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More money towards down payment versus long-term investments | There are two components to any non-trivial financial decision: Assuming that all things remain equal, borrowing money at a low rate while investing for a higher return is a no-brainer. The problem is, all things do not remain equal. For example: I think that you need to assess your position and preferences. I'd err on the side of being in less debt. |
What exactly can a financial advisor do for me, and is it worth the money? | In my experience financial advisors do not normally assist with budgeting and personal everyday finance. There certainly are people who do that, but you would normally only consult them when you have financial difficulties, especially debt. The more common find of financial advisor is mostly focussed on advising you about savings and investments. A lot work for banks and investment companies. They will usually advise you for free, the downside being that they will only recommend their company's products. This may or may not be a bad thing, depending on the company. Others will charge you a commission on purchases, and their advice will be more neutral. This question will also be interesting: Are all financial advisors compensated in the same way? |
Is there a good rule of thumb for how much I should have set aside as emergency cash? | The main factor should be what sorts of emergencies you are trying and also need to protect yourself against. Overall I'd say at least 6-9 months of expenses, adjusted for the above factors. More might be better but I'd probably keep that in a different type of investment vehicle, mainly because it doesn't really need to be accessible instantaneously like your normal emergency fund would need to be. |
Meanings of “price of the derivative” | @Tim - in this case, a futures contract isn't like an options contract. It's simply a method of entering into an agreement for delivery at a future date. While the speculators appear to have taken over, there are practical examples of use of the futures market. I am a gold miner and I see that my cost is $1200/oz given my quality of ore. I see the price of gold at $1600 and instead of worrying that if it goes too low, I run at a loss, I take advantage and sell contracts to match my production for the next year (or as long as the contracts go, I forget how far out gold futures are). Of course I give up the higher price if gold goes higher, but this scenarion isn't speculation, it's a business decision. The bread maker, on the other hand, might buy wheat futures to guarantee his prices for the next year. |
Setting up general ledger/tax reporting for a Real Estate Rental LLC in GnuCash | No, GnuCash doesn't specifically provide a partner cash basis report/function. However, GnuCash reports are fairly easy to write. If the data was readily available in your accounts it shouldn't be too hard to create a cash basis report. The account setup is so flexible, you might actually be able to create accounts for each partner, and, using standard dual-entry accounting, always debit and credit these accounts so the actual cash basis of each partner is shown and updated with every transaction. I used GnuCash for many years to manage my personal finances and those of my business (sole proprietorship). It really shines for data integrity (I never lost data), customer management (decent UI for managing multiple clients and business partners) and customer invoice generation (they look pretty). I found the user interface ugly and cumbersome. GnuCash doesn't integrate cleanly with banks in the US. It's possible to import data, but the process is very clunky and error-prone. Apparently you can make bank transactions right from GnuCash if you live in Europe. Another very important limitation of GnuCash to be aware of: only one user at a time. Period. If this is important to you, don't use GnuCash. To really use GnuCash effectively, you probably have to be an actual accountant. I studied dual-entry accounting a bit while using GnuCash. Dual-entry accounting in GnuCash is a pain in the butt. Accurately recording certain types of transactions (like stock buys/sells) requires fiddling with complicated split transactions. I agree with Mariette: hire a pro. |
Trading on forex news, Interactive Brokers / IDEALPRO, and slippage | In my experience thanks to algorithmic trading the variation of the spread and the range of trading straight after a major data release will be as random as possible, since we live in an age that if some pattern existed at these times HFT firms would take out any opportunity within nanoseconds. Remember that some firms write algorithms to predict other algorithms, and it is at times like those that this strategy would be most effective. With regards to my own trading experience I have seen orders fill almost €400 per contract outside of the quoted range, but this is only in the most volatile market conditions. Generally speaking, event investing around numbers like these are only for top wall street firms that can use co-location servers and get a ping time to the exchange of less than 5ms. Also, after a data release the market can surge/plummet in either direction, only to recover almost instantly and take out any stops that were in its path. So generally, I would say that slippage is extremely unpredictable in these cases( because it is an advantage to HFT firms to make it so ) and stop-loss orders will only provide limited protection. There is stop-limit orders( which allow you to specify a price limit that is acceptable ) on some markets and as far as I know InteractiveBrokers provide a guaranteed stop-loss fill( For a price of course ) that could be worth looking at, personally I dont use IB. I hope this answer provides some helpful information, and generally speaking, super-short term investing is for algorithms. |
How does the yield on my investments stack up against other investors? | From an article I wrote a while back: “Dalbar Inc., a Boston-based financial services research firm, has been measuring the effects of investors’ decisions to buy, sell, and switch into and out of mutual funds since 1984. The key finding always has been that the average investor earns significantly less than the return reported by their funds. (For the 20 years ended Dec. 31, 2006, the average stock fund investor earned a paltry 4.3 average annual compounded return compared to 11.8 percent for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.)” It's one thing to look at the indexes. But quite another to understand what other investors are actually getting. The propensity to sell low and buy high is proven by the data Dalbar publishes. And really makes the case to go after the magic S&P - 0.09% gotten from an ETF. |
What pension options are there for a 22 year old graduate in the UK? | Major things to consider: If you're expecting to look at the property market: it might prove to be sensible to start doing it now, since the market is just recovering, and (IMHO warning -I'm not a professional investor, just a random guy on the internet) prices still hasn't caught up with value fundamentals. check out cash ISA's for a 24-36 month timeframe; most do a reasonable 3-4% AER, with the current inflation rate being around 4%, this will, at the very least, make sure your money doesn't loose it's purchasing power. Finally, a word of caution: SIPPs have a rather rubbish AER rates. This, by itself, wouldn't be much of a problem on a 30-40 years timeframe, but keep the (current, and historically strictly monotonically increasing) 4% inflation rate in mind: this implies the purchasing power of any money tied in these vehicles will loose it's purchasing power, in a compounding manner. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions. |
