question stringlengths 14 166 | answer stringlengths 6 17k |
|---|---|
Simple loan with a mortage as collateral | Obligatory "Don't do it" remarks: If the guy isn't trusted enough to even show up to work, and can't get a personal loan directly from a bank (Home Equity Line of Credit would suffice), this is really setting things up for failure. What if he quits? What if you need to fire him (you know, for not showing up for weeks)?... |
Where should I park my money if I'm pessimistic about the economy and I think there will be high inflation? | Typically in a developed / developing economy if there is high overall inflation, then it means everything will rise including property/real estate. The cost of funds is low [too much money chasing too few goods causes inflation] which means more companies borrow money cheaply and more business florish and hence the st... |
Can I get a dividend "free lunch" by buying a stock just before the ex-dividend date and selling it immediately after? [duplicate] | It is important to remember that the stock price in principle reflects the value of the company, so the market cap should drop upon issuance of the the dividend. However, the above reasoning neglects to consider taxes, which make the question a bit more interesting. The key fact is that different investors are going to... |
How safe is a checking account? | While Rocky's answer is correct in the big picture there is another factor here to keep in mind: The disruption while you're waiting to resolve it. If a fraudster gets your card and drains your account you'll get your money back--but there will be a period while they are investigating that it won't be available. For th... |
Is it OK to use a credit card on zero-interest to pay some other credit cards with higher-interest? | The short answer is: it depends. The longer answer is that balance transfers are tricky, and often a bait-and-switch; they'll offer 0% interest, but charge a 3-4% "fee" (which isn't interest and is perfectly legal) on the amount transferred. If you transfer $5000, you now owe the new card company $5,200. Now, that coul... |
Is there any reason not to put a 35% down payment on a car? | If you know that you have a reasonable credit history, and you know that your FICO score is in the 690-neighborhood, and the dealer tells you that you have no credit history, then you also know one of two things: Either way, you should walk away from the deal. If the dealer is willing to lie to you about your credit s... |
Is this reply promising a money order and cashier check a scam? | It's a scam. The cashier's check will be forged. Craigslist has a warning about it here (item #3). What kind of payment do you think is not fakable? Or at least not likely to be used in scams? When on craigslist - deal only locally and in person. You can ask to see the person's ID if you're being paid by check When b... |
Recent college grad. Down payment on a house or car? | $27,000 for a car?! Please, don't do that to yourself! That sounds like a new-car price. If it is, you can kiss $4k-$5k of that price goodbye the moment you drive it off the lot. You'll pay the worst part of the depreciation on that vehicle. You can get a 4-5 year old Corolla (or similar import) for less than half t... |
How do I choose 401k investment funds? | I would stay away from the Actively Managed Funds. Index funds or the asset allocation funds are your best bet since they have the lowest fees. What is your risk tolerance? How old are you? I would suggest reading: |
Can stock brokerage firms fail? | Yes, any company can go under. SIPC offers a level of protection. They don't guarantee against stocks dropping, but will replace stocks that you owned, but the broker stole from you. (overgeneralization). There's a $500K limit, with $250K max in cash. |
Is there a way to take advantage of nice numbers? | 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. ... |
Acquiring first office clothes | While in the interview stage you need one good outfit. Take care of them and they will see you through this stage of the process. Shoes, ties, shirt, and a suit can all be purchased on sale. The fact that you have months before graduation give you time to purchase them when there is a sale. Off-the-rack is good enough... |
Stock trading after a crash | If the stock has dropped from $10 to $2 and now is range trading between $2 and $3, and you were not able to sell your shares earlier, then I would no be holding on to them now. As soon as the price hit $3 sell them. After you have sold them and you noticed the stock still range trading one strategy you could apply is ... |
Where do stock traders get realtime updates on Fed announcements? Is there a feed I could scrape? | Tthe easiest place to see Fed announcements as soon as they're published is the Federal Reserve itself. If you want the information as soon as it's made publicly available, scrape the Federal Reserve press releases. I assume you're most interested in the announcements after the FOMC meetings, so you might want to scrap... |
