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How will a 1099 work with an existing W-2? | You can have multiple W2 forms on the same tax return. If you are using software, it will have the ability for you to enter additional W2 forms. If you are doing it by paper, just follow the instructions and combine the numbers at the correct place and attach both. Similarly you can also have a 1099 with and without a W2. Just remember that with a 1099 you will have to pay the self employment tax ( FICA taxes, both employee and employer) and that no taxes will be withheld. You will want to either adjust the withholding on your main job or file quartely estimated taxes. Travel reimbursement should be the same tax exempt wise. The difference is that with a 1098, you will need to list your business expenses for deduction on the corresponding tax schedule. The value on the 1099 will include travel reimbursement. But then you can deduct your self employment expenses. I believe schedule C is where this occurs. |
What are the differences between an investment mortgage and a personal mortgage? | According to my wife who used to work in the industry, since an investment mortgage is more likely to fail (they are just riskier) there are higher loan to value requirements and higher interest rates. They are just different products for different situations. |
Is it a wise decision to sell my ESPP stock based on this situation? | Eric is right regarding the tax, i.e. ordinary income on discount, cap gain treatment on profit whether long term or short. I would not let the tax tail wag the investing dog. If you would be a holder of the stock, hold on, if not, sell. You are considering a 10-15% delta on the profit to make the decision. Now. I hear you say your wife hasn't worked which potentially puts you in a lower bracket this year. I wrote Topping off your bracket with a Roth Conversion which would help your tax situation long term. Simply put, you convert enough Traditional IRA (or 401(k) money) to use up some of the current bracket you are in, but not hit the next. This may not apply to you, depending on whether you have retirement funds to do this. Note - The cited article offers numbers for a single person, but illustrates the concept. See the tax table for the marginal rates that would apply to you. |
Can you explain why it's better to invest now rather than waiting for the market to dip? | This simulation game uses actual historical S&P 500 data to test whether you can "time the market." You start with $10,000 invested, and it plays back 10 years of index values, in which time you can choose to sell (once), and if you do sell you can subsequently buy (once). Then you find out how you did relative to just holding what you started with. If you play it enough times, you might eventually beat it once. I never did. |
Put on a put option | I doubt that this exists, but it could theoretically. After all, a share is kind of an option to a company's future success, and so a call is already a second level on indirection. The better approach would be to 'create your own Put-Puts', by investing less money (A) in the Put you wanted to invest into, and put the smaller rest (B) in the share itself or a Call. That way, if the original Put is successful, at max (B) is lost, and if it is unsuccessful, the loss on (A) is covered by a gain on (B). Potentially, if you do the math, you can reach a mathematical equivalent situation to a Put-Put by buying the right amount and kind of Calls. However, we know already that buying a Put and a Call is a poor strategy, so that would mean a Put-Put would also be a poor strategy. |
Does a market maker sell (buy) at a bid or ask price? | The answer posted by Kirill Fuchs is incorrect according to my series 65 text book and practice question answers. The everyday investor buys at the ask and sells at the bid but the market maker does the opposite. THE MARKET MAKER "BUYS AT THE BID AND SELLS AT THE ASK", he makes a profit form the spread. I have posted a quiz question and the answer created by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). To fill a customer buy order for 800 WXYZ shares, your firm requests a quote from a market maker. The response is "bid 15, ask 15.25." If the order is placed, the market maker must sell: A) 800 shares at $15.25 per share. B) 800 shares at $15 per share. C) 100 shares at $15.25 per share. D) 800 shares at no more than $15 per share. Your answer, sell 800 shares at $15.25 per share., was correct!. A market maker is responsible for honoring a firm quote. If no size is requested by the inquiring trader, a quote is firm for 100 shares. In this example, the trader requested an 800-share quote, so the market maker is responsible for selling 8 round lots of 100 shares at the ask price of $15.25 per share. |
What does an x% inflation rate actually mean? | As pointe out by @quid, inflation figures are almost always quoted as a comparison of prices last month, and prices a year ago last month. So 10% inflation in August means that things cost 10% more than they did in August a year ago. This can lead to some perverse conclusions. Consider an imaginary economy where prices stay constant over years. Annualized inflation is zero. Then something happens on January 2nd, 2018. Some crop fails, a foreign cheap source of something becomes unavailable, whatever. Prices rise, permanently, as more expensive sources are used. This is the only disruption to prices. Nothing else goes wrong. So, in February, 2018, the authorities find that prices in January, 2018 rose by 1% over January 2017. Inflation! Politicians pontificate, economists wring their hands, etc. In March, again, prices for February, 2018 are found to be 1% higher than for February, 2017. More wailing... This goes on for months. Every month, inflation (year over year) is unchanged at 1%. Everyone has a theory as to how to stop it... Finally, in February, 2019, there's a change! Prices in January, 2019, were the same as in January 2018. Zero inflation! Everyone takes credit for bringing down inflation... |
Should I charge my children interest when they borrow money? | This is largely a cultural issue. I would be appalled at the very idea that my parents would charge me interest for lending me money. Just as they would be appalled if I were to do so if lending them money. I find the idea of attempting to make money off of your children fundamentally wrong. I realize that you only want to do this to teach them, that you have their best interests in mind and not your own profit. Nevertheless, what will actually happen were you to charge them interest is that you would accrue a monetary gain at the expense of your children. Is that really something you would be comfortable with? Now, as I stated at the beginning, this is clearly a cultural issue. Based on the other answers here, many cultures, probably including your own, find nothing wrong with this. I've even heard of people charging their adult children rent when they come home for the holidays, something that is completely baffling to me. The point I am trying to make is that asking other people's opinions on whether you should do this is not very useful unless those people share your own cultural background. My family and culture are such that the idea of charging interest to one's family members seems downright immoral to me. Given that you are asking here, it seems like you might be on the fence about it yourself. However, I freely admit that my answer is colored by my own cultural prejudices and may very well not be applicable to you. Still, ask yourself, is a relatively small amount of money in the grand scheme of things—or, for that matter, an entire fortune—worth jeopardizing your relationship with your children? Do you really believe that having their parents retroactively charge them interest for a loan will somehow teach them something about the "real world" that your already adult children don't know? One of the main reasons they came to you and didn't go to a bank is precisely that they expected the loan to be interest free. So, sure, tell them that you won't lend any more until they repay what they owe. Even better, sit them down and have an honest, adult conversation, explaining that the absence of the money they owe is making itself felt in your household and work out a way they can repay you. What, in my opinion, you most certainly shouldn't do is treat your relationship with your children as a regular business transaction. It isn't and I am sure you don't want it to be. |
How can I lookup the business associated with a FEIN? | In most cases you cannot do "reverse lookup" on tax id in the US. You can verify, but for that you need to have more than just the FEIN/SSN. You should also have a name, and some times address. Non-profits, specifically, have to publish their EIN to donors, so it may be easier than others to identify those. Other businesses may not be as easy to find just by EIN. |
What is the Blue Line in these stock Charts? | The curved lines (on my screen orange, yellow and pink) are simple moving averages. The fuchsia and blue straight lines are automatically generated trend lines. Those lines are attempting to show how a stock is trending by showing potential bounce points and are commonly used in technical analysis (TA). |
How can this be enough to fund a scholarship in perpetuity? | The Trinity study looked at 'safe' withdrawal rates from retirement portfolios. They found it was safe to withdraw 4% of a portfolio consisting of stocks and bonds. I cannot immediately find exactly what specific investment allocations they used, but note that they found a portfolio consisting largely of stocks would allow for the withdrawal of 3% - 4% and still keep up with inflation. In this case, if you are able to fund $30,000, the study claims it would be safe to withdraw $900 - $1200 a year (that is, pay out as scholarships) while allowing the scholarship to grow sufficiently to cover inflation, and that this should work in perpetuity. My guess is that they invest such scholarship funds in a fairly aggressive portfolio. Most likely, they choose something along these lines: 70 - 80% stocks and 20 - 30% bonds. This is probably more risky than you'd want to take, but should give higher returns than a more conservative portfolio of perhaps 50 - 60% stocks, 40 - 50% bonds, over the long term. Just a regular, interest-bearing savings account isn't going to be enough. They almost never even keep up with inflation. Yes, if the stock market or the bond market takes a hit, the investment will suffer. But over the long term, it should more than recover the lost capital. Such scholarships care far more about the very long term and can weather a few years of bad returns. This is roughly similar to retirement planning. If you expect to be retired for, say, 10 years, you won't worry too much about pulling out your retirement funds. But it's quite possible to retire early (say, at 40) and plan for an infinite retirement. You just need a lot more money to do so. $3 million, invested appropriately, should allow you to pull out approximately $90,000 a year (adjusted upward for inflation) forever. I leave the specifics of how to come up with $3 million as an exercise for the reader. :) As an aside, there's a Memorial and Traffic Safety Fund which (kindly and gently) solicited a $10,000 donation after my wife was killed in a motor vehicle accident. That would have provided annual donations in her name, in perpetuity. This shows you don't need $30,000 to set up a scholarship or a fund. I chose to go another way, but it was an option I seriously considered. Edit: The Trinity study actually only looked at a 30 year withdrawal period. So long as the investment wasn't exhausted within 30 years, it was considered a success. The Trinity study has also been criticised when it comes to retirement. Nevertheless, there's some withdrawal rate at which point your investment is expected to last forever. It just may be slightly smaller than 3-4% per year. |
