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What's the average rate of return for some of the most mainstream index funds? | This page from simplestockinvesting.com gives details of total returns for the S&P500 for each decade over the last 60 years, including total returns for the entire 60 year period. It is important to understand that, from an investors point of view, the total return includes both the change in index value (capital gain) plus dividends received. This total then needs to be adjusted for inflation to give the "total real return". As noted in the analysis provided, 44% of the total return from the S&P500 over the last 80 years comes from dividends. For the DowJones30, this site provides a calculator for total returns and inflation adjusted total returns for user selected periods. Finding comparable analysis for the NASDAQ market is more difficult. The NASDAQ market site provides gross values for total returns over fixed periods, but you will then need to do the arithmetic to calculate the equivalent average annual total returns. No inflation adjusted values for "real" returns are provided, so again you will need to combine inflation data from elsewhere and do the arithmetic. |
Paid cash for a car, but dealer wants to change price | The sales manager and/or finance manager applied a rebate that did not apply. It's their fault. They have internal accounts to handle these situations as they do come up from time to time. The deal is done. They have no legal ground. |
Are you preparing for a possible dollar (USD) collapse? (How?) | I've thought of the following ways to hedge against a collapsing dollar: |
Selling a stock for gain to offset other stock loss | Long term gains are taxed at 15% maximum. Losses, up to the $3K/yr you cited, can offset ordinary income, so 25% or higher, depending on your income. Better to take the loss that way. With my usual disclaimer: Do not let the tax tail wag the investing dog. |
When does giving a gift “count” for tax year? | Generally it goes by when they receive the check, not when they cash the check. Though if the check was received prior to midnight on December 31st, but after the bank closes, they would probably let the tax payer decide to count it for the next year. Of course if the check is from person A to person B then the only issue is gift tax, or annual limit calculations. If it is company to person then income tax could be involved. The IRS calls this Constructive receipt Income Under the cash method, include in your gross income all items of income you actually or constructively receive during your tax year. If you receive property or services, you must include their fair market value in income. Example. On December 30, 2011, Mrs. Sycamore sent you a check for interior decorating services you provided to her. You received the check on January 2, 2012. You must include the amount of the check in income for 2012. Constructive receipt. You have constructive receipt of income when an amount is credited to your account or made available to you without restriction. You do not need to have possession of it. If you authorize someone to be your agent and receive income for you, you are treated as having received it when your agent received it. Example. Interest is credited to your bank account in December 2012. You do not withdraw it or enter it into your passbook until 2013. You must include it in your gross income for 2012. Delaying receipt of income. You cannot hold checks or postpone taking possession of similar property from one tax year to another to avoid paying tax on the income. You must report the income in the year the property is received or made available to you without restriction. Example. Frances Jones, a service contractor, was entitled to receive a $10,000 payment on a contract in December 2012. She was told in December that her payment was available. At her request, she was not paid until January 2013. She must include this payment in her 2012 income because it was constructively received in 2012. Checks. Receipt of a valid check by the end of the tax year is constructive receipt of income in that year, even if you cannot cash or deposit the check until the following year. Example. Dr. Redd received a check for $500 on December 31, 2012, from a patient. She could not deposit the check in her business account until January 2, 2013. She must include this fee in her income for 2012. In general it is best not to cut it close. If the check is to be counted as an January event it is best to send it in January. If it is to be December event it is best to send it early enough to be able to say with confidence that the check arrived at the destination before the end of the year. |
Is there any online personal finance software without online banking? | neobudget.com is a website that does exactly what you are describing. It is set up for electronically using the envelope system of budgeting. Disclosure: neobudget was founded by a former coworker of mine. |
If I'm going to start doing my own taxes soon, do I need to start keeping receipts for everything? | The other reason you might want to keep receipts is if you do any freelancing or contract work, for your business expenses. You can take a picture of the receipts with your phone, or scan them - you don't have to keep the paper copies. |
Am I required to have a lawyer create / oversee creation of my will? | This is not intended as legal advice, and only covers general knowledge I have on the subject of wills as a result of handling my own finances. Each state of the USA has its own laws on wills and trusts. You can find these online. For example, in Kentucky I found state laws here: http://www.lrc.ky.gov/krs/titles.htm and Title XXXIV is about wills and trusts. I would recommend reading this, and then talking to a lawyer if it is not crystal clear. Generally, if a lawyer does not draft your will, then either (1) you have no will, or (2) you use a form or computer program to make a will, that must then be properly witnessed before it is valid. If you don't have it witnessed properly, then you have no will. In some states you can have a holographic will, which means a will in your own handwriting. That's when you have that 3am heart attack, and you get out a pad of paper and write "I rescind all former wills hereby bequeathing everything to my mistress Samantha, and as to the rest of you go rot in hell. " One issue with these is that they have to get to court somehow, and someone has to verify the handwriting, and there are often state laws about excluding a current spouse, so you can guess for yourself whether that one might disappear in the fireplace when another family member finds it next to the body or if a court would give it validity. And there can be logic or grammar problems with do it yourself wills, made in your own handwriting, without experience or good references on how to write things out. Lawyers who have done a bunch of these know what is clear and makes sense. (1) In Tennessee, where I live, an intestate's property, someone who died with no will, is divided according to the law. The law looks to find a spouse or relatives to divide the property, before considering giving it to the state. That might be fine for some people. It happened once in my family, and was resolved in court with minimal red tape. But it really depends on the person. Someone in the middle of an unfinalized divorce, for instance, probably needs a will help to sort out who gets what. (2) A form will is valid in Tennessee if it is witnessed properly. That means two witnesses, who sign in yours' and each others' presence. In theory they can be called to testify that the signature is valid. In practice, I don't know if this happens as I am not a lawyer. I have found it difficult to find witnesses who will sign a form will, and it is disconcerting to have to ask friends or coworkers for this sort of favor as most people learn never to sign anything without reading it. But a lawyer often has secretaries that do it... There is a procedure and a treaty for international wills, which I know about from living overseas. To streamline things, you can get the witnesses to each sign an affidavit after they signed the will. The affidavit is sworn written testimony of what happened, that they saw the person sign their will and sign in each others' presence, when, where, no duress, etc. If done correctly, this can be sufficient to prove the will without calling on witnesses. There is another option (3) you arrange your affairs so that most of your funds are disbursed by banks or brokers holding your accounts. Option (3) is really cheap, most stock brokers and banks will create a Transfer-On-Death notice on your account for free. The problem with this is that you also need to write out a letter that explains to your heirs how to get this money, and you need to make sure that they will get the letter if you are dead. Also, you can't deal with physical goods or appoint a guardian for children this way. The advantage of a lawyer is that you know the document is correct and according to local law and custom, and also the lawyer might provide additional services like storing the will in his safe. You can get personalized help that you can not get with a form or computer program. |
I'm 23 and was given $50k. What should I do? | I'd be tempted to pay off the 35k in student loans immediately, but if you have to owe money, it's hard to beat zero percent. So I don't think I would pay it all off. Maybe cut it in half to make it a more comfortable payment. Currently, you are looking at $6K a year to pay them off, which is about 20% of your income. Cut that in half and you will sleep better! Definitely pay off the medical and credit cards. You're probably paying 20% on that. Clean it up. If you need a car, buy yourself a car. You have no savings, so I would put the rest in some kind of money market savings account. You are at an age where many people go through frequent changes. Maybe you get your own place, and you'll need to furnish it. Maybe you go back to school. Maybe you get married or have kids. Maybe you take a year off and backpack through Europe or Asia. You have a nice little windfall that puts you in a nice position to enjoy being young, so I would not lock it up into a 401k or other long term situation. |
What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? | It is easier to get a loan on a rental than a flip, which is a huge advantage to rental properties. Leverage allows you to increase your returns and make more money off appreciation and higher rents. I use ARMs to finance my rental properties that are amortized over 30 years. I have to put 20 percent down, but my portfolio lender lets me get as many loans as I want. Because I put 20 percent down on my rental properties and they still have great cash flow I can buy three times as many properties as I could with cash purchases. Buying more rental properties amplifies the other advantages like cash flow, equity pay down and the tax advantages. |
How do leveraged ETFs (index tracking) set intraday pricing? | Does the price only start the day based on the previous day's rebalancing? No, the tracker will open at the price according to the stock it is tracking. So for example, if the ETF closed at $10 but the tracked stock continued trading and was priced $15 when the ETF reopened the ETF will open at $15. (Example is for a non-leveraged ETF.) |
How to get a down payment for your next home? Use current home as the down payment on the new one? | I know you've clarified that you're in the US, but in case anyone else comes across this question: in the UK this is completely normal (including if you still have outstanding mortgage on your current home). We end up with long "chains" of buyers and sellers all completing / moving on the same day so that the proceeds from one sale can be used as the downpayment on the next. |
Cashing a cheque on behalf of someone else | If the cheque is crossed (as almost all are these days), it can only be paid into an account in the name of the person it was written out to: it cannot be paid into another's account, nor can it be "cashed"1 – see the rules on "Crossed" cheques. Note: that while the recipient of the cheque cannot (legally) alter this state of afairs, the writer of a cheque that was printed pre-crossed can – at least technically – cancel the crossing (see above link). Probably the best the OP can do is pay in the cheque on the friend's behalf (as described in Ben Millwood's answer) and then either lend the friend some money until they are mobile and can get some cash to repay the OP (or have the friend write one of their own cheques which the OP can pay into their bank account). 1 As mentioned in the last section of the rules on crossed cheques, the only exception is that designated "Cheque cashing shops" have special arrangements to deposit cheques which they have cashed (after deducting a fee). However, they would (should?) require proof of identity (of the original payee) and so are unlikely to be of any help (and probably not worth the cost for £35). Having said that, I've never used one, so have no idea how strict they are in practice. |