How to increase my credit score | It's probably important to understand what a credit score is. A credit score is your history of accruing debt and paying it back. It is supplemented by your age, time at current residence, time at previous residences, time at your job, etc. A person with zero debt history can still have a decent score - provided the... |
Is the ESPP discount profit? | The difference is ordinary income. If the price drops and you sell for exactly what you paid, you have an income of D and a capital loss of D which usually cancel each other, but not always. For example, if you already have over $3000 in losses, this loss won't help you, it will carry forward. The above changes a bit ... |
How to calculate how much house I can afford? | Fundamentals: Then remember that you want to put 20% or more down in cash, to avoid PMI, and recalculate with thatmajor chunk taken out of your savings. Many banks offer calculators on their websites that can help you run these numbers and figure out how much house a given mortgage can pay for. Remember that the old ... |
At what point should I go into credit card debt? | Credit cards are a reasonable if relatively expensive tool to gain liquidity. If you have $50k in liquid cash, you don't have a liquidity problem for credit to help you solve. You have 100 months of expenses in cash. I suppose you could see a balance as a motivational tool, but it's all stick and no carrot. Take the... |
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000? | Put them in Cds. Better than a savings account, you won't lose capital unlike the stock market. |
No-line-of-credit debit card? | I think what you are looking for is a secured credit card. They are mostly used by people who have ruined their credit and want to rebuild it, but it might also serve your purpose. Essentially you deposit some money in an account and the credit card can be used up to the amount left in the account. Each month when you... |
Retirement planning: Pension or personal saving/investing? | You can never depend ONLY on pension. You must get financial education and invest your money. I recommend you to read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham...it's the bible of Warren Buffet. Besides, you don't need to be a Billionaire for retiring and be happy. I recommend you to get education in ETFs. I quote Th... |
Idea for getting rich using computers to track stocks | 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 s... |
What ETF or other security tracks closest to 30 year mortgage rates? | Mortgage rates tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. The CBOE Interest Rate 10-Year T-Note, TNX, is a security directly related to this rate. Divide the CBOE price of TNX by 10 to get the yield. One can also track the 10Y T-Note yield at yahoo finance using ticker symbol (^TNX). One can also track t... |
Does the profit of a company directly affect its stock or indirectly by causing people to buy or sell? | Yes, the price of a stock is what investors think the value of a stock is, which is not tied to profits or dividends by any rigid formula. But to say that therefore the price could be high even though the company is doing very poorly is hypothetically true, but unlikely in practice. Consider any other product. There is... |
Pros/Cons of Buying Discounted Company Stock | The major pros tend to be: The major cons tend to be: Being in California, you've got state income tax to worry about as well. It might be worth using some of that extra cash to hire someone who knows what they're doing to handle your taxes the first year, at least. I've always maxed mine out, because it's always see... |
Is there a generally accepted term for fractions of Currency Units? | The Coinage Act of 1792 of the Continental Congress established that the lowest money of account for the United States is one-thousandth (1/1000) of a dollar. This sub-unit is the mille (also written mil, mill). Other sub-units given by the act are the disme for one-tenth (1/10) of a dollar (for which, etymologically,... |
If I invest in securities denominated in a foreign currency, should I hedge my currency risk? | So far we have a case for yes and no. I believe the correct answer is... maybe. You mention that most of your expenses are in dollars which is definitely correct, but there is an important complication that I will try to simplify greatly here. Many of the goods you buy are priced on the international market (a good e... |
Is VAT applied when a tradesman charges for materials? | The plumber will apply for and receive a refund of the amount of VAT he paid on the purchase amount. That's the cornerstone of how VAT works, as opposed to a sales tax. So for example: (Rounded approximate amounts for simplicity) Now, at each point, the amount between (original cost VAT) and (new VAT) is refunded. S... |
Getting live data from Yahoo! Finance for the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE)? | I wouldn't think so. If you read the list of features listed on the page you referred to, notice: Track Stocks It looks like it is restricted to the major U.S. stock markets. No mention of India's NSE. |
