Question stringlengths 14 166 | Answer stringlengths 3 17k |
|---|---|
Is it possible to make money by getting a mortgage? | I think this is possible under very special conditions. The important part of the description here is probably retired and rich. The answers so far apply to people with "normal" incomes - both in the sense of "not rich" and in the sense of "earned income." If you sit at the top tax bracket and get most of your income... |
Why do some people go through contortions to avoid paying taxes, yet spend money on expensive financial advice, high-interest loans, etc? | The bank provides a service that the customer voluntarily agreed to - the bank will provide funds to the customer now and the customer will pay back those funds plus interest in the future. The arragement wasn't forced onto the customer. The government, on the other hand, takes money (the exchange is not volutary) fro... |
Assessing risk, and Identifying scams in Alternative Investments | 10 to 20% return on investment annually. "When I hear that an investment has a 10%+ return on it I avoid it because...". In my opinion, and based on my experience, 10% annually is not an exageration. I start to ask questions only if one talks about return of 30% annually or more. These kind of returns are possible, but... |
Buying a car - advice needed | I would actually disagree with MrChrister on this. You can afford yourself the car in this price range paid cash. I don't know how exactly you spend your income, but from my experience, in expensive California, saving $20K a year from $70K income with $800/mo rent is feasible. Having a loan on your credit report which ... |
If NYSE has market makers, what is the role of NYSE ARCA which is an ECN | I would say it's a bit more complicated than that. Do you understand what a market maker does? An ECN (electronic communication network) is a virtual exchange that works with market makers. Using a rebate structure that works by paying for orders adding liquidity and charges a fee for removing liquidity. So liquidity ... |
What is the difference between speculating and investing? | Investing is balancing the desire for return against the various risks that your money is faced with. There's also a recognition that an investment will be in place for some extended period of time. Speculation is seeking short-term maximum return, without protecting yourself against risk. "Speculation" or "Speculator... |
Is the need to issue bonds a telltale sign that the company would have a hard time paying coupons? | One more scenario is when the company already has maturing debt. e.g Company took out a debt of 2 billion in 2010 and is maturing 2016. It has paid back say 500 million but has to pay back the debtors the remaining 1.5 billion. It will again go to the debt markets to fund this 1.5 billion maybe at better terms than th... |
Is there a Canadian credit card which shows holds? | It's not so much a credit card, but a financial institution's online platform that either provides this functionality or not. The following Canadian financial institutions show an itemized list of pre-authorized transactions (not an exhaustive list): The following institutions show a total value of pre-authorized tran... |
Are there common stock price trends related to employee option plans? | The stock market is generally a long term investment platform. The share prices reflect more the companies potential to be profitable in the future rather than its actual value. Companies that have good potential can over perform their actual value. We saw this regularly in the early days of the internet prior to t... |
What are institutional investors? | FINRA defines institutional investors as: Institutional investors include banks, savings and loan associations, insurance companies, registered investment companies, registered investment advisors, a person or entity with assets of at least $50 million, government entities, employee benefit plans and qualified plans ... |
What does this mean? SELL -10 VERTICAL $IYR 100 AUG 09 32/34 CALL @.80 LMT | SELL -10 VERTICAL $IYR 100 AUG 09 32/34 CALL @.80 LMT 1) we are talking about options, these are a derivative product whose price is based on 6 variables. 2) options allow you to create risk out of thin air, and those risks come with shapes, and the only limit is your imagination (and how much your margin/borrowing cos... |
What is the incentive for a bank to refinance a mortgage at a lower rate? | The reason is the same as with cell phones payment plans. As competition grows cell phone companies offer better payment plans for the same price or the same plans for lower price or both so that you stay with that cell operator. Banks also make better offers if the financial situation allows. Suppose several banks off... |
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... |
How can small children contribute to the “family economy”? | Another suggestion I heard on the radio was to give the child the difference between the name brand they want, and the store brand they settle on. Then that money can be accumulated as savings. Saving money is as important a feature of the family economy as earning money. Be careful with what you have a child do for r... |
