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How do you determine the dividend payout date for Mutual Funds? | Mutual funds generally make distributions once a year in December with the exact date (and the estimated amount) usually being made public in late October or November. Generally, the estimated amounts can get updated as time goes on, but the date does not change. Some funds (money market, bond funds, GNMA funds etc) di... |
Do “Instant Approved” credit card inquires appear on credit report? | You'll see a hard inquiry for both, but not necessarily on all three agencies (Experian, TransUnion and Equifax). I have both the Amazon Chase and Amazon Store Card. Amazon Chase, is obviously through Chase bank. Amazon Store Card is through GE Money. |
Where to Park Proceeds from House Sale for 2-5 Years? | Individual municipal bonds (not a fund) that will come to term in 2017 from your state. This satisfies 1, 2, 4 and 5. It doesn't satisfy #2. These are not insured, and there can be details in each state about whether the municipal bonds are backed up by state general revenues in the event of a municipal bankruptcy;... |
Personal “Profit & Loss Statement” required for mortgage? | The bank is asking for a P & L because as a contractor you are in essence running your own business. Its kind of a technicality, all you need to do is look at any expenses that you paid out of pocket while working there that were job or "business" related. Write a list of those expenses such as "Gas", "Materials", "Le... |
Can you explain the mechanism of money inflation? | The mechanism of supply and demand is imperfect. Producers don't know exactly how many purchasers/consumers for a good there are. Some goods, by their nature, are in short supply, and some are plentiful. The process of price discovery is one where (in a nominally free market) producers and purchasers make offers and ... |
Advice on preserving wealth in a volatile economic/political country | US Treasury securities are the safest investment. You can buy short term by buying T-Bills. You buy T-bills at a discount to face. For example, to buy a four week T-bill the treasury will take $99.98 out of your account. In four weeks the treasury will deposit $100 into your account. The $0.02 difference is your Intre... |
Does the stock market create any sort of value? | With regards to "the stock market," there are actually two markets involved here: PRIMARY MARKET Value is created in the primary market where capital is exchanged for a residual interest in an opportunity. As a theoretical example, if a person operating solo (or with a small team) were to discover or create a breakthr... |
Mortgage vs. Cash for U.S. home buy now | There are a number of reasons I'm in agreement with "A house that is worth $300,000, or $50,000 of equity in a house and $225,000 in the bank." So, the update to the first comment should be "A paid off house worth $300K, or a house with $150K equity and $275K in the retirement account." Edit - On reflection, an inter... |
Finding stocks following performance of certain investor, like BRK.B for Warren Buffet | Remember that unless you participate in the actual fund that these individuals offer to the public, you will not get the same returns they will. If you instead do something like, look at what Warren Buffet's fund bought/sold yesterday (or even 60 minutes ago), and buy/sell it yourself, you will face 2 obstacles to achi... |
What should I be aware of as a young investor? | Consistently beating the market by picking stocks is hard. Professional fund managers can't really do it -- and they get paid big bucks to try! You can spend a lot of time researching and picking stocks, and you may find that you do a decent job. I found that, given the amount of money I had invested, even if I beat th... |
Distribution rules LLC vs. S-Corp | LLC is not a federal tax designation. It's a state-level organization. Your LLC can elect to be treated as a partnership, a disregarded entity (i.e., just report the taxes in your individual income tax), or as an S-Corp for federal tax purposes. If you have elected S-Corp, I expect that all the S-Corp rules will apply... |
Creating a Limited company while still fully employed | I was just thinking ahead, can I apply for Limited company now, while fully time employed, and not take any business until I get a contract. Yes. You can open as many companies you want(assuming you are sane). There is no legal provisions regarding who can open a company. What happens if I create a company and it has... |
How to donate to charity that will make a difference? | In the. US, i'd suggest hitting the Charity Navigator website for evaluation of how efficiently various charities will use your money. At this point I won't donate money to anything that gets less than three stars unless I know the organization very well indeed -- and I've been progressively swapping out 3-star groups ... |
Renting or Buying an House | You may be in a situation where buying is preferred, especially because you can enter the market in a strong position - with a 20% down payment. If you have the financial ability to assume the risk of owning, you may be better off. I would consider two things. Renting is purchasing a service. You are buying the flex... |