CEO entitlement from share ownership? | In its basic form, a corporation is a type of 'privileged democracy'. Instead of every citizen having a vote, votes are allocated on the basis of share ownership. In the most basic form, each share you own gives you 1 vote. In most public companies, very few shareholders vote [because their vote is statistically meaningless, and they have no particular insight into what they want in their Board]. This means that often the Board is voted in by a "plurality" [ie: 10%-50%] of shareholders who are actually large institutions (like investment firms or pension funds which own many shares of the company). Now, what do shareholders actually "vote on"? You vote to elect individuals to be members of the Board of Directors ("BoD"). The BoD is basically an overarching committee that theoretically steers the company in whatever way they feel best represents the shareholders (because if they do not represent the shareholders, they will get voted out at the next shareholder meeting). The Board members are typically senior individuals with experience in either that industry or a relevant one (ie: someone who was a top lawyer may sit on the BoD and be a member of some type of 'legal issues committee'). These positions typically pay some amount of money, but often they are seen as a form of high prestige for someone nearing / after retirement. It is not typically a full time job. It will typically pay far, far less than the role of CEO at the same company. The BoD meets periodically, to discuss issues regarding the health of the company. Their responsibility is to act in the interests of the shareholders, but they themselves do not necessarily own shares in the company. Often the BoD is broken up into several committees, such as an investment committee [which reviews and approves large scale projects], a finance committee [which reviews and approves large financial decisions, such as how to get funding], an audit committee [which reviews the results of financial statements alongside the external accountants who audit them], etc. But arguably the main role of the BoD is to hire the Chief Executive Officer and possibly other high level individuals [typically referred to as the C-Suite executives, ie Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, etc.] The CEO is the Big Cheese, who then typically has authority to rule everyone below him/her. Typically there are things that the Big Cheese cannot do without approval from the board, like start huge investment projects requiring a lot of spending. So the Shareholders own the company [and are therefore entitled to receive all the dividends from profits the company earns] and elects members of the Board of Directors, the BoD oversees the company on the Shareholders' behalf, and the CEO acts based on the wishes of the BoD which hires him/her. So how do you get to be a member of the Board, or the CEO? You become a superstar in your industry, and go through a similar process as getting any other job. You network, you make contacts, you apply, you defend yourself in interviews. The shareholders will elect a Board who acts in their interests. And the Board will hire a CEO that they feel can carry out those interests. If you hold a majority of the shares in a company, you could elect enough Board members that you could control the BoD, and you could then be guaranteed to be hired as the CEO. If you own, say, 10% of the shares you will likely be able to elect a few people to the Board, but maybe not enough to be hired by the Board as the CEO. Short of owning a huge amount of a company, therefore, share ownership will not get you any closer to being the CEO. |
Money Structuring | Structuring, as noted in another answer, involves breaking up cash transactions to avoid the required reporting limits. There are a couple of important things to note. And, the biggest caveat - there have been many cases of perfectly legitimate transactions that have fallen foul of the reporting requirements. One case springs to mind of a small business that routinely deposited the previous day's receipts as cash, and due to the size of the business, those deposits typically fell in the $9,000-$9,500 range. This business ended up going through a lot of headaches and barely survived. Some don't. A single batch of transactions, if it is only 2 or 3 parts and they are separated by reasonable intervals, is not likely in and of itself to be suspicious. However, any set of such transactions does run the risk of being flagged. In your case, you also run afoul of the Know Your Customer rules, because it's not even you depositing the cash - it's your friend. (Why can your friend not simply write you a check? What is your friend doing with $5k of cash at a time? How do you know he's not generating illegal income and using you to launder it for him?) Were I your bank, you can be very certain I'd be reporting these transactions. Just from this description, this seems questionable to me. IRS seizes millions from law-abiding businesses |
What should I be aware of as a young investor? | Risk and return always go hand by hand.* Risk is a measure of expected return volatility. The best investment at this stage is a good, easy to understand but thorough book on finance. *Applies to efficient markets only. |
What prevents investors from buying high yield stocks and selling them as soon as their dividend is paid out? | The market is not stupid. It realises that a company is worth less after paying out dividends than before paying them. (It's obvious, since that company has just given out part of its earnings.) So after a company pays out dividends, its stock price normally drops approximately by the amount paid. Therefore if you buy, get the dividend, and immediately sell, under normal conditions you won't make any profit. |
How can I stop wasting food? | Let me start out by saying I know your pain. One of the most important things to do is have the basics in stock in your larder. They are the sorts of things that keep well, and you can make great simple meals from them whenever, without having to worry about them going off in a matter of days. A simple inventory like this - http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/12/06/the-well-stocked-kitchen-staple-foods-you-should-always-have-on-hand/ - can make a big difference. (This list is good, but check the comments for additional suggestions. There are a few extras that commenters reckon you should have and I think they are right - I certainly have more than just what's on that list.) And remember - frozen veg may or may not be as nutritious as fresh, but they are better than nothing. |
Mutual Fund with Dividends | Funds built of dividend-paying stocks are normally called income funds. |
Why do Americans have to file taxes, even if their only source of income is from a regular job? | you either tell your financial department about them (e.g. I used to get a student's tax discount), or you file them separately. But you don't have to file anything by default. That is a comment connected to the question. In the united states you can almost achieve this. 90% of the numbers on my tax form are automated. The W-2s are sent to the IRS, the 1099-s for my non retirement accounts are also sent. The two biggest items that take time are charities, and the educational benefits. Nobody has to claim every deduction they are entitled to. They must claim all the income, and decide to take the standard deduction. It would probably take less than an hour to finish the families taxes: both federal and state. |