Strategies for paying off my Student loans | Considering I'm in a nearly identical situation, I'll speak to my personal strategy and maybe there's some value for you as well. You have ~$22k in loans, which you say you could pay off today. So, what I read is that you're sitting there with a $22k investment and want to know which investment to make: pay down deb... |
When is the right time to buy a car and/or a house? | My recommendation is to pay off your student loans as quickly as possible. It sounds like you're already doing this but don't incur any other large debts until you have this taken care of. I'd also recommend not buying a car, especially an expensive one, on credit or lease either. Back during the dotcom boom I and man... |
Does freedom to provide services allow me contracting in Germany without paying taxes there (but in my home EU country)? | Also within Germany the tax offices usually determine which tax office is responsible for you by asking where you were more than 180 days of the year (if e.g. you have a second flat where you work). That's a default value, though: in my experience you can ask to be handled by another tax office. E.g. I hand my tax decl... |
Should I pay half a large balance this month before I get my CC statement? | This can make a difference of a few points. When your balance is reported on a monthly basis to the bureaus that current balance is used to determine your utilization. Keeping it paid down will help in this case. If you are monitoring your credit regularly, you can see what time of the month your balance is reported a... |
Work as a contractor for my current employer rather than become a full time employee after my graduation for health insurance continued coverage | There are several assumptions you made, that don't match the current laws: Costs: COBRA: |
Are credit histories/scores international? | Credit history is local, so when you move to the US you start with the blank slate. Credit history length is a huge factor, so in the first year expect that nobody would trust you and you may be refused credit or asked for deposits. I was asked for deposits at cell phone company and refused for store cards couple of ti... |
Stocks given by company vest if I quit? | You were probably not given stock, but stock options. Those options have a strike price and you can do some more research on them if needed. Lets assume that you were given 5K shares at a strike of 20, and they vest 20% per year. Assume the same thing in your second year and you are going to leave in year three. You... |
In what state should I register my web-based LLC? | Register in Nevada. It's a no brainer. I understand that it's not a great deal of money, but if you can save several hundred dollars per year, why not? It's the same amount (actually probably less) of paperwork to register in Nevada. |
How to find trailing 5-year stock returns for 1980s? | I dont know if this data is available for the 1980s, but this response to an old question of mine discusses how you can pull stock related information from google or yahoo finance over a certain period of time. You could do this in excel or google spreadsheet and see if you could get the data you're looking for. Quote... |
Why would you sell your bonds? | You sell any investment because you need to do something else with the money -- rebalance your investments, buy something, pay off a debt.... |
What is the process of getting your first share? | I think I understand what you're trying to achieve. You just want to see how it "feels" to own a share, right? To go through the process of buying and holding, and eventually selling, be it at a loss or at a gain. Frankly, my primary advice is: Just do it on paper! Just decide, for whatever reason, which stocks to buy... |
Why do some people go through contortions to avoid paying taxes, yet spend money on expensive financial advice, high-interest loans, etc? | I think sometimes this is simply ignorance. If my marginal tax rate is 25%, then I can either pay tax deductible interest of $10K or pay income tax of $2.5K. I think most americans don't realize that paying $10K of tax deductible interest (think mortgage) only saves them $2.5K in taxes. In other words, I'd be $7.5K... |
Is this investment opportunity problematic? | As an investment opportunity: NO. As a friendly assist with money you don't mind ever getting back, legal depending on amount. A few years back I was in the housing market myself and researching interest rates and mortgages. For one property I was very interested in, I would need about $4K extra in liquid cash to comp... |
From Facebook's perspective, was the fall in price after IPO actually an indication that it went well? | There could be an impact on Facebook because just before the IPO, Morgan Stanley apparently sent information to selected clients that their analysts had just lowered their valuation of the company. There were also reports yesterday that the lowered valuation came about because Facebook sent some revised preliminary es... |
Can saving/investing 15% of your income starting age 25, likely make you a millionaire? | The article links to William Bernstein’s plan that he outlined for Business Insider, which says: Modelling this investment strategy Picking three funds from Google and running some numbers. The international stock index only goes back to April 29th 1996, so a run of 21 years was modelled. Based on 15% of a salary of $... |
