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Gigantic point amount on rewards card - what are potential consequences?
First IANAL! This is going to depend on the kind of points. If it's an internal point system that the business is doing on their own, then they may very well, give you that many "extra" points. They may really not care. Specially if the cost of the points is low enough. Remember that steak dinner that you paid $60 for ...
On a debt collection agency's letter, what does “balance” refer to?
Without more info to go on (such as a screenshot of the relevant portion of the statement or what country you're in), I will run with the answer that "balance" is the amount the collection agency is attempting to collect from you, including any and all fees the agency may have added. One important idea to keep in mind ...
What gives non-dividend stocks value to purchasers? [duplicate]
A Company start with say $100. Lets say the max it can borrow from bank is $100 @ $10 a year as Interest. After a years say, On the $200 the company made a profit of $110. So it now has total $310 Option 1: Company pays back the Bank $100 + $10. It further gave away the $100 back to shareholders as dividends. The Balan...
what is this type of stock trade?
try to sell if today's google stock goes above 669$ This is Relative/Pegged-to-Primary Order with a Limit Price of $669 and an offset from National Best Offer of $0.00, but it is no different than an Market Order if the market price is $669 to begin with. do not sell if the stock keeps climbing beyond 669 unless there...
Can I pay off my credit card balance to free up available credit?
The card you have is one where you had to deposit an amount equivelent to your card limit -a secured limit credit card. Capital One is one if the primary cards of this type. The typical rules of credit card usage and building your credit, do not apply. So, yes, you want to use the card as much as possible and pay off...
What options exist to make money in the US on a work-restricted visa?
Are you planning to not pay taxes? Any time someone has income in the U.S., it is subject to U.S. taxes. You must file tax returns (and pay taxes if necessary) if you have income above a certain threshold, regardless of whether you're not authorized to work or not. If you plan to intentionally not pay taxes, then that'...
Paying myself a distribution caused a negative Owner's Equity account balance? Is this normal?
It's not abnormal for a company that is as young as yours seems to be. It seems (based on what little I know), that you have debts, or accounts payable that were formerly covered by the $200 cash, but now aren't, because you paid it to yourself. For now, you're "entitled" to pay yourself a draw or a salary. But if you ...
Can stock brokerage firms fail?
Brokerages are supposed to keep your money separate from theirs. So, even if they fail as a company, your money and investments are still there, and can be transferred to another brokerage. It doesn't matter if it's an IRA or taxable account. Of course, as is the case with MF Global, if illegally take their client's m...
Is it smart to only invest in mid- and small-cap stock equity funds in my 401(k)?
The benefit of the 401K and IRAs are that reallocating and re balancing are easy. They don't want you to move the funds every day, but you are not locked in to your current allocations. The fact that you mentioned in a comment that you also have a Roth IRA means that you should look at all retirements as a whole. Look...
Why do I get a much better price for options with a limit order than the ask price?
I can often get the option at [a] price [between bid and ask] The keyword you use here is quite relevant: often. More realistically, it's going to be sometimes. And that's just how supply and demand should work. The ask is where you know you can buy right away. If you don't wanna buy at ask, you can try and put a hige...
What ways are there for us to earn a little extra side money?
Have you considered doing some small freelance programming jobs? One site I like for this type of thing is eLance.com, but I am sure there are others. Heck, you are soon going to be up all night anyway, why not earn some cash during those hours the rest of us foolishly waste on sleep?
Is it practical to take actual delivery on a futures contract, and what is the process?
As mentioned in other answers, you find out by reading the Rulebook for that commodity and exchange. I'll quote a couple of random passages to show how they vary: For CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) Random Length Lumber Futures, the delivery is ornate: Seller shall give his Notice of Intent to Deliver to the Clearin...
How much money do I need to have saved up for retirement?
I wrote a spreadsheet (<< it may not be obvious - this is a link to pull down the spreadsheet) a while back that might help you. You can start by putting your current salary next to your age, adjust the percent of income saved (14% for you) and put in the current total. The sheet basically shows that if one saves 15% ...
Electric car lease or buy?