Why do people always talk about stocks that pay high dividends? | Dividends indicate that a business is making more profit than it can effectively invest into expansion or needs to regulate cash-flow. This generally indicates that the business is well established and has stabilized in a dominant market position. This can be contrasted against businesses that: Dividends are also given preferential tax treatment. Specifically, if I buy a stock and sell it 30 days later, I will be taxed on the capital gains at the regular income rate (typically 25-33%), but the dividends would be taxed at the lower long-term capital gains rate (typically 15%). |
which types of investments should be choosen for 401k at early 20's? | I can't find a decent duplicate, so here are some general guidelines: First of all by "stocks" the answers generally mean "equities" which could be either single stocks or mutual funds that consist of stocks. Unless you have lots of experience that can help you discern good stocks from bad, investing in mutual funds reduces the risk considerably. If you want to fine-tune the plan, you can weigh certain categories higher to change your risk/return profile (e.g. equity funds will have higher returns and risk than fixed income (bond) funds, so if you want to take a little more risk you can put more in equity funds and less in fixed income funds). Lastly, don't stress too much over the individual investments. The most important thing is that you get as much company match as you can. You cannot beat the 100% return that comes from a company match. The allocation is mostly insignificant compared to that. Plus you can probably change your allocation later easily and cheaply if you don't like it. Disclaimer: these are _general_ guidelines for 401(k) investing in general and not personal advice. |
What benefits are there to having a Pension (Retirement Account) In Ireland? | Here's an Irish government publication that should give you some background information to get you started. In a nutshell, you get tax benefits, but cannot withdraw money without penalty until you reach retirement age. |
In India, what is the difference between Dividend and Growth mutual fund types? | A growth fund is looking to invest in stocks that will appreciate in stock price over time as the companies grow revenues and market share. A dividend fund is looking to invest in stocks of companies that pay dividends per share. These may also be called "income" funds. In general, growth stocks tend to be younger companies and tend to have a higher volatility - larger up and down swings in stock price as compared to more established companies. So, growth stocks are a little riskier than stocks of more established/stable companies. Stocks that pay dividends are usually more established companies with a good revenue stream and well established market share who don't expect to grow the company by leaps and bounds. Having a stable balance sheet over several years and paying dividends to shareholders tends to stabilize the stock price - lower volatility, less speculation, smaller swings in stock price. So, income stocks are considered lower risk than growth stocks. Funds that invest in dividend stocks are looking for steady reliable returns - not necessarily the highest possible return. They will favor lower, more reliable returns in order to avoid the drama of high volatility and possible loss of capital. Funds that invest in growth stocks are looking for higher returns, but with that comes a greater risk of losing value. If the fund manager believes an industry sector is on a growth path, the fund may invest in several small promising companies in the hopes that one or two of them will do very well and make up for lackluster performance by the rest. As with all stock investments, there are no guarantees. Investing in funds instead of individual stocks allows you invest in multiple companies to ride the average - avoid large losses if a single company takes a sudden downturn. Dividend funds can lose value if the market in general or the industry sector that the fund focuses on takes a downturn. |
Optimal pricing of close to zero marginal cost content | It seems this will be very much driven by price discrimination. If there are some customers who will pay up to $100, sell at that; and if there are others who'll pay $1 sell at that price. For instance you see computer games, which have zero marginal cost of production, sold at "normal new release" prices, at premium prices with a special box or doo-dad, and at discount prices once the game is a bit old. |
How is Los Angeles property tax calculated if a 50% owner later buys out the other 50%? | Can't vouch for LA, but property typically is taxed at either the appraised value, the most recent purchase price ("if it wasn't worth that much, you wouldn't have paid that much"), or some combination of the two (usually highest of the two, to prevent "$1 and other goods and services" from lowering the tax to zero). You have now explicitly paid a total of $125k for the property; the fact that you bought it in two stages shouldn't be relevant. But "should" and law are only tangentially connected. I'd recommend asking a tax accountant who know your local practices, unless someone here can give you an authoritative answer. |
Why doesn't Japan just divide the Yen by 100? | Another possibly significant issue, is that the number ten thousand is very important in the Japanese language. In Japanese, you count in ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, BUT instead of a 'hundred thousand', you have ten ten thousands. and then one hundred ten thousands, and then a thousand ten thousands. The ten thousand yen note, equivalent roughly to the $100 bill, is the main base of Japanese currency. If you go to the bank, for example, you will almost always take out your money in ten thousand yen notes. Knowing a little about the language, i would say it would become quite strange and un-natural to suddenly start using a hundred as the main note value. I doubt the Japanese people would ever even consider that, and my guess is the only people who are even put out by the large number of zeroes are foreigners who are used to dealing in dollars and cents. |
What's the benefit of opening a Certificate of Deposit (CD) Account? | One reason why you can get a better rate with a CD compared to a regular savings account is that they lock you into that account for the period of the CD. You can get out of the CD early, but you will forfeit some of the interest. You also generally can't move a portion of the money out of the CD, you have to pull it all out, and then start a new CD with the portion you don't spend. You have to check the terms and conditions for that particular CD. Some people use them to hold their emergency fund. This is the 3-6 months of expenses you set aside in case of a major problem such as a medical emergency or a job loss. The rate is better than the regular savings account, so it can come closer to inflation. The goal is preservation of capital, not investing for the future. So if you understand the risks, and the CD is backed with the same guarantees as the savings account, then it is a viable way to store some or all of the emergency fund. |
