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Can I invest in gold through Vanguard (Or another instrument that should perform well in financial crisis)? | I found a comparison of stock and bond returns. The relevant portion here is that bonds went up by 10% in 2007 and 20% in 2008 (32% compounded). Stocks were already recovering in 2009, going up almost 26%. You don't mention what you were hoping to get from your gold investment, but bonds gave a very good return for... |
Why does capital gains tax apply to long term stock holdings? | Most well-off people have investments which they have held for long periods of time, often of very substantial value such as a large part of a company. They also have influence on legislators and officials through various social contacts, lobbyists, and contributions. They managed to convince these law makers to offe... |
Are credit cards not viewed as credit until you miss one payment? | There's a difference between missing a payment and "carrying a balance" (making an on-time payments that are less than the full balance due). I have heard mortgage brokers claim that, if you have no other credit history, carrying a small balance here and there on a credit card may improve your score. ("Small" is in re... |
Understanding how this interpretation of kelly criterion helps the trader | The goal of the kelly criterion strategy is to find a balance between preservation of starting capital and returns. One of extreme you could bet the entirety of your account on one trade, which would maximize your returns if you win, but leave you unable to further invest if you lose. On the other extreme, you could be... |
How can a person protect his savings against a country default? | Since you are going to be experiencing a liquidity crisis that even owning physical gold wouldn't solve, may I suggest bitcoins? You will still be liquid and people anywhere will be able to trade it. This is different from precious metals, whereas even if you "invested" in gold you would waste considerable resources on... |
Why does short selling require borrowing? | This can be best explained with an example. Bob thinks the price of a stock that Alice has is going to go down by the end of the week, so he borrows a share at $25 from Alice. The current price of the shares are $25 per share. Bob immediately sells the shares to Charlie for $25, it is fair, it is the current market pri... |
How might trading volume affect future share price? | As said previously, most of the time volume does not affect stock prices, except with penny stocks. These stocks typically have a small volume in the 3 or 4 figure range and because of this they typically experience very sharp rises and drops in stock prices, contrasting normal stocks that go up and down constantly eve... |
Optimal way for withdrawing vested company match from my 401k? | You can borrow against a 401k for 5 years. This defers any penalty fees that the IRS mandates. Put the cash back in your 401k within those 5 years. you can also solo administer 401k plans even if you have an unincorporated business, so you can start one of those if you have any other form of cashflow, and there may be ... |
Can paying down a mortgage be considered an “investment”? | It very much comes down to question of semantics and your particular situation. Some people do not view a house (and most upgrades) as an investment, but rather an expense. I certainly agree that this is probably the case if you pay someone else to make the repairs and upgrades. However, if you are a serious DIYer, t... |
Credit card issued against my express refusal; What action can I take? | As far as the banker himself goes, it's a customer service issue. WF is not going to tell you about their internal discipline (or oughtn't, anyway), other than potentially to confirm that the banker does or does not still work there; that's the closest they should get to telling you about it. I'm a (very) former reta... |
Optimal Asset Allocation | When you have multiple assets available and a risk-free asset (cash or borrowing) you will always end up blending them if you have a reasonable objective function. However, you seem to have constrained yourself to 100% investment. Combine that with the fact that you are considering only two assets and you can easily ... |
Do property taxes get deducted 100% from the Annual Tax Return or only a fraction of them? | If your deductions are higher than the standard deduction, you will be able to subtract property taxes from your income. In your example, that means that taxes are computed based on $95,000. In 2011, the standard deduction varies between $5,800 (single filer) and $11,600 (married filing jointly). Tax credits are subtra... |
Should I buy or lease a car given that its not a super luxury car and I only drive 15 miles/d on avg? | I have a few recommendations/comments: The trick here is to make it clear to the dealer that you will not be getting a new car from them and their only hope of making some money is to sell you your own car. You need to be prepared to walk away and follow through. DON'T buy a new car from them even if you end up turning... |
Car expense deductions with multiple work locations | Suppose that I work from home, but do not qualify for a business use of home deduction. As I understand it, this means I cannot deduct trips from home to another work location (e.g., going to a client's home or office to do work there). I do not think this is true. You cannot deduct trips to your main business lo... |
