in form of direct deduction from salary) ~ Investing in stock is up to the individual In many cases (if not most) capital gain/interest accrual in retirement funds are not taxable ~ Depending upon current laws capital gain (long term/short term) from stocks are taxable Retirement funds are managed and are (in general) more stable in their returns ~ Returns from direct stock investments are dependent on investment decisions of the investor Retirement funds tend to, (though this is very country specific) return somewhat less than market, as an example, in India Public Provident Fund (PPF)/Employee Provident Fund (EPF) return 8.68% tax free ~ As for direct investment on stocks, Nifty has returned approx. 17% CAGR over 15-20 years. Given the above, if you can invest in stock by taking informed calls and you have a good understanding of the financial markets and their underpinning and (probably) looking at long term investment, then investing directly in stock could fetch returns that might not be paralled by retirement funds. If on the other hand, if you feel investing in stock is not for you, then it probably is better to stick with retirement funds and other low risk investments. Either way, you probably have to (and may be you should) carry some portion of your portfolio as retirement funds.", "No one has considered the tax write off at the end of the year? Will the house be in the parent's name or his, and can one of them take a write off for taxes and interest at the end of each year? On a small salary this may mean he has no tax liability for the four years, and can possibly make up the extra buying costs.... also, look at the comps in the area for the past five years and see if home values have increased and turnover rate for the area will tell you if people are buying in that area...", "The dividend goes to he who owns the stock when it goes ex-div. A buyer (the call buyer who exercises) will not exercise unless the stock plus dividend are in the money. Otherwise they'd be buying the stock at a premium. I like the scenario your friend doesn't. If I can find a high dividend stock and sell the call for a decent price, I may get a great return on a stock that's gone down 5% over a year's time. If it goes up and called away, that's fine too, it means a profit.", "You could buy options. I do not know what your time horizon is but it makes all the difference due to theta burn. There are weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly and even longer duration options called leaps. You have decided how long of a time frame. You also have to see what the implied volatility is for the underlying because if you think hypothetically that the price of the spy is 100 dollars currently. Today is hypothetically a Thursday and you buy a weekly option expiring on Friday ( the next day) of strike 100.5 and the call option is priced at .55 cents and you buy it. This means that the underlying has to move .5 dollars in one day to be considered in the money but at time 0, the option should only be worth its intrinsic value which is the underlying, (Say the SPY moved 55 cents up from 100 to 100.55), (100.55) minus the strike (100.5) = 5 cents, so if you payed 55 cents and one day later at expiration its worth 5 cents ,you lost almost 91% of your money, rather with buying and holding you lose a lot less. The leverage is on a 10x scale typically. That is why timing is so important. Anyone can say x stock is going to go up in the future, but if you know ****when**** you can make a killing if it is not already priced into the market. Another thing you can do is figure out how much MSFT contributes to the SPX movement in terms of points. What does a 1% move in MSFT doto SPX. If you can calculate that and you think you know where MSFT is going, you can just trade the spy options synthetically as if it were microsoft. You could also buy msft stock on margin as a retail investor, but be careful. Like Rhaskett said, look into an etf that has microsoft. The nasdaq has a nasdaq-100 which microsoft is in called the triple Q. The ticker is qqq. PowerShares QQQ™, formerly known as \"QQQ\" or the \"NASDAQ- 100 Index Tracking Stock®\", is an exchange-traded fund based on the Nasdaq-100 Index®. Best of luck and always understand what you are buying before you buy it, JL", "Regarding SPY: \"One SPDR unit is valued at approximately 1/10 of the value of the S&P 500. Dividends are distributed quarterly, and are based on the accumulated stock dividends held in trust, less any expenses of the trust.\" (source) These are depository receipts, not the actual stocks. Regarding IVV: \"The component stocks are weighted according to the total float-adjusted market value of their outstanding shares. The Fund invests in sectors, such as energy, information technology, industrials, financials, consumer staples, healthcare, telecom services, consumer discretionary and materials.\" (more here) VOO is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The tracking error seems pretty small to me. I went to Google Finance and plotted the percent change for all four on one chart. They lie pretty much on top of one another. The actual dollar value of each one doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that they move up and down almost in lock-step. There may be a larger difference going farther out, but for three separate financial products, the agreement is still remarkably good." ]

[ "Assuming US. The only con that I know of is that hassle factor. You have to remember to sell when you get the new shares, and your taxes become a bit more complicated; the discount that you receive is taxed as ordinary income, and then any change in the price of the stock between when you receive it and you sell it will be considered a capital gain or loss. It's not hard to account for properly if you keep good records." ]