Pay off entire mortgage or put into investments | I like this option, rather than exposing all 600k to market risk, I'd think of paying off the mortgage as a way to diversify my portfolio. Expose 400k to market risk, and get a guaranteed 3.75% return on that 200k (in essence). Then you can invest the money you were putting towards your mortgage each month. The potential disadvantage, is that the extra 200k investment could earn significantly more than 3.75%, and you'd lose out on some money. Historically, the market beats 3.75%, and you'd come out ahead investing everything. There's no guarantee. You also don't have to keep your money invested, you can change your position down the road and pay off the house. I feel best about a paid off house, but I know that my sense of security carries opportunity cost. Up to you to decide how much risk you're willing to accept. Also, if you don't have an emergency fund, I'd set up that first and then go from there with investing/paying off house. |
Can buying REIT's be compared to investing in Real Estate? | A couple of distinctions. First, if you were to "invest in real estate" were you planning to buy a home to live in, or buy a home to rent out to someone else? Buying a home as a primary residence really isn't "investing in real estate" per se. It's buying a place to live rather than renting one. Unless you rent a room out or get a multi-family unit, your primary residence won't be income-producing. It will be income-draining, for the most part. I speak as a homeowner. Second, if you are buying to rent out to someone else, buying a single home is quite a bit different than buying an REIT. The home is a lot less liquid, the transaction costs are higher, and all of your eggs are in one basket. Having said that, though, if you buy one right and do your homework it can set you on the road for a very comfortable retirement. |
Someone asks you to co-sign a loan. How to reject & say “no” nicely or politely? | I'm going to be buying a house / car / home theater system in the next few months, and this loan would show up on my credit report and negatively impact my score, making me unable to get the financing that I'll need. |
How risky is it to keep my emergency fund in stocks? | I've read the answers and respect the thought behind them. I'd like to focus on (a) the magnitude of the emergency, and (b) the saving rate of the people affected. 3-6 months is interesting. It's enough not just to fix the car, repair the A/C, etc, but more than enough to lose one's job and recover. (Let's avoid the debate of how long it take to find a job, no amount of 'emergency savings' can solve that.) If one is spending below their means, any unexpected expense that can paid off within, say 3 months, doesn't really need to tap emergency funds (EF). And, at some level of income and retirement savings, one can more easily run a much lower EF. My own situation - I had 9mo worth of expenses saved as EF. We were living well beneath our means, and I was looking at the difference between our mortgage (6%+) vs bank interest (near 0%). I used the funds to pay down principal, refinanced to a lower rate, and at the same closing got a HELOC. The psychology of this is tough, it then appears that for simple expenses, I'd be borrowing from my HELOC. On the other hand, the choice was between a known cost, the $5K/year the money was costing by sitting there plus the lower rate by going to a non-jumbo loan at the time, vs the risk of using 3% money from the HELOC. In the end, the HELOC was never tapped for more than a small portion of its line, and I never regretted the decision. Ironically, it's the person who isn't saving much that need the EF most. If you are a saver, you need to judge how long it would take to replace the funds. I offer the above not as a recommendation, but as devil's advocate to the other excellent advice here. All cash flows are a choice, $100 going here, can't go there. I'd slip in a warning that one should capture matching 401(k) contributions, if offered, before funding the EF. And pay down any high interest debt. After that, the decision of how liquid to be is a personal choice, what worked for my wife and me may not be for everyone. |
Do I need to report to FInCEN if I had greater than $10,000 worth of bitcoin in a foreign bitcoin exchange? | Yes, I'd say you do. This is similar to reporting a brokerage account. Also, don't forget the requirements for form 8938. |
What are the economic benefits of owning a home in the United States? | It is almost a sure thing that the housing market will crash again hugely.For this reason I prefer to own several houses that way when it does no one can ask for their money back and leave me homeless. Current economics suggest a fall of between 40-60% from 2011 prices meaning that if you have bought a house in the last 12 years you can wave bye bye to any and all equity, and this will happen very soon. I recommend saving your money and buying a house outright (like I did 3 times) from someone who has spent 12 years or so paying a mortgage. |
Are low commission trading sites safe? | I have used TradeKing for a couple of years now and love it. It really is a great site. They hold an IRA trading account for me and have been helpful in rolling money into that account, and with answering the occasional question. Previously I have used Scottrade and found that TradeKing is a much better value. |
What are the pros and cons of buying an item on installments with zero percent interest? | If (and only if) there is a zero interest installment plan available, technically the only uncontrollable risk is that there will likely be a hard inquiry on your credit report which may or may not also have a corresponding debt obligation attached to it. (Personally, I recently signed up for one such plan with Google and I had a hard inquiry but no debt added to my report). The other risks are that 1) your monthly payment goes up, so if you are living on a tight budget the added payment might make it harder to meet your next bill, and 2) you could miss a payment which generally triggers interest to accrue retroactively at a high rate, and in some cases could be grounds for immediate repayment. The pro / reward of these plans is that you have to spend less of your capital upfront, which you may be able to use for other purposes (presumably with a higher net present value than purchasing the item you're considering outright). A larger example would be purchasing a new car. You want to buy a $50k car and you have the cash on hand to pay in full, but you are being offered 0% interest for 36 months. You may be more inclined to take a loan at 0% with 0 down payment and invest your money in another vehicle (no pun intended) that offers you a decent rate of return and you will come out ahead in the end. Of course, this example works in a perfect world where you can get such an offer, there are no extra fees available, you aren't worrying about your debt-to-income ratio in preparation for a big purchase like a house, there isn't a higher insurance premium to consider, etc. In short, 0% financing, be it for a phone or a car, can be a nice perk for the informed consumer who is not using the financing as a way to purchase outside their financial means, but it is offered by companies as a way to make people buy things they normally would not and, hopefully, capitalize on people missing payments in order to reap the sweet 20%+ interest rates generally seen with these offers. In your specific situation with the phone, you should consider if you get a discount on your monthly plan for purchasing outright, or if you can get the phone subsidized if you sign a contract (and you know you like your provider enough to stay for its duration). If the monthly plan rate stays the same and you're looking at either $500 now or $500 over 24 months and you don't mind a hard inquiry, there's not much of compelling reason to pass on the financing and hold on to your $500. |
Multiple accounts stagnant after quitting job. | You ask multiple question here. The 401(k) - move it to an IRA. As others stated,this will lower your costs, and open up a potential I didn't see mentioned, the conversion to a Roth IRA. A year in which your income is lower than average is a great opportunity to convert a bit of the IRA enough to "top off" the lower bracket in which you may find yourself. The company stock? If you never worked for the company would you have bought this stock? Would you buy it now? If not, why keep it? The loan is the toughest decision. Will you sleep better if it were paid in full? What's the rate? 6% or more, I'd pay it off, under 4%, less likely. I'd invest much of the cash and the $8000 in stock in a Dilip-recommended VFINX, and use the dividends to pay the loan each month. |
Is it a good investment for a foreigner to purchase a flat/apartment in China? | It is a lousy investment to purchase an apartment in China. Chinese citizens purchase apartments in China because, well... here's how China works: There's some fundamentals driving Chinese property values higher, but mostly it's a bubble caused by those reasons. |
Can you buy gift cards at grocery store to receive a higher reward rate? | (I agree with the answers above; would just like to make a couple of additional points.) It's a good and simple strategy to try it out with a small amount as suggested by @JoeTaxpayer♦. It's also generally safe to assert that card issuers currently don't receive or actively look at itemized transaction details. But that does not mean they cannot in the future. Some stores utilize level 3 data processing, which tells the card issuers exactly what you bought in a transaction. An example of level 3 data being utilized to reject rewards is with Discover, which announced a 10% cashback reward for any transactions made with Apple Pay last year. It later introduced an additional term to exclude gift card purchases. And this has been verified to be effective - no more reward on gift card purchases; clawback of cashback on existing gift card transactions. As far as I know, Amex does receive and look at some level 3 data retrospectively. That does not necessarily mean they will claw back your cashback after initially rewarding the 6%. But it might show up if you ever trigger an account review, and be used as evidence of your "abuse" of the program (which BTW is defined rather subjectively). There has been many cases of account shutdowns because of this. Card issuers are also trying to do a better job preventing "abuses" by proactively setting caps on rewards (as opposed to closing those accounts afterwards and taking the rewards away altogether). Given the trend in recent years, I have to speculate that at some point the card issuers would put clear language in the terms against gift card purchase and enforce it effectively (if they haven't already). This reward game is constantly changing. It's good while it lasts. Just be prepared and don't get surprised when things go south. |
What happens to options after a stock split? | Since you asked about Apple, and I happen to have two positions - This is what happened. I was long the $500, short the $600, in effect, betting Apple would recover from its drop from $700 down to $450 or so. Friday, my target was to hope that Apple remain above $600, but not really caring how much it went over. Now, post split, the magic number is $85.71. My account shows the adjusted option pricing, but doesn't yet show AAPL's new price. |