How can I improve my credit score if I am not paying bills or rent? | Buy a car. Vehicle loans, like mortgages, are installment loans. Credit cards are revolving lines of credit. In the US, your credit score factors in the different types of credit you have. Note that there are several methods for calculating credit scores, including multiple types of FICO scores. You could buy a car and... |
Employer reported ESPP ordinary income on wrong year's W-2 | You mentioned that the 1099B that reports this sale is for 2014, which means that you got the proceeds in 2014. What I suspect happened was that the employer reported this on the next available paycheck, thus reporting it in the 2015 period. If this ends up being a significant difference for you, I'd argue the employer... |
Are leverage/ko products the only reasonable way to trade stocks? | I am assuming you mean derivatives such as speeders, sprinters, turbo's or factors when you say "derivatives". These derivatives are rather popular in European markets. In such derivatives, a bank borrows the leverage to you, and depending on the leverage factor you may own between 50% to +-3% of the underlying value. ... |
Do I have to explain the source of *all* income on my taxes? | You can report it as illegal income and you don't have to elaborate any further. For instance, spirit the cash off to a state where pot is legal and set up a dispensary. That is not legal at the Federal level, so it is in fact "illegal income" vis-a-vis your Form 1040 and that's all you say. Make sure you look, walk,... |
Sell home to buy another home for cash | The cleanest way to accomplish this is to make the purchase of your new house contingent on the sale of your old one. Your offer should include that contingency and a date by which your house needs to sell to settle the contract. There will also likely be a clause that lets the seller cancel the contract within a pe... |
When would one actually want to use a market order instead of a limit order? | After learning about things that happened in the "flash crash" I always use limit orders. In an extremely rare instance if you place a market order when there is a some glitch, for example some large trader adds a zero at the end of their volume, you could get an awful price. If I want to buy at the market price, I ju... |
Starting with Stocks or Forex? | I took a course in forex trading for 3 months. I also studied financial markets in the Uni. I have been saving in order to start investing but I face the same question. I have gathered some advantages and disadventages that I would like to know your opinion. Forex market is more liquid, its more easy to identify what m... |
Canadian personal finance software with ability to export historical credit card transactions? | Yodlee and Mint are good solutions if you don't mind your personal financial information being stored "in the cloud". I do, so I use Quicken. Quicken stores whatever you give to it for as long as you want: so the only question is how to get the credit card transactions you want into it? All my financial institutions al... |
Can I estimate other people's credit limit at the grocery store? | What you're referring to is Visa Easy Payment Services (VEPS). Other payment processors have similar programs. Basically, certain merchants (based on merchant category code - or MCC), are not required to obtain a signature under $50. This limit was raised to $50 from $25 last year. Here is the press release from Visa d... |
When should I start an LLC for my side work? | It really depends on the type of business you are running. If there is any chance of liability, you should protect yourself with an LLC. Then it is much more difficult for them to sue and take personal assets. For example, if you are a wedding photographer, you would want to be an LLC in case you lose someones pict... |
Multi-user, non-US personal finance and budget software | I know exactly what you are talking about. You may like |
What options are available for a home loan with poor credit but a good rental history? | Take the long term view. Build up the cash. Once you have enough cash in the bank, you don't need a credit score. With 6 months living expenses in the bank after paying 20% down on a small house, he should have no issues getting a reasonably priced mortgage. However, if he waited just a bit longer he might buy the... |
Is there data and proof that a diversified portfolio can generate higher returns than the S&P 500 Index? | Yes, a diversified portfolio can generate greater returns than the S&P 500 by going OUTSIDE it. For instance, small stocks (on average) generate higher returns than the "large caps" found in the S&P 500. So if you own a diversified portfolio of stocks, some of which are smaller (in market cap) than the typical S&P 500 ... |
What are good Monthly Income Funds? [Canada] | @sharam - big question. I am going to answer part of it, but not as directly as you might like. You mention 4-6 cents per unit per month, but fail to give a unit price, so it is hard to tell how much return you are really looking for. Given the amount you have to invest, depending on your time horizon, you will do muc... |