I would like to add that from my own research, a pro to leasing over buying a new vehicle would be that with the lease the entire 7,500 federal incentive is applied directly to the lease, or so they say. If you buy a new car you get a 7,500 federal tax incentive also but if you dont have 7,500 bucks in taxes this wont ...
Buy index mutual fund or build my own?
You better buy an ETF that does the same, because it would be much cheaper than mutual fund (and probably much cheaper than doing it yourself and rebalancing to keep up with the index). Look at DIA for example. Neither buying the same amount of stocks nor buying for the same amount of money would be tracking the DJIE....
Does home equity grow with the investment put into the house?
In short, your scenario could work in theory, but is not realistic... Generally speaking, you can borrow up to some percentage of the value of the property, usually 80-90% though it can vary based on many factors. So if your property currently has a value of $100k, you could theoretically borrow a total of $80-90k aga...
When are stop market/limit orders visible on the open market?
From the non-authoritative Investopedia page: A stop-limit order will be executed at a specified price, or better, after a given stop price has been reached. Once the stop price is reached, the stop-limit order becomes a limit order to buy or sell at the limit price or better. So once the stop price has been breached, ...
How Long Can It Take For a Check I Write to Clear on My Account?
According to this Q&A by a Houston law professor: The law, however, is not designed to interfere with an individual's right to stop payment on a valid check because of a dispute with someone. If he didn't deliver as promised, you do not owe the money and have the right to stop payment. Assuming that you had enough mone...
I am not VAT registered. Do I need to buy from my supplier with excl VAT prices or incl VAT?
If an item costs £10 excluding VAT, and you buy it from a VAT registered company, you will have to pay £12. You sell it for any price you like, and you don't add VAT. Let's say you set the price at £15 and sell 1000 items for £15. You take £15,000, you spent £12,000, you make £3,000 profit in your pocket and you'll pa...
Set different trigger and sell price for Trailing Stop Limit
It will depend largely on your broker what type of stop and trailing stop orders they provide. Saying that, I have not come across any brokers yet that offer limit orders with trailing stop orders. Unlike a standard stop order where you can either make it a market stop order or a limit stop order, usually most brokers...
Is it practical to take actual delivery on a futures contract, and what is the process?
Not all futures contracts are deliverable. Some futures are specified as cash settlement only. In the case of deliverable contracts, part of the specification of a futures contract will be the delivery locations. As per my answer to your previous question, please see the CME Rulebook for details of delivery points fo...
Why not just invest in the market?
Perhaps someone has an investment objective different than following the market. If one is investing in stocks with an intent on getting dividend income then there may be other options that make more sense than owning the whole market. Secondly, there is Slice and Dice where one may try to find a more optimal investmen...
Do bond interest rate risk premiums only compensate for the amount investors might lose?
[...] are all bonds priced in such a way so that they all return the same amount (on average), after accounting for risk? In other words, do risk premiums ONLY compensate for the amount investors might lose? No. GE might be able to issue a bond with lower yield than, say, a company from China with no previous records o...
How do I get bill collectors who call about people I know to stop calling me?
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre27.pdf if you are in the US Look at section 805 and 805 about how they may contact you and what they are and aren't allowed to do. You can simply send a Certified Mail, Return Receipt (CMRR) letter explaining you have no part of it, and that they are not allowed to con...
Can I withdraw unsettled funds?
Yes, via a margin account, one can trade or transfer on unsettled funds. These are tight regulations that begin with the Federal Reserve, extend to FINRA, and downward. In a cash account, this is not possible. Since speed is a necessity, a margin account can actually be approved nearly instantly.
How can home buying be considered a sound investment with all of that interest that needs to be paid?
Since then I wanted to move out of this house because the property taxes are so high and the mortgage payment is a killer. As I understand this is a property jointly owned by your parents and you. As they are not living staying in the house, you have taken over the mortgage payments for this house along with any other ...
Historical stock prices: Where to find free / low cost data for offline analysis?
You may refer to project http://jstock.sourceforge.net. It is open source and released under GPL. It is fetching data from Yahoo! Finance, include delayed current price and historical price.