Any reason to be cautious of giving personal info to corporate fraud departments? | I can't address the psychology of trust involved in your question, but here are some common sense guidelines for dealing with your issue. Make sure you know who you are talking to. Call the company you need to speak to via a publicly available phone number. An email or something you got in a letter might be from a dif... |
How is the actual trade on exchanges processed for simple stock orders? | The simple answer is, there are many ways for trades to take place. Some systems use order-matching software that employs proprietary algorithms for deciding the order of processing, others use FIFO structures, and so on. Some brokerages may fill customer orders out of their own accounts (which happens more frequentl... |
At Vanguard, can I transfer shares from regular investment account to a Roth IRA? | Since you are paying taxes on the distributions from your mutual funds anyway, instead of reinvesting the distributions back into the mutual funds, you could receive them as cash, then contribute them to your Roth IRA once you are able to open one. |
GnuCash: Reimbursable expenses paid by credit card | GNUCash won't show 'Credit Card' type accounts in "Process Payment", as of v.2.6.1. A workaround is to create another account of type A/Payable. Then, transfer the operations you want to pay via "Process Payment" to this new account. It should be visible now. A drawback is that you have split your current Credit Card ... |
Is investing exlusively in a small-cap index fund a wise investment? | In a word, no. Diversification is the first rule of investing. Your plan has poor diversification because it ignores most of the economy (large cap stocks). This means for the expected return your portfolio would get, you would bear an unnecessarily large amount of risk. Large cap and small cap stocks take turns out... |
If a mutual fund did really well last year, then statistically speaking, is it likely going to do bad this year? | Nearly all long-lived active funds underperform the market over the long run. The best they can hope for in almost all cases is to approximate the market return. Considering that the market return is ~9%, this fund should be expected to do less well. In terms of predicting future performance, if its average return is g... |
How can I help my friend change his saving habits? | Get him the book "Total Money Makeover" (http://www.amazon.com/Total-Money-Makeover-Classic-Financial/dp/1595555277/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448904191&sr=8-1&keywords=total+money+makeover) and tell him to follow the baby steps. If he comes to you again or doesn't follow your advice, remind him to follow the baby steps. ... |
Is this reply promising a money order and cashier check a scam? | It's a scam. The cashier's check will be forged. Craigslist has a warning about it here (item #3). What kind of payment do you think is not fakable? Or at least not likely to be used in scams? When on craigslist - deal only locally and in person. You can ask to see the person's ID if you're being paid by check When b... |
Where can one find intraday prices for mutual funds? | Look at morningstar holdings.It will list the top 25 holdings and their current price.This will give you a good idea of the intra-day price of the fund. |
How does refinancing work? | A re-financing, or re-fi, is when a debtor takes out a new loan for the express purpose of paying off an old one. This can be done for several reasons; usually the primary reason is that the terms of the new loan will result in a lower monthly payment. Debt consolidation (taking out one big loan at a relatively low int... |
Stop paying VAT on digital sales when earnings are under £81k | You can't currently avoid it. The reason the legislation was introduced was to prevent the big-name developers from setting up shop in a low-VAT country and selling apps to citizens of EU countries that would normally be paying a much higher VAT. You need to register for VAT and file quarterly nil-returns so that you ... |
What's an economic explanation for why greeting cards are so expensive? | It'll all about the marketing. If you don't get a "real" greeting card for that important birthday or anniversary or whatever, the recipient may thing you're being cheap for using a card you printed out yourself. So you pay $6 for a card because you feel like you have to. Hallmark advertises with those sappy TV commerc... |
Why would anyone want to pay off their debts in a way other than “highest interest” first? | I recently paid off a line of credit on an investment property that I own. I had some surplus cash and decided to pay off the line of credit rather than to make a principal payment on the primary mortgage with a higher interest rate. The interest rate on the line of credit was tiny and the balance was also pretty low... |
If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting? | The only issue I can see is that the stranger is looking to undervalue their purchase to save money on taxes/registration (if applicable in your state). Buying items with cash such as cars, boats, etc in the used market isn't all that uncommon* - I've done it several times (though not at the 10k mark, more along about ... |