I carelessly invested in a stock on a spike near the peak price. How can I salvage my investment? | You should be worried. You have made the mistake of entering an investment on the recommendation of family/friend. The last think you should do is make another mistake of just leaving it and hoping it will go up again. Your stock has dropped 37.6% from its high of $74.50. That means it has to go up over 60% just to rea... |
What are the reasons to get more than one credit card? | I got a Capital One credit card because they don't charge a fee for transactions in foreign currencies. So I only use it when I travel abroad. At home, I use 3 different credit cards, each offering different types of rewards (cash back on gas, movies, restaurants, online shopping etc). |
Incorporating real-world parameters into simulated(paper) trading | You said the decision will be made by EOD. If you've made the decision prior to the market close, I'd execute on the closing price. If you are trading stocks with any decent volume, I'd not worry about the liquidity. If your strategy's profits are so small that your gains are significantly impacted by say, the bid/as... |
What exactly is BATS Chi-X Europe? | Yes, it would be incorrect to refer to BATS Chi-X Europe as a market maker. Market makers make markets on BATS Chi-X Europe, which is a stock exchange. |
Is inflation a good or bad thing? Why do governments want some inflation? | If there's no inflation (or alternately there's deflation) people would tend to sit on money and wait for the prices to drop. This in pretty bad for pricier stuff like real estate/housing industry where a few percent can make a big difference. For a growing economy a small inflation is good as people would go out and ... |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | The only valid reason from a financial point of view is if the raise is a promotion or comes with conditions that are unacceptable to you. You may not want added supervisory responsibilties, for example. You need to use discretion when refusing advancement though, at places where I have worked, declining a raise or pro... |
How do I figure out if I will owe taxes | If you want to predict the, the easiest solution is to get hold of a copy of last year's tax forms and fill them in with estimated numbers. Odds are that none of the more complicated deductions will apply to you this first time around, so I'd suggest just using the federal 1040EZ, and your state's equivalent, for this... |
Should market based health insurance premiums be factored into 6 months emergency fund savings? | Yes, you should budget some amount of your emergency fund for healthcare expenses. How much you budget is really dependent on your particular anticipated costs. Be aware that health insurance likely costs significantly more than your employer charges you for access to its plan. Since healthcare reform mandated guaran... |
How to avoid tax when taking a windfall in small chunks? | How can I avoid this, so we are taxed as if we are making the $60k/yr that we want to receive? You can't. In the US the income is taxed when received, not when used. If you receive 1M this year, taking out 60K doesn't mean the other 940K "weren't received". They were, and are taxable. Create a pension fund in the corp... |
What drives the stock of bankrupt companies? | With debts exceeding assets by a billion dollars, this activity likely comes from penny stock speculators and "pump and dump" schemers. There is no rational expectation that the stock is even worth multiple pennies when the company is that far upside-down on its debts. Even if the debts could be restructured in a chapt... |
Can I lose more on Forex than I deposit? | If you don't use leverage you can't lose more than you invested because you "play" with your own money. But even with leverage when you reach a certain limit (maintenance margin) you will receive a margin call from your broker to add more funds to your account. If you don't comply with this (meaning you don't add funds... |
Pay online: credit card or debit card? | I completely agree with @littleadv in favor of using the credit card and dispute resolution process, but I believe there are more important details here related to consumer protection. Since 1968, US citizens are protected from credit card fraud, limiting the out-of-pocket loss to $50 if your card is lost, stolen, or o... |
What are the advantages of a Swiss bank account? | For an American it nearly impossible to open a Swiss bank account. Even a Swiss person want to open a bank account, we have to fill out a document, which asks us if we have a greencard or other relationships with the united states. Some Swiss banks have transferred the money of Americans to Singapore to protect their c... |
Sleazy Bait and Switch Marketing — Is this legal? | But.. what I really want to know.... is it illegal, particularly the clause REQUIRING a trade in to qualify for the advertised price? The price is always net of all the parts of the deal. As an example they gave the price if you have $4000 trade in. If you have no trade in, or a trade in worth less than 4K, your fina... |
How do I screen for stocks that are near to their 52 weeks low | Although is not online, I use a standalone version from http://jstock.sourceforge.net It got drag-n-drop boxes, to let me design my own indicators. However, it only contain technical analysis information, not fundamental analysis information. It does come with tutorial http://jstock.sourceforge.net/help_stock_indicator... |