How do I protect myself from a scam if I want to help a relative? | For some reason can't transfer it directly to his account overseas (something to do with security codes, authorized payees and expired cards). Don't become someone's financial intermediary. Find out exactly why he can't transfer the money himself, and then if you want to help him, solve that problem for him. Helping him fix his issue with his expired card, or whatever the real problem is, would be a good thing to do. Allowing him to involve you in the transaction, would be a bad thing to do. Possible problems which might be caused by becoming directly involved in the transaction: -The relative is being scammed themselves, and doesn't realize it / doesn't realize the risks, and either wants you to take the risk, or simply thinks there is no risk but needs administrative help. -The person contacting you is not the relative - perhaps they are faking that person's identity, and are using your trust to defraud you. -The person is committing some form of fraud, money laundering, or worse, and is directly trying to defraud you in order to keep their hands clean. -The transaction may be perfectly legal, but is considered taxable in one or more countries. By getting involved, you might face tax filing obligations, or even tax payment obligations. -The transaction may be perfectly legal and legitimate, but might accidentally get picked up as potential fraud by a financial monitoring system, causing the funds to be held, and your account to be flagged for further investigation, creating headaches for you until it becomes resolved. There are possibly other ways that this can go awry, but these are the biggest possibilities I can think of. The only possible 'good' outcome here is that everything goes smoothly, and it works exactly as well as if your relative's "administrative problems" were solved first, and the money went through his own account. Handwaving about why your account is needed and his is faulty is a big red flag. If it is truly just an administrative issue on his end, help him fix that issue instead. |
How much should I be contributing to my 401k given my employer's contribution? | JoeTapayer has good advice here. I would like to add my notes. If they give a 50% match that means you are getting a 50% return on investment(ROI) immediately. I do not know of a way to get a better guaranteed ROI. Next, when investing you need to determine what kind of investor you are. I would suggest you make yourself more literate in investments, as I suggest to anyone, but there are basic things you want to look for. If your primary worry is loss of your prinicipal, go for Conservative investments. This means that you are willing to accept a reduced expected ROI in exchange for lower volatility(risk of loss of principal). This does not mean you have a 100% safe investment as the last market issues have shown, but in general you are better protected. The fidelity investments should give you some information as to volatility or if they deem the investments conservative. Conservative investments are normally made up of trading bonds, which have the lowest ROI in general but are the most secure. You can also invest in blue chip companies, although stock is inherently riskier. It is pointed out in comments that stocks always outperform bonds in the long term, and this has been true over the last 100 years. I am just suggesting ways you can protect yourself against market downturns. When the market is doing very well bonds will not give you the return your friends are seeing. I am just trying to give you a basic idea of what to look for when you pick your investments, nothing can replace a solid investment adviser and taking the time to educate yourself. |
No transaction fee ETF trades - what's the catch? | what is the mechanism by which they make money on the funds that I have in my account? Risk drives TD Ameritrade to look for profits, Turukawa's storytelling about 100,000$ and 500$ is trivial. The risk consists of credit risk, asset-liability risk and profit risk. The third, based on Pareto Principle, explains the loss-harvesting. The pareto distribution is used in all kind of decentralized systems such as Web, business and -- if I am not totally wrong -- the profit risk is a thing that some authorities require firms to investigate, hopefully someone could explain you more about it. You can visualize the distribution with rpareto(n, shape, scale) in R Statistics -program (free). Wikipedia's a bit populist description: In the financial services industry, this concept is known as profit risk, where 20% or fewer of a company's customers are generating positive income while 80% or more are costing the company money. Read more about it here and about the risk here. |
Tax implications of restricted stock units | With the Employee Stock Purchase Plan stock, if you sell it in less than 18 months from exercise, the discount you bought it at (normally 15%) becomes taxable income and included in your W-2. |
How can we get a hold of our finances again, with much less time to spend on accounting and budgeting, due to the arrival of our child? | I have also tried Mvelopes in the past, and my experiences match yours. I currently use the desktop version of YNAB:You Need a Budget (YNAB 4), and I like it much better. Where we failed after a while with Mvelopes, we are succeeding with YNAB, and have been now for the last 3.5 years. I don't want this to sound like a commercial for YNAB (I will give important caveats about YNAB later), but here is why I believe we have done better now with YNAB than before with Mvelopes. I hope that these reasons will be useful to you when you are evaluating your next options. As you said, we also found Mvelopes' interface to be slow and glitchy. YNAB 4 is a desktop app (with synching capabilities) that we found to be much quicker and easier to work with than Mvelopes' Flash-based interface. (That was 4 years ago; hopefully Mvelopes has redone their interface since then.) We also struggled with Mvelopes' connection with our banks. With YNAB 4, there is no connection to the bank: everything has to be entered manually. I initially thought this might be worse, but for us it has been better. I can either enter transactions as they happen on the mobile app, or I can hold on to receipts and enter them every day or two in the evening, categorizing as I go. We always have an up-to-date picture of our finances, and we don't have to mess with trying to match up downloaded transactions that have been screwed up, duplicated, or are missing. We aren't really using YNAB much differently than we were using Mvelopes, but we have learned a few tricks that I think have contributed to our success. One of the things we do differently is that I don't obsess about the cash accounts too much. Cash accounts, for us, are the hardest to keep track of, because most of our cash transactions don't have a receipt: we are paying a friend or family member for something, or leaving a tip, or something like that which we forget about when it comes time to enter into the software. As a result, the cash account balances get off. I periodically enter a correcting transaction to get the balances right, and have a budget category specifically for this that we have to put money in for these unknown transactions. Fortunately for us, our cash spending is a small percent of our total spending (we usually pay with a credit card) so this bit of untracked spending isn't that big of a concern. With YNAB, the current month's budget is right in front of you as soon as you open up the app, which makes it easy to adjust your budget during the month, if necessary. With Mvelopes (at least how their app worked 4 years ago), the budget was somewhat hidden after you funded your budget categories, and it was a bit of a pain to move money around between categories. The ability to adjust your budget in the middle of the month is crucial; if you don't do that, you'll get frustrated the first time you find that you don't have enough money in a category for something you need. YNAB makes it very easy to move money around inside your budget. That having been said, you need to be aware that the current version of YNAB is not a desktop application but a web-based app. YNAB 4, the old desktop version which we have been using, is officially unsupported as of the end of 2016. However, I see that it is still available for sale, if you are interested in it, the YNAB4 help site is still up, and the mobile app you would need to work with it on your phone (called YNAB Classic) is still in the app store. As I said, the current YNAB is now a web app, complete with automatic downloading of transactions from your bank. I have no experience with it (other than playing around with it a little), and so I can't tell you how quick the interface is or how well the auto-downloading of transactions works. As an alternative, another web-based solution is EveryDollar, from Dave Ramsey's company. (I have never tried it.) The advantage of this one is that it is free if you choose not to link it to your banks; the automatic downloading of transactions is a paid feature. I wrote an answer a couple of years ago in which I describe two different approaches that budgeting software packages tend to take. I'm not familiar with Buxfer, so I don't know which approach it takes, but perhaps that answer will help you evaluate all of your software options. On the behavior side of things, besides the relaxing of the cash accounting I mentioned above, we also involve my wife a little less in the budgeting process than we used to. (This is by her choice!) I am the one who enters all the transactions into the software (she hands me all her receipts), I reconcile the accounts at the end of the month, and I set the budget for the next month. We have been doing this long enough now that she knows what the budget is, and we only need to discuss it if we want to do something different with the budget than we have been doing in the past. She has the YNAB app on her phone and can see where we are at with all of our budget categories. |
Swiss-style Monetary Policy | This is what is called "weasel words". They're trying to put some authority into their ad, but since they don't have any - they're putting meaningless words that sound important. Monetary policy is the state/central bank policy to control the supply of the available currency. Cannot think of a way to connect it to private investments. |
What are useful indexes for rapid evaluation of country investment risk? | Rather than using the Human Development Index or Ease of Doing Business, if you primary purpose is for investments, you need to consider the Country rating provided by various agencies like These would tell as to how good the country is for investment in general. Just to highlight a difference, China may not fare very high in Human Development Index, however right now from investment point of view its a pretty good market. once you have decided the countries, you can either invest in funds specalizing in these countries or if legally permitted invest directly into the leading stock index in such countries. If your intention is to start a business in these countries, then you need to look at some other indexes. http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/articles/en/us/?assetID=1245219962821 http://www.fitchratings.com/jsp/sector/Sector.faces?selectedTab=Overview&Ne=4293330737%2b11&N=0 http://v3.moodys.com/Pages/default.aspx |
How are people able to spend more than what they make, without going into debt? | Bezos made very little "money." But he is very wealthy because of stock grants and options, from his previous years. Banks or brokerage firms will lend him (or anyone else) up to half the value of his stock. In Bezos' case, we're talking about billions. So he could, if he wanted to, cash out half of those billions. If the stock continues to go up (as it has), he will be able to cash out more each year. Imagine a person earning $1 a year in cash with $1 billion of stock, on which he can borrow up to $500 million. That, in a nutshell, is Bezos (with larger numbers). |
Does girlfriend have too much savings, time to invest? | Congrats to your GF! "How much" depends a lot on how stable her income tends to be. If she has stable salary @ $20K plus $5K-$15K in contract work, then having a larger EF is important. If she has a consistent track record of pulling in $35K each year with contract work, then she may still need a somewhat higher emergency fund to tide her over between gigs. The rule of thumb is at least 3 months' expenses before you start investing for better returns. If she is reliant on contract work, then holding up to 6 months' expenses could be wise just in case she hits a slow patch with work. After that emergency fund is covered, she can look at investment opportunities with varying levels of risk & return: I would also recommend putting it down in writing "why" she's investing/saving. Is she saving up for an awesome vacation? Maybe that's why she really is so far above a normal EF. Does she want a new car? Maybe there's not really so much to spare. Bottom line: Assuming her monthly expenses are around $2K per month, she might have $4,000 to $5,000 that she could look to start investing "safely". |