Planning to invest in stock, age 16
Don't try individual stocks. If you have a job, any job, even one from mowing lawns, you can open a Roth IRA. If you are under 18 you will need your parents/guardian to setting up the account. You can put the an amount equal to your earned income into the Roth IRA, up to the annual maximum of $5500. There are advantage...
If the U.S. defaults on its debt, what will happen to my bank money?
In principle, a default will have no effect on your bank account. But if the US's credit rating is downgraded, the knock-on effects might cause some more bank failures, and if the debt ceiling is still in place then the FDIC insurance might not be able to pay out immediately.
Where do stock traders get realtime updates on Fed announcements? Is there a feed I could scrape?
Tthe easiest place to see Fed announcements as soon as they're published is the Federal Reserve itself. If you want the information as soon as it's made publicly available, scrape the Federal Reserve press releases. I assume you're most interested in the announcements after the FOMC meetings, so you might want to scrap...
Average Price of a Stock
Edit3: Regarding the usefulness of the bare number itself, it is not useful unless, for example, an employer uses that average in the computation of how many options the employer grants to the employee as part of the compensation paid. One of my employers used just such an average. What is far more common is to use two...
Can I trust the Motley Fool?
Hmm.. hey bro, not personal, but is what comes to mind: I guess my answer will be highly down voted... =P
How smart is it really to take out a loan right now?
but I can't help but feel that these low rates are somehow a gimmick to trick people into taking out loans Let me help you: it's not a feeling. That's exactly what it is. Since the economy is down, people don't want to jeopardize what they have, and keep the cash in their wallets. But, while keeping the money safe in...
What's the fuss about Credit Score / History?
Simply staying out of debt is not a good way of getting a good credit score. My aged aunt has never had a credit card, loan or mortgage, has always paid cash or cheque for everything, never failed to pay her utility bills on time. Her credit score is lousy because she has never had any debts to pay off so there is no...
It is worth using a discount stock broker? I heard they might not get the best price on a trade?
Always use limit orders never market orders. Period. Do that and you will always pay what you said you would when the transaction goes through. Whichever broker you use is not going to "negotiate" for the best price on your trade if you choose a market order. Their job is to fill that order so they will always buy it ...
Understanding SEC Filings
The most important filings are: Form 10-K, which is the annual report required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Form 10-Q, for the interim quarters.
Are investor's preference for dividends justified?
Some investors (pension funds or insurance companies) need to pay out a certain amount of money to their clients. They need cash on a periodical basis, and thus prefer dividend paying stock more.
Source of income: from dividends vs sale of principal or security
The trend in ETFs is total return: where the ETF automatically reinvests dividends. This philosophy is undoubtedly influenced by that trend. The rich and retired receive nearly all income from interest, dividends, and capital gains; therefore, one who receives income exclusively from dividends and capital gains must f...
Is it a good idea to teach children that work is linearly related to income?
As a parent I think you absolutely have to teach them that income is related to work because (for most people at least) it's a more fundamental principle than budgeting, investments, interest, etc. Once they've learned that the primary source of income is work, then you can start teaching them what to do with it, i.e. ...
Is it a good practice to keep salary account and savings account separate?
In my opinion, separating your money into separate accounts is a matter of personal preference. I can only think of two main reasons why people might suggest separating your bank accounts in this way: security and accounting. The security reasoning might go something like this: My employer has access to my bank account...
What are some good ways to control costs for groceries?
You may use an app called Flipp (or one that serves your area) to check fliers while in the store. If your preferred store has a price match policy, this can save you a few bucks every trip. Just look up at the app what you are buying and price match it over the cashier. It may or may not work on your store, always ask...
Can future rental income be applied to present debt-to-income ratio when applying for second mortgage?
Generally speaking, no they won't. In this case, though I haven't done it myself, I was recommended to put the mortgage on the real estate after it's been leased out and has a contract on it. Then, yes, they will use it for that. But, ex-ante don't expect any bank to count on income from it because, at that point, th...