Is it true that more than 99% of active traders cannot beat the index? | Obviously, these numbers can never be absolute simply because not all the information is public. Any statistic will most likely be biased. I can tell you the following from my own experience that might get you closer in your answer: Hence, even though I cannot give you exact numbers, I fully agree that traders cannot b... |
Taking Losses To Save On Tax | No, if you are taking a loss solely and purely to reduce the tax you have to pay, then it is not a good strategy, in fact it is a very bad strategy, no matter what country you are in. No investment choice should be made solely due to your tax consequeses. If you are paying tax that means you made a profit, if you made ... |
How do I tell the Canada Revenue Agency that they're sending someone else's documents to my address? | Maybe just put all his correspondence back in the Post Box and mark it "Wrong address"? Precisely. Without opening. Just tell the postman that that person doesn't live there and have it returned to sender. The Revenue will figure it out. Most definitely do not accept any certified or registered mail not addressed to ... |
Which type of investments to keep inside RRSP? | Milliondollarjourney.com has a couple of articles on this topic. How Investing Taxes Work part 1 and part 2. The following is a summary of that article. Capital gains and dividends are taxed at a preferred rate, while interest tax is taxed at your regular rate. Interest is taxed at your marginal rate, but capital gains... |
What is the tax treatment of scrip dividends in the UK? | I wrote about this in another answer: You can sell the scrip dividend in the market; the capital gain from this sale may fall below the annual tax-free allowance for capital gains, in which case you don't pay any capital gains tax on that amount. For a cash dividend, however, there isn't a minimum taxable amount, so yo... |
Moving from India to Europe - Bank accounts and Mutual funds | Once you become NRI or know for sure you would be one, you can't hold ordinary accounts. Convert existing savings account into NRO. Open new NRE account so it's easier to move funds. In simple terms an NRE type of account means you can repatriate the funds outside of India anytime without any paperwork, there are some ... |
I earn $75K, have $30K in savings, no debt, rent from my parents who are losing their home. Should I buy a home now or save? | The biggest red flag is the fact that your parents may lose their house. There are multiple parts of the decision. The red flag comes in because you are stretching your finances to the max to afford the house you are interested in. Buying down the interest rate makes some sense depending on how long you plan on stayin... |
Looking to buy a property that's 12-14x my income. How can it be done? | What options do I have? Realistically? Get a regular full time job. Work at it for a year or so and then see about buying a house. That said, I recently purchased a decent home. I am self-employed and my income is highly erratic. Due to how my clients pay me, my business might go a couple months with absolutely no ... |
Why is stock dilution legal? | For new shares to be successfully sold, the price has to be below market price. If you currently own shares of that company, you should always get an option to buy those newly sold shares at that discounted price. The number of options depends on the relative number of shares you hold. Lets say you own 100 out of 1000 ... |
Is it possible to get life insurance as a beneficiary before the person insured dies? | If the insurance policy is a whole-life (or variable life) policy, it might have a surrender value that the owner of the policy might be able to get by surrendering the policy in whole; if it is a term life policy, it has no surrender value. In many cases, the owner of the policy is also the insured and so ask Uncle Jo... |
What exactly can a financial advisor do for me, and is it worth the money? | Technically, anyone who advises how you should spend or proportion your money is a financial adviser. A person that does it for money is a Financial Advisor (difference in spelling). Financial Advisors are people that basically build, manage, or advise on your portfolio. They have a little more institutional knowledg... |
For a car loan, how much should I get preapproved for? | —they will pull your credit report and perform a "hard inquiry" on your file. This means the inquiry will be noted in your credit report and count against you, slightly. This is perfectly normal. Just don't apply too many times too soon or it can begin to add up. They will want proof of your income by asking for recent... |
What risk of a diversified portfolio can be specifically offset by options? | As I stated in my comment, options are futures, but with the twist that you're allowed to say no to the agreed-on transaction; if the market offers you a better deal on whatever you had contracted to buy or sell, you have the option of simply letting it expire. Options therefore are the insurance policy of the free mar... |
