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Debit cards as bad as credit cards?
Debit cards are the dumbest development ever. I now have a piece of plastic that allows any yahoo to cause me to bounce my mortgage. Great. Throw away the debit card. Use a credit card and exercise some self control. Take out a sufficient amount of cash to cover your weekly incidental expenses under $50. If you want so...
Tax on Stocks or ETF's
If you receive dividends on an investment, those are taxed.
Work as a contractor for my current employer rather than become a full time employee after my graduation for health insurance continued coverage
There are several assumptions you made, that don't match the current laws: Costs: COBRA:
What do I need to be aware of if I choose to resell property early (in Alberta)?
You will have no problem doing this for one home and living in it for one or two years. There's a recent court case with around six homes bought and sold by the same person in that time frame. That's what you've probably heard about. There's no hard and fast rule about when it becomes a business but here are some hi...
Reconciling transactions reimbursing myself for expenses as self-employed (UK)
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 (Sco...
How to pay bills for one month while waiting for new job?
This is just a partial answer, but I believe the following observations are relevant:
Typical return for an IRA? How can I assess if my returns were decent?
There is no typical return for an IRA. Understand that an IRA is not an investment type, it is just an account that gets special tax treatment by the Federal Government. The money in the IRA could be invested in almost anything including Gold, Stocks, Bonds, Cash, CDs, etc. So the question as phrased isn't exactly mean...
Can PayPal transfer money automatically from my bank account if I link it in PayPal?
I have a PayPal account that I have linked to my bank account. My PayPal balance is always $0. When I make a purchase with PayPal, PayPal will automatically withdraw the funds from my bank account to make the purchase. PayPal does not ask my permission for each purchase. I probably gave them permission to do this ...
What headaches will I have switching from Quicken to GnuCash?
It's been a long time since I've used MS Money and/or Quickbooks (never Quicken), but I've used GnuCash over the past year or so. It works, but it does suffer from some usability problems. Some of the UI is clunky. Data entry sequences are a little harder than they should be. Reports could be a little prettier. But ove...
Do I have to explain the source of *all* income on my taxes?
@RonJohn's answer for pallet of $20's is right for the specific case. For the general case of all income, it depends on whether or not the the source of the income was potentially criminal. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timtodd/2015/11/16/a-win-for-the-5th-amendment-at-the-tax-court/ I am not a lawyer, but reading that ...
Working remotely from Canada for a US company. How to get paid?
I'm no lawyer and no expert, so take my remarks as entertainment only. Also see this question. If you have a U.S. SSN which is eligible for work, they may be able to pay you on 1099 basis with your SSN as a sole proprietor, unless they have some personal reason for avoiding that. So perhaps try asking about that specif...
If a stock doesn't pay dividends, then why is the stock worth anything?
Most companies get taken over eventually. More to the point, ANY company with a public float over 50 percent that's large and viable enough to fall on people's radar screens will get taken over if its stock price is "too low" relative to its long term prospects. It is the possibility of a takeover, as much as anything...
Good yield vs. safer route (Checking vs. Savings)
There is no difference in safety form the perspective of the bank failing, due to FDIC/NCUA insurance. However, there is a practical issue that should be considered, if you allow payments to be automatically withdrawn from your checking account In the case of an error, all of you money may be unavailable until the er...
Dry cleaners lost $160 pants, what should I do?
Dude, it's your lucky day! You just won the lottery!! Do like this guy and sue them for $67 million :-) Pearson v. Chung, better known as the "pants lawsuit",1 is a civil case filed in 2005 by Roy L. Pearson, Jr., an administrative law judge in the District of Columbia in the United States, following a dispute w...
Which types of insurances do I need to buy?
Evaluate if the Rs 5 million term insurance is sufficient. Typically the term insurance provided by employer is in the range of 1 to 3 times the gross. Generally one should be covered in the range of 5 to 10 times the Gross. The sooner you start the lesser the premium and you can get insured for a large amount for a lo...
What are the financial advantages of living in Switzerland?