Should I buy a home or rent in my situation? | You said 2 things that made me think you are one of the rare young couples barely making it but should attempt to buy rather than rent anyway.... Around my area, renting a place is about equivalent to just paying a monthly mortgage of a 30yr 3.5% APR of a home priced at around $250,500. and... Our ideal price range wo... |
Why are earning credit card rewards often tied to groceries and gas? | Every reward program has to have a funding source. If the card gives you x percent back on all purchases. That means that their business is structured to entice you to pump more transactions through the system. Either their other costs are lower, or the increased business allows them to make more money off of late fees... |
What US tax laws apply to a 13 year old game developer? | After doing a little research, I was actually surprised to find many internet resources on this topic (including sites from Intuit) gave entirely incorrect information. The information that follows is quoted directly from IRS Publication 929, rules for dependents First, I will assume that you are not living on your own... |
What is the interest rate online brokerages paying out tied to? | The prime rate is the interest rate banks use amongst themselves to lend money to each other only. It is used as the basis (sometimes) for what interest rate banks charge you. The prime rate is based loosely on the Fed rate. There is a committee that meets regularly to set this and other industry interest rates. http... |
Can you explain “time value of money” and “compound interest” and provide examples of each? | I will just explain the time value of money in general, descriptive terms and save the math for someone else. Imagine: You have half a million dollars. I'd like to borrow it all from you. I'll pay it all back, every penny, but no more. And I'll pay it back in about, oh, thirty years or so. (Imagine also that you can be... |
Stock exchanges open on Saturday | According to Wikipedia as well as this stock market trading-hours website, the Tehran Stock Exchange is open Saturday through Wednesday. |
Why are bank transactions not instant? | It is a rather complex system, but here is a rough summary. Interbank tranfers ultimately require a transfer of reserves at the central bank. As a concrete example, the bank of england system is the rtgs. Only the clearing banks and similar (e.g. bacs) have access to rtgs. You can send a chaps payment fairly quickly, b... |
What type of pension should I get? | If your new employer has a Final Salary or defined benefit type pension scheme, join it. DB plans are attractive because they are often less a risk for the employee. If your employer has a defined contribution scheme and contributes to it, join it and contribute at least up to the maximum amount that they will match – ... |
why would someone buy or sell just a few shares in stocks | I buy or sell a few shares whenever I have a small amount of money to transfer into out of my mutual funds. Since I'm not paying transaction fees, there is no reason not to, when that is what makes sense. If you are paying a fee for each transaction, of course it makes sense to try to wait until you have a larger amoun... |
Does a company's stock price give any indication to or affect their revenue? | Most of stock trading occurs on what is called a secondary market. For example, Microsoft is traded on NASDAQ, which is a stock exchange. An analogy that can be made is that of selling a used car. When you sell a used car to a third person, the maker of your car is unaffected by this transaction and the same goes for s... |
Are Forex traders forced to use leverage? | I recommended Currency Trading For Dummies, in my answer to Layman's guide to getting started with Forex (foreign exchange trading)? The nature of the contract size points toward only putting up a fraction of the value. The Euro FX contract size is 125,000 Euro. If you wish to send the broker US$125K+ to trade this co... |
Higher returns from international markets? | Foreign stocks tend to be more volatile -- higher risk trades off against higher return potential, always. The better reason for having some money in that area is that, as with bonds, it moves out-of-sync with the US markets and once you pick your preferred distribution, maintaining that balance semi-automatically take... |
Are binary options really part of trading? | If I really understood it, you bet that a quote/currency/stock market/anything will rise or fall within a period of time. So, what is the relationship with trading ? I see no trading at all since I don't buy or sell quotes. You are not betting as in "betting on the outcome of an horse race" where the money of the pa... |
Are stocks suitable for mid term money storage? | You have several options depending on your tolerance for risk. Certainly open an investment account with your bank or through any of the popular discount brokerage services. Then take however much money you're willing to invest and start earning some returns! You can split up the money into various investments, too. A ... |