Can I deduct child's charitable deduction from my taxes? | No, you may not deduct the charitable contributions of your children. The Nest covers this in detail: The IRS only allows you to deduct charitable contributions that you personally funded, whether the contribution was made in your name or in someone else's. If your child or dependent makes a donation to a charity, you ... |
How exactly does dealing in stock make me money? | If you have money and may need to access it at any time, you should put it in a savings account. It won't return much interest, but it will return some and it is easily accessible. If you have all your emergency savings that you need (at least six months of income), buy index-based mutual funds. These should invest... |
Would I qualify for a USDA loan? | If you even qualify for a no-down payment USDA loan, which I'm not sure you would. It would be extremely risky to take on a $250K house loan and have near-zero equity in the house for a good while. If property values drop at all you are going to be stuck in that house which likely has a pretty high monthly payment, ins... |
How to sell a stock in a crashing market? | Your question contains a faulty assumption: During crashes and corrections the amount of sellers is of course higher than the amount of buyers, making it difficult to sell stocks. This simply isn't true. Every trade has two sides; thus, by definition, for every seller there is buyer and vice versa. Even if we broaden... |
How can I calculate a “running” return using XIRR in a spreadsheet? | Set your xirr formula to a very tall column, leaving lots of empty rows for future additions. In column C, instead of hardcoding the value, use a formula that tests if it's the current bottom entry, like this: =IF(ISBLANK(A7),-C6, C6) If the next row has no date entered (yet), then this is the latest value, and make it... |
I file 83(b) election, but did't include a copy of it in that year’s tax return | I've talked to several very experienced accountants that deal with startup shares, stock 83(b)'s, etc. weekly (based in SF, CA) as this issue would have had a massive impact on me. The most important part of filing an 83(b) is notifying the IRS within 30 days. The law requires the written notification within the 30 da... |
Good at investing - how to turn this into a job? | Step 1: Get a part-time job in sales. Perhaps selling appliances at Sears. Step 2: If you are great at that, then look into becoming a stock broker/investment adviser in Boise ... which is a sales job. Step 3: If you are great at that, then you might be able to become a portfolio manager, perhaps a hedge fund manage... |
I cosigned on a house for my brother | This is why we tell people not to co-sign unless they are able and willing to risk that money becoming a gift... or are able and willing to treat it as business rather than family. Unfortunately that advice is a bit late now to help you. When you cosigned, you promised the bank that you would make any payments he didn'... |
I started some small businesses but need help figuring out taxes. Should I hire a CPA? | Certainly sounds worthwhile to get a CPA to help you with setting up the books properly and learning to maintain them, even if you do it yourself thereafter. What's your own time worth? |
When people say 'Interest rates are at all time low!" … Which interest rate are they actually referring to? | You are correct that it could refer to any of the types of interest rates that you've mentioned. In general, though, phrases such as "rising interest rates" and "falling interest rates" refer to the Federal Funds Rate or LIBOR. These are the interest rates at which banks in the U.S. and U.K., respectively, are lending ... |
Assessed value of my house | You said the tax assessor gave you an appraised value, but I think you mean assessed value. This article YOUR HOME; Market vs. Appraisal: What's the Real Value? explains the differences pretty well. |
Why index funds have different prices? | To add on to the other answers, in asking why funds have different price points one might be asking why stocks aren't normalized so a unit price of $196 in one stock can be directly compared to the same price in another stock. While this might not make sense with AAPL vs. GOOG (it would be like comparing apples to ora... |
Why do banks require small businesses to open a business bank account instead of a cheaper personal one? | You could, but the bank won't let you... If you're a sole proprietor - then you could probably open a personal account and just use it, and never tell them that is actually a business. However, depending on your volume of operations, they may switch you on their own to business account by the pattern of your transactio... |
Is it worth it to buy TurboTax Premier over Deluxe if I sold investments in a taxable account? | Here are the lists for the tax forms that Deluxe and Premier include. I think you'll be fine with Deluxe because it sounds like all you need is the Schedule D/8949 forms. Deluxe actually includes most investment related forms. |
How does on-demand insurance company Trov prevent insurance fraud or high prices? | For example, it is not allowed to buy flood insurance at peak flood season and then cancel it when it is over. They are not offering this right now. So it would be interesting to see if they offer this and how they offer this. For example, you can insure your camera for a week when you are going on vacation. They call ... |
