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How does start-up equity end up paying off? | In the real world, there are only two times you'll see that 5% become worth anything - ie, something you can exchange for cash - 1) if another company buys them; (2) if they go public. If neither of these things happen, you cannot do anything with the stock or stock options that you own. |
How do I interpret this analysis from Second Opinion? | This is analyst speak for "the stock isn't going anywhere anytime soon". Remember these guys are offering advice to the entire universe in a few lines, so the advice gets fortune cookie-like. When I look at these things, I care more about when the analyst changes their opinion more than what the opinion is. If you real... |
Putting borrowed money into an SIPP | You're creating more liabilities for yourself in the future, although yes this could definitely be a profitable move for you. However, some small mistakes you made, from what I can see using the tools at Hargreaves Lansdown. The first, is that the government relief would only be 20%, not 60%. The second is that the tax... |
Should I take a personal loan for my postgraduate studies? | As mentioned in the comments, there are costs associated with owning & living in an apartment. First you have to pay maintenance charges on a monthly basis and perhaps also property tax. Find out the overall outgoings when you live in that apartment & add the EMI payments to the bank, it should not be way higher than y... |
How are people able to spend more than what they make, without going into debt? | I don't know about Jeff Bezos in particular but, in general, and with a a few other notorious exceptions like Warren Buffet, billionaires also have incomes (salary, dividends, fees to seat on various boards of directors, etc.) in the millions, not the tens of thousand. That's typically still much lower than their wealt... |
Can we compare peer-to-peer loans to savings accounts? | Peer to peer lending isn't FDIC insured. You can lose all your investment with peer to peer lending, whereas you will not lose your deposited money in a savings account, even if it doesn't grow very fast. |
Is there any way to attach a statement of explanation while submitting a tax return electronically using Free Fillable Forms? | Depending on what you need to explain, you can submit your electronic return without the supplemental information and subsequently mail a Form 8453 with the additional information. This is helpful for form 8489, for example, where you need to list every transaction reported by your stock broker on a 1099-B. See https... |
How do auto-loan payments factor into taxes for cars that are solely used by dependent(s)? | I don't see how allowing usage of your vehicle is less support than giving money to buy their own vehicle. If that's the only vehicle your mother has - then you're supporting her. Quantifying that support may be difficult though, but if you are providing her all of her needs - it doesn't matter. If she does have income... |
Do gift cards expire? Does a gift certificate's value depreciate? How long can I keep them for? | It depends on: In Canada, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and Nova Scotia have each enacted legislation to stop gift cards/certificates from expiring. Cards issued before the effective date are still subject to the old rules. The legislation came into effect: There are several common themes: There are still some unusual e... |
Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do? | First, there are MLM businesses that are legitimate and are not Ponzi schemes; I actually work with one (I will not name it lest I give the impression of trying to sell here). One thing I learned was how to respond when a prospect raises objections related to the actual scams, which are abundant; the answer being to po... |
How smart is it really to take out a loan right now? | I think it's smart. It's the same game, just stiffer regulations, so your lender will ask more from you. Buy if you... If someone has been saving for years and years and still can't put 20% down, I think they're taking a significant risk. Buy something where your mortgage payment is around one week's salary at most. Tr... |
Can I lose more on Forex than I deposit? | It's the same as with equities. If you're just buying foreign currencies to hold, you can't lose more than you invest. But if you're buying derivatives (e.g. forward contracts or spread bets), or borrowing to buy on margin, you can certainly lose more than you invest. |
What is the best and most optimal way to use margin | This essentially depends on how you prefer to measure your performance. I will just give a few simple examples to start. Let me know if you're looking for something more. If you just want to achieve maximum $ return, then you should always use maximum margin, so long as your expected return (%) is higher than your cost... |
What does “Yield Curve” mean? | Great question! A Yield Curve is a plot of the yields for different maturities of debt. This can be for any debt, but the most common used when discussing yield curves is the debt of the Federal Government. The yield curve is observed by its slope. A curve with a positive slope (up and to the right) or a steepening c... |