How to avoid tax when taking a windfall in small chunks? | I agree with the other posters that you will need to seek the advice of a tax attorney specializing in corporate taxation. Here is an idea to investigate: Could you sell the company, and thereby turn the profits that are taxed as ordinary income into a long-term capital gain (taxed at 15%, plus state income tax, if any... |
Which Benjamin Graham book should I read first: Security Analysis or Intelligent Investor? | I would recommend reading Intelligent Investor first. It was written slightly more recently (1949) than Security Analysis (1934). More important is that a recently revised edition* of Intelligent Investor was published. The preface and appendix were written by Warren Buffett. Intelligent Investor is more practical as a... |
Approximate IT company valuation (to proximate stock options value) | You also need to remember that stock options usually become valueless if not exercised while an employee of the company. So if there is any chance that you will leave the company before an IPO, the effective value of the stock options is zero. That is the safest and least risky valuation of the stock options. With ... |
Are there capital gains taxes or dividend taxes if I invest in the U.S. stock market from outside of the country? | I believe that tax will be withheld (at 30%?) on dividends paid to non-residents. You can claim it back if your country has a tax treaty with the USA, but you will need to file. You probably also need to file a W-series withholding form (eg a W9-BEN). Interesting question. I would like to hear a more definitive answ... |
Yahoo Finance not showing detailed information for foreign stocks | The cause of incomplete/inaccurate financial data's appearing on free sites is that it is both complicated and expensive to obtain and parse these data. Even within a single country, different pieces of financial data are handled by different authorities. In the US, for example, there is one generally recognized autho... |
What does the term “match the market” mean? | If your returns match the market, that means their rate of return is the same as the market in question. If your returns beat the market, that means their rate of return is higher. There's no one 'market', mind you. I invest in mutual funds that track the S&P500 (which is, very roughly, the U.S. stock market), that tra... |
Keeping our current home (second property) as a rental. Will it interfere with purchasing a third home? | There's a couple issues to consider: When you sell your primary home, the IRS gives you a $500k exemption (married, filing jointly) on gain. If you decide not to sell your current house now, and you subsequently fall outside the ownership/use tests, then you may owe taxes on any gains when you sell the house. Rather t... |
Tax me more: Can I pay extra to the government so I don't have to deal with all this paperwork? | Actually, if you don't care about paying a bit more, either hire an accountant and dump the paper on them, or (may be cheaper but a bit more work) spring for tax software. Modern tax programs can often download most of your data directly. If you don't care about claiming deductions you can skip a lot of the rest. I'm p... |
Trustable, official sources on holdings, purchases and sales by finance academics/professionals? | You won't be able to know the trading activity in a timely, actionable method in most cases. The exception is if the investor (individual, fund, holding company, non-profit foundation, etc) is a large shareholder of a specific company and therefore required to file their intentions to buy or sell with the SEC. The thre... |
Should I make more conservative investments in my company 401(K) if I'm going to leave the job in a couple of years? | Your retirement PLAN is a lifelong plan and shouldn't be tied to your employer status. Max out your 401(k) contribution to the maximum that your employer matches (that's a 100% ROI!) and as much as you can afford. When you leave the work force rollover your 401(k) to an IRA account (e.g.: you can create an IRA account ... |
Will a stop order get triggered if the floor is hit and trading is halted? | quantycuenta is right, if a halt is in place, then no trading will occur, simple as that. But in the practice of risk management it is a little different. Want to remind you that you are assuming that trading is halted immediately upon the drop in price. That doesn't always happen, so if there is any time between the a... |
using credit card and paying back quickly | Yes, however you would have to wait for the $900 to actually be available in your credit card account if making the transaction from an account from another bank or provider, as it usually might take one to two business days for this to happen. If both the chequing account and credit card account are with the same ban... |
When is it better to rent and when is better buy in a certain property market? | The Motley Fool suggested a good rule of thumb in one of their articles that may be able to help you determine if the market is overheating. Determine the entire cost of rent for a piece of property. So if rent is $300/month, total cost over a year is $3600. Compare that to the cost of buying a similar piece of propert... |