Is this investment opportunity problematic? | Your Spidey senses are good. A good friend would not put you in such a position. It's simple, to skirt some issue (we'll get to that in a second) you are being asked to lie. All for a 15% return on your $$$$. <<< How much is that? You can easily lend him the money, and have a better paper trail. But the bank is not going to like that, and requires this money from friends or family to be a gift. I've heard mortgage guys at the bank say "It's just a formality, we need this paperwork to sell the loan to the investors." These bankers belong in jail, or at least fired and barred from the industry. They broke the economy in 2008, and should be stopped from doing it again. |
Are account holders with a bank better able to receive a loan from that bank? | Banks are businesses, and as such should have the right to refuse service, so they should probably be able to choose one customer over another at will. [I say "should" because business owners protecting themselves against litigation related to discrimination could restrict their freedom as business owners.] However, banks are businesses and if the customers are identical, both will be approved (or not) according to credit records. Does not make sense to approve one person with a given credit record and refuse someone with a similar record. Unless they barely qualify. Since no two credit histories are identical, there are surely edge cases. Finally, if a customer is a long term customer with large deposits and/or significant amounts of business with the bank, the bankers will likely be inclined to do more business. |
Is it inadvisable to leave a Roth IRA to charity upon death? | I think what those articles are saying is: "If you want to leave some money to charity and some to relatives, don't bequeath a Roth to charity while bequeathing taxable accounts to relatives." In other words, it's not "bad" to leave a Roth IRA to charity, it's just not as good as giving it to humans, if there are humans you want to give money to. In your situation, the total amount you want to leave to relatives is less than the value of your Roth. So it sounds like the advice as it applies to you is: "Don't leave your relatives $30K from your taxable funds while leaving the whole Roth to charity. Instead, leave $30K of your Roth to your relatives, while leaving all the taxable funds to charity (along with the leftover $20K of the Roth)." In other words, the Roth is a "last resort" for charitable giving --- only give away Roth money to charity if you already gave humans all the money you want to give them. (I'm unsure of the details of how you would actually designate portions of the Roth for different beneficiaries, but some googling suggests it is possible.) |
Why do consultants or contractors make more money than employees? | Note too that being a contractor means that you will unavoidably have periods between contracts; you tend to be out of work more often than a salaried employee would. You need to set your rates so your average income, including those down times, adds up to a living wage including all those benefits that aren't being covered. If a company hires a contractor, they understand that this is part of the trade-off. They avoid making a long-term commitment when they don't have a long-term need, and they accept that this convenience may cost a bit more in the short term. |
Bonds vs equities: crash theory | I would suggest looking into Relative Strength Asset Allocation. This type of investment strategy keeps you invested in the best performing asset classes. As a result of investing in this manner it removes the guesswork and moves naturally (say into cash) when the stock market turns down. There is a good whitepaper on this subject by Mebane Faber titled Relative Strength Strategies for Investing. |
Why doesn’t every company and individual use tax-havens to pay less taxes? | Many of the Financial intermediaries in the business, have extraordinary high requirements for opening an account. For example to open an account in Credit Suisse one will need 1 million US dollars. |
How to calculate cash loss over time? | If inflation is at 2% per annum, in a year you would need £102 to buy equivalent goods to what you could buy today. So if you keep your money in a drawer the buying power of your £100 in a year will be only 100/102 = 98.039% of what it is currently. |
Which banks have cash-deposit machines in Germany? | This may not answer your question but it may be an alternative. My credit union credits my account for deposits immediately (ones I make in an envelope). They view it as a service to their members. They take the risk that the member could deposit an empty envelope, say they deposited $400, and then withdraw the money. There may be banks in your country that do business this way. |
How dividend payout happens | The ex-dividend date is the first date on which you may sell without losing your dividend. In this case that date is August 5th (thanks, Victor). The price opens on the ex-dividend date lower than it closed on the previous day (by the amount of the dividend). Therefore you may sell any time on August 5th (including during pre-market trading) and still get the dividend. You must be the owner of the stock as of the end of after-hours trading on the 4th (and therefore overnight) in order to get the dividend. Intel's Dividend Dates The record date isn't important to your trading decision. |
Do dividend quotes for U.S. stocks include witheld taxes? | No. As a rule, the dividends you see in the distribution table are what you'll receive before paying any taxes. Tax rates differ between qualified and unqualified/ordinary dividends, so the distribution can't include taxes because tax rates may differ between investors. In my case I hold it in an Israeli account but the tax treaty between our countries still specifies 25% withheld tax This is another example of why tax rates differ between investors. If I hold SPY too, my tax rate will be very different because I don't hold it in an account like yours, so the listed dividend couldn't include taxes. |
How should we prioritize retirement savings, paying down debt, and saving for a house? | The advice to pay off near-7% debt is tough to argue against. That said, I'd project out a few years to understand the home purchase. Will you plan for the 20% down John recommends? The Crazy Truth about PMI can't be ignored. The way the math works, if you put 15% down, the PMI costs you so much, it's nearly like paying 20% interest on that missing 5%. If your answer is that you intend to save for the full downpayment, 20%, and can still knock off the student loan, by all means, go for it. I have to question the validity of "we will definitely be in a higher tax bracket when we retire." By definition, pretax deposits save tax at the marginal rate. i.e. If you are in the 25% bracket, a $1000 deposit saves you $250 in tax that year. But, withdrawals come at your average rate, i.e. your tax bill divided by gross income. There's the deductions for itemized deductions or the standard. Then 2 exemptions if you are married. Then the 10% bracket, etc. Today, a couple grossing $100K may be in the 25% bracket, but their average rate is 12%. I read this Q&A again and would add one more observation - Student Loans and Your First Mortgage is an article I wrote in response to a friend's similar question. With the OP having plan to buy a house, paying off the loan may be more costly in the long run. It may keep him from qualifying for the size mortgage he needs, or from having enough money to put 20% down, as I noted earlier. With finance, there are very few issues that are simply black and white. It's important to understand all aspects of one's finances to make any decision. Even if thee faster payoff is the right thing, it's not a slam-dunk, the other points should be considered. |
Why is the stock market price for a share always higher than the earnings per share? | First, the earnings are per year, not per quarter. Why would you expect to get a 100% per year return on your money? The earnings can go one of two ways. They can be retained, reinvested in the company, or they can be distributed as a dividend. So, the 'return' on this share is just over 5%, which is competitive with the rate you'd get on fixed investments. It's higher, in fact, as there's the risk that comes with holding the stock. |
Is IRS Form 8938 asking me to double-count foreign assets? | Yes, you effectively need to "double count" when shifting balances between foreign accounts. |
Asset management after leaving the USA | Yes to all three. However, |
How come we can find stocks with a Price-to-Book ratio less than 1? | Note that the formula for Price to Book ratio is: Stock Price / {[Total Assets - (Intangible Assets + Liabilities)] / Stock Outstanding} http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-bookratio.asp http://www.investopedia.com/articles/fundamental/03/112603.asp There's a number of factors that could lead to a lower than 1. The primary reason, imho, could be the company is in a state of retiring stock with debt. The company is selling penny stocks (only to get people more interested in it's later development) which are inherently undervalued. There may be other reasons, but definitely check out both articles. |
Why do governments borrow money instead of printing it? | The Government doesn't borrow money. It in fact simply prints it. The bond market is used for an advanced way of controlling the demand for this printed money. Think about it logically. Take 2011 for example. The Govt spent $1.7 trillion more than it took in. This is real money that get's credited in to people's bank accounts to purchase real goods and services. Now who purchases the majority of treasuries? The Primary Dealers. What are the Primary Dealers? They are banks. Where do banks get their money? From us. So now put two and two together. When the Govt spends $1.7 trillion and credits our bank accounts, the banking system has $1.7 trillion more. Then that money flows in to pension funds, gets spent in to corporation who then send that money to China for cheap products... and eventually the money spent purchases up Govt securities for investments. We had to physically give China 1 trillion dollars for them to be able to purchase 1 trillion dollars in securities. So it makes sense if you think about how the math works in the real world. |
Do financial advisers in Canada who work at the bank, make investing decisions not in your best interest? | The way this works, as I understand it, is that financial advisers come in two kinds. Some are free to recommend you any financial products they think fit, but many are restricted in what they can recommend. Most advisers who work for finance companies are the second kind, and will only offer you products that their company sells. I believe they should tell you up front if they are the second kind. They should certainly tell you that if you ask. So in essence, your Scotiabank advisor is not necessarily making bad decisions for you - but they are restricted in what they will offer, and will not tell you if there is a better product for you that Scotiabank doesn't sell. In most cases, 'management fees' means something you pay to the actual managers of the fund you buy, not to the person who sells you the fund. You can compare the funds you are invested in yourself, both for performance and for the fees charged. Making frequent unnecessary changes of investment is another way that an advisor can milk you for money, but that is not necessarily restricted to bank-employed advisors. if you think that is happening to you, ask question, and change advisors if you are not happy. |