How do I look for private limited partnership investment opportunities? (Or should I?) | Investing in an existing company is almost like buying a house, or even becoming an "Angel investor" in a start-up. Before you start the process, decide how much you want to be involved in the day-to-day and which industries you would feel most comfortable in. The latter is an important consideration since you would h... |
Can I place a stock limit order to buy above the current price? Can I place a stock limit order to sell below the current price? | I have done this, and the reason is to make sure that I don't run out of money in my account to place the order if there is an unexpected upswing in price. Suppose I have $1000 in my account and I want to buy 10 shares of ABCD that are currently at $99. If the price doesn't change, then I am all set, but if the price ... |
Pension or Property: Should I invest in more properties, or in a pension? | I think the real answer to your question here is diversification. You have some fear of having your money in the market, and rightfully so, having all your money in one stock, or even one type of mutual fund is risky as all get out, and you could lose a lot of your money in such a stock-market based undiversified inve... |
Does it make any sense to directly contribute to reducing the US national debt? | No, it makes no sense. The US national debt is different from other debt on TWO KEY WAYS : 1.) The national debt is not money we owe to our government IT IS MONEY WE OWE TO OURSELVES. 2.) If the GNP of our country can grow at a rate equal to or greater than the national debt interest, then the figure of national debt... |
How to find SEC filings that are important to stock market | 10-Q is the quarterly report, and accordingly is filed quarterly. Similarly, 10-K is the annual report. 8-K is a general form for notification of material events. It is filed every time a material event is required to be reported to the shareholders. It may accompany the periodical reports, but doesn't have to. It can ... |
Why don't banks print their own paper money / bank notes? | In the US, this was the case during the 19th century. There was a system of "subscriptions" between banks, where larger banks backed the smaller banks to some extent. In trade, notes from distant banks were not accepted or discounted relative to known local banks, or silver/gold coinage. There were a number of problems... |
Do property taxes get deducted 100% from the Annual Tax Return or only a fraction of them? | Any deductable expense will reduce your taxable income not your tax payable. Your Example 1 above is correct and gives you 100% deduction. It is like having a business where your sales are $100,000 and your expenses in making the sales is $40,000. The expenses are your tax deductions and reduce your profits on which yo... |
Why is it important to research a stock before buying it? | The only sensible reason to invest in individual stocks is if you have reason to think that they will perform better than the market as a whole. How are you to come to that conclusion other than by doing in-depth research into the stock and the company behind it? If you can't, or don't want to, reach that conclusion ... |
What can I replace Microsoft Money with, now that MS has abandoned it? | www.mint.com is a very good web site that can upload your financial data from your bank and analyze it for you. Security concerns seem to have been addressed reassuringly. |
Simple loan with a mortage as collateral | Assuming United States; answer may be different elsewhere. The best instructions I have seen for this were on the webpage of one of the law firms making an organized business out of intra-family loans, but any lawyer who can deal with normal bank loans should be able to help you set this up and get it filed with the ap... |
Can't the account information on my checks be easily used for fraud? | When an someone as esteemed and smart as Donald Knuth tells you the chequing system is busted it's time to close your cheque account, or I guess live with the associated risk. Answer to question, yes your account information can be used to commit fraud on you via your bank. |
Multiple people interested in an Apartment | I wouldn't start a bidding war if I were you. Sometimes you may get potentially bad tenants who cannot find a property anywhere else offering more money just to get in a place. If you know nothing else about these people how can you guarantee they will keep paying the rent once they get in. The things you should be doi... |
Sale of jointly owned stock | They may be confused. The combination of "my wife received stock when younger" and "her father just died" leaves questions. A completed gift, when she was a kid, means she has a basis (cost) same as the original owner of that stock. This may need to be researched. The other choice is that she gets a price based on the ... |