How to compare the value of a Masters to the cost? | Just looking at your question I can tell it's not worth it financially, even if you didn't borrow the money to do it. At your current rate, you'll be making 54,384 in 5 years, which is roughly a growth of 2.5% per year. If you go for the masters, in 5 years you'll be making 55,680, with roughly the same growth rate (2.5%). So it's costing you $70,000 (the cost of school plus the 2 years of reduced income) to raise your salary by $1,300. The payback period would be about 25 years. It would be MUCH worse if you borrowed the money to do it. Not a chance. |
Why don't market indexes use aggregate market capitalization? | would constantly fluctuate and provide an indication of how well the market is doing. The index is there to tell if you made profit or loss by investing in the market. Using a pure total market cap will only tell you "Did IPO activity exceed bankruptcy and privatization activity". |
Employer skipped payments, should I allow them to defer payment until Jan 2017? | 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)) |
Is there a mathematical formula to determine a stock's price at a given time? | A stock market is just that, a market place where buyers and sellers come together to buy and sell shares in companies listed on that stock market. There is no global stock price, the price relates to the last price a stock was traded at on a particular stock market. However, a company can be listed on more than one stock exchange. For example, some Australian companies are listed both on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and the NYSE, and they usually trade at different prices on the different exchanges. Also, there is no formula to determine a stock price. In your example where C wants to buy at 110 and B wants to sell at 120, there will be no sale until one or both of them decides to change their bid or offer to match the opposite, or until new buyers and/or sellers come into the market closing the gap between the buy and sell prices and creating more liquidity. It is all to do with supply and demand and peoples' emotions. |
Buy securities at another stock exchange | In a simple statement, no doesn't matter. Checked on my trade portal, everything lines up. Same ISIN, same price(after factoring in FX conversions, if you were thinking about arbitrage those days are long gone). But a unusual phenomenon I have observed is, if you aren't allowed to buy/sell a stock in one market and try to do that in a different market for the same stock you will still not be allowed to do it. Tried it on French stocks as my current provider doesn't allow me to deal in French stocks. |
How to calculate the standard deviation of stock returns? | This link does it ok: http://investexcel.net/1979/calculate-historical-volatility-excel/ Basically, you calculate percentage return by doing stock price now / stock price before. You're not calculating the rate of return hence no subtraction of 100%. The standard is to do this on a daily basis: stock price today / stock price yesterday. The most important and most misunderstood part is that you now have to analyze the data geometrically not arithmetically. To easily do this, convert all percentage returns with the natural log, ln(). Next, you take the standard deviation of all of those results, and apply exp(). This answers the title of your question. For convenience's sake, it's best to annualize since volatility (implied or statistical) is now almost always quoted annualized. There are ~240 trading days each year. You multiply your stdev() result by (240 / # of trading days per return) ^ 0.5, so if you're doing this for daily returns, multiply the stdev() result by 240^0.5; if you were doing it weekly, you'd want to multiply by (240 / ~5)^0.5; etc. This is your number for sigma. This answers the intent of your question. For black-scholes, you do not convert anything back with exp(); BS is already set up for geometric analysis, so you need to stay there. The reason why analysis is done geometrically is because the distribution of stock returns is assumed to be lognormal (even though it's really more like logLaplace). |
Interest on Amount Exceeding CC Balance? | In the US, if your monthly statement was issued by the credit card company on January 1 and it showed a balance of $1000, then a payment must be made towards that balance by January 25 or so, not February 1 as you say, to keep the card in good standing. The minimum payment required to keep the card in good standing is specified in your monthly statement, and failure to meet this requirement can trigger various consequences such as an increase in the interest rate charged by the credit card company. With regard to interest charges, whether your purchase of $2000 on January 3 is charged interest or not depends entirely on what happened the previous two months. If you had paid both your monthly statements dated November 1 and December 1 of the previous year in full by the their respective due dates of November 25 and December 25, and the $1000 balance on the January 1 statement is entirely due to purchases (no cash advances) made in December, then you will not be charged interest on your January purchase of $2000 as long as you pay it off in full by February 25 (the charge will appear on your February 1 statement). But, if you had not paid your December 1 statement in full by December 25, then that $1000 billed to you on January 1 will include purchases made during December finance charges on the unpaid balance from the previous month plus finance charges on the purchases made during December. The finance charges will continue to accumulate during January until such time as you pay off the bill in full (these charges will appear on your February 1 statement), hopefully by the due date of January 25. But even if you pay off that $1000 in full on January 25, your charge of $2000 on January 3 will start to accumulate finance charges as of the day it hits the account and these finance charges will appear on your February 1 statement. If you paid off that $1000 on January 10, say, then maybe there will be no further finance charges on the $2000 purchase on January 3 after January 10 but now we are getting into the real fine print of what your credit card agreement says. Ditto for the case when you pay off that $1000 on January 2 and made the $2000 charge on January 3. You most likely will not be charged interest on that $2000 charge but again it depends on the fine print. For example, it might say that you will be charged interest on the average of the daily balances for January, but will not be charged interest on purchases during the February cycle (unless you miss the February 25 payment and the whole cycle starts all over again). As a general rule, it takes two monthly cycles of payment in full by the due date before one gets into the state of no finance charges for new purchases and effectively an "interest-free" loan of $2000 from January 3 (date of purchase) till February 25 (due date of payment). Matters become more complicated when cash advances are taken from a credit card which are charged interest from the day they are taken but don't trigger finance charges on new purchases or the so-called "zero percent balance transfer offers" are accepted. |
What can I replace Microsoft Money with, now that MS has abandoned it? | hledger is a free software, cross-platform double-entry accounting tool I've been working on for a while. It has command-line and web-based interfaces to your local data, and some other interesting features. There's also ledger (http://wiki.github.com/jwiegley/ledger/) which is command-line only. These are.. different, but worth a look for some folks. |
Shorting stocks: Indicators that a stock will drop? | First utilize a security screener to identify the security profiles you are looking to identify for identifying your target securities for shorting. Most online brokers have stock screeners that you can utilize. At this point you may want to look at your target list of securities to find out those that are eligible for shorting. The SHO thresold list is also a good place to look for securities that are hard to borrow to eliminate potential target securities. http://regsho.finra.org/regsho-Index.html Also your broker can let you know the stocks that are available for borrowing. You can then take your target securities and then you can look at the corporate filings on the SEC's Edgar site to look for the key words you are looking for. I would suggest that you utilize XBRL so you can electronically run your key word searched in an automated manner. I would further suggest that you can run the key word XBRL daily for issuer filings of your target list of securities. Additional word searches you may want to consider are those that could indicate a dilution of the companies stock such as the issuance of convertible debt. Also the below link detailing real short interest may be helpful. Clearing firms are required to report short interest every two weeks. http://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/short-interest.aspx |
Can a company have a credit rating better than that of the country where it is located? | BlackJack's answer is technically correct: government credit ratings are independent of corporate credit ratings. The rating should reflect the borrower's ability to repay its obligations. One reason the book you read may have stated that corporate credit ratings cannot be better than the government's credit rating is that the government, unlike the corporation, can steal (or in government parlance "tax") from anywhere or anyone. So if a government finds itself in financial difficulty it could simply take the cash from corporations or people with high credit ratings by a variety of methods: implement windfall profit taxes, take over industries, take peoples gold, tax pension savings, or simply take peoples pensions or retirement savings. This increases the risk of doing business in a country with an over-extended government. Over extended governments do not die gracefully. They only die when there is nothing left to steal. |
Form as LLC or S Corp to reduce tax liability | This is actually quite a complicated issue. I suggest you talk to a properly licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State). Legal advice (from an attorney licensed in your State) is also highly recommended. There are many issues at hand here. Income - both types of entities are pass-through, so "earnings" are taxed the same. However, for S-Corp there's a "reasonable compensation" requirement, so while B and C don't do any "work" they may be required to draw salary as executives/directors (if they act as such). Equity - for S-Corp you cannot have different classes of shares, all are the same. So you cannot have 2 partners contribute money and third to contribute nothing (work is compensated, you'll be getting salary) and all three have the same stake in the company. You can have that with an LLC. Expansion - S-Corp is limited to X shareholders, all of which have to be Americans. Once you get a foreign partner, or more than 100 partners - you automatically become C-Corp whether you want it or not. Investors - it would be very hard for you to find external investors if you're a LLC. There are many more things to consider. Do not make this decision lightly. Fixing things is usually much more expensive than doing them right at the first place. |
What would a stock be worth if dividends did not exist? [duplicate] | A share of stock is a small fraction of the ownership of the company. If you expect the company to eventually be of interest to someone who wants to engineer a merger or takeover, it's worth whatever someone is willing to pay to help make that happen or keep it from happening. Which means it will almost always track the company's value to some degree, because the company itself will buy back shares when it can if they get too cheap, to protect itself from takeover. It may also start paying dividends at a later date. You may also value being able to vote on the company's actions. Including whether it should offer a dividend or reinvest that money in the company. Basically, you would want to own that share -- or not -- for the same reasons you would want to own a piece of that business. Because that's exactly what it is. |