Can travel expenses be deducted from Form 1040A if they were used to gather material for a book? | Hobby expenses are not tax deductible. Business expenses are, but only if it's a bona fide business. First they look at profitability: if you reported a net profit (i.e. paid taxes) in your first 3 years, they will believe you rant on Youtube for a living. Remember, by the time they get around to auditing you, you'... |
Buying my first car out of college | Buying this car would be a good idea because you will quickly learn why you feel you need a BMW (that you cannot afford). This is not an investment, but a financing decision, beyond your means of living. As a future MBA you will regret not investing this money now. |
Shares in Chinese startup company | Setting up an entity that is partially foreign owned is not that difficult. It takes an additional 1-1.5 months in total, and in this particular case, you guys would be formed as a Joint Venture. It will cost a bit more (about 3-5000). If you're serious about owning a part of a business in China, you should carefully e... |
Is investing into real estate a good move for a risk-averse person at the moment | Real estate is never a low-risk investment. I'd keep your money in the bank, and make sure that you don't have more in any one bank than is guaranteed in the event of bank failure. If your bank account is in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal or Ireland, I'd consider moving it to Eurozone country that's in better shape, as... |
Understanding the phrase "afford to lose" better | The way I approach "afford to lose", is that you need to sit down and figure out the amount of money you need at different stages of your life. I can look at my current expenses and figure out what I will always roughly be paying - bills, groceries, rent/mortgage. I can figure out when I want to retire and how much I ... |
Do I need to file taxes when selling on eBay or Amazon? | In simple terms, it is a business operation when it becomes a profit-making enterprise. It is a grey area, but there is a difference between selling occasional personal items on eBay and selling for profit. I would imagine the sort of considerations HM Revenue & Customs would take into account are the size of you... |
Paying off a loan with a loan to get a better interest rate | Your current loan is for a new car. Your refinanced loan would probably be for a used car. They have different underwriting standards and used car loan rates are usually higher because of the higher risks associated with the loans. (People with better credit will tend to buy new cars.) This doesn't mean that you can't ... |
Is there a measure that uses both cost of living plus income? | The key term you're looking for is "purchasing power parity", which considers the local prices of goods and services when making comparisons between countries. For example, you can look up the GDP by PPP per capita to get a sense of much people on average incomes can buy in each country. Of course, average incomes may ... |
Will a credit card company close my account if I stop using it? | Please realize that your issuer can close the account for any number of reasons. Inactivity is one, as having a credit line open costs them money and if you never charge anything, the company doesn't get any transaction fees from vendors nor does the company get to charge you any interest. An occasional charge is like... |
Is it a good practice to keep salary account and savings account separate? | I pretty much only use my checking. What's the downside? Checking accounts don't pay as much interest as savings account. Oh, but wait, interest rates have been zero for nearly 10 years. So there is very little benefit to keeping money in my savings account. In fact, I had two savings accounts, and Well Fargo closed on... |
Are solar cell panels and wind mills worth the money? | To answer the investment aspect takes a bit of math. First, solar insolation numbers: This represents the average sun-hours per day for a given area. You can see the range from 4 to 6, or 1460 hrs to about 2190 hrs of sun per year depending on location. I believe electricity also has a range of cost, but 15 cents per ... |
How much should a new graduate with new job put towards a car? | As someone who has a very similar debt amount and environment (new grad, nice new paying job, want a car, etc), I'd like to share something with you. Life has unexpected costs. Luckily I didn't buy that new car the first few months out of college like I had planned to; I'm glad that I didn't because, as a fledgling "ad... |
How to save criteria in Google Finance Stock Screener? | There is probably a better way, but you can do the following: (1) Right click on the right pointing arrow next to the "1-20 of xx rows" message at the bottom right of the table, and select "Copy link location" (2) Paste that into the location (3) At the end of the pasted text there is a "&output=json", delete that and ... |