Do I need to pay taxes in India? | Do I need to pay taxes in India in this scenario? For India tax purposes, you would still qualify as "Resident Indian". As a resident Indian you have to pay taxes on Global income. It is not relevant whether you transfer the money back to India to keep in US. The income is generated and taxable. Depending on your cont... |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | It would make sense to refuse a raise when it pushes your effective marginal 'tax' (including reduced benefits) above 100%. The working poor (family of 4, 20K-40K in the US) often face marginal rates above 100% when you consider the phase out of various government benefits (EITC, insurance, housing,etc.) You can see ... |
When are stock trade fees deducted? | Typically the fees are charged when the order is executed. The only catch I have ever ran into is when an order is partially executed. A good-till-cancel order that gets executed in several blocks over multiple days may get charged a separate commission for each day (but typically not each block). If this is a simple... |
Idea for getting rich using computers to track stocks | The main reason I'm aware of that very few individuals do this sort of trading is that you're not taking into account the transaction costs, which can and will be considerable for a small-time investor. Say your transaction costs you $12, that means in order to come out ahead you'll have to have a fairly large position... |
What happens if a purchase is $0.02 in Canada? | I think it should be free. Why? I had a coupon for 35, I bought something for 35.01 including taxes and total to pay was 0.01, rounded to 0.00. I think it's almost the same scenario. |
My investment account is increasingly and significantly underperforming vs. the S&P 500. What should I do? | The majority (about 80%) of mutual funds are underperforming their underlying indexes. This is why ETFs have seen massive capital inflows compared to equity funds, which have seen significant withdrawals in the last years. I would definitively recommend going with an ETF. In addition to pure index based ETFs that (al... |
Why I cannot find a “Pure Cash” option in 401k investments? | There is no zero risk option! There is no safe parking zone for turbulent times! There is no such thing as a zero-risk investment. You would do well to get this out of your head now. Cash, though it will retain its principle over time, will always be subject to inflation risk (assuming a positive-inflation environmen... |
At what interest rate should debt be used as a tool? | It's not so much the rate of the debt as it is the total cost of the debt relative to the gain you expect to see from using it to purchase something of value. I've known people who were quite happy to pay 12% on personal loans used to buy investment properties for flipping. They're happy to pay that because convention... |
Which brokerages offer the best streaming quotes (tick level) for the best price? | I have ScottradeElite on my desktop. I have played around with it but no longer use it. The transactions that I make through Scottrade are more dependent on my goals for the securities than what the market is doing at the moment. Keep in mind that there will always be others out there with better access to price chang... |
When should I start an LLC for my side work? | An LLC is overkill for 99% of 1 man small businesses. Side-businesses should remain as sole proprieterships until they get much larger and need the benefits of the LLC laws. You can still bill through a company name if you want to start building a brand: And set aside 25% of your gross income for Uncle Sam. He wants yo... |
Is it legal to not get a 1099-b until March 15? | If one looks at the "Guide to Information Returns" in the Form 1099 General Instructions (the instructions that the IRS provides to companies on how to fill out 1099 and other forms), it says that the 1099-B is due to recipient by February 15, with a footnote that says "The due date is March 15 for reporting by trustee... |
Is it worth it to reconcile my checking/savings accounts every month? | I quit diligently reconciling monthly statements some years before everything was online, when I realized that for years before that, every time I thought I found a mistake, it was always my own error. I was spending a fair amount of time (over the years) doing something that wasn't helping me. So I quit. That said, I ... |
what is shareholders' Equity in balance sheets? | Shareholder's Equity consists of two main things: The initial capitalization of the company (when the shares were first sold, plus extra share issues) and retained earnings, which is the amount of money the company has made over and above capitalization, which has not been re-distributed back to shareholders. So yes, i... |
How do I pay my estimated income tax? | Congratulations on starting your own business. Invest in a tax software package right away; I can't recommend a specific one but there is enough information out there to point you in the right direction: share with us which one you ended up using and why (maybe a separate question?) You do need to make your FICA taxes ... |
Taxes on foreign and local dividends held in a TFSA | As far as I read in many articles, all earnings (capital gains and dividends) from Canadian stocks will be always tax-free. Right? There's no withholding tax, ie. a $100 dividend means you get $100. There's no withholding for capital gains in shares for anybody. You will still have to pay taxes on the amounts, bu... |