What is the best way to stay risk neutral when buying a house with a mortgage? | Note: I am making a USA-assumption here; keep in mind this answer doesn't necessarily apply to all countries (or even states in the USA). You asked two questions: I'm looking to buy a property. I do not want to take a risk on this property. Its sole purpose is to provide me with a place to live. How would I go about hedging against increasing interest rates, to counter the increasing mortgage costs? To counter increasing interest rates, obtaining a fixed interest rate on a mortgage is the answer, if that's available. As far as costs for a mortgage, that depends, as mortgages are tied to the value of the property/home. If you want a place to live, a piece of property, and want to hedge against possible rising interest rates, a fixed mortgage would work for these goals. Ideally I'd like to not lose money on my property, seeing as I will be borrowing 95% of the property's value. So, I'd like to hedge against interest rates and falling property prices in order to have a risk neutral position on my property. Now we have a different issue. For instance, if someone had opened a fixed mortgage on a home for $500,000, and the housing value plummeted 50% (or more), the person may still have a fixed interest rate protecting the person from higher rates, but that doesn't protect the property value. In addition to that, if the person needed to move for a job, that person would face a difficult choice: move and sell at a loss, or move and rent and face some complications. Renting is generally a good idea for people who (1) have not determined if they'll be in an area for more than 5-10 years, (2) want the flexibility to move if their living costs rises (which may be an issue if they lose wages), (3) don't want to pay property taxes (varies by state), homeowner's insurance, or maintenance costs, (4) enjoy regular negotiation (something which renters can do before re-signing a lease or looking for a new place to live). Again, other conditions can apply to people who favor renting, such as someone might enjoy living in one room out of a house rather than a full apartment or a person who likes a "change of scenes" and moves from one apartment to another for a fresh perspective, but these are smaller exceptions. But with renting, you have nothing to re-sell and no financial asset so far as a property is concerned (thus why some real estate agents refer to it as "throwing away money" which isn't necessarily true, but one should be aware that the money they invest in renting doesn't go into an asset that can be re-sold). |
$200k in an IRA, unallocated. What's the safest investment? | The safest investment is probably a money market fund [originally I said a TIPS fund but they appear to be riskier than I had thought]. But you might not want to invest everything there because the returns are not going to be great. High returns come with high risk. The best portfolio has some percentage (which may be 0) of your money in a safe asset like a money market and some in a risky portfolio (this percentage may also be zero for some people). You should consult your own risk aversion and decide how much money to put in each. If you are super risk-averse, put almost all of it in the money market. If you want a little more return, put more of it in the risky portfolio. This is a fundamental result of finance theory. What's the risky asset? A fully diversified portfolio of bonds and stocks. People don't agree on exactly what the weights should be. The rule of thumb back in the day was 60% stock and 40% bonds. These days lots of financial planners recommend 120 minus your age in stock and the rest in bonds. But no one really knows what the perfect weights in the risky portfolio should be (the rules of thumb I just gave have little or no theoretical foundation) so you have to choose for yourself what you think makes sense. |
Does financing a portfolio on margin affect the variance of a portfolio? | Financing a portfolio with debt (on margin) leads to higher variance. That's the WHOLE POINT. Let's say it's 50-50. On the downside, with 100% equity, you can never lose more than your whole equity. But if you have assets of 100, of which 50% is equity and 50% is debt, your losses can be greater than 50%, which is to say more than the value of your equity. The reverse is true. You can make money at TWICE the rate if the market goes up. But "you pay your money and you take your chances" (Punch, 1846). |
Should retirement fund be equal to amount of money needed for financial independence? | I want to know ideally how much should a person save for retirement funds? A person should save enough such that your total retirement resources will equal the amount you personally need for a comfortable retirement at the point in time when the person desires to retire. If you want to retire at 40, you may need to save quite a lot each year. If you want to retire at 70, you may need to save less each year. If you will have a pension, you may wish to save somewhat less than someone who won't have a pension. The same is true for Social Security (or your local equivalent). I am getting a feeling retirement funds is equal to financial independence because one can live without needing to borrow money from anyone. Sort of, but it depends on your goals. Some who are financially independent never choose to retire, but choose jobs without regard to financial need. |
What is this fund? | SMID CAP FUND is Fidelity's way of saying SMALL to MID CAP FUND. Small to Medium is self explanatory. Cap is capitalization, and it basically means how much the sum of all the existing shares of the company are worth. Fidelity names the funds inside their 401k plans according to who provides the fund. They also provide management resources for funds chosen by your employer. There should be more available about the fund you're interested in on your Fidelity 401(k) site. |
Are there any countries where citizens are free to use any currency? | Wikipedia has a list of countries which ban foreign exchange use by its citizens. It's actually quite short but does include India and China. Sometimes economic collapse limits enforcement. For example, after the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar (and its government running out of sufficient foreign exchange to buy the paper necessary to print more), the state turned a blind eye as the US dollar and South African rand became de facto exchange. Practicality will limit the availability of foreign exchange even in free-market economies. The average business can't afford to have a wide range of alternative currencies sitting around. Businesses which cater to large numbers of addled tourists sometimes offer one or two alternative currencies in the hopes of charging usurous rates of exchange. Even bureaux de change sometimes require you to order your "rarer" foreign exchange in advance. So, while it may be legal, it isn't always feasible. |
How can I invest in an index fund but screen out (remove) certain categories of socially irresponsible investments? | Hmm, this would seem to be impossible by definition. The definition of an "index fund" is that it includes exactly the stocks that make up the index. Once you say "... except for ..." then what you want is not an index fund but something else. It's like asking, "Can I be a vegetarian but still eat beef?" Umm, no. There might be someone offering a mutual fund that has the particular combination of stocks that you want, resembling the stocks making up the index except with these exclusions. That wouldn't be an index fund at that point, but, etc. There are lots of funds out there with various ideological criteria. I don't know of one that matches your criteria. I'd say, search for the closest approximation you can find. You could always buy individual stocks yourself and create your own pseudo-index fund. Depending on how many stock are in the index you are trying to match and how much money you have to invest, it may not be possible to exactly match it mathematically, if you would have to buy fractions of shares. If the number of shares you had to buy was very small you might get killed on broker fees. And I'll upvote @user662852's answer for being a pretty close approximation to what you want. |