Should I get a car loan before shopping for a car? | You have a good start (estimated max amount you will pay, estimated max down payment, and term) Now go to your bank/credit union and apply for the loan. Get a commitment. They will give you a letter, you may have to ask for it. The letter will say the maximum amount you can pay for the car. This max includes their money and your down payment. The dealer doesn't have to know how much is loan. You also know from the loan commitment exactly how much your monthly payment will be in the worst case. If you have a car you want to trade in, get an written estimate that is good for a week or so. This lets you know how much you can get from selling the car. Now visit the dealer and tell them you don't need a loan, and won't be trading in a car. Don't show them the letter. After all the details of the purchase are concluded, including any rebates and specials, then bring up financing and trade-in. If they can't beat the deal from your bank and the written estimate for the car you are selling, then the deal is done. Now show them the letter and discuss how much down they need today. Then go to the bank for the rest of the money. If they do have a better loan deal or trade in then go with the dealer offer, and keep the letter in your pocket. If you go to the dealer first they will confuse you because they will see the price, interest rate, length of loan, and trade in as one big ball of mud. They will pick the settings that make you happy enough, yet still make them the most money. |
For a mortgage down-payment, what percentage is sensible? | I think anything from 10% on demonstrates a reasonable ability to save. I would consider ongoing debt level a better indicator than the size of the down payment. It's been my experience that, without exception, there is a direct correlation between a persons use of revolving credit and their ability to manage their money & control their spending. Living in Seattle, I only put 10% down on my first house, but not only have we never missed a payment we have always paid extra and now have about 50% equity after 10 years with a family. Yet it would have taken me another year to save the other 10% during which time I would have burned that amount and 1/2 again in useless rent. |
Health insurance lapsed due to employer fraud. How to get medications while in transition? | Check with the manufacturer of the name brand medication. Most of them have programs to help people who need their medication but can not afford it. They may be able to send you coupons for discounted or free medication. You can go to a free clinic. If your income is low enough the free clinic will provide medicine until you can get back on insurance. You can do what alot of people who work hard and do not have insurance do and pay for it outof pocket. You can talk to your doctor and see if there is an alternative to the expensive medicine that your insurance used to pay for. It may not be as effective or may have other side affects but many people are forced to go with these alternatives. You situation is certianly unfortunate but also not terribly uncommon. You probably also have recourse against the former employer but if they commited fraud, and faked your insurance there probably is not alot of money to recoup. If it was a person who commited fraud then you may be able to get a judgement against them that would survive bankruptcy and the business but it will probably be at least 5 years before you can recoup anything possibly much longer and your attorney will probably not take it on contingency. |
How fast does the available amount of gold in the world increase due to mining? | For the last few years around 2,500 metric tonnes of gold have been produced each year. This is on top of existing supply of 160,000 metric tonnes. Existing yearly production is around 1.5% of the existing supply. Charts from here. |
A good investment vehicle for saving for a mortgage down payment? | Assuming this'll be a taxable account and you're an above-average wage earner, the following seem to be biggest factors in your decision: tax-advantaged income w/o retirement account protection - so I'd pick a stock/stocks or fund that's designed to minimize earnings taxable at income and/or short-term gains rates (e.g. dividends) declining risk profile - make sure you periodically tweak your investment mix over the 2-3 year period to reduce your risk exposure. You want to be near savings account risk levels by the end of your timeline. But make sure you keep #1 in mind - so probably don't adjust (by selling) anything until you've hit the 1-year holding mark to get the long-term capital gains rates. In addition to tax-sensitive stock & bond funds at the major brokerages like Fidelity, I'd specifically look at tax-free municipal bond funds (targeted for your state of residence) since those generally pay better than savings on after tax basis for little increase in risk (assuming you stick w/ higher-rated municipalities). |
If I were to get into a life situation where I would not be able to make regular payments, do lenders typically provide options other than default? | I would say generally, the answer is No. There might be some short term relief to people in certain situations, but generally speaking you sign a contract to borrow money and you are responsible to pay. This is why home loans offer better terms then auto loans, and auto loans better than credit cards or things like furniture. The better terms offer less risk to the lender because there are assets that can be repossessed. Homes retain values better than autos, autos better than furniture, and credit cards are not secured at all. People are not as helpless as your question suggests. Sure a person might lose their high paying job, but could they still make a mortgage payment if they worked really hard at it? This might mean taking several part time jobs. Now if a person buys a home that has a very large mortgage payment this might not be possible. However, wise people don't buy every bit of house they can afford. People should also be wise about the kinds of mortgages they use to buy a home. Many people lost their homes due to missing a payment on their interest only loan. Penalty rates and fees jacked up their payment, that was way beyond their means. If they had a fixed rate loan the chance to catch up would have not been impossible. Perhaps an injury might prevent a person from working. This is why long term disability insurance is a must for most people. You can buy quite a bit of coverage for not very much money. Typical US households have quite a bit of debt. Car payments, phone payments, and either a mortgage or rent, and of course credit cards. If income is drastically reduced making all of those payments becomes next to impossible. Which one gets paid first. Just this last week, I attempted to help a client in just this situation. They foolishly chose to pay the credit card first, and were going to pay the house payment last (if there was anything left over). There wasn't, and they are risking eviction (renters). People finding themselves in crisis, generally do a poor job of paying the most important things first. Basic food first, housing and utilities second, etc... Let the credit card slip if need be no matter how often one is threatened by creditors. They do this to maintain their credit score, how foolish. I feel like you have a sense of bondage associated with debt. It is there and real despite many people noticing it. There is also the fact that compounding interest is working against you and with your labor you are enriching the bank. This is a great reason to have the goal of living a debt free life. I can tell you it is quite liberating. |
Is sales tax for online purchases based on billing- or shipping address? | The technical answer is defined by the laws of state you live in but most (all?) states with a sales tax have some form of use tax. Where if you buy something in another state for use in your home state you are technically liable for sales tax on it regardless of whether the merchant charged you tax on it or not. I don't think many people actually pay the use taxes, and enforcement generally seems rare. |
Is real (physical) money traded during online trading? | 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. |
MasterCard won't disclose who leaked my credit card details | As indicated in comments, this is common practice in the US as well as EU. For example, in this Fox Business article, a user had basically the same experience: their card was replaced but without the specific merchant being disclosed. When the reporter contacted Visa, they were told: "We also believe that the public interest is best served by quickly notifying financial institutions with the information necessary to protect themselves and their cardholders from fraud losses. Even a slight delay in notification to financial institutions could be costly,” the spokesperson said in an e-mail statement. “Visa works with the breached entity to collect the necessary information and provides payment card issuers with the affected account numbers so they can take steps to protect consumers through independent fraud monitoring, and if needed, reissuing cards. The most critical information needed is the affected accounts, which Visa works to provide as quickly as possible.” What they're not saying, of course, is that it's in Visa's best interests that merchants let Visa know right away when a leak occurs, without having to think about whether it's going to screw that merchant over in the press. If the merchant has to consider PR, they may not let the networks know in as timely of a fashion - they may at least wait until they've verified the issue in more detail, or even wait until they've found who to pin it on so they don't get blamed. But beyond that, the point is that it's easier for the network (Visa/Mastercard/etc.) to have a system that's just a list of card numbers to submit to the bank for re-issuing; nobody there really cares which merchant was at fault, they just want to re-issue the cards quickly. Letting you know who's at fault is separate. There's little reason for the issuing bank to ever know; you should find out from the merchant themselves or from the network (and in my experience, usually the former). Eventually you may well find out - the article suggest that: [T]he situation is common, but there is some good news: consumers do in many cases find out the source of the breach. But of course doesn't go into detail about numbers. |
Principal 401(k) managed fund fees, wow. What can I do? | In my opinion, the fee is criminal. There are ETFs available to the public that have expenses as low as .05%. The index fund VIIIX an institution level fund available to large 401(k) plans charges .02%. I'll pay a total of under 1% over the next 50 years, Consider that at retirement, the safe withdrawal rate has been thought to be 4%, and today this is considered risky, perhaps too high. Do you think it's fair, in any sense of the word to lose 30% of that withdrawal? Another angle for you - In my working years, I spent most of those years at either the 25% or 28% federal bracket taxable income. I should spend my retirement at 15% marginal rate. On average, the purpose of my 401(k) was to save me (and my wife) 10-13% in tax from deposit to withdrawal. How long does it take for an annual 1.1% excess fee to negate that 10% savings? If one spends their working life paying that rate, they will lose half their wealth to those managing their money. PBS aired a show in its Frontline series titled The Retirement Gamble, it offers a sobering look at how such fees are a killer to your wealth. |
Gigantic point amount on rewards card - what are potential consequences? | I would behave exactly as I would expect it from others. If you were the one giving away too many points by accident you would be thankful if somebody notifies you about this error. You can write a letter or call them. I would not use the points (of course only not use the points which are added in error). Other options are possible but I would advise against them. It's just about fair play and the points are clearly not yours. |
How can I have credit cards without having a credit history or credit score? | For instance and to give a comparison to the US - in Austria, almost everybody gets a credit card (without a credit history (e.g. a young person) / with a bad credit history & with a good credit history). The credit history is in the USA much more important than in Austria. In future, the way to assess a credit history will change due to analysis of social networks for instance. This can be considered in addition to traditional scoring procedures. Is your credit history/score like a criminal record? Nope. I mean is it always with you? Not really cause a criminal record will be retained on a central storage (to state it abstract) and a credit history can be calculated by private companies. Also, are there other ways to get credit cards besides with a bank? That depends on the country. In Austria, yes. |