Dad paying for my new home in cash. How can I buy the house from him? | You are going to need a lawyer anyway so check with him. But here is a path you might be able to go down. Put the house in your name right from the get go. He gives you the money but you sign over a promissory note to him so that you net less than $14000 (gift tax annual exclusion for the calendar year). He can gi... |
Investing in hemp producers in advance of possible legalization in Canada? | Hemp is already pretty easily grown by farmers here. Canada had 50,000 acres of legal hemp in 2006, but it's been in decline the last 3 years due to the cost, lack of demand, and the high values of some other crops. It's also difficult to harvest due to its size. It's possible that the demand for hemp products will i... |
Prepaying a loan: Shouldn't the interest be recalculated like a shorter loan? | A few years ago I had a 5 year car loan. I wanted to prepay it after 2 years and I asked this question to the lender. I expected a reduction in the interest attached to the car loan since it didn't go the full 5 years. They basically told me I was crazy and the balance owed was the full amount of the 5 year car loan. T... |
Will my father still be eligible for SNAP if I claim him as my dependent? | This may be best handled by an expert. Look for somebody recommended by a church, homeless shelter, food pantry, office of unemployment, office of disability, or Veterans services to advise you on maximizing support for your father. You want to know what type of help you can give without causing the overall level of ... |
RSU Tax Implications of 83(b) Election | I can make that election to pay taxes now (even though they aren't vested) based on the dollar value at the time they are granted? That is correct. You must file the election with the IRS within 30 days after the grant (and then attach a copy to that year's tax return). would I not pay any taxes on the gains because I ... |
How to invest in gold at market value, i.e. without paying a markup? | And you have hit the nail on the head of holding gold as an alternative to liquid currency. There is simply no way to reliably buy and sell physical gold at the spot price unless you have millions of dollars. Exhibit A) The stock symbol GLD is an ETF backed by gold. Its shares are redeemable for gold if you have more t... |
Is housing provided by a university as employer reported on 1040? | You should ask a CPA or tax lawyer to what extent living in specific housing provided by the employer as a job requirement is exempt from taxation. You might find a nice surprise. Your tax professional can also help you to report the items properly if mis-reported. Much of this is in the article you cite in the quest... |
What does a reorganization fee that a company charges get applied to? | Its a broker fee, not something charged by the reorganizing company. E*Trade charge $20, TD Ameritrade charge $38. As with any other bank fee - shop around. If you know the company is going to do a split, and this fee is of a significant amount for you - move your account to a different broker. It may be that some port... |
Why would someone want to sell call options? | I have an example of a trade I made some time ago. By entering the position as a covered call, I was out of pocket $5.10, and if the stock traded flat, i.e. closed at the same $7.10 16 months hence, I was up 39% or nearly 30%/yr. As compared to the stock holder, if the stock fell 28%, I'd still break even, vs his loss... |
Would cross holding make market capitalization apparently more? | 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 ... |
Over how much time should I dollar-cost-average my bonus from cash into mutual funds? | I'm staring at this chart and asking myself, How long a period is enough to have an average I'd be happy with regardless of the direction the market goes? 3 years? 4 years? Clearly, a lump sum investment risks a 2000 buy at 1500. Not good. Honestly, I love the question, and find it interesting, but there's likely no e... |
What is a good way to save money on car expenses? | It is almost always cheaper to do regular maintenance then to fix problems because you didn't change the oil or check the transmission fluid. |
Are low commission trading sites safe? | 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 b... |
Does bull/bear market actually make a difference? | The main difference between a bull market and a bear market is due the "the leverage effect". http://www.princeton.edu/~yacine/leverage.pdf The leverage effect refers to the observed tendency of an asset’s volatility to be negatively correlated with the asset’s returns. Typically, rising asset prices are accompanie... |
Is there a free, online stock screener for UK stocks? | Although this is an old question, it's worth pointing out that the Google Stock Screener now supports stocks traded on the London Stock Exchange. From the country dropdown on the left, select "United Kingdom" and use the screener as before. |
Are bond ETF capital gains taxed similar to stock or stock funds if held for more than 1 year? | Yes, that's correct. |