How much should a new graduate with new job put towards a car? | In a very similar situation as yours, I bought a used motorcycle for $3000. It was still reasonably new, very reliable, and with California weather, you can use it year-round. It reduced my time in traffic, and it had very low fuel and maintenance costs. The biggest expense was tires. The biggest pitfall in buying a motorcycle is auto-insurance. Do your research and ask for quotes from your broker before even considering a particular model of bike. When I decided that my finances justified a new motorcycle, I was surprised that full collision coverage cost about $3000/year on a lower powered bike that had a bad accident record because it appealed to new riders. I got a much more powerful bike that appealed to more experienced riders and the premium was only $500/year. Is this answer not what you were looking for? Spend as little as you can on a 4-6 year old car. Drive it until you can save enough cash to buy the one you really want. I'm currently driving a 2007 Corolla, and I'm waiting until I can get a new civic turbo with a manual transmission to replace it. (They currently only offer them with a CVT, but next fall they'll have them with the MT, so I'm probably 2 1/2 years out from buying one used.) |
Why is Net Asset Value (NAV) only reported by funds, but not stocks? | The (assets - liabilities)/#shares of a company is its book value, and that number is included in their reports. It's easy for a fund to release the net asset value on a daily basis because all of its assets (stocks, bonds, and cash) are given values every day by the market. It's also necessary to have a real time value for a fund as it will be bought and sold every day. A company can't really do the same thing as it will have much more diverse assets - real estate, cars, inventory, goodwill, etc. The real time value of those assets doesn't have the same meaning as a fund; those assets are used to earn cash, while a fund's business is only to maximize its net asset value. |
Do you know of any online monetary systems? | I'm not sure, but I think the monetary system of Second Life or World of Warcraft would correspond to what you are looking for. I don't think they are independent of the dollar though, since acquiring liquidity in those games can be done through exchange for real dollars. But there can be more closed systems, maybe Sim type games where this is not the case. I hope this helps. |
Would I qualify for a USDA loan? | If you even qualify for a no-down payment USDA loan, which I'm not sure you would. It would be extremely risky to take on a $250K house loan and have near-zero equity in the house for a good while. If property values drop at all you are going to be stuck in that house which likely has a pretty high monthly payment, insurance, taxes, HOA fees, maintenance costs, etc. My rule of thumb is that if you can't come up with a down payment, then you can't afford the house. Especially with that much debt hanging over your head already. If one major thing goes wrong with the house (roof, A/C, electrical, etc.) you are going to put yourself in a world of hurt with no clear path out of that financial trap. My suggestion: Keep renting until you have enough money for a downpayment, even if this means downsizing your price range for houses you are considering. |
What would happen if the Euro currency went bust? | If the Euro went bust then it would be the 12th government currency to go belly up in Europe (according to this website). Europe holds the record for most failed currencies. It also holds the record for the worst hyperinflation in history - Yugoslavia 1993. I'm not sure what would happen if the Euro failed. It depends on how it fails. If it fails quickly (which most do) then there will be bank runs, bank holidays, capital controls, massive price increases, price controls, and just general confusion as people race to get rid of their Euros. Black markets for everything will pop up if the price controls remain in place. Some countries may switch to a foreign currency (i.e. the US dollar if it is still around) until they can get their own currency in circulation. |
Why is economic growth so important? | There is an economic principle called "non-satiation," which translated into plain English means "people always want more." (This was best illustrated in the movie, Oliver Twist, "Please sir, can I have MORE?") Over time, most people won't be satisfied with "things as they are." Which is why growth is so important. Many behavioral economists would argue that it is not the LEVEL of utility, but rather the utility CHANGES (in calculus, "deltas" or "derivatives") that make people happy. Or not. |
Ongoing things to do and read to improve knowledge of finance? | For learning about finances my main two financial resources are this site, and the Motley Fool. My secondary sources are keeping up with columns by my favourite economic journalists - in the press in the US, Australia, England, and India. Regarding your comment about feeling green on the basics despite the reading - you're not alone. I've been interested in financials for better than 10 years, but there are a lot of questions on this site where I say to myself, "I've no idea of what the answer could be, what are our resident experts saying?" Having said that, there are some topics where I feel as though I can weigh in - and they tend to be where I have a little book knowledge and a lot of personal experience. |
Why do grocery stores in the U.S. offer cash back so eagerly? | It doesn't cost them anything, they don't pay commission on you taking cash-back. But it brings customers to the stores because these customers would rather buy something and use cash-back to get cash, than go to an ATM and pay the ATM commission. |
How to interpret a 1,372.55% dividend payout ratio (GSK)? | I don't think it makes sense to allow accounting numbers that you are not sure how to interpret as being a sell sign. If you know why the numbers are weird and you feel that the reason for it bodes ill about the future, and if you think there's a reason this has not been accounted for by the market, then you might think about selling. The stock's performance will depend on what happens in the future. Financials just document the past, and are subject to all kinds of lumpiness, seasonality, and manipulation. You might benefit from posting a link to where you got your financials. Whenever one computes something like a dividend payout ratio, one must select a time period over which to measure. If the company had a rough quarter in terms of earnings but chose not to reduce dividends because they don't expect the future to be rough, that would explain a crazy high dividend ratio. Or if they were changing their capital structure. Or one of many other potentially benign things. Accounting numbers summarize a ton of complex workings of the company and many ratios we look at could be defined in several different ways. I'm afraid that the answer to your question about how to interpret things is in the details, and we are not looking at the same details you are. |