Once stock prices are down, where to look for good stock market deals? | Indexes are down during the summer time, and I don't think it has something to do with specific stocks. If you look at the index history you'll see that there's a price drop during the summer time. Google "Sell in May and go away". The BP was cheap at the time for a very particular reason. As another example of a similar speculation you can look at Citibank, which was less than $1 at its lowest, and within less than a year went to over $4 ( more than 400%). But, when it was less than $1 - it was very likely for C to go bankrupt, and it required a certain amount of willingness to loose to invest in it. Looking back, as with BP, it paid off well. But - that is looking back. So to address your question - there's no place where people tell you what will go up, because people who know (or think they know) will invest themselves, or buy lottery tickets. There's research, analysts, and "frinds' suggestions" which sometimes pay off (as in your example with BP), and sometimes don't. How much of it is noise - I personally don't think I can tell, until I can look back and say "Damn, that dude was right about shorts on Google, it did go down 90% in 2012!" |
Pros/cons for buying gold vs. saving money in an interest-based account? | Just because gold performed that well in the past does not mean it will perform that well in the future. I'm not saying you should or should not buy gold, but the mere fact that it went up a lot recently is not sufficient reason to buy it. Also note that on the house, an investment that accrues continuous interest for 30 years at an annual rate of about 7.7% will multiply by a factor of 10 in 30 years. That rate is pretty high by today's standards, but it might have been more feasible in the past (I don't know historical interest rates very well). Yet again note that the fact that houses went up a lot over the last 30 years does not mean they will continue to do so. |
Is it possible to buy UK Consols (perpetuities)? | Selftrade does list them. Not sure if you'll be able to sign up from the US though, particularly given the FATCA issues. |
Why do grocery stores in the U.S. offer cash back so eagerly? | The only card I've seen offer this on credit card purchases is Discover. I think they have a special deal with the stores so that the cash-over amount is not included in the percentage-fee the merchant pays. (The cash part shows up broken-out from the purchase amount on the statement--if this was purely something the store did on its own without some collaboration with Discover that would not happen). The first few times I've seen the offer, I assumed it would be treated like a cash-advance (high APR, immediate interest with no grace period, etc.), but it is not. It is treated like a purchase. You have no interest charge if you pay in full during the grace period, and no transaction fee. Now I very rarely go to the ATM. What is in it for Discover? They have a higher balance to charge you interest on if you ever fail to pay in full before the grace period. And Discover doesn't have any debit/pin option that I know of, so no concern of cannibalizing their other business. And happier customers. What is in it for the grocer? Happier customers, and they need to have the armored car come around less often and spend less time counting drawers internally. |
Why is there so much interest on home loans? | APR stands for "annual percentage rate." This means when you see a loan with a 6% rate, it is 6% per year. On a $100,000 mortgage, where you aren't paying much of the principal down at first, a 6% rate would have you paying nearly $6,000 in interest in the first year alone. |
Why do stocks go up? Is it due to companies performing well, or what else? [duplicate] | The value of a stock ultimately is related to the valuation of a corporation. As part of the valuation, you can estimate the cash flows (discounted to present time) of the expected cash flows from owning a share. This stock value is the so-called "fundamental" value of a stock. What you are really asking is, how is the stock's market price and the fundamental value related? And by asking this, you have implicitly assumed they are not the same. The reason that the fundamental value and market price can diverge is that simply, most shareholders will not continue holding the stock for the lifespan of a company (indeed some companies have been around for centuries). This means that without dividends or buybacks or liquidations or mergers/acquisitions, a typical shareholder cannot reasonably expect to recoup their share of the company's equity. In this case, the chief price driver is the aggregate expectation of buyers and sellers in the marketplace, not fundamental evaluation of the company's balance sheet. Now obviously some expectations are based on fundamentals and expert opinions can differ, but even when all the experts agree roughly on the numbers, it may be that the market price is quite a ways away from their estimates. An interesting example is given in this survey of behavioral finance. It concerns Palm, a wholly-owned subsidiary of 3Com. When Palm went public, its shares went for such a high price, they were significantly higher than 3Com's shares. This mispricing persisted for several weeks. Note that this facet of pricing is often given short shrift in standard explanations of the stock market. It seems despite decades of academic research (and Nobel prizes being handed out to behavioral economists), the knowledge has been slow to trickle down to laymen, although any observant person will realize something is amiss with the standard explanations. For example, before 2012, the last time Apple paid out dividends was 1995. Are we really to believe that people were pumping up Apple's stock price from 1995 to 2012 because they were waiting for dividends, or hoping for a merger or liquidation? It doesn't seem plausible to me, especially since after Apple announced dividends that year, Apple stock ended up taking a deep dive, despite Wall Street analysts stating the company was doing better than ever. That the stock price reflects expectations of the future cash flows from the stock is a thinly-disguised form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), and there's a lot of evidence contrary to the EMH (see references in the previously-linked survey). If you believe what happened in Apple's case was just a rational re-evaluation of Apple stock, then I think you must be a hard-core EMH advocate. Basically (and this is elaborated at length in the survey above), fundamentals and market pricing can become decoupled. This is because there are frictions in the marketplace making it difficult for people to take advantage of the mispricing. In some cases, this can go on for extended periods of time, possibly even years. Part of the friction is caused by strong beliefs by market participants which can often shift pressure to supply or demand. Two popular sayings on Wall Street are, "It doesn't matter if you're right. You have to be right at the right time." and "It doesn't matter if you're right, if the market disagrees with you." They suggest that you can make the right decision with where to put your money, but being "right" isn't what drives prices. The market does what it does, and it's subject to the whims of its participants. |
Can unclear or deceptive company news and updates affect the stock price in the opposite direction of where the company is actually headed? | Yes, but only in a relatively short term. False news or speculations can definitely change the stock price, sometimes even significantly. However, the stock price will eventually (in the long-term) correct itself and head to the right direction. |
Has anyone created a documentary about folks who fail to save enough for retirement? | To answer your question, Retirement Revolution may fit the bill to some extent. I'd also like to address some of the indirect assumptions that were made in your bullet points. I'm convinced that the best way to overcome this is not simply to hold down a good job with COLAs every year, max out your IRA accounts and 401(k)s, invest another 10-20% on top, and live off of the savings and whatever Social Security decides to pay you. Instead, the trick is to not retire -- to make a transition into an income-producing activity that can be done in the typical retirement years, hopefully one that is closer to one's calling (i.e., more fulfilling). This takes time, not money. If people just shut off the TV and spent the time building up a side business that has a high passive component, they'd stand a much better chance of not outliving their money. |
Why buy bonds in a no-arbitrage market? | Rates are a complex field. I will assume that context wise you are talking about rates for a individual saver quantities. The two rates you are asking about are personal bank saving account and exchange traded bonds. The points you want to compare between them are. In general, a bond is what we called a fixed rate instrument. This means that for the life of the product, it will yield a fixed percentage of its face value at a regular period. Baring any extreme circumstances (such as bankruptcy), no external factors will change the payment schedule on a bond. Conversely, by placing your money into a bank, you will accrue interest rate at some value related to some published interest rate. For example, if tomorrow, the Treasury decided to try to stimulate the economy, they could slash the interest rate, this would directly affect the rate at which your savings account would accrue interest. In general, a bond has a maturity date, where the capital is finally released from the bond. Until such date, you cannot access the money directly (you can however sell the bond, but it would likely be at a discounted value). Therefore, in general, you cannot get access to the money whenever you want it. As for a saving account, normally one can access the funds instantly, if not within a few days. This seems to the reason people seem to be focusing on. For each bond, the issuer of the bond is obligated to pay you the holder of the bond fixed payments at an interval, plus the capital at the maturity. However, obligation does not mean guarantee. If the issuer, is unable to make the payments, they may go into bankruptcy to avoid paying you. There are companies setup to advise people on the likelihood of each bond issuer on their ability to honour their debts. For example Standard and Poor issues a rating which goes all the way up to AAA for bonds. Recently, many sovereign countries have lost their AAA rating from S&P. Meaning that S&P feel that the possibility of these countries going bankrupt is non-zero. Conversely, banks may also be unable to give you your money when requested. In the US, the reserve requirements means that at any one time it only holds 10% of the money it owes to its customers. This can mean that if every customer turns up to the bank to demand their money, that bank would be unable to pay. This situation is called a Bank Run. During such a situation, the bank would likely collapse and default. In many modern countries, the government put into place guarantees on the first xxx amount in saving accounts, but otherwise, your savings could be lost. There are many complex reasons to choose one instrument over another (including some I have avoided), even if at the outset, they could appear to have the same rates. |
Strategies for saving and investing in multiple foreign currencies | If you want to use that money and maybe don't have the time to wait a few years if things should go bad, than you will definitely want to hold a good bunch of your money in the currency you buy most stuff with (so in most cases the currency of the country you live in) even if it is more volatile. |
Can gold prices vary between two places or country at the same time? | I don't know about an actual example now, but in the past, India had restrictions on how much gold you could bring into the country from abroad, and there were heavy customs duties. Thus, gold smuggling was a huge business, because by avoiding the duties, people could stand to make a lot of money. At some point in 90s, India made changes in these laws so that smuggling was not as profitable. |
What is a good rental yield? | Historically that 'divide by 1000' rule of thumb is what many people in Australia have thought of as normal, and yes, it's about a 5.2% gross yield. Net of expenses, perhaps 3-4%, without allowing for interest. If you're comparing this to shares, I think the right comparison is to the dividend yield, not to the overall PE. A dividend yield of about 3-5% is also about typical: if you look at the Vanguard Index Australian Shares Fund as a proxy for the ASX the yield last year was about 4%. Obviously a 4% return is not very competitive with a term deposit. But with both shares and housing you can hope for some capital growth in addition to the income yield. If you get 4% rental yield plus 5% growth it is more attractive. Is it "good" to buy at what people have historically thought was "normal"? Perhaps you are better off looking around, or sitting out, until you find a much better price than normal. "Is 5% actually historically normal?" deserves a longer answer. |