Why would a country want to use the currency of some other country? | This is more of an economics question than personal finance. That said, I already started writing an answer before I noticed, so here are a few points. I'll leave it open for others to expand the list. Advantages Disadvantages Advantages Disadvantages The flip-side to the argument that more users means more stability i... |
Why don't SPY, SPX, and the e-mini s&p 500 track perfectly with each other? | The S&P 500 is an index. This refers to a specific collection of securities which is held in perfect proportion. The dollar value of an index is scaled arbitrarily and is based off of an arbitrary starting price. (Side note: this is why an index never has a "split"). Lets look at what assumptions are included in the pr... |
Standard Deviation with Asset Prices? | Almost every online datasources provide historical prices on given company / index's performance; from this, you can easily calculate "standard deviation" by yourself. With that said, standard deviation presumes a fixed set of data. Most public corporations have data spanning multiple decades, during which a number of ... |
Can I open a Solo 401(k) if I am an independent contractor but also work part-time as an employee? | I'm in a similar situation as I have a consulting business in addition to my regular IT job. I called the company who has my IRA to ask about setting up the Individual 401k and also mentioned that I contribute to my employer's 401k plan. The rep was glad I brought this up because he said the IRS has a limit on how muc... |
How to Store Funds Generated through FX Trading | Earned income is what your software is doing, so it is taxable. So you can't really make it tax exempt. You can form a business and claim the revenues from that business as income and deduct expenses it costs you to earn that revenue. If you buy a server to run your software, then that is an acceptable expense to ded... |
What is the difference between a bond and a debenture? | Investopedia has definitions for both: Debenture: A type of debt instrument that is not secured by physical asset or collateral. Bond: A debt investment in which an investor loans money to an entity (corporate or governmental) that borrows the funds for a defined period of time at a fixed interest rate. Wikipedia's ent... |
Free Historical Commodity Prices in txt? | You can find gold historical prices on the kitco site. See the "View Data" button. |
Where should I be investing my money? | Pay off your debt. As you witnessed, no "investment" % is guaranteed. But your debt payments are... so if you have cash, the best way to "invest" it is to pay off your debt. Since your car is depreciating while your house may be appreciating (don't know but it's possible) you should pay off your car loan first. You... |
Algorithmic trading in linux using python | I don't think any open source trading project is going to offer trial or demo accounts. In fact, I'm not clear on what you mean by this. Are you looking for some example data sets so you can see how your algorithm would perform historically? If you contact whatever specific brokers that you'd like to interface with, th... |
Single employee - paying for health insurance premiums with pre-tax money | The answer likely depends a bit on which state you are in, but this should be true for most states. I don't know anything about Pennsylvania specifically unfortunately. The Affordable Care Act created the SHOP marketplace, which allows small businesses to effectively form larger groups for group coverage purposes. SH... |
Options liquidity and trading positions larger than the daily volume? | One broker told me that I have to simply read the ask size and the bid size, seeing what the market makers are offering. This implies that my order would have to match that price exactly, which is unfortunate because options contract spreads can be WIDE. Also, if my planned position size is larger than the best bid/bes... |
Online tools for monitoring my portfolio gains/losses in real time? | This functionality is widely available, not only on brokerage sites, but also financial management and even financial information sites. For instance, two of the latter are Google Finance and Yahoo Finance. If you are logged in, they let you create "portfolios" listing your stocks and, optionally, the size of your ho... |
Difference between Vanguard sp500 UCITS and Vanguard sp500 | The main difference is that VOO trades on US stock exchanges while VUSA/VUSD trade on the London Stock Exchange. (VUSA is listed in British pounds while VUSD is listed in US dollars.) They are essentially the same product, but the fees and legal hurdles for a European citizen to trade on the LSE may be quite different... |
Options for Cash only Buyout due to Company Merger | What are my options, if any, in how to deal with a buyout that forced me to sell, and accept cash only for my Florida USA company shares? Options are limited; |
What's the difference between buying bonds and buying bond funds for the long-term? | Yes, bond funds are marked to market, so they will decline as the composition of their holdings will. Households actually have unimpressive relative levels of credit to equity holdings. The reason why is because there is little return on credit, making it irrational to hold any amount greater than to fund future liqui... |