Are low commission trading sites safe? | Generally, yes. Rather than ask, "why are these guys so cheap?", you should be asking why the big names are so expensive. :) Marketing spend plays a big role there. Getting babies to shill for your company during the super bowl requires a heck of a lot of commissions. Due to the difficulties involved in setting up a b... |
Does technical analysis work on small stock exchanges? | Assuming that you accept the premise that technical analysis is legitimate and useful, it makes sense that it might not work for a small market, or at the very least that it wouldn't be the same for a small market as it is for a large market. The reason for this is that a large stock market like the U.S. stock market ... |
Where can one find intraday prices for mutual funds? | This idea does not make sense for most mutual funds. The net asset value, or NAV, is the current market value of a fund's holdings, minus the fund's liabilities, that is usually expressed as a per-share amount. For most funds, the NAV is determined daily, after the close of trading on some specified financial exchange,... |
Dad paid cash for house and we want to put it in my name | If your parents are not on the deed then I am not sure how it could be their house. It seems like the sale was done unofficially. If your parents or aunt pass away this could be a real mess. Make this official ASAP. It might be possible for your aunt to gift you the house. This may have tax implication but the article ... |
Am I understanding buying options on stock correctly | Options have legitimate uses as a way of hedging a bet, but in the hands of anyone but an expert they're gambling, not investing. They are EXTREMELY volatile compared to normal stocks, and are one of the best ways to lose your shirt in the stock market yet invented. How options actually work is that you're negotiating ... |
What would the broker do about this naked call option? | The broker would give you a margin call and get you to deposit more funds into your account. They wouldn't wait for the stock price to reach $30, but would take this action much earlier. More over it is very unrealistic for any stock to go up 275% over a few hours, and if the stock was this volatile the broker would be... |
Should I replace bonds in a passive investment strategy | Bonds still definitely have a place in many passive portfolios. While it is true that interest rates have been unusually low, yields on reasonable passive bond exposures are still around 2-4%. This is significantly better than both recent past inflation and expected inflation both of which are near zero. This is re... |
Is it a good idea to teach children that work is linearly related to income? | As a parent I think you absolutely have to teach them that income is related to work because (for most people at least) it's a more fundamental principle than budgeting, investments, interest, etc. Once they've learned that the primary source of income is work, then you can start teaching them what to do with it, i.e. ... |
Found Mistake on 2013 1120S Form | I don't know if it's common or necessary to include capital stock as a liability? Yes, if you look at the title of the nonasset part of the balance sheet it actually is titled "Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity". Your capital stock is a component of Equity. This sounds like it was reported in a reasonable manner. ... |
ESPP: Share vs Payroll withholding | Note that you're asking about withholding, not about taxing. Withholding doesn't mean this is exactly the tax you'll pay: it means they're withholding a certain amount to make sure you pay taxes on it, but the tax bill at the end of the year is the same regardless of how you choose to do the withholding. Your tax bil... |
New or Used Car Advice for Recent College Grad | 17.5 thousand miles/year is pretty high mileage. You could find an Accord or Civic of comparable age with much lower mileage than that, and it wouldn't be a stretch for someone (even with your limited credit history) to get a loan on an old car like that. You might try to have your parents cosign on a loan depending ... |
Is it legal if I'm managing my family's entire wealth? | I agree that this is a "bad idea" but I want to add in one more reason. Let's pretend your family and you are ok with all the tax ramifications and legal issues. This is still a horrid idea. You have to deal with the What Ifs. What if you get in an accident with your car, and then a law suit comes around and they deci... |
What is the best approach to save money for College for three kids? | In your situation you will be using your normal savings to offset additional funding from student loans or similar financing. Also, sending your children to or moving to a jurisdiction that has lower education costs but ample opportunity should also be in your cards. That can be another state, or another country. |
Do I need to file a tax return as a student? | In the U.S., Form 1040 is known as the tax return. This is the form that is filed annually to calculate your tax due for the year, and you either claim a refund if you have overpaid your taxes or send in a payment if you have underpaid. The form is generally due on April 15 each year, but this year the due date is Ap... |