60% Downpayment on house? | Peace of mind is the key to your question. Just before the US housing bust of 2007, I had someone try to convince me to take all the equity from my house which was overvalued in an overheated market. The idea was to put that money in the stock market for a bigger return than the interest on the house. Many people did t... |
Transfering money from NRE to saving account is taxable or not | There are quite a few things here; Edit: If you are away for 2.5 Years, you are NRE. Your situation is slightly tricky in the sense that you are getting a salary in India for doing work outside. Please consult a professional CA who can advise you better. If you were not getting an Indian salary, then whatever you earn ... |
How does a financial advisor choose debt funds and equity funds for us? | There are raters of stock and bond funds of which Morningstar's is the best. Standard and Poor's and Value line offer reports that aren't quite as good. If you are able to read and understand these reports yourself, you don't need a professional. Such help is necessary for people who are "rank beginners" in investments... |
One company asks for picture of my debit card | Sounds questionable to me. If there is no way around this I would suggest opening a new account with only the minimum balance necessary and sending them the debit card associated with that account. If anything goes wrong then the amount of damage they can do will be limited. I would definitely be looking for other opti... |
Settling house with husband during divorce. Which of these two options makes the most sense? | Both seem to be reasonable. To decide you need to guess if the value of the house will go up or down between now and when you sell. If you think the value will go up - reach a calculation agreement now. If you think the value will go down - wait until the house is actually sold. So ya pays yer money, and ya takes yer c... |
Should I open a credit card when I turn 18 just to start a credit score? | No, don't open a credit card. Get used to paying cash for everything from the beginning. The best situation you can be in is not to have any credit. When it comes time to buy a house, put down %30 percent and your 0 credit score won't matter. This will keep you within your means, and, with governments gathering more an... |
Looking at Options Liquidity: what makes some stocks so attractive for options traders? | Option liquidity and underlying liquidity tend to go hand in hand. According to regulation, what kinds of issues can have options even trading are restricted by volume and cost due to registration with the authorities. Studies have shown that the introduction of option trading causes a spike in underlying trading. Mark... |
Should I use a credit repair agency? | So you are in IT, that is great news because you can earn a fabulous income. The part time is not great, but you can use this to your advantage. You can get another job or three to boost your income in the short term. In the long term you should be able to find a better paying job fairly easily. There is one way ... |
Investing/business with other people's money: How does it work? | You can either borrow money... credit card, line of credit, re-finance your home, home equity line of credit, loan, mortgage, etc. Or you have other invest in your company as equity. They will contribute $X to get Y% of your company and get Z% of the profits. Note amount of profits does not necessarily have to equate... |
Pros and cons of investing in a cheaper vs expensive index funds that track the same index | Cheaper would refer to the fees of a fund rather than the share price, IMO. Are 2 quarters worth more or less than 10 nickels? This is another way to express your question though most open-end funds bought directly from the fund family or through fund supermarkets would do fractional shares that may be better than goin... |
Ways to get individual securities from ETF's | Assuming that the ETF is tracking an index, is there a reason for not looking at using details on the index? Typically the exact constituents of an index are proprietary, and companies will not publish them publicly without a license. S&P is the heavyweight in this area, and the exact details of the constituents at a... |
What Happens to Cofounders' Shares when they IPO? | A company typically goes public in order to bring in additional capital. In an IPO, the company (through its officials) will typically do so by issuing additional shares, and offering to sell those to investors. If they did not do that, then there would be no net capital gain for the company; if person A sells share in... |
Do any publically available documents from IR or SEC include all patents the company holds? | SEC filings do not contain this information, generally. You can find intangible assets on balance sheets, but not as detailed as writing down every asset separately, only aggregated at some level (may be as detailed as specifying "patents" as a separate line, although even that I wouldn't count on). Companies may hold ... |
Is it possible to make money by getting a mortgage? | To keep the math simple, say you are in the 25% federal tax bracket. Your 4% mortgage effectively costs you 3%. Did Mr Advisor tell you what he suggests investing the money in? Borrowing at 3% net to put the money in .1% CDs makes little sense. And for most people, investing it in the stock market hoping to come out ah... |