How are mortgage payments decided? [duplicate] | It has nothing to do with forcing people to pay off their debt; in that case it would make better sense to have people pay off debt rather than interest. It is because you want to have your actual payment stay the same each month, which is easier for the vast majority of people to comprehend and put into their budget. It is called an annuity in Finance terms. In theory you could use another method - eg. pay of the same amount of debt each month - then your interest payments will decrease over time. But in that case your monthly payment (debt + interest) will not be stable - It will start of high and decrease a little bit each month. With an annuity you have a constant cashflow. In Finance you generally operate with three methods of debt repayment: Annuity: Fixed cashflow. High interest payment in the beginning with small debt payments - later it will be reversed. Serial loan: Fixed debt payments. Debt payments are equally spread out accross the period - interst is paid on the remaining debt. Cash flow will decrease over time, because interest payments become smaller for each period. Standing loan: You only pay interest on the loan, no debt payments during the period. All debt is payed back in the end of the loan. In Europe it is common practise to combine a 30 year annuity with a 10 year standing loan, so that you only pay interest on the loan for the first 10 years, thereafter you start paying back the debt and interest, the fixed amount each month (the annuity). This is especially common for first-time buyers, since they usually have smaller salaries early in life than later and therefore need the additional free cash in the beginning of their adult life. |
How can I determine if a debt consolidation offer is real or a scam? | I believe no-one who's in a legal line of business would tell you to default voluntarily on your obligations. Once you get an offer that's too good to be true, and for which you have to do something that is either illegal or very damaging to you - it is probably a scam. Also, if someone requires you to send any money without a prior written agreement - its probably a scam as well, especially in such a delicate matter as finances. Your friend now should also be worried about identity theft as he voluntary gave tons of personal information to these people. Bottom line - if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is probably a duck. Your friend had all the warning signs other than a huge neon light saying "Scam" pointing at these people, and he still went through it. For real debt consolidation companies, research well: online reviews, BBB ratings and reviews, time in business, etc. If you can't find any - don't deal with them. Also, if you get promises for debtors to out of the blue give up on some of their money - its a sign of a scam. Why would debtors reduce the debt by 60%? He's paying, he can pay, he is not on the way to bankruptcy (or is he?)? Why did he do it to begin with? |
Options profit calculation and cash settlement | Marketwatch reports that the 108 strike call option sells for 1.45, down 1.53 from yesterday. If we split the bid and ask you get 1.415. That is what that contract will, likely, trade at. The biggest problems with options are commissions and liquidity. I have seen a commission as high as $45 per trade. I have also seen open interest disappear overnight. Even if you obtain contracts that become worth more than you paid for them you may find that no one wants to pay you what they are worth. Track your trade over a few weeks to see how you would have done. It is my experience that the only people who make money on options are the brokers. |
Is it a good idea to get a mortgage when buying a house, for credit reasons? | It may or may not be a good idea to borrow money from your family; there are many factors to consider here, not the least of which is what you would do if you got in serious financial trouble and couldn't make your scheduled payments on the loan. Would you arrange with them to sell the property ASAP? Or could they easily manage for a few months without your scheduled payments if it were necessary? A good rule of thumb that some people follow when lending to family is this: don't do it unless you're 100% OK with the possibility that they might not pay you back at all. That said, your question was about credit scores specifically. Having a mortgage and making on-time payments would factor into your score, but not significantly more heavily than having revolving credit (eg a credit card) and making on time payments, or having a car loan or installment loan and making on time payments. I bought my house in 2011, and after years of paying the mortgage on time my credit score hasn't changed at all. MyFico has a breakdown of factors affecting your credit score here: http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/whatsinyourscore.aspx. The most significant are a history of on-time payments, low revolving credit utilization (carrying a $4900 balance on a card with a $5000 limit is bad, carrying a $10 balance on the same card is good), and overall length of your credit history. As to credit mix, they have this to say: Types of credit in use Credit mix determines 10% of my FICO Score The FICO® Score will consider your mix of credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, finance company accounts and mortgage loans. It's not necessary to have one of each, and it's not a good idea to open credit accounts you don’t intend to use. The credit mix usually won’t be a key factor in determining your FICO Score—but it will be more important if your credit report does not have a lot of other information on which to base a score. Have credit cards – but manage them responsibly Having credit cards and installment loans with a good payment history will raise your FICO Score. People with no credit cards tend to be viewed as a higher risk than people who have managed credit cards responsibly. |
When after a companys IPO date can I purchase shares? | You can purchase stock immediately in the open market on the day of the IPO when market opens. Below link gives you more information. http://finance.zacks.com/buy-ipo-stock-3903.html |
Are Credit Cards a service to banks? | Credit cards are a golden goose for banks, as they get to issue high-interest loans and simultaneously generate alot of fee income. Debit cards aren't quite as good, but they still generate substantial fee income -- ~2% of every credit/non-PIN debit transaction goes to the bank and credit card network. Credit histories exist because they are the most effective tool available to predict whether you will pay back your loans or not. You don't need a credit history to buy most things, you need a credit history to get a large loan. Think of it from perspective of a lender: Credit scoring is the bank's way screening out people who are expensive to do business with. It's objective, doesn't discriminate on the basis of race, sex or other factors, and you have recourse if the rating agencies have incorrect information. |
Wash Sales and Day Trading | Great question! It can be a confusing for sure -- but here's a great example I've adapted to your scenario: As a Day Trader, you buy 100 shares of LMNO at $100, then after a large drop the same day, you sell all 10 shares at $90 for a loss of $1,000. Later in the afternoon, you bought another 100 shares at $92 and resold them an hour later at $97 (a $500 profit), closing out your position for the day. The second trade had a profit of $500, so you had a net loss of $500 (the $1,000 loss plus the $500 profit). Here’s how this works out tax-wise: The IRS first disallows the $1,000 loss and lets you show only a profit of $500 for the first trade (since it was a wash). But it lets you add the $1,000 loss to the basis of your replacement shares. So instead of spending $9,200 (100 shares times $92), for tax purposes, you spent $10,200 ($9,200 plus $1,000), which means that the second trade is what caused you to lose the $500 that you added back (100 x $97 = $9,700 minus the 100 x $102 = $10,200, netting $500 loss). On a net basis, you get to record your loss, it just gets recorded on the second trade. The basis addition lets you work off your wash-sale losses eventually, and in your case, on Day 3 you would recognize a $500 final net loss for tax purposes since you EXITED your position. Caveat: UNLESS you re-enter LMNO within 30 days later (at which point it would be another wash and the basis would shift again). Source: http://www.dummies.com/personal-finance/investing/day-trading/understand-the-irs-wash-sale-rule-when-day-trading/ |
Shifting income to 401k | This will be difficult to achieve. It can be done, but it's very rare to have an agreement where your employer is willing to max out your contribution limit unless you are a partner in the business or a family relation. In this situation the extra employer money would probably come from a profit sharing contribution. If your employer increases your match, others are correct that your employer would have to increase the match for everyone. Not so with a profit sharing contribution. This is assuming 2 things though: Both of those are BIG if's, and I'd say 99% of the time it's not gonna happen for either of those two reasons. Your chances are better if you don't own >5% of the company, don't make over $120,000/year, and are related to you employer. Good luck! |
“Business day” and “due date” for bills | I don't believe Saturday is a business day either. When I deposit a check at a bank's drive-in after 4pm Friday, the receipt tells me it will credit as if I deposited on Monday. If a business' computer doesn't adjust their billing to have a weekday due date, they are supposed to accept the payment on the next business day, else, as you discovered, a Sunday due date is really the prior Friday. In which case they may be running afoul of the rules that require X number of days from the time they mail a bill to the time it's due. The flip side to all of this, is to pick and choose your battles in life. Just pay the bill 2 days early. The interest on a few hundred dollars is a few cents per week. You save that by not using a stamp, just charge it on their site on the Friday. Keep in mind, you can be right, but their computer still dings you. So you call and spend your valuable time when ever the due date is over a weekend, getting an agent to reverse the late fee. The cost of 'right' is wasting ten minutes, which is worth far more than just avoiding the issue altogether. But - if you are in the US (you didn't give your country), we have regulations for everything. HR 627, aka The CARD act of 2009, offers - ‘‘(2) WEEKEND OR HOLIDAY DUE DATES.—If the payment due date for a credit card account under an open end consumer credit plan is a day on which the creditor does not receive or accept payments by mail (including weekends and holidays), the creditor may not treat a payment received on the next business day as late for any purpose.’’. So, if you really want to pursue this, you have the power of our illustrious congress on your side. |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | At least with US tax law where you only pay taxes at the higher rate for the income above the minimum for that tax bracket, you will always wind up ahead taking the raise if you are simply concerned with after tax (FICA) income. For example, assume you were making $8,350 (the top end of the 10% bracket in the US), and got a $100 raise, you would be taxed roughly as follows: After Tax Income Before Raise: $8,350 x (100% - 10%) After Tax Income After Raise: $8,350 x (100%-10%) + $100 x (100%-15%) You can easily see that the second number is always higher than the first as long as the raise is a positive amount (obviously). |