What to ask Warren Buffet at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting? | I would be curious how he balanced having two female life partners at once. Not sure I would ask that at the shareholder meeting though ;) |
In Canada, how much money can I gift a friend or family member without them being taxed on it? | Canada doesn't seem to have a gift tax. http://www.taxtips.ca/personaltax/giftsandinheritances.htm |
Can travel expenses be deducted from Form 1040A if they were used to gather material for a book? | Hobby expenses are not tax deductible. Business expenses are, but only if it's a bona fide business. First they look at profitability: if you reported a net profit (i.e. paid taxes) in your first 3 years, they will believe you rant on Youtube for a living. Remember, by the time they get around to auditing you, you'... |
How to receive packages pseudonymously? | I've done this before for startup companies where I didn't want the mailing address to really obviously be my apartment or home address. Just for appearances. What you should be Googling are terms like "private mailbox center." If I recall correctly, I used to do this with Mail Boxes Etc before they were bought by UPS.... |
Why index funds have different prices? | Funds which track the same index may have different nominal prices. From an investors point of view, this is not important. What is important is that when the underlying index moves by a given percentage, the price of the tracking funds also move by an equal percentage. In other words, if the S&P500 rises by 5%, the... |
Risk and reward of a synthetic option position | You sold a call, and have a risk if the stock rises. You bought a put and gain when the stock drops. You, sir, have a synthetic short position. It's Case 3 from your linked example: Suppose you own Long Stock and the company is going to report earnings but you’re going on vacation. How can you hedge your position w... |
Can paying down a mortgage be considered an “investment”? | If your mortgage interest is tax-deductible, it's generally a bad idea to pay down the principal on the mortgage because you'd be losing the tax deduction. You could instead invest it in a tax-free municipal bond fund, especially if you're in a high tax bracket (including state and local marginal tax rates). For exampl... |
If a mutual fund did really well last year, then statistically speaking, is it likely going to do bad this year? | From a mathematical point of view the stats do not change depending on past performance. Just because a fund is lucky one year doesn't mean that it will be unlucky the next. Consider tossing a coin, the chance of heads is 50%. If you have just thrown 3 heads, the chance of heads is still 50%. It doesn't go down. If yo... |
What is the best way to stay risk neutral when buying a house with a mortgage? | How can one offset exposure created by real-estate purchase? provides a similar discussion. Even if such a product were available in the precise increments you need, the pricing would make it a loser for you. "There's no free lunch" in this case, and the cost to insure against the downside would be disproportional to t... |
What is the smartest thing to do in case of a stock market crash | I suggest to just invest in index funds, these are low risk with high reward stocks that can survive even the worst of stock crashes but are still extremely profitable when the stock market is booming |
Is there a standard for naming stocks exchanges? Is there a list of abbreviated names? | Wikipedia is your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_exchanges |
How can I lookup the business associated with a FEIN? | If it is Texas company, you can try doing a taxable entity search on the Texas Comptroller website. |
Anticipating being offered stock options in a privately held company upon employment. What questions should I ask? | The company doesn't necessarily have to go public. They can also be worth money if the company is acquired. Also keep in mind that even if the company does eventually go public, your shares can essentially be wiped out by a round of pre-IPO funding that gives the company a low valuation. You could ask: |
Was this a good deal on a mortgage? | That seems a very bad offer, it borders on fraud. In the current US economy, you should be able to get between 3 and 4 % APR (and that number is what you should look at). That means that for $300,000 over 30 years, you'd pay $1,265 to $1,432 per month. If you are able to pay more than that monthly rate, you should go f... |
How to understand a volatility based ETF like VXX | To understand the VXX ETF, you need to understand VIX futures, to understand VIX futures you need to understand VIX, to understand VIX you need to understand options pricing formulas such as the "Black Scholes" formula Those are your prerequisites. Learn at your own pace. Short Answer: When you buy VXX you are buying t... |
Which set of earnings is used to work out the P/E of a stock | This is a note from my broker, CMC Markets, who use Morningstar: Morningstar calculate the P/E Ratio using a weighted average of the most recent earnings and the projected earnings for the next year. This may result in a different P/E Ratio to those based solely on past earnings as reported on some sites and other publ... |