Pay off mortgage or invest in high value saving account | Basically, the easiest way to do this is to chart out the "what-ifs". Applying the amortization formula (see here) using the numbers you supplied and a little guesswork, I calculated an interest rate of 3.75% (which is good) and that you've already made 17 semi-monthly payments (8 and a half months' worth) of $680.04, ... |
Foreign currency conversion for international visitors to ecommerce web site? | Central banks don't generally post exchange rates with other currencies, as they are not determined by central banks but by the currency markets. You need a source for live exchange rate data (for example www.xe.com), and you need to calculate the prices in other currencies dynamically as they are displayed -- they wil... |
Can future rental income be applied to present debt-to-income ratio when applying for second mortgage? | Generally speaking, no they won't. In this case, though I haven't done it myself, I was recommended to put the mortgage on the real estate after it's been leased out and has a contract on it. Then, yes, they will use it for that. But, ex-ante don't expect any bank to count on income from it because, at that point, th... |
How do stocks like INL (traded in Frankfurt) work? | A "stock price" is nothing but the price at which some shares of that stock were sold on an exchange from someone willing to sell those shares at that price (or more) to someone willing to buy them at that price (or less). Pretty much every question about how stock prices work is answered by the paragraph above, which ... |
Is there a way to buy raw oil today and sell it in 1 year time? | There are many ways of investing either directly or indirectly in oil: all of these options are ways to invest in an expected change in the price of oil at various degrees of directness and risk profiles. Investing in derivative or derivative-like products such as futures and CFDs is very risky and requires a good degr... |
Deductions greater than Income : Traditional IRA to Roth Conversion? | Answering for just the US part, yes, you should be able to do this and it's a good strategy. The only additional gotcha I can think of is that if you've made after-tax contributions to your traditional IRA, you need to prorate the conversion, you can't just convert all the pre-tax or all the after-tax. I'm not familiar... |
My employer is switching 401k plan providers. How might this work in practice? | A few years ago our company switched from Fidelity to a different 401k provider. During the blackout transition, nearly every employee lost a considerable amount of money. The "Trustee" advised us that during the blackout he had a right to invest the funds and that the investments lost money. |
Why liquidity implies tight spread and low slippage | Consider the case where a stock has low volume. If the stock normally has a few hundred shares trade each minute and you want to buy 10,000 shares then chances are you'll move the market by driving up the price to find enough sellers so that you can get all those shares. Similarly, if you sell way more than the typic... |
Who gets the dividend when a stock is bought/sold around the ex-dividend date? [duplicate] | Your understanding is incorrect. The date of record is when you have to own the stock by. The ex-dividend date is calculated so that transaction before that date settles in time to get you listed as owner by the date of record. If you buy the stock before the ex-dividend date, you get the dividend. If you buy it on ... |
Is there a formula to use to analyse whether an investment property is a good investment? | There is no generic formula as such, but you can work it out using all known incomes and expenses and by making some educated assuption. You should generaly know your buying costs, which include the purchase price, legal fees, taxes (in Australia we have Stamp Duty, which is a large state based tax when you purchase a ... |
Should I pay off my credit card online immediately or wait for the bill? | It does not matter. Your credit score is affected by late payments, by credit usage and by age of credit. DO NOT PAY LATE. Paying early is only good in that it means you don't pay late. Your credit usage is calculated by percentage of the credit you have that you actually use. Keep your usage to under 20% of your lim... |
How does one value Facebook stock as a potential investment? | To know if a stock is undervalued is not something that can be easily assessed (else, everybody would know which stock is undervalued and everybody will buy it until it reaches its "true" value). But there are methods to assess the value of a company, I think that the 3 most known methods are: If the assets of the comp... |
Simple and safe way to manage a lot of cash | Overall I think your idea is sound. The key here is to choose that 401k provider wisely and have a specific asset allocation plan (like Joe mentioned) Summary of this approach: Pluses: Minuses: I'd consider Vanguard for simple, no frills investing. If you're looking to get into choosing stocks, check out the Motley F... |
At what point should I begin paying off student loans? | All great answers. The only thing I didn't see mentioned was that student loans are not dischargable in a bankruptcy. So for example if you took money that could have gone to student loans and poured it into other debt, then for some reason declared bankruptcy later, your student load debt would remain while other debt... |