Credit card issued against my express refusal; What action can I take? | I believe it is so. It doesn't sound like they did anything outright illegal, just a pushy upsell. You can complain to the bank manager. If you want you can mention the employee by name (if you know who they are). Ultimately, you can change banks. From what you say it sounds like you are dissatisfied with this bank, so I think you should at least begin evaluating other banks and consider switching. You can also let your current bank know you are planning to take all your money away from them specifically because of their poor customer service. You could consider filing a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleging that the bank engaged in some kind of deceptive marketing of their financial products. Of course you can also file a complaint with something like the Better Business Bureau, or even just write a negative Yelp review. But these actions won't really result in any penalty for the bank as a result of what they did in your specific case; they just express your dissatisfaction in a way that will be recorded and possibly made public (e.g., in a list of complaints) to protect future consumers. If you're really gung-ho and have time and money to burn, you could hire a lawyer and get legal advice about whether it is possible to sue the bank for fraud or misuse of your personal information. Needless to say, I think this would be overkill for this situation. I would just cancel the credit card, tell the bank you're dissatisfied, switch banks, and move on. |
What is the relationship between the earnings of a company and its stock price? | I have heard that people say the greater earning means greater intrinsic value of the company. Then, the stock price is largely based on the intrinsic value. So increasing intrinsic value due to increasing earning will lead to increasing stock price. Does this make sense ? Yes though it may be worth dissecting portions here. As a company generates earnings, it has various choices for what it can do with that money. It can distribute some to shareholders in the form of dividends or re-invest to generate more earnings. What you're discussing in the first part is those earnings that could be used to increase the perceived value of the company. However, there can be more than a few interpretations of how to compute a company's intrinsic value and this is how one can have opinions ranging from companies being overvalued to undervalued overall. Of Mines, Forests, and Impatience would be an article giving examples that make things a bit more complex. Consider how would you evaluate a mine, a forest or a farm where each gives a different structure to the cash flow? This could be useful in running the numbers here. |
How much is an asset producing $X/month is worth? | The simplest way is just to compute how much money you'd have to have invested elsewhere to provide a comparable return. For example, if you assume a safe interest rate of 2.3% per year, you would need to have about $520,000 to get $1,000/month. |
Why does it take 3 days to do electronic transfers between banks? [duplicate] | When Laurence Olivier took the role of Douglas Macarthur in the Unification Church's filming of Inchon, he told the press, "People ask me why I'm playing in this picture. The answer is simple: Money, dear boy." Banking systems are typically decades old and subject to innumerable legal and technical restrictions. Moving money more quickly from one client's account to another would definitely be in the clients' interest, but |
Switching Accountants - who does the audit review for past years? | It depends on what you paid for, but usually audit support is an unrelated engagement to the return preparation. If the accountant made a professional mistake, you can request correction and compensation from that accountant, other than that any accountant can help you with audit regardless of who prepared the return. The original accountant would probably be better informed about why you reported each number on the return and how it was calculated, but if you kept all the docs, it can be recalculated again. That's what happens in the audit anyway. |
Is it possible to physically own a share certificate in a company? | There is a company that will sell you single paper shares of stock for many companies and handle framing. But you pay a large premium over the stock price. Disney stopped doing paper share certificates a while ago, but you should be able to buy some of the old ones on eBay if you want. |
How to account for a shared mortgage in QuickBooks Online? | You could classify the mortgage as a different assets class and then create automated additions and deductions to the account as deems fit. other than that quickbooks online is a bit fishy so it seems. |
How do cashier's checks work and why are they good for scams? | Ok, few things to understand first: Secondly, think about the way a scam usually flows. A person (scammer) with an actual bank account with money issues a valid cashiers check, trick someone else (victim) into receiving it (typically in exchange for a percent) and passing along a portion to another account (back to the scammer). The scammer then reports the first transaction as fraudulent and the bank takes back that transaction. Now the victim is stuck with the second transaction, and without the funds from the first. Meanwhile the scammer has both the original funds and the percentage from the second one. In a way they're attractive for scammers because they're so trusted. |
How to acquire skills required for long-term investing? | Far and away the most valuable skill in investing, in my opinion, is emotional fortitude. You need to have the emotional stability and confidence to trust your decision making and research to hold on down days. |
Should we park our money in our escrow account? | You should talk to a financial fiduciary (make sure they are a fiduciary, not all planners are) about investing your money. Even ultra safe investments such as treasury bonds will beat the 1% interest rate offered by your savings account (the yield on the 5 year treasury is currently around 2%). |
Snowball debt or pay off a large amount? | My advice: IMO, all things being somewhat equal, you should always try to retire debts as quickly as possible in most cases, so start with the small cases. The method of calculating credit card interest is written on the statement. Usually it is "average daily balance method". Don't sweat the details. Just pay the things off. |
Costs around a modern crowd-sourced hedge fund | Your inference in #1 is incorrect. The million dollars he has contributed is going to be part of the assets of the fund. This is common practice and is a way for the founder to express confidence that the fund will make money. He wants you to come up with a model that he can then use to trade those assets. Presumably he will give you some money if he uses your model and it works. Regarding #2, there are lots of ways of getting data. Sometimes you can buy it directly from the exchange. You can also buy from vendors like tickdata.com. There are lots of such vendors. Since he makes a big deal about saying it's expensive, I'm assuming he is talking about data at relatively high frequency (not daily, which would be cheap). Stock data is still not bad. Complete US data would be a few thousand dollars (maybe 20K at the most). For someone sitting at home with no capital, that's a lot of money, but for a hedge fund it's nothing. As an institutional investor, your broker will give you a data feed that will provide all prices in real time (but not historically). If he's been in operation a while, he could have just saved the prices as they came out of the pipe. I don't think that's the case here, though, based on how young he is and how little money is involved. In short, he paid for some data and has "encrypted" it in such a way that he can legally share it for free. Supposedly his method preserves the structure so that you could write a trading model based on the encrypted data and it would work on real data. Once you have a good trading model, you sell it to him and he will use it to trade his million dollars and whatever other money he is able to gather. |
Why do consultants or contractors make more money than employees? | There are a couple of reasons, including: |
If my put option reaches expiration on etrade and I don't log in to the site will it automatically exercise if it's in the money or be a total loss? | There are a number of choices: I prefer Dilip's response "Have you tried asking etrade?" No offense, but questions about how a particular broker handles certain situations are best asked of the broker. Last - one should never enter into any trade (especially options trades) without understanding the process in advance. I hope you are asking this before trading. |
How to diversify IRA portfolio given fund minimum investments and IRA contribution limits? | There are fund of funds,e.g. life cycle funds or target retirement funds, that could cover a lot of these with an initial investment that one could invest into for a few years and then after building up a balance large enough, then it may make sense to switch to having more control. |
Issuing bonds at discount - computing effective interest rate | In this case the market interest rate is the discount rate that sets equal the market price (current value) of the bond to its present value. To find the market interest rate which is also referred to as promised yield YTM you would have solve for the interest rate in the bond price formula A market price of bond is the sum of discounted coupons and the terminal value of the bond. Most spreadsheet programs and calculators have a RATE function that makes possible finding this market interest rate. First see this for finding a coupon paying bond price The coupon payments are discounted so is the par value of the bond and sum of such discounts is the market price of the bond. The TVM functions in Excel and calculators make this possible using the following equation Let us take your data, 9% $100,000 coupon with 5 years remaining to maturity with market interest rate of 10%. Bonds issued in the US mostly pay two coupons per year. Thus we are finding the present value of 10 coupons each worth $4500 and par value of $100,000. The semi-annual market interest rate is 10%/2 or 5% The negative sign indicate money going out of hand Now solving for RATE is only possible using numerical methods and the RATE function is programmed using Newton-Raphson method to find one of the roots of the bond price equation. This rate will be the periodic rate in this case semi-annual rate which you have to multiply by 2 to get the annual rate. Do remember there is a difference between annual nominal rate and an annualized effective rate. To find the market interest rate If you don't have Excel or a financial calculator then you may opt to use my version of these financial functions in this JavaScript library tadJS |
What is a good open source Windows finance software | You really shouldn't be using class tracking to keep business and personal operations separate. I'm pretty sure the IRS and courts frown upon this, and you're probably risking losing any limited liability you may have. And for keeping separate parts of the business separate, like say stores in a franchise, one approach would be subaccounts. Messy, I'm sure. |
What is the best way to help my dad consolidate his credit card debt at a lower rate? | Are you doing the right thing? Yes, paying back some of the expense of college is a great way to show your gratitude. Could your sister also pitch in a little to help pay the debt down? Will you get approved for a $30,000 unsecured loan? You don't mention your credit rating but that will have an effect obviously. You might consider visiting a credit union with your father and co-signing a loan since it is his debt that you are assuming. You might still want to write a loan for your dad to sign even if he isn't co-signed on a loan. This could protect you in case of his death if there are other assets to divide. If you are not approved for a loan, you could also simply join your dad in paying down the highest-rate cards first and have a loan agreement for him to pay back that money if/when it is possible. You've mentioned that you have no collateral. There aren't many options for loans with no collateral. Your dad's bank or a credit union might consider a debt consolidation loan with you as a co-signer. That's why I mentioned going to a credit union. Talking to a loan officer at a local financial institution will make it easier to get approved. If they see that you are taking responsible steps to pay off the debt, that reduces your credit risk. If you do get a debt consolidation loan, they will probably ask your dad to close some credit card accounts. |