Does a bond etf drop by the amount of the dividend just like an equity etf | No, they do not. Stock funds and bonds funds collect income dividends in different ways. Stock funds collect dividends (as well as any capital gains that are realized) from the underlying stocks and incorporates these into the funds’ net asset value, or daily share price. That’s why a stock fund’s share price... |
22-year-old inherited 30k from 529 payout - what is the best way to invest? | First, I applaud you for caring. Most people don't! In fact, I was in that category. You bring up several issues and I'll try to address them separately. (1) Getting a financial planner to talk with you. I had the same experience! My belief is that they don't want to admit that they don't know how things work. I ... |
Why is property investment good if properties de-valuate over time? | It's all about the land value. The structure is only ever worth as much as it would cost to build a new one (minus demolition costs) |
How to rescue my money from negative interest? | I'd prefer having it (more or less) fluent at any time, if possible... And the Swiss National Bank (SNB) will do their darndest to make this a costly option. That's exactly the point of negative interest rates. They don't want to help you saving money. So you will have to choose what to give up: liquidity, or profitabi... |
ESPP cost basis and taxes | This answer fills in some of the details you are unsure about, since I'm further along than you. I bought the ESPP shares in 2012. I didn't sell immediately, but in 2015, so I qualify for the long-term capital gains rate. Here's how it was reported: The 15% discount was reported on a W2 as it was also mentioned twice... |
How does GST on PayPal payments work for Australian Taxation? | Regardless of wether or not you are registered for GST, you are legally required to include a GST total on every invoice sent to an Australian customer. This GST total must be 10% of the payment amount if you are registered for GST, or it must be $0.00 if you are not registered for GST. Since all GST transactions with ... |
How can put options be used to buy shares at a lower price? | If you are looking for a simple formula or buying order / strategy to guarantee a lower buying price, unfortunately this does not exist. Otherwise, all investors would employ this strategy and the financial markets would no longer have an validity (aka arbitrage). Buying any investment contains a certain level of ris... |
Electric car lease or buy? | There are some who argue that you should lease an electric car. These factors are in addition to all the normal pros and cons of leasing vs. buying. The technology is still new and is advancing rapidly. In 2-3 years, the newer model may have significantly improved features, range, and efficiency, as well as lower price... |
What type of insurance would protect you against the Amazon 1p bug? | I believe the appropriate recourse in this scenario is to bring a court case for breach of contract. The 1p repricing issue has been admitted as an error out of scope of the purpose of the software. |
Walking away from an FHA loan | Nearly every state in the US is full-recourse. If one doesn't seek bankruptcy protection, creditors can seek judgement, and collect assets. Foreclosures frequently sell for approximately half the market price. Considering unemployment risk, homes can be risky. A far better way to accumulate wealth is with equities (st... |
Looking to buy a house in 1-2 years. Does starting a Roth IRA now make sense? | With a Roth IRA, you can withdraw the contributions at any time without penalty as long as you don't withdraw the earnings/interest. There are some circumstances where you can withdraw the earnings such as disability (and maybe first home). Also, the Roth IRA doesn't need to go through your employer and I wouldn't do i... |
Ballpark salary equivalent today of “healthcare benefits” in the US? | Many answers here have given what look to be useful perspectives on your question. I want to point out an interesting technical issue. If an employer contracts with an insurer, it agrees to cover all employees (or all that fill some pre-specified definition and no one else), and to offer only a limited range of option... |
How does a high share price benefit a company when it is raising funds? | In an IPO (initial public offering) or APO (additional public offering) situation, a small group of stakeholders (as few as one) basically decide to offer an additional number of "shares" of equity in the company. Usually, these "shares" are all equal; if you own one share you own a percentage of the company equal to t... |
When a company liquidates, are earlier investors paid back first? | Assuming no debt, as you've specified in the comments to your question, the assets should generally be distributed proportional to ownership share. BUT, without any sort of agreement, there might be contention on what each investor's share is and that might get fought out in court. With a corporation issuing shares, ... |
What kind of life insurance is cheaper? I'm not sure about term vs. whole vs. universal, etc | Wow, very amused by some of the answers. I will comment on those later. To directly answer your question, here is a link to a brochure that explains the three basic typs and is written in straightforward language. link text That is step one. Step 2 is a question, cheapest when, initially or for long term? Without a dou... |