What exactly is a “derivative”? | The basic idea behind a derivative is very simple actually. It is a contract where the final value depends on (is derived from) the value of something else. Stock, for instance, is not a derivative because the contract itself is actually ownership of part of a company. Whereas car insurance is a derivative because t... |
Should I pay off my student loan before buying a house? | IMO student loans are junk debt that should be dealt with as soon as possible. Buying a house comes with risks and expenses (repairs, maintenance, etc) and dealing with a student loan at the same time just makes it tougher. Personally, I would try to pay off at least a few of the loans first. |
Looking for a stock market simulation that's as close to the real thing as possible | Stock market is like poker: you don't take the same risks when it is fake money and thus you don't learn the same lessons from your mistakes. I would recommend instead to play with real market and real money (rule #0: use only money that you don't need). Start with safe products and go to the bath progressively. It too... |
What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time? | Surprised nobody has mentioned Freshbooks yet. It's lightweight, easy to use, and free for low-end use (scaling up price-wise as you scale up). |
What emergencies could justify a highly liquid emergency fund? | While there have been plenty of good answers I would like to suggest turning it on it's head--the problem is one of perception. Other than in terms of cash-type emergency funds (my general policy is to have enough cash to get home, however far from there I might be) I consider available credit + assets that can be liqu... |
What Happens To Stocks During Hyperinflation | Stocks in the Weimar hyperinflation are discussed in When Money Dies. I don't own a copy of the book but here is a link to a blog post about it. Speculation on the stock exchange has spread to all ranks of the population and shares rise like air balloons to limitless heights Basically, the stock market did very well ... |
What assets would be valuable in a post-apocalyptic scenario? | Barton Biggs's book Wealth, War and Wisdom aims to answer the question of what investments are best-suited to preserving value despite large-scale catastrophes by looking at how various investments and assets performed in countries affected by WWII. In Japan, stocks and urban land turned out to be good investments; in... |
Should I finance a used car or pay cash? | There are several factors here. Firstly, there's opportunity cost, i.e. what you would get with the money elsewhere. If you have higher interest opportunities (investing, paying down debt) elsewhere, you could be paying that down instead. There's also domino effects: by reducing your liquid savings to or below the mini... |
Mortgage or not? | Short answer: No. Longer answer: The only reason to move would be to get out of the condo and into a SFR of equal cost because condos can be quite difficult to sell and you don't really want that potential burden later on. Moving is expensive though and you can't afford to spend more when you are already living on t... |
Reconciling transactions reimbursing myself for expenses as self-employed (UK) | Any money that ScottMcGready gives to the company is a personal loan that must be repaid by the company at some point without tax consequences. Any money that the company gives to ScottMcGready is either salary (Scott pays income tax, company counts this as cost), or a dividend (Scott pays dividend tax), or a loan (Sco... |
Do people tend to spend less when using cash than credit cards? | Unless a study accounts for whether the users are following a budget or not, it is irrelevant to those who are trying to take their personal finances seriously. I can certainly believe that those who have no budget will spend more on a credit card than they will on a debit card or with cash. Under the right circumstanc... |
Why would someone buy a way out-of-the-money call option that's expiring soon? | The most likely explanation is that the calls are being bought as a part of a spread trade. It doesn't have to be a super complex trade with a bunch of buys or sells. In fact, I bought a far out of the money option this morning in YHOO as a part of a simple vertical spread. Like you said, it wouldn't make sense and w... |
Why doesn't the market capitalization of a company match its acquisition price during a takeover? | Short answer: google finance's market cap calculation is nonstandard (a.k.a. wrong). The standard way of computing the market capitalization of a firm is to take the price of its common stock and multiply by the number of outstanding common stock shares. If you do this using the numbers from google's site you get arou... |
I thought student loans didn't have interest, or at least very low interest? [UK] | From the description, you have a post-1998 income contingent loan. The interest rate on those is currently 1.5% but it has varied quite a bit in the last few years due to the formula used to calculate it, which is either the inflation rate (RPI), or 1% + the highest base rate across a group of banks - whichever is smal... |