Owner-Financed home sale or Land Contract — how to handle the transaction and the ongoing entity? | Great question, but I'm thinking you'll want to get a professional who can look at your specific situation and do it right. I wouldn't go solely on advice here. Having said that, though, my decidedly non-professional advice: The other alternative is to take a bit of a profit hit, and demand that the seller pay cash. ... |
Should I buy a home or rent in my situation? | Another reason, and to me the main reason not to buy a house if you're in your early 20s (regardless of your income), is mobility. If you rent, you can move pretty much whenever you want after the first year of your rental lease is up, even before then in some cases. If your fiancee finishes school and gets a great job... |
What is the opposite of a hedge? | The opposite of a hedge is nothing. Because if you don't want to hedge you bets, you don't, therefore you merely have the original bet. The opposite state of being hedged, is being unhedged. |
Should I avoid credit card use to improve our debt-to-income ratio? | For scoring purposes, having a DTI between 1-19% is ideal. From Credit Karma: That being said, depending on the loan type you looking at receiving (FHA, VA, Conventional, etc), there are certain max DTIs that you want to stay away from. As a rule, for VA, you want to try to stay away from 41% DTI. Exceptions are made... |
Where can I buy preferred stocks as opposed to common stocks? | Preferred stock is traded on the market, so you can just buy it like any other. The symbol for a preferred stock is the ticker symbol followed by a dash and a letter for each class of preferred stock. Examples: Generally speaking, you should buy Preferred stock with the intention of holding onto it for at least a coup... |
What are the marks of poor investment advice? | To evaluate any advice, this lists some of the things to consider: There are good advisors out there. There are also Bernie Madoffs who give the entire industry a black eye. In the end, the best path is to educate yourself, read as much as you can before you invest. Better to lose a bit by staying out of the market tha... |
New car cash vs finance | Yes, maybe. Sometimes the mother company (that makes the car) covers a bit of the loss that comes from the super-offer loan, so the dealer loses a bit less. But generally, you are right. you should be able to talk them into some rebate that gets you around the given number, depending on how good you are a negotiator (a... |
How is income tax calculated in relation to selling used items? | If the items you sold are items you previously bought for a higher price, the money you get selling them is not income, as you are taking a loss. However, you cannot deduct such losses. If you sell anything for more than what you paid for, the difference is a gain and is taxable. See this IRS web site for the explanati... |
What are the tax consequences if my S corporation earns money in a foreign country? | Be careful here: If ACME were in California, I would pay taxes on USD 17,000 because I had revenue of 20,000 and expenses of 3,000. To CALIFORNIA. And California taxes S-Corps. And, in addition, you'd pay $800 for the right of doing business in the State. All that in addition to the regular Federal and State taxes to... |
What does this diagram from Robert Kiyosaki about corporations mean? | These types of diagrams appear all throughout Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad book. The arrows in the diagrams represent cash flow. For example, the first two diagrams of this type in the book are: The idea being presented here is that an asset generates income, and a liability generates expenses. According to the boo... |
Efficient International money transfer | 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... |
How to deposit a cheque issued to an associate in my business into my business account? | Just have the associate sign the back and then deposit it. It's called a third party cheque and is perfectly legal. I wouldn't be surprised if it has a longer hold period and, as always, you don't get the money if the cheque doesn't clear. Now, you may have problems if it's a large amount or you're not very well know... |
Auto loan and student loan balance | So, in general, pay to the higher interest rate. Some contrived reasons you would want to pay your auto loan more could be: |
How to calculate money needed for bills, by day | If I understand you right, what you need is the minimum amount in the account until your next deposit. So for example, if today is the 10th and you get paid on the 15th, how much do I need to have in the account, so I know how much I can spend? That amount should be all of the bills that will be paid between today an... |
What do these numbers mean for the S&P? | USB is the ticker for US Bancorp. The numbers to me look like their prediction of the return for the day, I could be wrong but I think that's what it is. |
How to value employee benefits? | It would depend on the health insurance that was being offered, and if it covers your family or just you. We pay around $500-600 for individual health insurance for our employees (families cost north of 1500 a month). It's extremely expensive. Provide more details on the stock purchase plan as well (it sounds to me li... |