Buying from an aggressive salesperson | There are few main reasons I can think of that the salesperson would do this: A lot of people assume it's the 3rd option always. But if the person is reputable, it's most likely 1 or 2. You can't run a business doing option 3 for long without getting a reputation. |
Is there any drawback in putting all my 401K into a money market fund? | Yes. There are huge disadvantages to saving money in a money market account. Money market account can be a good place to save some of your emergency fund, because it's basically a cash account and you can withdraw from it at will, with few delays. It's liquid. |
Cannot get a mortgage because I work through a recruiter | Some options: See if the seller will sell to you on Contract. With a significant down payment the seller may be willing to sell you the condo on contract. This fill in the year or so you will probably need to go from contractor to full time employee with enough time on the job to get a mortgage. Keep Shopping. Be ... |
Learn investing as a programmer | My master's thesis was on using genetic algorithms and candle stick method. If you are familiar, the AI was used to answer questions like "what is a long day", which is not formally defined in most candle stick texts. So in theory unlimited potential for learning including teaching machines to learn. Wall street pa... |
What to bear in mind when considering a rental home as an investment? | First off, I would label this as speculation, not investing. There are many variables that you don't seem to be considering, and putting down such a small amount opens you to a wide variety of risks. Not having an "emergency fund" for the rental increases that risk greatly. (I assume that you would not have an emerg... |
What is the process of getting your first share? | Here's a different take: Look through the lists of companies that offer shareholder perks. Here's one from Hargreaves Lansdown. See if you can find one that you already spend money with with a low required shareholding where the perks would actually be usable. Note that in your case, being curious about the whole t... |
Making a big purchase over $2500. I have the money to cover it. Should I get a loan or just place it on credit? | It is going to save you more money in the long run to pay at once with cash. If you take out a loan, you will pay interest on the balance, costing you money. If you pay off the balance immediately, there is no difference between the options and your question becomes irrelevant. There is no credit rating benefit to pla... |
How smart is it really to take out a loan right now? | The logic "the interest rate on the mortgage was so low it didn't make sense not to buy" is one reason the housing bubble happened. The logic was that it made the house affordable even at high prices. Once the prices collapsed people still had affordable payments, but were unable to sell because they were upside down o... |
Need something more basic than a financial advisor or planner | Yes, there is a profession that does exactly what you're looking for. It's called a fee-only financial advisor. These are professionals who (in the United States) enter into a fiduciary relationship with a client, meaning they are legally required to put your financial interests above all other considerations (such as... |
Accepting high volatility for high long-term returns | Modern portfolio theory has a strong theoretical background and its conclusions on the risk/return trade-off have a lot of good supporting evidence. However, the conclusions it draws need to be used very carefully when thinking about retirement investing. If you were really just trying to just pick the one investment... |
Are there extra fees for a PayPal Premier account? | If you are using paypal to sell items online, you need a Premier (or better) account rather than personal. Paypal states: Our fees are the same for Personal, Premier, and Business accounts. [...] If you use your PayPal account to request money from someone, you'll be charged a fee when you receive the payment. |
Pay off credit cards in one lump sum, or spread over a few months? | Pay them off immediately. But, as I note in my article Too Little Debt?, a zero utilization is actually a negative hit. So you want to just use the cards to get over 1%. i.e. if the lines add to $38K, just charge say, gas and some groceries, $100/wk. Pay in full every month. It's the amount on the statement that counts... |
Are tax deductions voluntary? | There are many people who have deductions far above the standard deduction, but still don't itemize. That's their option even though it comes at a cost. It may be foolish, but it's not illegal. If @littleadv citation is correct, the 'under penalty of perjury' type issue, what of those filers who file a Schedule A but ... |
Strategies for putting away money for a child's future (college, etc.)? | Others have given some good answers. I'd just like to chime in with one more option: treasury I-series bonds. They're linked to an inflation component, so they won't lose value (in theory). You can file tax returns for your children "paying" taxes (usually 0) on the interest while they're minors, so they appreciate tax... |
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