Working for recruiter on W-2 vs. working for client on 1099? | I don't think anyone can give you a definitive answer without knowing all about your situation, but some things to consider: If you are on a 1099, you have to pay self-employment tax, while on a W-2 you do not. That is, social security tax is 12.4% of your income. If you're a 1099, you pay the full 12.4%. If you're W-2... |
What is the role of a manager in a passively managed index fund? | There still is some buying and selling to do in a passively-managed fund. The stocks might pay dividends. If the fund manager didn't reinvest these dividends, the fund would begin to accumulate a cash position, which would cause it to stray from being an index fund. Stocks come and go from an index as well; if the f... |
Are my parents ripping me off with this deal that doesn't allow me to build my equity in my home? | I would go see a Lawyer no matter what. It's a form of a scam your parents are doing. Make sure it's YOUR name only on the title of the building if it is, then you have a MAJOR case against them. This is a form of Equity scam, in where you aren't really going to make hardly any money. Once you pay them that money towar... |
Why will the bank only loan us 80% of the value of our fully paid for home? | If you get a loan for 80% of the value of your house, that's equivalent to buying a house with a 20% down payment (assuming the appraised value is what you'd buy it for). That's the minimum down payment for Fannie Mae backed loans without PMI (mortgage insurance). See this table for more details. Freddie Mac (the oth... |
Why is the dominant investing advice for individuals to use mutual funds, exchanged traded funds (ETFs), etc | I agree with the other answers, but I want to give a slightly different perspective. I believe that a lot of people are smart enough to beat the market, but that it takes a lot more dedication, patience, and self-control than they think. Before Warren Buffett buys a stock, he has read the quarterly reports for years, h... |
Is there a financial product that allows speculation on GDP? | The closest thing that you are looking for would be FOREX exchanges. Currency value is affected by the relative growth of economies among other things, and the arbritrage of currencies would enable you to speculate on the relative growth of an individual economy. |
Why do non-electronic stock exchanges (with floor traders) still exist? | Non-electronic stock exchanges still exist because they used to exist. There are a lot of people in trading firms who grew up with floor trading and don't want to give it up, either because they feel more comfortable with it or because they might lose their job if they went away from it. |
Personal Tax Return software for Linux? | I used H&R Block this year 2013 to do my 2012 taxes and it was a snap! Ubuntu 12.10 with Firefox 20 and everything worked great! Although it is not listed as one of the "supported" platforms, Firefox breezed through the application without any problems. I used the deluxe version of H&R to calculate my mortgage and h... |
Is there a difference between buying few shares of an expensive stock vs many shares of an inexpensive one? | Before the prevalence of electronic trading, trading stocks was very costly, dropping from ~15c in the late 1970s to less than a nickel per share today. Exchange fees for liquidity takers are ~0.3c per share, currently. When orders were negotiated exclusively by humans, stocks used to be quoted in fractions rather tha... |
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... |
Fees aside, what factors could account for performance differences between U.S. large-cap index ETFs? | The "ideal world" index fund of any asset class is a perfect percentage holding of all underlying assets with immediate rebalancing that aligns to every change in the index weighting while trading in a fully liquid market with zero transaction costs. One finance text book that describes this is Introduction to Finance:... |
Avoid Capital Gains on Rental | Your question is best asked of a tax expert, not random people on the internet. Such an expert will help you ask the right questions. For example you did not point out the country or state in which you live. That matters. First point is that you will not pay tax on 60K, its expensive to transact real estate, so you... |
Can my brother fix his credit? | Well, he could negotiate with the bank to pay off the loan before the foreclosure takes effect. That would obviously cost him a large pile of cash but might remove the foreclosure, and possibly the late payments, from his record. But the real answer is that, having signed the note, he should have been making sure payme... |
What to consider before buying (exercising) a family member's private company employee stock options, about to expire? | The company may not permit a transfer of these options. If they do permit it, you simply give him the money and he has them issue the options in your name. As a non-public company, they may have a condition where an exiting employee has to buy the shares or let them expire. If non-employees are allowed to own shares,... |
Would every FX currency pair or public stock that is under the 30 level using Relative Strength Index (RSI) be an undervalued pair? | No. The long-term valuation of currencies has to do with Purchasing Power Parity. The long-term valuation of stocks has to do with revenues, expenses, market sizes, growth rates, and interest rates. In the short term, currency and stock prices change for many reasons, including interest rate changes, demand for goods ... |