Does the currency exchange rate contain any additional information at all? | No. An exchange rate tells you the exchange rate, that's all. Changes in exchange rates are a little more interesting because they suggest economic changes (or anticipation of such), but since the exchange rate is the composite of many economic forces, determining what changes may be in action from an exchange rate change is not really possible. |
Effective returns on investment in housing vs other financial instruments | Thinking of personal residence as investment is how we got the bubble and crash in housing prices, and the Great Recession. There is no guarantee that a house will appreciate, or even retain value. It's also an extremely illiquid item; selling it, especially if you're seeking a profit, can take a year or more. ' Housing is not guaranteed to appreciate constantly, or at all. Tastes change and renovations rarely pay for themselves. Things wear out and have costs. Neighborhoods change in popularity. Without rental income and the ability to write off some of the costs as business expense, it isn't clear the tax advantage closes that gap, especislly as the advantage is limited to the taxes upon your mortgage interest (by deducting that from AGI). If this is the flavor of speculation you want to engage in, fine, but I've seen people screw themselves over this way and wind up forced to sell a house for a loss. By all means hope your home will be profitable, count it as part of your net wealth... but generally Lynch is wrong here, or at best oversimplified. A house can be an investment (or perhaps more accurately a business), or your home, but -- unless you're renting out the other half of a duplex,which splits the difference -- trying to treat it as both is dangerous accounting. |
Buying my first car: why financing is cheaper than paying cash here and now? | The dealership is getting a kickback for having you use a particular bank to finance through. The bank assumes you will take the full term of the loan to pay back, and will hopefully be a repeat customer. This tactic isn't new, and although it maybe doesn't make sense to you, the consumer, in the long run it benefits the bank and the dealership. (They wouldn't do it otherwise. These guys have a lot of smart people running #s for them). Be sure to read the specifics of the loan contract. There may be a penalty for paying it off early. Most customers won't be able to pay that much in cash, so the bank makes a deal with the dealership to send clients their way. They will lose money on a small percentage of clients, but make more off of the rest of the clients. If there's no penalty for paying it off early, you may just want to take the financing offer and pay it off ASAP. If you truly can only finance $2500 for 6 mos, and get the full discount, then that might work as well. The bank had to set a minimum for the dealership in order to qualify as a loan that earns the discount. Sounds like that's it. Bonus Info: Here's a screenshot of Kelley Blue Book for that car. Car dealers get me riled up, always have, always will, so I like doing this kind of research for people to make sure they get the right price. Fair price range is $27,578 - $28,551. First time car buyers are a dealers dream come true. Don't let them beat you down! And here's more specific data about the Florida area relating to recent purchases: |
Are dividends the only thing linking stocks to corporate performance? | There is certainly an obligation in some cases of a company to distribute profit, either as dividend or a stock buy back. Activist investors frequently push for one or the other when a company is doing well - sometimes to the detriment of future growth, in some eyes - and can even file shareholder lawsuits (saying the company is not doing its duty to its shareholders by simply holding onto cash). Apple famously held out from doing either for years under Steve Jobs, and only in the last few years started doing both - a large dividend and a share buy-back which increases the value of remaining shares (as EPS then goes up with fewer shares out there). Carl Icahn for example is one of those investors in Apple's case [and in many cases!] who put significant pressure, particularly when they were sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars. Ultimately, a (for-profit) corporation's board is tasked with maximizing its shareholder's wealth; as such, it can buy back shares, pay dividends, sell the company, liquidate the company, or expand the company, at its discretion, so long as it can justify to its shareholders that it is still attempting to maximize the value of their holdings. Companies in their growth phase often don't return any money and simply reinvest - but the long-term hope is to either return money in the form of dividends on profits, or the sale of the company. |
I own a mutual fund that owns voting shares, who gets the vote? | You will not get a vote on any issues of the underlying stock. The mutual fund owner/manager will do the voting. In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) required that fund companies disclose proxy votes, voting guidelines and conflicts of interest in the voting process. All funds must make these disclosures to the SEC through an N-PX filing, which must either be available to shareholders on the fund company's websites or upon request by telephone. You can also find your fund's N-PX filing on the SEC website. -- http://www.investopedia.com/articles/mutualfund/08/acting-in-interest.asp |
Are bonds really a recession proof investment? | During the hyperinflation of the Wiermer republic, corporate stocks and convertible bonds were thought second only to the species (gold, silver etc) as the only secure currencies. As Milton Friedman proved, inflation is caused solely by the monetary token supply increasing faster than productivity. In the past, days of species of currency, it was caused by governments debasing the currency e.g. streatching the same amount of silver in 50 coins to 100 coins. Sudden increases in the supply of precious metals can also trigger it. The various gold rushes in 19th century and later, improvements in extraction methods caused bouts of inflation. Most famously, the huge amounts of silver the Spanish extracted from the New World mines, devastated the European economy with high inflation. Governments use inflation as a form of stealth flat tax. Money functions as an Abstract Universal Trade Good and it obeys all the rules of supply and demand. If the supply of money goes up suddenly, then its value drops in relation to real goods and service. But that drop in value doesn't occur instantly, the increased quality of tokens has to percolate through the market before the value changes. So, the first institution to spend the infalted/debased currency can get the full current value from trade. The second gets slightly less, the third even less and so on. In 2008, the Federal reserve began printing money and loaning at 0% to insolvent backs who then used that money to buy T-Bill. This had the duel effect of giving the banks an (arbitrary) A1 rated asset for their fractional reserve while the Federal government got full pre-inflation value of the money paid for the T-bills. As the government spent that money, the number of tokens increased fast than the economy. In times of inflation, the value of money per unit drops as its supply increases and increases The best hedges against inflation are real assets e.g. land, equipment, stocks (ownership of real assets) and convertible bonds which are convertible to stock. It's important to remember that money is, of itself, worthless. It's just a technology that abstracts and smilies trading which at the base, is still a barter system. During inflation the barter value of money plunges owing to increased supply. But the direct barter value between any two real assets remain the same because their supplies have not changed. The value of stocks and convertible bonds is maintained by the economic activity of the company whose ownership they represent. Dividends, stock prices and bond equity, as measured in the inflated currency continue to rise in sync with inflation. Thus they preserve the original value of the money paid for them. Not sure why you expect more inflation. The only institution that can create inflation in the US is the Federal Reserve which Trump has no direct control off. Deregulation of banks won't cause inflation in and of itself as the private banks cannot alter the money supply. If banks fail, owing to deregulation, unlikely I think given the dismal nearly century long record of regulation to date, then the Federal Reserve might fix the problem with another inflation tax, but otherwise not. |