Companies, especially big ones, find in Switzerland a business-friendly environment and often benefit from a special tax regime. Don't mix the companies interests with yours.
What is an “International Equity”?
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.
Should I try to hedge my emergency savings against currency and political concerns?
You have to balance several concerns here. The primary problem is that if you go to the effort of saving your money you want to also be sure that your savings will not lose too much of its value to inflation. Ukraine had a terrible inflation spike in 2015 for obvious reasons. Even as inflation has settled down in 2016,...
Data source for historical intra-day bid/ask price data for stocks?
Check the answers to this Stackoverflow question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/754593/source-of-historical-stock-data a number of potential sources are listed
How can it be possible that only ~10% of options expire worthless, and only ~10% are exercised?
You gave your own answer - the 80% is positions, not contracts. Most actors on the option market have no interest in the underlying asset. They want "just" exposure to its price movement. It makes more sense to close your position than to be handed over bushels of wheat or whatever.
Why do moving average acts as support and resistance?
It's not stopped. Crossing a moving average is considered a signal to buy or sell. Yahoo stock charts offer the ability to add moving averages to the charts, and you can observe all stocks cross the line regularly. As a contrast to Victor's charts, you can see that Apple, over the last two years, has traded above and...
Is giving my girlfriend money for her mortgage closing costs and down payment considered fraud?
It's a gift if there are no strings attached. If you are rationalizing it to try to make it a gift for tax or any other purpose when there really is a connection between the transactions, or when you expect any kind of value or benefit in return for it, then it's not a gift... don't make it one and don't call it one. T...
When does a low PE ratio not indicate a good stock?
PE can be misleading when theres a good risk the company simply goes out of business in a few years. For this reason some people use PEG, which incorporates growth into the equation.
How to reconcile these contradictory statements about the effect of volume on stock price?
The first statement is talking about a sudden sharp increase in volume (double or more of average volume) with a sudden increase in price. In other words, there has been a last rush to buy the stock exhausting all the current bulls (buyers), so the bears (sellers) take over, at least temporarily. Whilst the second stat...
What are frontier markets? Is investing in them a good idea?
From Wikipedia A frontier market is a type of developing country which is more developed than the least developing countries, but too small to be generally considered an emerging market. The term is an economic term which was coined by International Finance Corporation’s Farida Khambata in 1992. The term is commonly us...
Should I take out a loan vs pay off with mother's help?
Is it a gift or a loan? Either way, ask the same lawyer who will do the closing to record a mortgage on the property, your mother holds it. You are required to pay her market interest, 4% or so should pass IRS scrutiny. If it's truly a loan, decide on the payoff time and calculate the payments, she'll have a bit of i...
Would I qualify for a USDA loan?
If you even qualify for a no-down payment USDA loan, which I'm not sure you would. It would be extremely risky to take on a $250K house loan and have near-zero equity in the house for a good while. If property values drop at all you are going to be stuck in that house which likely has a pretty high monthly payment, ins...
Can I apply prior years' capital losses against my employee stock option exercise?
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 fo...
How to tell if an option is expensive
One way is to compare the implied volatility with the realised volatility over a period similar to the time left to expiry. However there are plenty of reasons why the implied may be higher than the historical, for example because the market volatility has increased overall or because the underlying company is going to...
Can saving/investing 15% of your income starting age 25, likely make you a millionaire?
The article links to William Bernstein’s plan that he outlined for Business Insider, which says: Modelling this investment strategy Picking three funds from Google and running some numbers. The international stock index only goes back to April 29th 1996, so a run of 21 years was modelled. Based on 15% of a salary of $...
Prepaying a loan: Shouldn't the interest be recalculated like a shorter loan?
So, let's take a mortgage loan that allows prepayment without penalty. Say I have a 30 year mortgage and I have paid it for 15 years. By the 16th year almost all the interest on the 30 year loan has been paid to the bank This is incorrect thinking. On a 30 year loan, at year 15 about 2/3's of the total interest to be ...
US Foreign-Owned LLC that owes no income tax - Do I have to file anything?
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",...