Why does gold have value? | It has semantic value (because we culturally believe gold is valuable). There is a very important point here. Gold and many other coin metals. This "semantic value" is enshrined in law through the special tax status of coin metals. You can buy a kilo of gold and not pay sales tax. You can't buy a kilo of iron or ti... |
Why would you elect to apply a refund to next year's tax bill? | Aside from the fear that you or a loved one will spend it frivolously, I'm hard pressed to come up with another reason. If you'll owe money in the next tax year, you have the rest of the year to adjust your withholdings and/or make quarterly payments. As both my fellow PFers state, you're better off getting your money... |
Could capital gains from a stock sale impact my IRA eligibility? | Yes. Look at form 1040 AGI is line 37, and it comes well after you report your schedule D cap gains. I read this question as meaning you wish to contribute to a traditional IRA pretax. There is no income limit to contribute to an IRA and not take the deduction. |
Why charge gross receipts taxes to the customer? | It sounds like "gross receipt tax" is essentially the same thing most states call "sales tax", which is always handled this way -- prices displayed are pre-tax, tax is added when the final price is calculated. One reason for doing it that way is that most prices result in taxes that involve fractions of pennies, and c... |
Hedging against Exchange Rate Risk | You can calculate your exposure intuitively, by calculating your 'fx sensitivity'. Take your total USD assets, let's assume $50k. Convert to EUR at the current rate, let's assume 1 EUR : 1.1 USD, resulting in 45.5k EUR . If the USD strengthens by 1%, this moves to a rate of ~1.09, resulting in 46k EUR value for the sam... |
Looking into investment bonds for the first time- what do I need to be aware of? | All bonds carry a risk of default, which means that it's possible that you can lose your principal investment in addition to potentially not getting the interest payments that you expect. Bonds (in the US anyway) are graded, so you can manage this risk somewhat by taking higher quality bonds, i.e. in companies or gove... |
What are some ways to mitigate the risks of covered calls? | Two ways to mitigate this risk are to buy a put at a lower premium to the written call, or manage your trade by buying back your call if you see the underlying price going against you - a bit similar to having a stop loss. |
Why does selling and then rebuying stock not lead to free money? | There are a few people that do this for a living. They are called "market makers" or "specialists" in a particular stock. First of all, this requires a lot of capital. You can get burned on a few trades, a process known as "gambler's ruin," but if you have enough capital to weather the storm, you can make money. Second... |
Does a stay at home mom need term life insurance? | Absolutely! Just because a spouse doesn't have a taxable income, doesn't mean they aren't providing real, tangible benefit to the family economy with an important job. As tragic as it is to consider losing your spouse, are you truly in a position to replace everything they do you for you? Knowing what they do for you... |
Mortgage or not? | I often say "don't let the tax tail wag the investing dog." I need to change that phrase a bit to "don't let the tax tail wag the mortgage dog." Getting a tax deduction on a 4% mortgage basically results (assuming you already itemize) in an effective 3% rate mortgage. The best way to avoid tax is save pretax in a 401(k... |
Should a retail trader bother about reading SEC filings | I use 10-K and 10-Qs to understand to read the disclosed risk factors related to a business. Sometimes they are very comical. But when you see that risk factor materializing you can understand how it will effect the company. For example, one microlending company's risk factor stated that if Elizabeth Warren becomes hea... |
A friend wants to use my account for a wire transfer. Is this a scam or is it legitimate? | In many countries it is a legal requirement or in some other way mandatory for the banks to ban the owner(s) of an account to allow a third party to use the account. In some countries if you willing give someone access in this way you get no compensation what so ever and you'll be lucky if they catch the crooks and eve... |
Why is the fractional-reserve banking not a Ponzi scheme? | The fundamental underlying difference between a bank and a Ponzi scheme: When a bank lends money and charges interest, people can do things with that borrowed money which are worth it. (Building factories, starting businesses, or just enjoying the comfort and warmth of a single-family home instead of paying rent). This... |
Should I sell a 2nd home, or rent it out? | Heres what you need to know: This can be prevented by what a previous renter did to us. This is a smart, kind of a jerky way to do it but its VERY SMART, as long as your property is worth it, raise the rent higher. You must have a very nice, clean, everything working, house. You must be willing to have anything fixed. ... |