Does it make sense to buy a house in my situation? | Just echoing the other answers here. You're not ready yet. 3% down, or no money down loans are what got so many of us into trouble these last few years. It sounds like you make a pretty good living and are able to squirrel away money despite paying rent. Let me suggest something that I haven't seen here yet. Save up for a 20% down payment. You will get better rates, won't have to buy mortgage insurance and it will give you enough of a cushion on your payment that you could better weather a job loss or other loss of income. Your priority for saving are, in order: Home prices aren't going up any time soon, so you're not going to miss out on a great deal. Keep your expenses low, treat yourself and your kids once in a while and keep saving. |
At what interest rate should debt be used as a tool? | This post has a great discussion on the topic. Basically, there is no single interest rate above which you should pay off and below which you should keep. You have to keep in mind factors such as |
Why do people use mortgages, when they could just pay for the house in full? | Condensed to the essence: if you can reliably get more income from investing the cost of the house than the mortgage is costing you, this is the safest leveraged investment you'll ever make. There's some risk, of course, but there is risk in any financial decision. Taking the mortgage also leaves you with far greater flexibility than if you become "house- rich but cash-poor". (Note that you probably shouldn't be buying at all if you may need geographic flexibility in the next five years or so; that's another part of the liquidity issue.) Also, it doesn't have to be either/or. I borrowed half and paid the rest in cash, though I could have taken either extreme, because that was the balance of certainty vs.risk that I was comfortable with. I also took a shorter mortgage than I might have, again trading off risk and return; I decided I would rather have the house paid off at about the same time that I retire. |
I am not VAT registered. Do I need to buy from my supplier with excl VAT prices or incl VAT? | It looks like there's some confusion about the purchase price and reclaiming VAT. You should pay your supplier the total amount (£10 + VAT in this scenario, so £12) - look for this figure on the invoice or receipt. The supplier doesn't normally expect you to work this out for yourself, so I'd be a little surprised if it's not on there? As Dumbcoder's said, you'd then be able to claim the VAT back from HMRC if you were VAT registered. But seeing as you're not, then you don't need to worry about claiming it. And as for selling the product without VAT, you can (and probably should) increase the unit price to cover the extra cost, otherwise you'll be operating at a loss. Hope this helps! |
Everyone got a raise to them same amount, lost my higher pay than the newer employees | The same thing happened to me when I worked retail during my college years. I agree that it is unfair however, it is what it is. With that being said, there may be several factors that you should consider: the new employees might have more experience or qualifications then you, your work performance based on your manager's perspective, and like in my situation when I worked retail, I started out as a cashier which get paid less than sales associates but when I moved to a sales associate position I still got paid less and when I got my raise I got the same pay a new sales associate would get. I suggest you suck it up and ride it through until you get a real job because in retail, in my opinion, you are expendable, if you don't like their pay they will find someone else. |
Investing small amounts at regular intervals while minimizing fees? | I think your best bet would be commission-free ETFs, which have no minimum and many have a share price under $100. Most online brokerages have these now, e.g. Vanguard, Fidelity, etc. Just have to watch out for any non-trading fees brokerages may charge with a low balance. |
How does 1099 work with my own company | Can I work on 1099 from my own company instead of on W2? The reason is on W2 I can't deduct my commute, Health Insurance and some other expenses while on 1099 I think I can able do that. Since I am going to client place to work not at my own office, I am not sure whether I should able to do that or not. If you have LLC, unless you elected to tax it as a corporation, you need neither 1099 nor W2. For tax purposes the LLC is disregarded. So it is, from tax perspective, a sole proprietorship (or partnership, if multiple members). Being a W2 employee of your own LLC is a bad idea. For all these above expenses, which can I use company's debit/credit card or I need to use only my personal debit/credit card? It would be better to always use a business account for business purposes. Doesn't matter much for tax per se, but will make your life easier in case of an audit or a legal dispute (limited liability protection may depend on it). If I work on 1099, I guess I need to file some reasonable taxes on quarterly basis instead of filing at year end. If so, how do I pay my tax on quarterly basis to IRS? I mean which forms should I file and how to pay tax? Unless you're a W2 employee, you need to do quarterly estimate payments using form 1040-ES. If you are a W2 employee (even for a different job, and even if it is not you, but your spouse with whom you're filing jointly) - you can adjust your/spouse's withholding using form W4 to cover the additional tax liability. This is, IMHO, a better way than paying estimates. There are numerous questions on this, search the site or ask another one for details. |
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. |
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 than being concerned about your net debt, you should be concerned about your monthly debt payments. Generally speaking, you cannot have debt payments of more than 36% of your monthly income. If you can secure a renter for your current property, then you may be able to reach this ratio for your next (third) property. Also, only 75% of your expected monthly rental income is considered for calculating your 36% number. (This is not an exhaustive list of risks you expose yourself to). The largest risk is if you or your spouse find yourself without income (e.g. lost job, accident/injury, no renter), then you may be hurting to make your monthly debt payments. You will need to be confident that you can pay all your debts. A good rule that I hear is having the ability to pay 6 months worth of debt. This may not necessarily mean having 6 months worth of cash on hand, but access to that money through personal lines of credit, borrowing against assets, selling stocks/investments, etc. You also want to make sure that your insurance policies fully cover you in the event that a tenant sues you, damages property, etc. You also don't want to face a situation where you are sued because of discrimination. Hiring a property management company to take care of these things may be a good peace-of-mind. |