Announcement of rights offering (above market price) causing stock price increase [duplicate]
This seemed very unrealistic, I mean who would do that? But to my immense surprise the market price increased to 5.50$ in the following week! Why is that? This is strange. It seems that people mistakenly [?] believe that the company should be at 5.5 and currently available cheap. This looks like irrational behaviour. M...
devastated with our retirement money that we have left
When you say: I am 48 and my husband is 54. We have approx. 60,000.00 left in our retirement accounts. We want to move our money into something so our money will grow. We've been looking at annunities. We've talked to 4 different advisors about what is best for us. Bad mistake, I am so overwhelmed with the differ...
How does a TFSA work? Where does the interest come from?
As to where the interest comes from: The same place it comes from in other kinds of savings accounts. The bank takes the money you deposit and invests it elsewhere, traditionally by lending it out to others (hence the concept of a "savings and loan" bank). They make a profit as long as the interest they give for "borro...
What are my best options if I don't have a lot of credit lines for housing loans?
The short answer is, with limited credit, your best bet might be an FHA loan for first time buyers. They only require 3.5% down (if I recall the number right), and you can qualify for their loan programs with a credit score as low as 580. The problem is that even if you were to add new credit lines (such as signing up...
Wash sale rule impact on different scenarios between different types of accounts
The wash sale rule only applies when the sale in question is at a loss. So the rule does not apply at all to your cases 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, and 16, which all start with a gain. You get a capital gain at the first sale and then a separately computed gain / loss at the second sale, depending on the case, BUT any ga...
Two 1099B for same stock
It looks like what you're calling a name change was registered as a merger that resulted in an exchange of stock. If that's the case, then what you've been told is correct. You've got one long-term sale and one short-term sale. Based a quick read of the Form 8937 that was filed, it looks like there were multiple enti...
Are assets lost in a bankruptcy valued at the time of loss, or according to current value?
You are not the person or entity against whom the crime was committed, so the Casualty Loss (theft) deduction doesn't apply here. You should report this as a Capital Loss, the same way all of the Enron shareholders did in their 2001 tax returns. Your cost basis is whatever you originally paid for the shares. The final ...
Does this sound like a great idea regarding being a landlord and starting a real estate empire?
This is a reasonable idea and many people have done it. But there are some risks that you need to mitigate. This is a viable business model, but it is a business and you need to treat it as such and expect to work quite hard at it.
What makes a Company's Stock prices go up or down?
There are many things that can make a company's share price go up or down. Generally, over the long term, the more consistently profitable a company is the more its share price will go up. However, there are times when a company may not be making any profits yet but its share price still goes up. This can be due to for...
What to bear in mind when considering a rental home as an investment?
Started to post this as a comment, but I think it's actually a legitimate answer: Running a rental property is neither speculation nor investment, but a business, just as if you were renting cars or tools or anything else. That puts it in an entirely different category. The property may gain or lose value, but you don'...
Saving for a down payment on a new house, a few years out. Where do we put our money next?
In October 2011 in the United States, you just don't have any options. Save your money in a savings account and that is the best you can do. Your desire to buy a house means you are a saver not an investor, and you risk tolerance on this pile of money is 0. Save it in a bank account; I highly doubt chasing an interes...
Does Implied Volatilty factor in all known future events?
In short, yes. Implied volatility will capture any expected upcoming material announcements. There is also supply/demand impact bundled in which may inflate an option price, and by extension increase implied volatility. OTM and ITM options are particularly predisposed to this phenomenon -- which is of course at odds wi...
For very high-net worth individuals, does it make sense to not have insurance?
Simply put, it makes sense from the moment you can afford the loss without negative consequences. For example, if your car costs $20000 and you happen to have another $20000 laying around, you can choose not to insure your car against damage. In the worst case, you can simply buy a new one. However, not insuring your c...
Which close price (adjusted close or close price) shall be used when calculating a stock's daily percent change?
The adjusted close price takes into account stock splits (and possibly dividends). You want to look at the adjusted close price. Calculating percentage changes gets computationally tricky because you need to account for splits and dividends.
Buy index mutual fund or build my own?
There are only three circumstances where building your own "index" portfolio make sense, in my opinion.