Does “income” include capital gains? | For example, if I have an income of $100,000 from my job and I also realize a $350,000 in long-term capital gains from a stock sale, will I pay 20% on the $350K or 15%? You'll pay 20% assuming filing single and no major offsets to taxable income. Capital gains count towards your income for determining tax bracket. They're on line 13 of the 1040 which is in the "income" section and aren't adjusted out/excluded from your taxable income, but since they are taxed at a different rate make sure to follow the instructions for line 44 when calculating your tax due. |
Should I lease, buy new, or buy used? | I think you're dancing with the line here, this question is hard to back up without opinions and could really be three different questions. I'm going to push aside the part about quality and reliability, that could be an emotional subject. So from a price standpoint, there's virtually no disagrement that it makes financial sense to buy a used car instead of a new car. The majority of new cars lose the majority of their resale value within the first year or two. If you purchase said car after someone else has used it for the first two years, you just avoided all of that depreciation yourself, and you're still going to be purchasing a perfectly reliable car as long as you are diligent in the buying process. |
How can this stock have an intra-day range of more than 90% on 24Aug2015? | EDIT: It was System Disruption or Malfunctions August 24, 2015 2:12 PM EDT Pursuant to Rule 11890(b) NASDAQ, on its own motion, in conjunction with BATS, and FINRA has determined to cancel all trades in security Blackrock Capital Investment. (Nasdaq: BKCC) at or below $5.86 that were executed in NASDAQ between 09:38:00 and 09:46:00 ET. This decision cannot be appealed. NASDAQ will be canceling trades on the participants behalf. A person on Reddit claimed that he was the buyer. He used Robinhood, a $0 commission broker and start-up. The canceled trades are reflected on CTA/UTP and the current charts will differ from the one posted below. It is an undesired effect of the 5-minute Trading Halt. It is not "within 1 hour of opening, BKCC traded between $0.97 and $9.5". Those trades only occurred for a few seconds on two occasions. One possible reason is that when the trading halt ended, there was a lot of Market Order to sell accumulated. Refer to the following chart, where each candle represents a 10 second period. As you can see, the low prices did not "sustain" for hours. And the published halts. |
Real estate loans for repairs | If you intend to flip this property, you might consider either a construction loan or private money. A construction loan allows you to borrow from a bank against the value of the finished house a little at a time. As each stage of the construction/repairs are completed, the bank releases more funds to you. Interest accrues during the construction, but no payments need to be made until the construction/repairs are complete. Private money works in a similar manner, but the full amount can be released to you at once so you can get the repairs done more quickly. The interest rate will be higher. If you are flipping, then this higher interest rate is simply a cost of doing business. Since it's a private loan, you ca structure the deal any way you want. Perhaps accruing interest until the property is sold and then paying it back as a single balloon payment on sale of the property. To find private money, contact a mortgage broker and tell them what you have in mind. If you're intending to keep the property for yourself, private money is still an option. Once the repairs are complete, have the bank reassess the property value and refinance based on the new amount. Pay back the private loan with equity pulled from the house and all the shiny new repairs. |
Is a stock's trade size history publicly available? | You can buy the data and process it on your own. http://www.nyxdata.com/Data-Products/Daily-TAQ |
Does dividend on 401K have any effect on gains | Adjusting for a market change from day to day, the dividend should have no impact on you. Your X shares time $Y should be nearly identical right after that dividend hits the account. And within the 401(k) or IRA for that matter, the accounting doesn't matter most of the time. Outside a retirement account, you need to pay tax on the dividend, and add the newly purchased shares' cost to your cost basis. |
What is the lifespan of a series of currency? | In general, currency has no expiration date. Specifically, in Canada, the Bank of Canada has been issuing banknotes since 1935, and these are still considered legal tender, even though they don't look much like the modern banknotes. Before that, Canadian chartered banks issued currency, and these also still have value. However, there are a few things to note. First of all, with currency of that age, it often has more value as a collector's item than the face value. So spending it at a store would be foolish. Second, store clerks are not experts in old currency, and will not accept a bill that they do not recognize. If you want the face value of your old currency, you may need to exchange it for modern currency at a bank. Having said all that, there are certainly cases where currency does expire. Generally this happens when a country changes currency. For example, when the Euro was introduced, the old currencies were discontinued. After a window of exchange, the old currency in many cases lost its value. So if you have some old French Franc notes, for example, they can no longer be exchanged for Euros. These types of events cannot be predicted in the future, of course, so it is impossible to say when, if ever, the Canadian currency you have today will lose its spending value in Canada. |
Who gets the periodic payments when an equity is sold on an repurchase agreement? | The Wikipedia page for Repurchase Agreement has two relevant pointers on this topic: The legal title for any securities used in a repo actually pass from seller to buyer during the term of the agreement. In basic terms this means that if one sells a bond on repo with a promise to buy it back, then the ownership actually transfers to the buyer for that period of time. If a coupon is paid during this time period, it can either go to the buyer or the seller. Usually, the coupon payment goes to the initial owner of the security pre-repo (our "seller"). But sometimes the repurchase agreement will specify otherwise. So, again in basic terms, usually the repo seller/initial security owner receives any payments made during the term of the repurchase agreement. (Both points are in the first paragraph of the section "Structure and Terminology".) |
What extra information might be obtained from the next highest bids in an order book? | The Level 2 data is simply showing the depth of the market. If I am trading shares with my broker I have the option of viewing only the top 10 bid/ask prices in the depth or all of the data (which sometimes can be a very long list). With another broker I get the top ten bid and ask prices and how many orders are available for each price level, or I have the option of listing each order separately for each price level (in order of when the order was placed). I get the same kind of data if trading options. I do not know about futures because I don't trade them. Simply this data may be important to a trader because it may give an indication of whether there are more buyers or sellers in the market, which in turn may (but not always) give an indication of which way the market may be moving. As an example the price depth below shows WBC before market open with sellers outweighing the buyers in both numbers and volume. This gives an indication that prices may drop when the market opens. Of course there could be some good news coming out prior to market open or just after, causing a flood of buyers into the market and sellers to cancel their orders. This would change everything around with more buyers than sellers and indicate that prices may now be going up. The market depth is an important aspect to look at before putting an order in, as it can give an indication of which way the market is moving, especially in a very liquid security or market. |
First time homeowner and getting a mortgage? | Make sure you shop around and ask a lot of places for a good faith estimate. Last I knew, the good faith document is the same everywhere and long form that makes it easy enough to compare the hard numbers from place to place. I have gotten several estimates for various scenarios and I have had them hand written and printed. (I discounted the hand written ones because that broker seemed pretty disorganized in general) Learn the terms online, and start comparing. Use the good faiths as a negotiation tool to get lower rates or lower costs from other brokers. See how accurate the person is at listening to you and filling out the paperwork. See how responsive they are to you when you call with questions and want some changes. Check with at least four places. The more places you shop, the better idea you will have of what fees are high and what interest rates are low. I might pay a higher fee to get a lower interest rate, so there are lots of trade offs to consider. |
Should I remodel or buy a bigger house? | I am quite sure you can set up an office in your basement for a lot less than $15,000. Don't build any walls, install any flooring, or upgrade the ceiling. Just install more lights and plugs. Set up your desks, bookshelves and what not in whatever corner is furthest from noises like the laundry room or the furnace. The kids and the nanny get the main floor - just let the whole living room be a giant playroom, for example. This gives you the separation you need to work at home, but you can hear if something really needs your attention. When the kids go off to school, you can refinish the basement into a playroom for kids who don't always need supervision, using the money you are no longer spending on the nanny to install carpeting, real walls, a drop ceiling and so on. Your office stuff can move up to the main floor or to a spare room upstairs if you had one but it wasn't usable during the baby years when upstairs generally has to be quiet. As the kids get older the basement can get tailored to what preteens and teens like. This is essentially what we did, and our square footages and child counts match yours almost precisely. We did eventually convert our garage to carpeted and finished space, and it spent time as an office with staff coming in each day, then some time as a teen playroom (think video games and loud music) after the business rented office space outside the house, but if you don't intend to hire staff for your business you don't need to do this part. We did the majority of the basement wiring ourselves and got an electrician to hook it into the panel and check our work. The budget would probably be less than 10% of the guess from your real estate agent. |
Multi-Account Budgeting Tools/Accounts/Services | Have you looked at mint? Their budgeting feature can track spending against your budget categories across your checking and credit card accounts. Not the same as the envelope system -- so if you need the built-in limitation that this provides, it may not work for you. But it is a low-effort, automatic system that does the tracking for you if you have your spending mostly under control. |