Automatic transaction on credit card to stay active | credit cards are almost never closed for inactivity. i have had dozens of cards innactive for years on end, and only one was ever closed on me for inactivity. i would bet a single 1$ transaction per calendar year would keep all your cards open. as such, you could forget automating the process and just spend 20 minutes... |
Cost is (maybe) part of basis for two assets | For accounting purposes, consider the costs of acquisition as part of the cost of the asset as opposed to expensing. This will be important to consider if you need to amortise the asset for reporting or tax purposes. Dr. Land $250,000 Dr. Building: $250,000 Cr. Cash $500,000 The acquisition of the land from previous o... |
Why is being "upside down" on a mortgage so bad? | For most people "home ownership" is a long term lifestyle strategy (i.e. the intention is to own a home for several decades, regardless of how many times one particular house might be "swapped" for a different one. In an economic environment with steady monetary inflation, taking out a long-term loan backed by a tangi... |
What does it mean "sell on ask" , "sell on bid" in stocks? | It's good to ask this question, because this is one of the fundamental dichotomies in market microstructure. At any time T for each product on a (typical) exchange there are two well-defined prices: At time T there is literally no person in the market who wants to sell below the ask, so all the people who are waiting t... |
Most common types of financial scams an individual investor should beware of? | In the case of an investment strategy, if you don't retain custodianship over your funds, or at least determine who is the custodian, then walk away. You should be able to get accurate account statements from a trustworthy third party at all times. |
Is a robo-adviser worth the risk? | They've been around long enough now for there to be past performance figures you can google for. I think you'll find the results aren't very encouraging. I personally don't think there's a huge risk that the robots will lose all your money, but there's every reason to expect they aren't likely to perform better than tr... |
How is someone tax exempt at Walmart in Canada? | Note that folks may also be shopping for supplies for a nonprofit tax-exempt organization. I made such a purchase a few weeks ago. Whatever the legal basis of the exception, you need to be able to prove to the store that you have it. If you can't, they must collect the tax. |
How do I bring money overseas? | This page from TripAdvisor may be of interest. Look at what fees are charged on your ATM cards and credit cards, and consider overpaying your credit card so you have a credit balance that you can draw on for cash "advances" from ATMs that will dispense in local currency. Depending on what fees your bank charges, you m... |
Sales Tax Licence/Permit - When is it required and how can I make a use of it as a non-US resident selling in USA? | Disclaimer: I am not a tax specialist You probably need a sales tax permit if you're going to sell goods, since just about every state taxes goods, though some states have exemptions for various types of goods. For services, it gets tricker. There is a database here that lists what services are taxed in what states; i... |
Connection between gambling and trading on stock/options/Forex markets | There is economic value added to the marketplace, by having many investors trading stocks. The stock market itself can be thought of as a tool which provides additional 'liquidity' to the marketplace. Liquidity is the ease with which you can convert your assets into cash (for example, how quickly could you sell your ca... |
How can you possibly lose on investments in stocks? | Easiest thing ever. In fact, 99% of people are loosing money. If you perform worse then 10% annually in cash (average over 5-10 years), then you better never even think about trading/investing. Most people are sitting at 0%..-5% annually. They win some, loose some, and are being outrun by inflation and commissions. In ... |
15 year mortgage vs 30 year paid off in 15 | Why would anyone ever get a 15 year instead of just paying off a 30 year in 15 years? Because the rate is not the same. Never that I've seen in my 30 years of following rates. I've seen the rate difference range from .25% to .75%. (In March '15, the average rate in my area is 30yr 3.75% / 15yr 3.00%) For a $150K loan, ... |
Solid reading/literature for investment/retirement/income taxes? | You bring up some very high level stuff, each of which can be the subject of a life's work. For taxes, I first read J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax. I actually read it cover to cover instead of using it as a reference guide. I hit topics that I'd otherwise have never looked up on purpose. Once you familiarize yourself w... |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | One "economic reason" to turn down a raise is if your company gives bonuses based on performance reviews. When you get a raise in salary, your boss usually expects a better performance from you. That being said, if you get the raise, and your performance review is worse, you might get a smaller annual income. |