Best return on investment for new home purchase
Trying to determine what the best investment option is when buying a home is like predicting the stock market. Not likely to work out. Forget about the "investment" part of buying a home and look at the quality of life, monthly/annual financial burden, and what your goals are. Buy a home that you'll be happy living in ...
Gigantic point amount on rewards card - what are potential consequences?
Most likely scenario (A): You spend tons of time and effort talking to them, with the end result that they take away the extra points. You feel screwed having to do their job for them - they've given you no benefit for looking out for them, and you're left with the points you've earned but maybe less desire to go back...
How can online trading platforms be trustworthly?
In most countries trading platforms are legally required to be overseen by a regulator, in the US this is the SEC (Securities and Exchanges Commission). This regulatory oversight is required in order to operate (i.e. have clients) in that country and the company will lose the right to operate in that country if they do...
How to get 0% financing for a car, with no credit score?
Yes, of course it is. Car dealers are motivated to write loans even more than selling cars at times. When I bought a new car for the first time in my life, in my 40's, it took longer to get the finance guy out of my face than to negotiate and buy the car. The car dealer selling you the used car would be happy to packa...
What are the disadvantages to borrowing money for energy conservation measures / solar panels?
If you sell the property before the ten years are up, the panels might have declined in value more than the amount you owe declined. In the original post's situation, this is a negligible risk. Suppose (for the sake of argument) that each year's panels are 10% better than the previous year's panels. Even if the panel...
Can I buy a new house before selling my current house?
A bridge loan (or bridging loan) is designed for exactly this circumstance. They're short-term loans (6 months is common) designed to help home-buyers to bridge the gap between buying and selling. MoneySupermarket defines them like this: Bridging loans are designed to help people complete the purchase of a property bef...
Prepaying a loan: Shouldn't the interest be recalculated like a shorter loan?
You seem to think that you are mostly paying interest in the first year because of the length of the loan period. This is skipping a step. You are mostly paying interest in the first year because your principle (the amount you owe) is highest in the first year. You do pay down some principle in that first year; this ...
Why buy insurance?
People's value of money is not always linear. Consider an individual with $1000 in the bank. I'm going to look at amounts of debt by orders of magnitude: Now its pretty easy to see a order of magnitude increase in impact from $100 to $1000, and it becomes slightly worse for the $10,000 case due to debt. However, one...
Buying a house, how much should my down payment be?
As observed, there is no answer that will fit all, but below are some considerations: Your monthly requirement is 5000, so you have 3000 left to pay the monthly instalments (EMI). However, if you do pay 3000, you will have no money left for any other activities (holidays etc.) till your EMI is finished Set off a sum, l...
What is a normal amount of money to spend per week on food/entertainment/clothing?
I'll start with a question... Is the 63K before or after taxes? The short answer to your question on how much is reasonable is: "It depends." It depends on a lot more than where you live, it depends on what you want... do you want to pay down debt? Do you want to save? Are you trying to buy a house? Those will influen...
Where can I trade FX spot options, other than saxobank.com?
If you have a big pocket there are quite a few.. not sure if they take us clients though. Vcap, Barclays, Icap, Fixi, Fc Stone, Ikon.. Then there are probably a few banks that have x options also but i don't know if a private investor can trade them. A few im not sure if they have fx options or if they are "good": GFTF...
Paying extra on a mortgage. How much can I save? [duplicate]
Can I pay $12,000 extra once a year or $1000 every month - which option is better? Depends when. If you mean 12K now vs 1K a month over the next 12 months, repeating this each year, now wins. If you mean saving 1K a month for 12 months then doing a lumpsum, the 1K a month wins. Basically, a sooner payment saves you mor...
Why is tax loss harvesting helpful for passive investing?
The harvested losses are capital losses. See this IRS page: Generally, realized capital losses are first offset against realized capital gains. Any excess losses can be deducted against ordinary income up to $3,000 ($1,500 if married filing separately) on line 13 of Form 1040. Losses in excess of this limit can be c...
Who can truly afford luxury cars?