Will a credit card company close my account if I stop using it? | Please realize that your issuer can close the account for any number of reasons. Inactivity is one, as having a credit line open costs them money and if you never charge anything, the company doesn't get any transaction fees from vendors nor does the company get to charge you any interest. An occasional charge is like... |
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 ... |
Finance options for a new furnace. | You walk into the finance company with a written quote from the supplier for the equipment you want to buy. You then fill out forms and sign a promissory note. The finance company then writes out a check to the supplier for the amount of the quoted equipment. Usually you need to provide at least 3 things: They will req... |
Can I open a personal bank account with an EIN instead of SSN? | According to IRS Publication 1635, Understanding your EIN (PDF), under "What is an EIN?" on page 2: Caution: An EIN is for use in connection with your business activities only. Do not use your EIN in place of your social security number (SSN). As you say your EIN is for your business as a sole proprietor, I would also ... |
What is the 'real' monthly cost of a car? | How can I find out what these 'additional' costs will be when looking to buy a car? If you know what model you're interested in buying you can try out Edmund's True Cost To Own calculator. This will estimate the depreciation, taxes and fees, financing costs, fuel costs, insurance premiums, maintenance, repairs, and any... |
Company revenue increased however stock price did not | It's great that you have gotten the itch to learn about the stock market. There are a couple of fundamentals to understand first though. Company A has strong, growing, net earnings and minimal debt, it's trading for $100 per share. Company B has good revenue but high costs of goods and total liabilities well in exces... |
Is keeping old credit cards and opening new credit cards with high limits and never using an ideal way to boost credit scores? | Problems with your plan (in no particular order) there is a limit, once they have decided that you have enough credit they won't offer any more. If the economy changes (like it did in 2008) they can reduce the limit on existing accounts. If you don't use them, they may decide to close them. Using existing cards will en... |
Is it a good idea to put everything in the S&P500? | At a very high-level, the answer is yes, that's a good idea. For money that you want to invest on the scale of decades, putting money into a broad, market-based fund has historically given the best returns. Something like the Vanguard S&P 500 automatically gives you a diverse portfolio, with super low expenses. As it s... |
When's the best time to sell the stock of a company that is being acquired/sold? | What's your basis? If you have just made a 50% gain, maybe you should cash out a portion and hold the rest. Don't be greedy, but don't pass up an opportunity either. |
Does reading financial statements (quarterly or annual reports) really help investing? | Yes, especially if you are a value investor. The importance and relevance of financial statements depends on the company. IMO, the statements of a troubled "too big to fail" bank like Citibank or Bank of America are meaningless. In other industries, the statements will help you distinguish the best performers -- if you... |
How do I know if refinance is beneficial enough to me? | When evaluating a refinance, you need to figure out the payback time. Refinancing costs money in closing costs. The payback time is the time it takes to recover the closing costs with the amount of money you are saving in interest. For example, if the closing costs are $2,000, your payback time is 2 years if it takes ... |
Why is routing number called ABA/ABN number? | With number of Banks increasing every country at some point in time adopted an Identification code. In US these are called ABA number because they are allocated by American Bankers Association, in UK Sort Codes ... like wise for other countries. See list here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_code In some countries the... |
Is it a good idea to rebalance without withdrawing money? | Yes, rebalancing with new money avoids capital gains taxes and loads (although if you're financially literate enough to be thinking about rebalancing techniques, I'm surprised to hear that you're invested in funds with loads). On the other hand, if it's taking you years to rebalance, then: (a) you are not rebalancing a... |
My tenant wants to pay rent through their company: Should this raise a red flag? | The company that's apparently going to pay this rent wants to treat it as a business expense. They are asking for your SSN because they expect to issue a 1099-MISC. (They probably gave you a Form W-9? It's not mandatory but it's common to request a taxpayer ID on this form.) There are a couple of issues at play here: |
Is there any downside to using temporary credit card numbers with subscription services? | If you've agreed to pay the money, then you owe them whether they have a valid credit card number of yours or not. If they want to report your debt to a collections agency and/or credit bureau, they can. Which would suck for you. It may not be that likely over $9.99 or whatever, but my point is that it's still a small ... |
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