How should I go about creating an estate plan? | Yes, an estate plan can be very important. Estate planning - typically attempts to eliminate uncertainties over the administration of a probate and maximize the value of the estate by reducing taxes and other expenses. Guardians are often designated for minor children and beneficiaries in incapacity. In general, your "estate" includes all of your assets, less all debt, plus death benefits from all life insurance policies not held in an irrevocable trust. The biggest reason to have an estate plan is to make sure that your personal values about both medical and personal finance financial matters are honored in the event that death or incapacity prevents you from acting for yourself. In addition, tax minimization is a further and very important goal of estate planning for persons with taxable estates. To create an estate plan for yourself or update an existing plan, you will most likely need the services of an estate planning attorney. When you consult with an estate planning attorney, the attorney considers how you want assets distributed to heirs, what taxes might your estate be liable for and whether there are tax-minimization strategies that would be appropriate and appealing; what your preferences and values are with respect to the management of medical and financial affairs in the event of incapacity; and any complicating family issues. To deal with these issues, your attorney will need full and accurate information about you, including: When an estate plan is created, be sure you understand what the attorney is saying. Estate planning ideas can be confusing. It is also appropriate and expected for you to ask about the attorney's fee for any legal service. Some articles and resources: Get ahead of your estate planning Estate Planning by CBA |
Why do stocks tend to trade at high volumes at the end of (or start) the trading day? | Trading at the start of a session is by far higher than at any other time of the day. This is mostly due to markets incorporating news into the prices of stocks. In other words, there are a lot of factors that can affect a stock, 24 hours a day, but the market trades for only 6.5 hours a day. So, a lot of news accumulates during the time when people cannot trade on that news. Then when markets finally open, people are able to finally trade on that news, and there is a lot of "price discovery" going on between market participants. In the last minutes of trading, volumes increase as well. This can often be attributed to certain kinds of traders closing out their position before the end of the day. For example, if you don't want to take the risk a large price movement at the start of the next day affecting you, you would need to completely close your position. |
Is it a good investment for a foreigner to purchase a flat/apartment in China? | No, it's not. This could be a great question, but with no background, not so much. Do you live there now? For how long, and how much longer? You say investment, are you looking to live in it or rent it out? I have nothing against China, but I'd not buy anywhere unless the price, location, and timing all were right. |
Prepaying a loan: Shouldn't the interest be recalculated like a shorter loan? | Your thinking is unfortunately incorrect; an amortising loan (as opposed to interest only loans) pay down, or amortise, the principal with each payment. This means that the amount that is owed at prepayment will always be less than the total borrowed, and is also why some providers make a charge for prepayment. The "fairness" arguments that you make predicated on that misunderstanding are, therefore, incorrect. |
Do Americans really use checks that often? | In my business (estate planning law practice), probably 60-70% of my income is in the form of checks, with the balance as credit/debit cards. I prefer to get paid by check so I don't have to pay the approx 2.5% merchant fee, but I don't push clients to choose one method over the other. I offer direct deposit to my employees but most of them choose to be paid by check. Also, check processing is becoming more and more electronic - when I get paid by check, I scan the checks in a dedicated desktop scanner, and upload the check images to the bank at the end of the day, and the checks are processed very quickly. I also make deposits to my personal credit union account by scanning checks and uploading the images. So, yes, there's technically a paper check, but I (as the merchant/recipient/depositor) keep the check for a few months to make sure there's no problem with the deposit/payment, then shred them. The bank never sees the actual paper check. |
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. |
Splitting Hackathon Prize Money to minimize tax debt | A simple option is to ask your teammates to send you their portion of the tax bill. This option makes everyone's taxes easier, especially since it is very likely that they have already sent in their tax returns. |
Got a large cash sum, wanna buy stocks. Should I buy all at once, or spread it over time? | It would depend on a) Ones view on Markets and b) Ones nature. If one believes that the market would be going up in the near future then it would be best to buy all at once. If one believes the market is uncertain, it would make sense to invest over a period of time. If one is a disciplined investor and can stick to plan, it would make sense to invest over a period of time as the risk is generally less. How much less is again subjective. If one is not a disciplined investor then buying now and getting done with is a good idea. As to exactly quantifying this is absolute number for future would not be possible. One can take the data from past, however it would work advantages if the prices moves up and disadvantages if the price moves down. |
Pros and cons of investing in a cheaper vs expensive index funds that track the same index | So, why or why should I not invest in the cheaper index fund? They are both same, one is not cheaper than other. You get something that is worth $1000. To give a simple illustration; There is an item for $100, Vanguard creates 10 Units out of this so price per unit is $10. Schwab creates 25 units out of this, so the per unit price is $4. Now if you are looking at investing $20; with Vanguard you would get 2 units, with Schwab you would get 5 units. This does not mean one is cheaper than other. Both are at the same value of $20. The Factors you need to consider are; Related question What differentiates index funds and ETFs? |
Why do stock exchanges close at night? | Here are some plausible reasons why markets might continue to close: |
Should I trade in a car I own to lower my payments on a new lease? | Trade-in values are generally below what you can get in a private sale. To directly answer your question, you should sell the crossover yourself and use the balance to purchase your new vehicle. I would encourage you to use the $9k to finance directly without a lease, especially if you are planning on financing after the lease term. The lease will not save you money over the time you drive the vehicle in this case, and worse, will likely expose you to risk of having to pay additional fees if you break certain terms in the lease (mileage, wear and tear, etc) Best option mathematically is to use the $9k to purchase a vehicle for cash. This provides the lowest total cost of ownership. Even if you are afraid of purchasing a lemon, leasing a vehicle is awfully expensive insurance against that possibility. You would have to rack up some significant repairs to justify the cost of the lease vs cash over the term of operating the vehicle. |
As a total beginner, how do I begin to understand finance & stocks? | Let me first give you my definitions of the words 'investor' and 'speculator'. To me, anyone looking to 'buy low, sell high' is a speculator. Only 'buy and hold' people are investors. The news agencies love to report on changes in the price of a stock. This gives them something to talk about. So speculation is encouraged by the news media. What investors care about is dividends. In my opinion whatwhat news agencies should report on are changes to the dividend provided by a security. I used to be a speculator, but now that I am retired I am an investor. |
Frequency of investments to maximise returns (and minimise fees) | Okay, I think I managed to find the precise answer to this problem! It involves solving a non-linear exponential equation, but I also found a good approximate solution using the truncated Taylor series. See below for a spreadsheet you can use. Let's start by defining the growth factors per period, for money in the bank and money invested: Now, let S be the amount ready to be invested after n+1 periods; so the first of that money has earned interest for n periods. That is, The key step to solve the problem was to fix the total number of periods considered. So let's introduce a new variable: t = the total number of time periods elapsed So if money is ready to invest every n+1 periods, there will be t/(n+1) separate investments, and the future value of the investments will be: This formula is exact in the case of integer t and n, and a good approximation when t and n are not integers. Substituting S, we get the version of the formula which explicitly depends on n: Fortunately, only a couple of terms in FV depend on n, so we can find the derivative after some effort: Equating the derivative to zero, we can remove the denominator, and assuming t is greater than zero, we can divide by the constant ( 1-G t ): To simplify the equation, we can define some extra constants: Then, we can define a function f(n) and write the equation as: Note that α, β, γ, G, and R are all constant. From here there are two options: Use Newton's method or another numerical method for finding the positive root of f(n). This can be done in a number of software packages like MATLAB, Octave, etc, or by using a graphics calculator. Solve approximately using a truncated Taylor series polynomial. I will use this method here. The Taylor series of f(n), centred around n=0, is: Truncating the series to the first three terms, we get a quadratic polynomial (with constant coefficients): Using R, G, α, β and γ defined above, let c0, c1 and c2 be the coefficients of the truncated Taylor series for f(n): Then, n should be rounded to the nearest whole number. To be certain, check the values above and below n using the formula for FV. Using the example from the question: For example, I might put aside $100 every week to invest into a stock with an expected growth of 9% p.a., but brokerage fees are $10/trade. For how many weeks should I accumulate the $100 before investing, if I can put it in my high-interest bank account at 4% p.a. until then? Using Newton's method to find roots of f(n) above, we get n = 14.004. Using the closed-form approximate solution, we get n = 14.082. Checking this against the FV with t = 1680 (evenly divisible by each n + 1 tested): Therefore, you should wait for n = 14 periods, keeping that money in the bank, investing it together with the money in the next period (so you will make an investment every 14 + 1 = 15 weeks.) Here's one way to implement the above solution with a spreadsheet. StackExchange doesn't allow tables in their syntax at this time, so I'll show a screenshot of the formulae and columns you can copy and paste: Formulae: Copy and paste column A: Copy and paste column B: Results: Remember, n is the number of periods to accumulate money in the bank. So you will want to invest every n+1 weeks; in this case, every 15 weeks. |
Is it wise to switch investment strategy frequently? | I understand you're trying to ask a narrow question, but you're basically asking whether you should time the market. You can find tons of books saying you shouldn't try it, and tons more confirming that you can. Both will have data and anecdotes to back them up. So I'll give you my own opinion. Market timing, especially in a macro sense, is a zero-sum game. Your first thought should be: I'm smarter than the average person; the average person is an idiot. However, remember that a whole lot of the money in the market is not controlled by idiots. You really need to ask yourself if you can compete with people who get paid to spend 12 hours a day trying to beat the market. Stick with a mid-range strategy for now. Your convictions aren't and shouldn't be strong enough at the moment to do otherwise. But, if you can't resist, I say go ahead and do what you feel. Regardless of what you do, your returns over the next 3 years won't be life changing. In the meantime, learn as much as you can about investing, and keep a journal of your investment activity to keep yourself honest. |
Is there a good options strategy that has a fairly low risk? | By coincidence, I entered this position today. Ignore the stock itself, I am not recommending a particular stock, just looking at a strategy. The covered call. For this stock trading at $7.47, I am able, by selling an in-the-money call to be out of pocket $5.87/sh, and am obliged to let it go for $7.00 a year from now. A 19% return as long as the stock doesn't drop more than 6% over that time. The chart below shows maximum profit, and my loss starts if the stock trades 21% below current price. The risk is shifted a bit, but in return, I give up potential higher gains. The guy that paid $1.60 could triple his money if the stocks goes to $12, for example. In a flat market, this strategy can provide relatively high returns compared to holding only stocks. |