A while back I sold cars for a living. Over the course of 4 years I worked for 3 different dealerships. I sold new cars at 2 and used at the last one. When selling new cars I found that the majority of people buying the higher end cars honestly shouldn't have been - 80%+. They almost always came in owing more on the...
What is best investment which is full recession proof?
Can anyone suggest all type of investments in India which are recession proof? There are no such investments. Quite a few think bullions like Gold tend to go up during recession, which is true to an extent; however there are enough articles that show it is not necessarily true. There are no fool proof investments. The ...
Organizing Expenses/Income/Personal Finance Documents (Paperless Office)
If you're curious, here are my goals behind this silly madness You said it... The last two words, I mean...:-) If you're auditing your statements - why do you need to keep the info after the audit? You got the statement for last month, you verified that the Starbucks charge that appears there is the same as in your rec...
Payroll reimbursments
As @Dilip suggested in the comments, the problem is the accountability of the reimbursement plans. In order for the reimbursement to be non-taxable, there has to be a reimbursement plan and policy set up by the employer, it has to be done per receipt, and accounted for correctly. If the employer just cuts you a check -...
Why doesn't Japan just divide the Yen by 100?
I think the tradition within the country would outweigh any convenience it would have for the rest of the world. The US hasn't even been able to switch to the Metric system, even though it's taught in school and used in math / science. The costs involved with changing price tags, and re-organizing everything in their...
I might use a credit card convenience check. What should I consider?
Read the terms carefully. With promotional offers, if you do anything "bad", the promotion is terminated and you immediately revert to either your normal rate or a penalty rate. "Bad" includes things like: making a late payment, going over your limit, paying less than the minimum payment, etc. I wouldn't sweat the pot...
Mutual fund value went down, shares went up, no action taken by me
You did something that you shouldn't have done; you bought a dividend. Most mutual fund companies have educational materials on their sites that recommend against making new investments in mutual funds in the last two months of the year because most mutual funds distribute their earnings (dividends, capital gains etc)...
How to invest in gold at market value, i.e. without paying a markup?
This is an excellent question; kudos for asking it. How much a person pays over spot with gold can be negotiated in person at a coin shop or in an individual transaction, though many shops will refuse to negotiate. You have to be a clever and tough negotiator to make this work and you won't have any success online. Ho...
Does the CRA reprieve those who have to commute for work?
The answer on the Canadian Government's website is pretty clear: Most employees cannot claim employment expenses. You cannot deduct the cost of travel to and from work, or other expenses, such as most tools and clothing. However, that is most likely related to a personal vehicle. There is a deduction related to Pu...
Buy tires and keep car for 12-36 months, or replace car now?
New tires will increase the resale value of the car; while not by the full cost of the tires, it will not be entirely a sunk cost. You'd need to factor that in and find out how much the new tires increase the resale value of the car to determine how much they would truly cost you. However, I suspect they would cost yo...
Why do stock exchanges close at night?
I believe there are electronic exchanges that run continuously, but the older ones don't want to change their practices since some people may have strategies which (claim they) are based on this behavior so there would be a lot of unhappy people if it was altered. The pause doesn't seem to do any harm. There are alte...
Replacement for mint.com with a public API?
Plaid is exactly what you are looking for! It's docs are easy to understand, and you can sign up to their API and use their free tier to get started. An example request to connect a user to Plaid and retrieve their transactions data (in JSON):
Merchant dispute with airline over missed flight, and which credit cards offer protection?
What you are looking for is travel insurance. I have never heard of this being offered as a credit card perk, but there might be something out there. You can buy this separately, but only you can decide if it is worth the costs. To me, it would seem to only be worth it for something quite expensive, like a cruise that...
What happens if a Financial Services Company/Stockbroker goes into administration in the UK?
Nothing. Stockbrokers set up nominee accounts, in which they hold shares on behalf of individual investors. Investors are still the legal owners of the shares but their names do not appear on the company’s share register. Nominee accounts are ring-fenced from brokers’ other activities so they are financially secure.
Evaluating worth of ESPP (Startup)
You have a lot of different questions in your post - I am only responding to the request for how to value the ESPP. When valuing an ESPP, don't think about what you might sell the shares for in the future, think about what the market would charge you for that option today. In general, an option is worth much less than ...