Paying taxes on dividends even though your capital gains were $0? | How and why is this considered fair (and/or legal)? Let's use an analogy. The issue is not fairness, it is just the rules. The assets you own and the cash you receive are reported differently. If the rules don't make sense, I suggest you hire an adviser that can teach you and help you get the most out of your investme... |
Are Certificates of Deposit worth it compared to investing in the stock market? | A CD is guaranteed to pay its return on maturation. So if you need a certain amount of money at a specific time in the future, the CD is a more reliable way of getting it. The stock market might give you more money or less. More is obviously OK. Less is not if you're planning to pay basic expenses with it, e.g. foo... |
Should I avoid credit card use to improve our debt-to-income ratio? | If you pay it off before the cycle closes it will look like you have 100% available credit. So if you credit card statement closes on the 7th pay it off on the 6th in full don't pay it when its due 2/3 weeks later. Then after three months of doing that your credit score will go up based on the fact that your debt rat... |
Capital gains on no-dividend stocks - a theoretical question | Berkshire Hathaway would be a good example of a company that has yet to pay dividends, yet is a highly valued stock. A couple of key points here to note is how on the first hand you have that the dividend policy will never change, yet couldn't one argue that there will always be new investors wanting more shares and th... |
Why does HMRC still require “payment on account” after I have moved to PAYE? | The Government self-assessment website states you can ask HMRC to reduce your payments on account if your business profits or other income goes down, and you know your tax bill is going to be lower than last year. There are two ways to do this: |
Cannot get a mortgage because I work through a recruiter | Some options: See if the seller will sell to you on Contract. With a significant down payment the seller may be willing to sell you the condo on contract. This fill in the year or so you will probably need to go from contractor to full time employee with enough time on the job to get a mortgage. Keep Shopping. Be ... |
Buy home and leverage roommates, or split rent? | It's doable, but there's a fair amount of risk involved. The biggest issue is that your roommates could move out. It's possible that they could have a falling out, get a job in a different city, or just move on. How difficult would it be to find another roommate? How many roommates can you lose and still afford to pay ... |
Why would my job recruiter want me to form an LLC? | The "independent contractor" vs. "employee" distinction is a red herring to this discussion and not at all important just because someone suggested you use your LLC to do the job. Corp-2-Corp is a very common way to do contracting and having an LLC with business bank accounts provides you with more tax deductions (such... |
Should I buy out my brother on a property we will inherit before making improvements? | If your father is still able to make financial decisions and sign contracts, I see a better option. Have your father borrow against his equity to finance the renovation. Example: the house is worth 400 now. He can borrow 100 against that. He spends it on the addition, making the house worth 500, with the same 400 of e... |
How can one protect oneself from a dividend stock with decreasing price? | A specific strategy to make money on a potentially moderately decreasing stock price on a dividend paying stock is to write covered calls. There is a category on Money.SE about covered call writing, but in summary, a covered call is a contract to sell the shares at a set price within a defined time range; you gain a p... |
Large volume options sell | Yes this is possible in the most liquid securities, but currently it would take several days to get filled in one contract at that amount There are also position size limits (set by the OCC and other Self Regulatory Organizations) that attempt to prevent people from cornering a market through the options market. (getti... |
Converting annual interbank rates into monthly rates | The formula you're looking for is Thus, from 3% p.a. you get ca. 0.247% per month. However, as you see 0.25% is a good approximation (generally, small rates give good approximation). |
How are the best way to make and save money at 22 years old | Fantastic question to be asking at the age of 22! A very wise man suggested to me the following with regard to your net income I've purposely not included saving a sum of money for a house deposit, as this is very much cultural and lots of EU countries have a low rate of home ownership. On the education versus entrepre... |
How to evaluate an annuity | Guaranteed 8.2% annual return sounds too good to be true. Am I right? Are there likely high fees, etc.? You're right. Guaranteed annual return is impossible, especially when you're talking about investments for such a long period of time. Ponzi (and Madoff) schemed their investors using promises of guaranteed return ... |