What did John Templeton mean when he said that the four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different'? | Essentially, he means "one ignores history at their own peril". We often hear people arguing that "the old rules no longer apply". Whether it be to valuations, borrowing, or any of the other common metrics, to ignore the lessons of the past is to invite disaster. History shows us that major crises in the markets usually occur when the old rules are ignored and people believe that current exceptional market conditions are justified by special circumstances. |
Are REIT worth it and is it a good option to generate passive income for a while? | Other individuals answered how owning an REIT compares to an individual real estate investment, but did not answer your second question as readily, "are REITs a good option to generate passive income for awhile?". The "awhile" part is quite important in answering this question. If your intentions are to invest for a relatively short time period (say, 7 years or less), it may be especially advantageous to invest in a REIT. The foremost advantage comes from significantly lower transaction fees (stock/ETF trades are practically/potentially free today) compared to purchasing real estate, which involves inspection+titling fees/taxes/broker fees, which in a round-trip transaction (purchase and sale) would come to ~10%. The secondary advantage to owning a REIT is they are much more liquid than a property. If you wanted to sell your investment at a given point in time, you can easily log into your brokerage and execute your transaction, while liquidating an investment property will take time on market/potentially tossing tenants/fixing up place, etc. On the other hand, illiquid investments have generally yielded higher historical returns according to past research. |
Index fund that tracks gold and other commodities | I don't know answers that would be specific to Canada but one of the main ETF funds that tracks gold prices is GLD (SPDR Gold Trust) another is IAU (iShares Gold Trust). Also, there are several ETF's that combine different precious metals together and can be traded. You can find a fairly decent list here on the Stock Encylopedia site. |
How do I determine ownership split on a franchise model? | There is no right and wrong answer to this question. What you and your business partner perceive as Fair is the best way to split the ownership of the new venture. First, regarding the two issues you have raised: Capital Contributions: The fact that you are contributing 90% of initial capital does not necessarily translate to 90% of equity. In my opinion, what is fair is that you transform your contributions into a loan for the company. The securitization of your contribution into a loan will make it easier to calculate your fair contribution and also compensate you for your risk by choosing whatever combination of interest income and equity you see suitable. For example, you might decide to split the company in half and consider your contributions a loan with 20%, 50% or 200% annual interest. Salary: It is common that co-founders of start-ups forgo their wages at the start of the company. I do not recommend that this forgone salary be compensated through equity because it is impossible to determine the suitable amount of equity to be paid. I suggest the translation of forgone wages into loans or preferred stocks in similar fashion to capital contribution Also, consider the following in deciding the best way to allocate equity between both of you and your partner Whose idea was it? Talk with you business partner how both of you value the inventor of the concept. In general, execution is more important but talking about how you both feel about it is good. Full-time vs. part-time: A person who works full time at the new venture should have more equity than the partner who is only a part-time helper. Control: It is important to talk about control and decision making of the company. You can separate the control and decision making of important decisions from ownership. You can also check the following article about this topic at http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2012/04/05/what-every-founder-needs-to-know-about-equity/#726842f3668a |
Like a Roth IRA for intellectual property, offshore assignment? | One can have a self-directed IRA. This is not like a Schwab, eTrade, etc IRA. It has a special type of custodian that knows how to manage it. I became aware of such an account as a way to purchase a rental property. There were two issues. The type of property I looked at wasn't anything a bank was willing to finance. And the rules regarding self dealing added a potential layer of expense as I technically could not perform the simplest of things for the property. For you, the obstacle looks like self-dealing. Any IRA can only be funded with cash or transfer/conversion from another IRA/401(k). I don't know how you would get the intelligent property into the IRA in the first place. Once you own a patent, or anything else, you can't sell it into the IRA. It's at times like this that member littleadv would suggest this is the time to talk to a pro before you do anything hazardous to your wealth. |
Are large companies more profitable than small ones? | This isn't as rigorous as it should be, but may offer some useful insight into how big and small companies differ operationally. Putting Apple aside, larger companies tend to sell larger volumes of products (even if they're MRI devices, or turbines) relative to what smaller companies can sell (obviously, in absolute terms as well). They are also able to negotiate volume discounts as well as payment terms. This allows them to finance sales through their supply chain. However, their large direct competitors are able to do the same thing as well. Competitive forces then drive prices down. Smaller businesses, without these advantages of scale, tend to have to charge higher margins since they have to pay directly (and, if their clients are large businesses, finance the sale). Small businesses still have higher proportional costs of operation. Sadly, my reference here is a study I performed for the South African Revenue Service about ten years ago, and not available online. However, the time taken by a small business to manage admin, tax, HR is a greater proportion of revenue than for larger companies. If the small business is a start-up with big investment from venture finance, then they could subsidise their selling price, run at a loss and try and gain scale. Funnily enough, there is a fantastic article on this by Joel Spolsky (Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon) For the average highly-competitive smaller company, the best choice is to chase design/quality/premium markets in order to justify the higher margins they have to charge. And that's what makes Apple interesting as a case study. They were a small company in the presence of giants (Intel, Microsoft, IBM). They were "forced" to concentrate on design and premium markets in order to justify their need for higher margins. It almost didn't work but then they broke through. Now they're in the unique position of having gained scale but are still small enough relative to other electronics manufacturers to continue charging that premium (by volume their sales are still relatively small but their margins make them a giant). This type of variation from market to market makes developing some sort of generalised solution very unlikely but the general requirement holds: that smaller companies must charge higher margins in order to create equivalent profits to larger companies which must gain scale through volume. |
Free/open source Unix software that pulls info from all my banks/brokers/credit cards? | As far as I can tell there are no "out-of-the-box" solutions for this. Nor will Moneydance or GnuCash give you the full solution you are looking for. I imaging people don't write a well-known, open-source, tool that will do this for fear of the negative uses it could have, and the resulting liability. You can roll-you-own using the following obscure tools that approximate a solution: First download the bank's CSV information: http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/gnucash.html That guy did it with a perl script that you can modify. Then convert the result to OFX for use elsewhere: http://allmybrain.com/2009/02/04/converting-financial-csv-data-to-ofx-or-qif-import-files/ |
Lending to the bank | This will happen automatically when you open an interest-bearing account with a bank. You didn't think that banks just kept all that cash in a vault somewhere, did you? That's not the way modern banking works. Today (and for a long, long time) banks will keep only a small fraction of their deposits on hand (called the "reserve") to fund daily withdrawals and other operations. The rest they routinely lend out to other customers, which is how they pay for their operations (someone has to pay all those tellers, branch managers, loan officers) and pay interest on your deposits, as well as a profit for their owners (it's not a charity service). The fees charged for loan origination, as well as the difference between the loan interest rate and the deposit rate, make up the profit. Banks rarely hold their own loans. Instead, they will sell the loans in portfolios to investors, sometimes retaining servicing rights (they continue to collect the payments and pass them on) and sometimes not (the payments are now due to someone else). This allows them to make more loans. Banks may sometimes not have enough capital on hand. In this case, they can make inter-bank loans to meet their short-term needs. In some cases, they'll take those loans from a government central bank. In the US, this is "The Fed", or the Federal Reserve Bank. In the US, back around the late 1920's, and again in the 1980's some banks experienced a "run", or a situation where people lost confidence in the bank and wanted to withdraw their money. This caused the bank to have insufficient funds to support the withdrawals, so not everyone got their money. People panicked, and others wanted to take their money out, which caused the situation to snowball. This is how many banks failed. (In the '80s, it was savings-and-loans that failed - still a kind of "bank".) Today, we have the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) to protect depositors. In the crashes in the early 2000's, many banks closed up one night and opened the next in a conservatorship, and then were literally doing business as a new bank without depositors (necessarily) even knowing. This protected the consumers. The bank (as a company) and its owners were not protected. |
Taxation from variations in currency | According to the answers to this question, you generally aren't taxed on gains until you sell the asset in question. None of those answered specifically for the U.K., so perhaps someone else will be able to weigh in on that. To apply those ideas to your question, yes your gains and losses are taxable. If you originally traded something worth $100 for the bitcoins, then when you converted back to dollars you received $200, you would have a $100 gain, simply on the foreign exchange trade. That is, this $100 of income is in addition to any income you made from your business (selling goods). |
Why would a company issue a scrip dividend and how will this issue affect me? | Am I correct in understanding that a Scrip Dividend involves the issue of new shares instead of the purchase of existing shares? Yes. Instead of paying a cash dividend to shareholders, the company grants existing shareholders new shares at a previously determined price. This allows shareholders who join the program to obtain new shares without incurring transaction costs that would normally occur if they purchased these shares in the market. Does this mean that if I don't join this program, my existing shares will be diluted every time a Scrip Dividend is paid? Yes, because the number of shares has increased, so the relative percentage of shares in the company you hold will decrease if you opt-out of the program. The price of the existing shares will adjust so that the value of the company is essentially unchanged (similar to a stock split), but the number of outstanding shares has increased, so the relative weight of your shares declines if you opt out of the program. What is the benefit to the company of issuing Scrip Dividends? Companies may do this to conserve their cash reserves. Also, by issuing a scrip dividend, corporations could avoid the Advanced Corporation Tax (ACT) that they would normally pre-pay on their distributions. Since the abolition of the ACT in 1999, preserving cash reserves is the primary reason for a company to issue scrip dividends, as far as I know. Whether or not scrip dividends are actually a beneficial strategy for a company is debatable (this looks like a neat study, even though I've only skimmed it). The issue may be beneficial to you, however, because you might receive a tax benefit. 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). |