Is 6% too high to trade stocks on margin?
6% isn't "too high" in terms of market rates at the moment, however it's a very subjective question whether it's too high for you. The real question to determine is if paying 6%, can you make more than 6% return (to cover the costs plus your profit)? As for a rule of thumb, there's none I know of, however your best bet...
Who is the issuer in a derivative contract?
While the issuer of the security such as a stock or bond not the short is responsible for the credit risk, the issuer and the short of a derivative is one. In all cases, it is more than likely that a trader is owed securities by an agent such as a broker or exchange or clearinghouse. Legally, only the Options Clearing ...
Why don't share prices of a company rise every other Friday when the company buys shares for its own employees?
This is an old question that has an accepted answer, but it has gotten bumped due to an edit and the answers given are incorrect. I am assuming this means that every other Friday, the company is going into the open public market, buying those shares and then giving it out to the employees. No. Companies will internally...
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...
Is UK house price spiral connected to debt based monetary system?
No. Rural Scotland has exactly the same monetary system, and not the same bubble. Monaco (the other example given) doesn't even have its own monetary system but uses the Euro. Look instead to the common factor: a lot of demand for limited real estate. Turning towards the personal finance part of it, we know from experi...
When should I walk away from my mortgage?
The value of debt is that it allows you to profit from the return of equity beyond the amount of actual net equity you own. Of course, this only works if the cost of borrowing is less than your return on equity. Market timing matters a great deal but isn't accounted for in this view. For my answer I would like to ha...
Where are all those unsold vehicles?
When the 2016 models come out, the dealership marks down the 2015 model and then it sells pretty fast. The process doesn't take that long in the car market because the 2015 models are just as good as the 2016 so if they are just a little cheaper, they will sell quickly. If you want a 2008 Audi that has never sold, yo...
What forms of payment am I compelled to accept?
The confusion comes from ambiguity in popular belief -- that businesses are required to accept x_y_x as payment. In reality, a business can state the terms of a transaction to their pleasure. On the other hand, debt is different -- no lender can refuse cash or other legal tender for repayment of debt. Sometimes, people...
Medical Bill Consolidation
In short, no, or not retroactively. There really are multiple companies involved, each of which bills you separately for the services they provided. This can be partly avoided by selecting either a high-end health plan with lower out-of-pocket maximum, (costs more up front, of course) or by selecting a genuine Health M...
Why small retail stores ask for ID with a credit card while big don't
Probably because large chains can absorb the loss from fraud better than small stores do. Thus, small stores want to ensure that the person holding the card is the same as the name on the card.
Do I owe taxes if my deductions are higher than my income?
In your case, I believe the answer is that you don't owe any taxes, if your deductions exceed your income. There is something called the Alternate Minimum Tax to catch "rich" people, who claim "too many" deductions. Basically, it taxes their "gross" income at a lower rate, but allows them no deductions if they make $17...
Should I pay my Education Loan or Put it in the Stock Market?
2.47% is a really, really good rate, doubly so if it's a fixed rate, and quadruply so if the interest is tax-deductible. That's about as close to "free money" as you're ever going to get. Heck, depending on what inflation does over the next few years, it might even be cheaper than free. So if you have the risk toleranc...
What is a reasonable salary for the owner and sole member of a small S-Corp?
You can get audited for anything Business owners are more likely to get audited than people filing 1040-EZ's for their simplistic income tax obligation. According to HR Block I hope you enjoy the process where you explain the source of your earnings
Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
With your wife's income, you're not doing to see a net difference if she stops working that job. You may actually yield a little more. At the end of the day, it's doable, but you're going to have to rationalize your spending and one or both of you should pick up a part-time job. Do you remember the last time you bought...
Investment strategy for 401k when rolling over soon
You will be rolling over the proceeds, since you can only deposit cash into an IRA. However, this should probably not affect your considerations much since the pre-rollover sale is non-taxable within the 401k and the period of roll-over itself (when the cash is uninvested) is relatively short. So, whatever investments ...