[ "Can you afford to replace it? What does that mean? Even if insuring means overpaying, it does spread the risk. NB: This example is not about the Applecare program, which I think is a waste of money for many people. Others have explained very well if it would work for you or not. I have a Macbook but no Applecare. I have an expensive smartphone with insurance for dropping and water damage, but not theft. After one year I cancel this insurance. I don't have $200K in my bank account.", "You can start a software company. Than your office will be around the world and you can work whenever you want. If you can appoint some people who can collect work from here and there and the coder around the world can give you the job done(this can be done by posting your work in various freelancing site). It is challenging, because you have to get yourself up-to-date with the technological things.", "There are several ways that the issuers profit from CFDs. If the broker has trades on both sides (buy and sell) they can net the volumes off against each other and profit off the spread whilst using the posted margins to cover p&l from both sides. Because settlement for most securities is not on the same day that the order is placed they can also buy the security with no intention of taking delivery and simply sell it off at the end of day to pass delivery on to someone else. Here again they profit from the spread and that their volumes give them really low commissions so their costs are much lower than the value of the spread. If they have to do this rather than netting the position out the spreads will be wider. Sometimes that may be forced to buy the security outright but that is rare and the spreads will be even wider so that they can make a decent profit.", "(At least in the UK) a company named Card Factory has been very successful in undercutting the competition using the classic pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap strategy with less glamorous high-street locations than 'traditional' stores. Interestingly it doesn't seem to have spawned either competition at their price point or lowered the general prices for greetings cards even in low-margin businesses like supermarkets. A quick glance at their annual report suggests they're doing reasonably well with this approach.", "Some banks and credit unions have IRA accounts. They pay interest like a savings account or a CD but they are an IRA. After the 15th you can roll them over into a IRA at one of the big investment companies so you can get invest in an index or Target Retirement Fund. But it is not too late. Opening an account at one of the big companies takes ten minutes (you need to know your social security number and your bank account info) they can pull it out of your bank account. I helped my kid do the same thing this week. We went on-line Tuesday night, and they pulled the money from his account on Thursday morning. Also know which type you want (Roth or regular) before you start. Also make sure you specify that the money is for 2013 not 2014.", "Short answer: student loans are loans given to people that are currently enrolled in school and yes, you can use them for personal expenses. Long answer: be very careful because you can easily be financially ruined if you borrow too much and can't repay it quickly. Once the loans get beyond a certain size relative to your income, you can find it hard to stay ahead of the interest payments let alone actually pay off the principal. These are the facts you need to know:", "Your financial advisor got a pretty good commission for selling you the annuity is what happened. As for transferring it over to Vanguard (or any other company) and investing it in something else, go to Vanguard's site, tell them that you want to open a new Roth IRA account by doing a trustee-to-trustee transfer from your other Roth IRA account, and tell them to go get the funds for you from your current Roth IRA trustee. You will need to sign some papers authorizing Vanguard to go fetch, make sure all the account numbers and the name of the current trustee (usually a company with a name that includes Trust or Fiduciary as shown on your latest statement) are correct, and sit back and wait while your life improves.", "If you carried a balance from the last month, then pay the card off as soon as possible. Otherwise I agree with @mbhunter that you should wait until close to time for the bill to become due. Then always pay the credit card off in full and you will borrowing Chase's money interest free for up to 30 days.", "A \"true\" 0% loan is a losing proposition for the bank, that's true. However when you look at actual \"0%\" loans they usually have some catches: There might also be late payment fees, prepayment penalties, and other clauses that make it a good deal on average to the bank. Individual borrowers might be able to get away with \"free money\", but the bank does not look to make money on each loan, they look to make money on thousands of loans overall. For a retailer (including new car sellers). the actual financing costs will be baked into the sales price. They will add, say, 10% to the sales price in exchange for an interest-free loan. They can also sell these loans to an investment bank or other entity, but they would be sold at a deep discount, so the difference will be made up in the sales price or other \"fees\". It's possible that they would just chalk it up to promotional discounts or customer acquisition costs, but it would not be a good practice on a large scale.", "I think you need to define what you mean by \"buy currency online using some online forex trading platform\" ... In large Fx trades, real money [you mean actual electronic money, as there is not paper that travels these days]... The Fx market is quite wide with all kinds of trades. There are quite a few Fx transactions that are meant for delivery. You have to pay in the currency for full amount and you get the funds electronicall credited to you in other currency [ofcouse you have an account in the other currency or you have an obligation to pay]. This type of transaction is valid in Ismalic Banking. The practise of derivaties based on this or forward contracts on this is not allowed." ]