What should I consider when I try to invest my money today for a larger immediate income stream that will secure my retirement? | I don't think you should mix the two notions. Not starting out with at least. It takes so much money, time and expertise to invest for income that, starting out at least, you should view it as a goal, not a starting point. Save your money in the lowest cost investments you can find. If you are like me, you can't pic... |
Which practice to keep finances after getting married: joint, or separate? | Here are the main ways of doing this that I've encountered. I've met advocates of each. You might be interested in this set of articles: http://www.slate.com/id/2281885/ which looks at some different ways of doing this and the financial - and other - effects. |
My ex sold our car that still had money owed | This is not a finance issue, it is a legal one. You need to talk to a lawyer. To save your credit you can pay off the bank now and fight out the details with your ex later. The bank is still owed their money. |
Paying off mortgage or invest in annuity | I am in the process of writing an article about how to maximize one's Social Security benefits, or at least, how to start the analysis. This chart, from my friends at the Social Security office shows the advantage of waiting to take your benefit. In your case, you are getting $1525 at age 62. Now, if you wait 4 year... |
College student lacking investment experience: How to begin investing money? | If you have wage income that is reported on a W2 form, you can contribute the maximum of your wages, what you can afford, or $5500 in a Roth IRA. One advantage of this is that the nominal amounts you contribute can always be removed without tax consequences, so a Roth IRA can be a deep emergency fund (i.e., if the ch... |
How to dollar-cost-average with a large amount of money in a savings account? | DCA is not 10%/day over 10 days. If I read the objective correctly, I'd suggest about a 5 year plan. It's difficult to avoid the issue of market timing. And any observation I'd make about the relative valuation of the market would be opinion. By this I mean, some are saying that PE/10 which Nobel prize winner Robert Sc... |
How can contractors recoup taxation-related expenses? | They are already indirectly paying these expenses. They should be built into your rates. The amount per job or per hour needs to cover what would have been your salary, plus the what would have been sick, vacation, holidays, health insurance, life insurance, disability, education, overhead for office expenses, cost of... |
What are the tax consequences if my S corporation earns money in a foreign country? | Be careful here: If ACME were in California, I would pay taxes on USD 17,000 because I had revenue of 20,000 and expenses of 3,000. To CALIFORNIA. And California taxes S-Corps. And, in addition, you'd pay $800 for the right of doing business in the State. All that in addition to the regular Federal and State taxes to... |
Are there any investment strategies which take advantage of an in-the-money option price that incorporates no “time value”? | It depends on the volatility of the underlying stock. But for "normal" levels of volatility, the real value of that option is probably $3.50! Rough estimates of the value of the option depending on volatility levels: Bottom line: unless this is a super volatile stock, it is trading at $3.50 for a reason. More generally... |
Can I trade more than 4 stocks per week equally split between two brokers without “pattern day trading” problems? | Yes, this is a way to avoid the pattern day trader regulation. The only downside being that your broker will have different commission rates and your capital will be split amongst several places. |
Leasing a car I intend to buy | What does not seem reasonable about your plan is the payment and buyout. While $200/month payments are possible (but hard to find), buyouts are more typically in the five figure range. Given that your savings and desired payment for a car is low (the average car payment today is about 450/month), can you really afford... |
Is it a good practice to keep salary account and savings account separate? | There are a lot of good answers, but I will share my experience. First, a savings account needs to be for savings. If your in the US you have "Regulation D" to deal with and that will bite you on the rear if you go over those limits. Specially easy to do if your purchasing from a savings account. Next having an "Inco... |
Student loan payments and opportunity costs | Ponder this. Suppose that a reputable company or government were to come out and say hey, we are going to issue some 10 year bonds at 6.4%. Anyone interested in buying some? Assume that the company or government is financially solid and there is zero chance that they will go bankrupt. Think those bonds would sell? Woul... |
Paying tax for freelance work while travelling | Having freelanced myself in South America I could give you a sound advice BUT you would first need to answer some questions. 1) How long do you plan on being in South America? At the end of 2017 will you be back in Ireland or still being in South America? In other words was is your country of residence for tax purpose... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.