Why does shorting a call option have potential for unlimited loss? | You are likely making an assumption that the "Short call" part of the article you refer to isn't making: that you own the underlying stock in the first place. Rather, selling short a call has two primary cases with considerably different risk profiles. When you short-sell (or "write") a call option on a stock, your position can either be: covered, which means you already own the underlying stock and will simply need to deliver it if you are assigned, or else uncovered (or naked), which means you do not own the underlying stock. Writing a covered call can be a relatively conservative trade, while writing a naked call (if your broker were to permit such) can be extremely risky. Consider: With an uncovered position, should you be assigned you will be required to buy the underlying at the prevailing price. This is a very real cost — certainly not an opportunity cost. Look a little further in the article you linked, to the Option strategies section, and you will see the covered call mentioned there. That's the kind of trade you describe in your example. |
Home Renovations are expensive.. Should I only pay cash for them? | I have a different take on this. If it would only take 3 months to save up to pay for it, line up the work now. Shop with your spouse to find the exact floor you want. By the time you hire the store to do the install, a month will have gone by, by the time the charge bill comes in, you'll be able to pay 2/3 off, and pay in full next month. Note: I see this was asked in December. For those carrying no debt at all, I'm not adverse to a purchase of this type getting partially floated on a credit card for a month or two. Not a pair of shoes, or golf clubs, but a kitchen floor? The $10 interest is worth it to not walk over a ripped up floor in your home. |
Giving kids annual tax free gift of $28,000 | If the child is a dependent the question is moot. It is accepted that the parent will pay for some, most, or all of the tuition. There is no tax issue for a current student. The payment of tuition helps them qualify as a dependent. There is no need to transfer the money to the child's account; it can be sent directly to the school. If the money is to be used in the future there are accounts such as 529s pre-paid accounts, and Coverdell savings accounts that can be used. All have pluses and minuses, all can impact taxes, and all can impact financial aid calculations. |
The Benefits/Disadvantages of using a credit card | There are a couple of things to consider. First, in order to avoid interest charges you generally just need to pay the statement balance before the statement due date. This is your grace period. You don't need to monitor your activity every day and send immediate payments. If you're being really tight with money, you can actually make a little profit by letting your cash sit in an interest bearing account before you pay your credit card before the due date. Second, credit card interest rates are pretty terrible, and prescribed minimum payments are comically low. If you buy furniture using your credit card you will pay some interest, be sure to pay way more than the minimum payment. You should avoid carrying a balance on a credit card. At 20% interest the approximate monthly interest charge on $1,000 is $16.67. Third, if you carry a balance on your credit card you lose the interest grace period (the first point above) on new charges. If you buy your couch, and carry the balance, when you buy a soda at 7-11, the soda begins to accrue interest immediately. If you decide to carry a balance on a credit card, stop using that card for new charges. It generally takes two consecutive billing period full balance payments to restore the grace period. Fourth, to answer your question, using a credit card to carry a balance has no impact on your score. Make your payments on time, don't exceed your limits, keep your utilization reasonable. The credit agencies have no idea if you're carrying a balance or how much interest you're paying. To Appease the people who think point four needs more words: Your credit report contains your limit, your reported balance (generally your statement balance), and approximate minimum payment. There is no indication related to whether or not the balance contains a carried balance and/or accrued interest. The mere fact of carrying a balance will not impact your credit score because the credit reporting bureaus don't know you're carrying a balance. Paying interest doesn't help or hurt your score. Obviously if your carried balance and interest charges push your utilization up that will impact your score because of the increased utilization. Make your payments on time, don't exceed your limits, keep your utilization reasonable and your score will be fine. |
Is a car loan bad debt? | A car loan might be considered "good" debt, if the following circumstances apply: If, on the other hand, you only qualify for a subprime loan, or you're borrowing to buy a needlessly expensive car, that's probably not a good idea. |
Received a call to collect on a 17 year old, charged off debt. What do I do? | If they are a debt collector, they must follow the requirements of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. In particular, they must provide you with verification of the debt at your written request. If they won't give you a way to do this, they are in violation of the law, and you should contact proper authorities. If they are not a debt collection agency, it does sound like a scam, in which case you should also contact the appropriate law enforcement agency. |
How much percent of my salary should I use to invest in company stock? | Does your company offer a 401k? or similar pre-tax retirement plans? Is your company a publicly traded company? These questions are important, basically the key to any of your investments should be diversification. This means buying more than one kind of investment, amongst stock(s), bonds, real estate or more. The answer to "How Much" of your salary should go to company stock, is subjective. I personally would contribute the max toward a retirement plan or even post-tax savings, which would be invested in a variety of public companies. Hope that helps. |
How come we can find stocks with a Price-to-Book ratio less than 1? | The VDE fund is an energy fund so this is a function of recent price changes in oil (and gas, coal, &c). For example. Lets say last year when oil was $100 per barrel a bunch of companies saw a good return and put $ 100 million into a bunch of leases, boreholes, pumps, &c to return $10 million per year, and the market says yeah, they're all together worth 100M. Now oil is less, maybe $40 per the link. These exploration companies don't have a lot of labor or variable costs; they are operationally profitable, may have "use it or lose it" leases or minimum pumping requirements for contract or engineering reasons. Lets say the cash flow is 7M so the market values them at 70M. They still have about 100M book value so here we are at .7 and I believe the scenario in the question. Nobody would invest in new capacity at this oil price. The well equipment could be repurposed but not the borehole or lease, so the best use is to continue pumping and value it on cash flow. If an individual well runs negative long enough and goes bust, either a different pumper will pay the minimum price that gives profitable cash flow, or that borehole that cost millions to dig is shut off and rendered valueless. The CNBC article says some explorers are playing games with debt to maintain yield, so there is that too. In the ETF, your bet is that the market is wrong and oil will go up, increasing future cash flows (or you like the current yield, taking on the risk that some of these oil explorers could go bust). |
Can I profit from anticipating a drop in value? | Purchasing an option to sell the stock is probably the safest bet. This gives you reasonable leverage, and your risk is limited to the cost of the option. Say the stock currently sells for $100 per share. You think it will drop to $80 per share in the next two weeks and the market thinks the price will be stable. Now, consider an option to sell one share of that stock for $95 any time within the next two weeks. The market would consider that option nearly worthless, since in all likelihood, you would lose out by exercising it (since you could just sell the share on the market for a price expected to be higher than that). You might be able to acquire that option for $5. Now, say you're right and within two weeks, the price drops to $80. Now you can purchase a share for $80, exercise the option to sell it for $95, and pocket $15. That would make you a $10 profit on a $5 investment. If you're wrong, you just let the option lapse and are out $5. No problem. In reality, you would buy a number of such options. And you wouldn't actually buy a share and exercise the option, you would just sell the option back to its issuer for $15. |
Record retention requirements for individuals in the U.S.? | Indeed the IRS publication references the 3-6 year time span. And no limit for fraud. But. I get a notice that some stock I owned 10 years ago has a settlement pending, and the records of this stock purchase and sale would potentially get me back some money. I get my Social Security statement (the one they stopped sending, but this was before then) and I see the 1995 income shows zero. Both of these were easily resolved with my returns going all the way back, and my brokerage statement as well. For the brokerage, I recently started downloading all statements as PDFs, and storing a copy away from home. Less concerned about the bank statements as I've never had an issue where I'd need them. |
One of my stocks dropped 40% in 2 days, how should I mentally approach this? | Don't throw good money after bad. If you bought on the peak of an event like news/earnings hoping for more and ignored its value than you might be doomed. Determine the stocks value and see it as a buying opportunity if it's still sweet. If not buy more carefully. Those kinds of moves in that range you must have been involved in micro-small caps like biotechs. Thats where money goes to talk to itself and chew on its arm. You win big by finding an alien chip under your skin to reverse engineer or far more likely just wind up eating yourself. If your not holding inside info or at the higher levels of a pyramid for a pump/dump you really shouldn't let your greed take you there. I can expect and stomach w/o worry being wrong at my buy time as much as 10-15% and live with it for a year or more because I see I'm buying a quarter for a dime and will continue to buy into it without staking everything though). I bought in heavy when netflix (prior to split) was $50 or so hoping for a quick bounce and it sunk to like 20 something. No I didn't buy more, I felt like I just got my own .com bubble experience. I stopped looking at it,helpless to do anything other than eat a huge loss I adopted an out of sight out of mind thinking. I no longer wished to be in it, I felt like an ass for getting myself into it, it did NOT look good at the time and I risked a huge amount of capital for what I felt wrongly was a nice quick trade to make some thousands off. Checked it one day, must have wanted to hurt myself, and it was near $300 a share. My extreme loss had turned into something wonderful. A big tax bomb. Netflix eventually split and rose even more meteorically. I held on and only exited a while back and my worst mistake became my best success. Yet still, you trade like that, on unsound things, don't rely on getting the winning ticket because they are few and all others are losers. If your in for a penny you need to be in for the pound and help yourself immensely by sticking to sound stocks and currencies. You trade on news you may find yourself in Zimbabwe dollars with Enron stock. Bad footing, no matter the news or excitement is bad footing. |
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