United States Treasury Not Endorsing Checks | 1.Why is there no "United States Treasury" endorsement? Why should there be, and what do you think it would look like? Some person at Treasury sitting at a desk all day signing "Uncle Sam"? At most you would expect to see some stamp, because it's clear that no person is going to sign all of these checks. 2.Can I have t... |
Is paying off your mortage a #1 personal finance priority? | It is one thing to take the advice of some numb-skulls on a web site, it is another thing to take the advice of someone who is really wealthy. For myself, I enjoy a very low interest rate (less than 3%) and am aggressively paying down my mortgage. One night I was contemplating slowing that down, and even the possibili... |
Why are the banks and their customers in the United States still using checks? [duplicate] | Check use is declining here too, but it still has some practical advantages over electronic means: |
When can you use existing real estate as collateral to buy more? | It would be good to know which country you are in? You are basically on the right track with your last point. Usually when you buy your first property you need to come up with a deposit and then borrow the remainder to have enough to purchase the property. In most cases (and most places) the standard percentage of loan... |
Does doing your “research”/“homework” on stocks make any sense? | Doing your homework means to perform what's more accurately called "fundamental analysis". According to proponents of fundamental analysis (FA), it is possible to accurately determine how much a stock should trade for and then buy or sell the stock based on whether it trades above or below this target price. This targe... |
How far do I go with a mortgage approval process when shopping around? | As per my comments, I think this is up to you and how much work you want to put forth. I do not feel it is trivial to provide documentation even with 90% of it will be the same among lenders. See this question: First answer, third and fourth paragraphs. You need to go as far as understanding the total cost of the loan... |
How to explain quick price changes early in the morning | http://www.marketwatch.com/optionscenter/calendar would note some options expiration this week that may be a clue as this would be the typical end of quarter stuff so I suspect it may happen each quarter. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/triplewitchinghour.asp would note in part: Triple witching occurs when the cont... |
Is foreign stock considered more risky than local stock and why? | One risk not mentioned is that foreign stock might be thinly traded on your local stock market, so you will find it harder to buy and sell, and you will be late to the game if there is some sudden change in the share price in the original country. |
How can I diversify $7k across ETFs and stocks? | You don't really have a lot of money, and that isn't a criticism as much as that you are limited to diversification. For example, I would estimate you can only have one or two stocks for a buy-write scheme. Secondly you may be only to buy one fund with a high minimum investment, and a second fund with a smaller minim... |
If I'm going to start doing my own taxes soon, do I need to start keeping receipts for everything? | The other reason you might want to keep receipts is if you do any freelancing or contract work, for your business expenses. You can take a picture of the receipts with your phone, or scan them - you don't have to keep the paper copies. |
What are the fundamental levels that makes a Stock Ideal? (either to sell or buy) | for buying: High PE, low debt, discount = win. a company with high debt (in relation to revenues and cash on hand) will have to pay interest and pay off the debt, stunting their growth. and just like a normal person, will barely be able to pay their bills and keep borrowing and might go bankrupt determining discount is... |
Credit balance on new credit card | Things are generally fine. A credit balance is not a horrible thing. The argument against maintaining a credit balance is that you are essentially loaning the credit card issuer money at 0% interest. You probably have alternative investments that would pay better interest, so it's usually better to park your money ... |
hardship withdrawal | With respect to the 401(k). Before taking a hardship withdrawal, one must first deplete the ability to take any 401(k) loans available. This is a regulation. The 401(k) loan limit is the lesser of $50k, 50% your vested balance, or $50k minus the highest loan balance within the last year. Here's the good news: it is not... |
How to handle missing W2 from failed direct deposit only company? | Yes, there's a way. I actually wrote a blog post about it. Its a new service from the IRS which allows you pulling your account online. IRS also has an instruction page just for this case here. |
What drives the stock of bankrupt companies? | With debts exceeding assets by a billion dollars, this activity likely comes from penny stock speculators and "pump and dump" schemers. There is no rational expectation that the stock is even worth multiple pennies when the company is that far upside-down on its debts. Even if the debts could be restructured in a chapt... |
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