Is short selling a good hedging strategy during overzealous market conditions? | 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. |
Should I keep most of my banking, credit, and investment accounts at the same bank? | I've had all my account with the same bank for all my life. Generally, the disadvantage is that if I want some kind of product like a credit extension or a mortgage, I have the one bank to go to and if they don't want to help me I'm out of luck. However, occasionally there are also perks like the bank spontaneously offering you increased credit or even a whole line of credit. They can do this because they have your whole history and trust you. |
What is the difference between a stock and a bond? | WilliamKF explained it pretty well, but I want to put it in a more simplistic form: |
Prices go up and salary doesn't: where goes delta? | One of the byproducts of free trade is that there is now a global labor market. So companies routinely review their operations and think strategically about where the company is going. Standard options are: Because the disincentives that once existed in the past are gone (the need for humans to do work, tariffs, regulation, poor infrastructure in the developing world), the available supply of labor is greater and demand lower -- thus wages are falling in real terms. Think in the simplest terms in an office environment. In 1980 to make photocopies, you needed a Xerox machine that required a technician on site every couple of weeks to make adjustments, change toner, etc. There was probably a local rep you called to schedule break/fix serivce. Now technology has replaced that copy machine with a cheap multi-function device that requires no maintenance and any technical support is delivered by a person sitting in a Indian call center. So to answer your question, the incremental money from rising prices goes to a number a places. Alot of it goes to oil producers and other commodity producers. Much of it consists of indirect costs that fulfill other mandated services -- when you buy something, buried in that cost are things like health insurance, prescription drugs and school taxes. |
Should I set a stop loss for long term investments? | My broker offers the following types of sell orders: I have a strategy to sell-half of my position once the accrued value has doubled. I take into account market price, dividends, and taxes (Both LTgain and taxes on dividends). Once the market price exceeds the magic trigger price by 10%, I enter a "trailing stop %" order at 10%. Ideally what happens is that the stock keeps going up, and the trailing stop % keeps following it, and that goes on long enough that accrued dividends end up paying for the stock. What happens in reality is that the stock goes up some, goes down some, then the order gets cancelled because the company announces dividends or something dumb like that. THEN I get into trouble trying to figure out how to re-enter the order, maintaining the unrealized gain in the history of the trailing stop order. I screwed up and entered the wrong type of order once and sold stock I didn't want to. Lets look at an example. a number of years ago, I bought some JNJ -- a hundred shares at 62.18. - Accumulated dividends are 2127.75 - My spreadsheet tells me the "double price" is 104.54, and double + 10% is 116.16. - So a while ago, JNJ exceeded 118.23, and I entered a Trailing Stop 10% order to sell 50 shares of JNJ. The activation price was 106.41. - since then, the price has gone up and down... it reached a high of 126.07, setting the activation price at 113.45. - Then, JNJ announced a dividend, and my broker cancelled the trailing stop order. I've re-entered a "Stop market" order at 113.45. I've also entered an alert for $126.07 -- if the alert gets triggered, I'll cancel the Market Stop and enter a new trailing stop. |
Who creates money? Central banks or commercial banks? | A central bank typically introduces new money into the system by printing new money to purchase items from member banks. The central bank can purchase whatever it chooses. It typically purchases government bonds but the Federal Reserve purchased mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) during the 2008 panic since the FED was the only one willing to pay full price for MBS after the crash of 2008. The bank, upon receipt of the new money, can loan the money out. A minimum reserve ratio specifies how much money the bank has to keep on hand. A reserve ratio of 10% means the bank must have $10 for every $100 in loans. As an example, let's say the FED prints up some new money to purchase some office desks from a member bank. It prints $10,000 to purchase some desks. The bank receives $10,000. It can create up to $100,000 in loans without exceeding the 10% minimum reserve ratio requirement. How would it do so? A customer would come to the bank asking for a $100,000 loan. The bank would create an account for the customer and credit $100,000 to the customer's account. There is a problem, however. The customer borrowed the money to buy a boat so the customer writes a check for $100,000 to the boat company. The boat company attempts to deposit the $100,000 check into the boat company's bank. The boat company's bank will ask the originating bank for $100,000 in cash. The originating bank only has $10,000 in cash on hand so this demand will immediately bankrupt the originating bank. So what actually happens? The originating bank actually only loans out reserves * (1 - minimum reserve ratio) so it can meet demands for the loans it originates. In our example the bank that received the initial $10,000 from the FED will only loan out $10,000 * (1-0.1) = $9,000. This allows the bank to cover checks written by the person who borrowed the $9,000. The reserve ratio for the bank is now $1,000/$9,000 which is 11% and is over the minimum reserve requirement. The borrower makes a purchase with the borrowed $9,000 and the seller deposits the $9,000 in his bank. The bank that receives that $9,000 now has an additional $9,000 in reserves which it will use to create loans of $9,000 * (1 - 0.1) = $8100. This continual fractional reserve money creation process will continue across the entire banking system resulting in $100,000 of new money created from $10,000. This process is explained very well here. |
What is the process of getting your first share? | Let's handle this as a "proof of concept" (POC); OP wants to buy 1 share of anything just to prove that they can do it before doing the months of painstaking analysis that is required before buying shares as an investment. I will also assume that the risks and costs of ownership and taxes would be included in OP's future analyses. To trade a stock you need a financed broker account and a way to place orders. Open a dealing account, NOT an options or CFD etc. account, with a broker. I chose a broker who I was confident that I could trust, others will tell you to look for brokers based on cost or other metrics. In the end you need to be happy that you can get what you want out of your broker, that is likely to include some modicum of trust since you will be keeping money with them. When you create this account they will ask for your bank account details (plus a few other details to prevent fraud, insider trading, money laundering etc.) and may also ask for a minimum deposit. Either deposit enough to cover the price of your share plus taxes and the broker's commission, plus a little extra to be on the safe side as prices move for every trade, including yours, or the minimum if it is higher. Once you have an account the broker will provide an interface through which to buy the share. This will usually either be a web interface, a phone number, or a fax number. They will also provide you with details of how their orders are structured. The simplest type of order is a "market order". This tells the broker that you want to buy your shares at the market price rather than specifying only to buy at a given price. After you have sent that order the broker will buy the share from the market, deduct the price plus tax and her commission from your account and credit your account with your share. |
Are there guidelines for whom you should trust for financial advice (online, peer, experts, only myself, etc) | Nothing beats statistics like that found on Morning Star, Yahoo or Google Finance. When you are starting out, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Pick a couple of mutual funds with good track records and start there. Keep in mind the financial press, to some degree, has a vested interest in having their readership chase the next hot thing. So while sites like Seeking Alpha, Kiplingers, or Money do provide some good advice, there is also an element that placates their advertisers. The only peer-to-peer lending I would consider is Lending Club. However, you are probably better off in the long run investing in mutual funds. One way to get involved in individual stocks without getting burned is to participate in Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs). Companies that have them tend to be very well established, and they are structured to discourage trading. Buying is easy, dividend reinvestment is easy, dividend payouts are easy; but, starting and selling is kind of a pain. That is a good thing. |
What IT form to use in India? | As you have income from Business / Profession, you would need to use form ITR4S |
How can I decide whether do a masters even if I have go into debt after doing it? | I did some research and I found a very interesting article that had exactly my case as an example ( person has an undergrad from a nice University in the relative field and wants to do a masters to get a job in a high tech company). Here is the source. Consider “Susan:” She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in Computer Science, and is considering applying to a master’s program at UW or an equivalent program. She’s hoping afterwards to land a job at a top tech company. So far, she’s only been able to get jobs with startups and smaller-name companies. A master’s degree probably wouldn’t make sense for Susan. It might help her to land a job at a top tech company, but she could also do that by working at a startup for a year or two and spending some time developing her skill set through personal projects. If she did it that way, she’d probably be a lot richer in the end. |
How can a Canadian establish US credit score | set up a US company (WY is cheap and easy), go south and open a personal and business bank account, ask for the itin form. file for the itin. set up your EIN for the company. get a credit card for both. pay some mail forwarding service with it. file for taxes in the next year using your itin. prepaid cards do not link to your tax id |
Should I pay off my student loan before buying a house? | There may be specific answers that can be determined based on the interest rates, amounts, tax provisions, etc. But I'm here to tell you... It is much easier (i.e., less stressful) to own a home when you have less debt. Pay off any and every debt you can before purchasing a home because there will always be something requiring you to spend money once you own one. |
Pay off credit card debt or earn employer 401(k) match? | Nope, take the match. I cannot see not taking the match unless you don't have enough money to cover the bills. Every situation is different of course, and if the option is to missing minimum payments or other bills in order to get the match, make your payments. But in all other circumstances, take the match. My reasoning is, it is hard enough to earn money so take every chance you can. If you save for retirement in the process, all the better. |
Will a credit card issuer cancel an account if it never incurs interest? | Remember, the card company gets a percentage at the time of purchase, as well as any interest you let them collect from you. Yes, they're still making a profit on our accounts, and they can always hope that at some point we'll run up a high enough bill to be willing to pay some interest. They may kill completely inactive cards, since they need a bit of income to pay for processing the account. But if you're actively using it, they aren't very likely to tell you to go away (though they may change which plan(s) they offer you). |