What happens to my savings if my country defaults or restructures its debt? | I am going to add in an opinion here from the Wall Street Journal that I read this morning in What's at Stake in the Greek Vote, in light of current events and elections in Greece. The article claims that if the election results make it sound like a break from the Euro is imminent then ... we will see a full-fledged ba... |
Conservative ways to save for retirement? | It has been hinted at in some other answers, but I want to say it explicitly: Volatility is not risk. Volatility is how much an investment goes up and down, risk is the chance that you will lose money. For example, stocks have relatively high volatility, but the risk that you will lose money over a 40 year period is vi... |
Should I invest in real estate to rent, real estate to live in, or just stocks and bonds to earn 10-15%? | To be completely honest, I think that a target of 10-15% is very high and if there were an easy way to attain it, everyone would do it. If you want to have such a high return, you'll always have the risk of losing the same amount of money. Option 1 I personally think that you can make the highest return if you invest i... |
Is this follow-up after a car crash a potential scam? | You have to realize that you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You want to do things "unofficially" by not reporting the accident (to insurance companies and/or police), but you want to do it "officially" in that you want to have legal recourse if they try to hit you up for more money. The only way to have ... |
LLC: Where should the funds for initial startup costs come from? | Like you said, it's important to keep your personal assets and company assets completely separate to maintain the liability protection of the LLC. I'd recommend getting the business bank account right from the beginning. My wife formed an LLC last year (also as a pass-through sole proprietorship for tax purposes), and ... |
Mutual Fund with Dividends | Generally value funds (particularly large value funds) will be the ones to pay dividends. You don't specifically need a High Dividend Yield fund in order to get a fund that pays dividends. Site likes vanguards can show you the dividends paid for mutual funds in the past to get an idea of what a fund would pay. Growth f... |
Why would anyone want to pay off their debts in a way other than "highest interest" first? | Very good Ben, in a more simplistic form: If debt was about math only, we would not have payday lenders, 21% + credit cards, or sub-prime car loans. Yet these things are prevalent. Debt reduction is often about behavior modification. As such small wins are necessary to keep going much like a 12 step program; or, gam... |
How do you report S-corporation Shareholder loans / capital contributions? | As the owner of the S-corp, it is far easier for you to move money in/out of the company as contributions and distributions rather than making loans to the company. Loans require interest payments, 1099-INT forms, and have tax consequences, whereas the distributions don't need to be reported because you pay taxes on ne... |
What do I need to consider when refinancing one home to pay the down-payment of another? | What kind of financial analysis would make you comfortable about this decision? The HELOC and ARM are the biggest red flags to me in your current situation. While I don't expect interest rates to skyrocket in the near future, they introduce an interest rate risk that is easy to get rid of. Getting rid of the HELOC an... |
Should I purchase a whole life insurance policy? (I am close to retirement) | I'll start by saying that if this is being explored to scratch a specific itch you have then great, if this was a cold call it's probably safe to ignore it. Certain whole life products (they vary in quality by carrier) can make sense for very high earners who are looking for additional tax preferred places to store mon... |
First 401K portfolio with high expense ratios - which funds to pick? (24yo) | If you're willing to do a little more work and bookkeeping than just putting money into the 401(k) I would recommend the following. I note that you said you chose some funds based on performance since the expense ratios are all high. I would recommend against chasing performance because active funds will almost always ... |
Why can't you just have someone invest for you and split the profits (and losses) with him? | A 'indexed guaranteed income certificate' (Market Growth GIC) fits the criteria defined in the OP. The "guaranteed" part of the name means that, if the market falls, your capital is guaranteed (they cover the loss and return all your capital to you); and the "index linked" or "market growth" means that instead of the R... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.