Price difference among shares in Hong Kong and Shang Hai | Wikipedia talks about the Chinese currency: Scholarly studies suggest that the yuan is undervalued on the basis of purchasing power parity analysis. so despite it appearing cheaper due to the official exchange rate, the price in China might actually be fair. There are also restrictions on foreign exchange (purportedly "to prevent inflows of hot money"), which, in concert with any other legal obstacles to owning or trading on the Chinese exchange, may also explain why the high-frequency traders aren't tripping over each other to arbitrage away the difference. |
Better approach to close loans? | It is typically best to pay minimum payments to 2 of the loans and pay aggressively on the third loan. Some will tell you to pay the highest interest rate loan off first because "personal finance" is about "finance" and mathematically that saves you the most interest. Some will tell you to pay the smallest balance loan off first because "personal finance" is "personal" and the psychological "win" of paying off a loan is more valuable than the small amount of interest difference between this strategy and paying off the loan with the highest interest rate first. |
What kinds of information do financial workers typically check on a daily basis? | In addition to the information in the other answer, I would suggest looking at an economic calendar. These provide the dates and values of many economic announcements, e.g. existing home sales, durable orders, consumer confidence, etc. Yahoo, Bloomberg, and the Wall Street Journal all provide such calendars. Yahoo provides links to the raw data where available; Bloomberg and the WSJ provide links to their article where appropriate. You could also look at a global economic calendar; both xe.com and livecharts.co.uk provide these. If you're only interested in the US, the Yahoo, Bloomberg, and WSJ calendars may provide a higher signal-to-noise ratio, but foreign announcements also affect US markets, so it's important to get as much perspective as possible. I like the global economic calendars I linked to above because they rate announcements on "priority", which is a quick way to learn which announcements have the greatest effect. Economic calendars are especially important in the context of an interview because you may be asked a follow-up question. For example, the US markets jumped in early trading today (5/28/2013) because the consumer confidence numbers exceeded forecasts (from the WSJ calendar, 76.2 vs 2.3). As SRKX stated, it's important to know more than the numbers; being able to analyze the numbers in the context of the wider market and being aware of the fundamentals driving them is what's most important. An economic calendar is a good way to see this information quickly and succinctly. (I'm paraphrasing part of my answer to another question, so you may or may not find some of that information helpful as well; I'm certainly not suggesting you look at the website of every central bank in the morning. That's what an economic calendar is for!) |
For a major expensive home renovation (e.g. addition, finished basement, or new kitchen) should one pay cash or finance with a loan? Would such a loan be “good” debt? | Reasons to pay with cash Reasons to borrow Things to watch out for |
Due Diligence - Dilution? | Your best bet is to just look at comparative balance sheets or contact the company itself. Otherwise, you will need access to a service like PrivCo to get data. |
I'm only spending roughly half of what I earn; should I spend more? | If you are happy, really honestly happy, there is no need to change because you read it somewhere. While I believe that budgeting in some fun is smart so you don't go crazy, I am really speaking for myself. I personally have to work at not spending more than I make, so I need to blow off some steam. I also think that you will find in the future something you want to do that costs money, and you would be glad to have it now. The same rules apply for you as they apply to everybody |
Is laminate flooring an “Improvement” or “Depreciable Property”? | Aesthetics aside, laminate floor is attached to the floor and as such is a part of the building. So you depreciate it with the building itself, similarly to the roof. I believe the IRS considers these permanently attached because the foam itself is permanently attached, and is a part of the installation. To the best of my knowledge, the only flooring that is considered as a separate unit of property is tucked-in carpet or carpet pads (typically installed in commercial buildings, not homes). Everything else you'll have to prove to be an independent separate unit of property. Technically, you can take the tucked in carpet, and move it elsewhere as-is and be able to install it there assuming the size fits. You cannot do it with the foam (at the very least you'll need a new foam cover in the new location since you cannot take the foam with you from the old one). That's the difference between a "separate unit of property" and "part of the building". Note that the regulations in this area have changed significantly starting of 2014, so you may want to talk to a professional. |
Make your money work for you | In addition to the other excellent answers here, check out Mr. Money Mustache's site, it's based in the US but the basics still hold here in the UK. Another great site is the Monevator which is UK based and gives some great information on passive investing. Well done on getting to this point at your age - you've got plenty of time for the miracle of compound interest to work for you. EDIT: Once you have any existing debts paid off, take a look at passive/index investing. This could be a good way to make your £150 work for you by capturing the gains of the stock market. Invest it long-term (buy and hold) to make the most of the compound interested effect and over time that money will become something substantial - especially if you can increase payments over time as your income increases. You could also look at reducing your outgoings as recommended on the Mustache site linked above so you can increase your monthly investment amount. |
Why invest in IRA while a low-cost index fund is much simpler? | Lots of good answers. I'll try and improve by being more brief. For each option you will pay different taxes: Index Fund: Traditional IRA Roth IRA You can see that the Roth IRA is obviously better than investing in a taxable account. It may not be as obvious that the traditional IRA is better as well. The reason is that in the traditional account you can earn returns on the money that otherwise would have gone to the government today. The government taxes that money at the end, but they don't take all of it. In fact, for a given investment amount X and returns R, the decision of Roth vs Traditional depends only on your tax rate now vs at retirement because X(1-tax)(1+R_1)(1+R_2)...(1+R_n) = X(1+R_1)(1+R_2)...(1+R_n)(1-tax) The left hand side is what you will have at retirement if you do a Roth and the right hand side is what you will have at retirement if you do traditional. Only the tax rate differences between now and retirment matter here. An index fund investment is like the left hand side but has some additional tax terms on your capital gains. It's clearly worse than either. |
What's the catch with biweekly mortgage payments? | Pete and Noah addressed the math, showing how this is, in effect, converting a 30yr to a ~23yr mortgage, at a cost, plus payment about 8% higher (1 extra payment per year). No magic there. The real issue, as I see it, is whether this is the best use of the money. Keep in mind, once you pay extra principal, which in effect is exactly what this is, it's not easy to get it back. As long as you have any mortgage at all, you have the need for liquidity, enough to pay your mortgage, tax, utilities, etc, if you find yourself between jobs or to get through any short term crisis. I've seen people choose the "sure thing" prepayment VS the "risky" 401(k) deposit. Ignoring a match is passing up a 50% or 100% return in most cases. Too good to pass up. 2 points to add - I avoided the further tangent of the tax benefit of IRA/401(k) deposits. It's too long a discussion, today's rate for the money saved, vs the rate on withdrawal. Worth considering, but not part of my answer. The other discussion I avoid is Nicholas' thoughts on the long term market return of 10% vs today's ~4% mortgage rate. This has been debated elsewhere and morphs into a "pre-pay vs invest" question. |
Why should one only contribute up to the employer's match in a 401(k)? | I'd hazard that Jim is mostly worried that people are getting ripped off by high employer 401(k) fund fees. A lot of employers offer funds with fees over 1% a year. This sounds low-ish if you don't realize that the real (inflation-adjusted) return for the fund will probably average out to about 4%, so it's really something like a quarter of your earnings gone. With an IRA, you don't have to do that. You can get an IRA provider which offers good, cheap index funds and the like (cough Vanguard cough). Fund fees will probably be closer to 0.1%-ish. HOWEVER. The maximum IRA contribution in 2013 will be $5,500. The maximum for a 401(k) contribution will be $17,500. That extra capacity is enough to recommend a 401(k) over an IRA for many people. These people may be best served by putting money into the 401(k) and then rolling it over into a rollover IRA when they change jobs. Also, certain people have retirement plans which offer them good cheap index funds. These people probably don't need to worry quite as much. Finally, having two accounts is more complicated. Please contact someone who knows more about taxes than I am to figure out what limitations apply for contributing to both IRAs and 401(k)s in the same year. |
Why do stock prices of retailers not surge during the holidays? | I used to be in research department for big financial data company. Tell your son that there are three factors: Most people think that net sales vs. expectations is the only factor. It might not even be the biggest. It is simply how much money did company make. Note that this is not how many units they sold. For most companies they will have adjustable pricing and incentives in their sector. For example let's talk about a new company selling Superman Kid's Bikes (with a cape the flips out when you hit a certain speed). The company has it in Walmart at one price, Target at another, Toys R' Us even cheaper, Amazon (making more profit there), and other stores. They are doing "OK" come Dec. 1 but holiday season being half way over they slash price from $100 to $80 because they have tons of inventory. What are looking at her is how much money did they make. Note that marketing, advertising, legal (setting up contracts) are a bit fixed. In my opinion consumer sentiment is the #1 thing for a company that sells a product. Incredible consumer sentiment is like millions of dollars in free advertising. So let's say Dec. 15th comes and the reviews on the Superman Bike are through the roof. Every loves it, no major defects. Company can't even supply the retailers now because after slashing the price it became a great buy. A common investor might be pissed that some dummy at the company slashed the prices so they could have had a much better profit margin, but at the same time it wouldn't have led to an onslaught of sales and consumer sentiment. And the last area is product sell-off. This doesn't apply to all product but most. Some products will only have a technology shelf life, some will actually go bad or out of fashion, and even selling Superman bikes you want to get those to the store because the product is so big. So ignoring making a profit can a company sell off inventory at or around cost. If they can't, even if they made a profit, their risk factor goes up. So let's get back to Superman Bikes. This is the only product company ABC has. They had expected holiday sales at 100 million and profits at 40 million. They ended up at 120 million and 44 million. Let's say their stock was $20 before any information was gathered by the public (remember for most companies info is gathered daily now so this is rather simplistic). So you might expect that the stock would rise to maybe $24 - to which if you were an investor is a great profit. However this company has a cult consumer following who are waiting for the Captain America Bike (shoots discs) and the Hulk Bike (turns green when you go fast). Let's say consumer sentiment and projections base off that put next holiday sales at $250 million. So maybe the company is worth $40 a share now. But consumer sentiment is funny because not only does it effect future projections but it also effects perceived present value of company - which may have the stock trading at $60 a share (think earnings and companies like Google). Having a company people feel proud owning or thinking is cool is also a indicator or share worth. I gave you a really good example of a very successful company selling Superman Bikes... There are just as many companies that have the opposite happening. Imagine missing sales goals by a few million with bad consumer feedback and all of a sudden your company goes from $20 to $5 a share. |
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