What is the US Fair Tax? | Its a new way of computing sales tax. Wikipedia has a nice article on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax |
Why would someone want to buy an option on the day of expiry | The short answer to your initial question is: yes. The option doesn't expire until the close of the market on the day of expiration. Because the option is expiring so soon, the time value of the option is quite small. That is why the option, once it is 'in-the-money', will track so closely to the underlying stock price. If someone buys an in-the-money option on the day of expiration, they are likely still expecting the price to go up before they sell it or exercise it. Many brokers will exercise your in-the-money options sometime after 3pm on the day of expiration. If this is not what you desire, you should communicate that with them prior to that day. |
Are there good investment options to pay off student loans? | What you're getting at is the same as investing with leverage. Usually this comes in the form in a margin account, which an investor uses to borrow money at a low interest rate, invest the money, and (hopefully!) beat the interest rate. is this approach unwise? That completely depends on how your investments perform and how high your loan's interest rate is. The higher your loan's interest rate, the more risky your investments will have to be in order to beat the interest rate. If you can get a return which beats the interest rates of your loan then congratulations! You have come out ahead and made a profit. If you can keep it up you should make the minimum payment on your loan to maximize the amount of capital you can invest. If not, then it would be better to just use your extra cash to pay down the loan. [are] there really are investments (aside from stocks and such) that I can try to use to my advantage? With interest rates as low as they are right now (at least in the US) you'll probably be hard-pressed to find a savings account or CD that will return a higher interest rate than your loan's. If you're nervous about the risk associated with investing in stocks and bonds (as is healthy!), then know that they come in a wide spectrum of risk. It's up to you to evaluate how much risk you're willing to take on to achieve a higher return. |
How aggressive should my personal portfolio be? | Its important to note that aggression, or better yet volatility, does not necessarily offer higher returns. One can find funds that have a high beta (measure of volatility) and lower performance then stock funds with a lower beta. Additionally, to Micheal's point, better performance could be undone by higher fees. Age is unimportant when deciding the acceptable volatility. Its more important as to when the money is to be available. If there might be an immediate need, or even less than a year, then stick to a savings account. Five years, some volatility can be accepted, if 10 years or more seek to maximize rate of return. For example assume a person is near retirement age. They are expected to have 50K per year expenses. If they have 250K wrapped up in CDs and savings, and another 250K in some conservative investments, they can, and should, be "aggressive" with any remaining money. On the contrary a person your age that is savings for a house intends to buy one in three years. Savings for the down payment should be pretty darn conservative. Something like 75% in savings accounts, and maybe 25% in some conservative investments. As the time to buy approaches they can pull the money out of the conservative investments at a optimal time. Also you should not be investing without an emergency fund in place. Get that done first, then look to invest. If your friend does not understand these basic concepts there is no point in paying for his advice. |
What happens to an ETF if one of the companies in the ETF gets aquired? | There are a number of ways this can result. In a broad ETF, such as SPY, the S&P 500 spider, the S&P index will have 500 stocks no matter what, so a buyout would simply result in a re-shuffling of the index makeup. No buyout will happen so quickly that there's no time to choose the next stock to join the index. In your case, if the fund manager (per the terms of the prospectus) wishes to simply reallocate the index to remove the taken-over stock that's probably how he handle it. Unless of course, the prospectus dictates otherwise. In which case, a cash dividend is a possible alternative. |
What things are important to consider when investing in one's company stock? | You really have asked two different questions here: I'm interested in putting away some money for my family Then I urge you to read up on investing. Improving your knowledge in investing is an investment that will very likely pay off in the long-term - this can't be answered here in full length, pointers to where to start are asset allocation and low-cost index funds. Read serious books, read stackexchange posts, and try avoid the Wall Street marketing machine. Also, before considering any long term investments, build an emergency fund (e.g. 6 months worth of your expenses) in case you need some liquid money (loss of job etc.), and also helps you sleep better at night. What things are important to consider before making this kind of investment? Mainly the risk (other answers already elaborate on the details). Investing in a single stock is quite risky, even more so when your income also depends on that company. Framed another way: which percentage of your portfolio should you put into a single stock? (which has been answered in this post). If after considering all things you think it's a good deal, take the offer, but don't put a too great percentage of you overall savings into it, limit it to say 10% (maybe even less). |
Taxes, Puts and the Wash Rule | There are different schools of thought. You can ask the IRS - and it would not surprise me if you got different answers on different phone calls. One interpretation is that a put is not "substantially identical" to the disposed stock, therefore no wash is triggered by that sale. However if that put is exercised, then you automatically purchase the security, and that is identical. As to whether the IRS (or your brokerage firm) recognizes the identical security when it falls out of an option, I can't say; but technically they could enforce it because the rule is based on 30 days and a "substantially identical" stock or security. In this interpretation (your investor) would probably at least want to stay out of the money in choosing a strike price, to avoid exercise; however, options are normally either held or sold, rather than be exercised, until at or very close to the expiration date (because time value is left on the table otherwise). So the key driver in this interpretation would be expiration date, which should be at least 31 days out from the stock sale; and it would be prudent to sell an out of the money put as well, in order to avoid the wash sale trigger. However there is also a more unfavorable opinion - see fairmark.com/capgain/wash/wsoption.htm where they hold that a "deep in the money" option is an immediate trigger (regardless of exercise). This article is sage, in that they say that the Treasury (IRS) may interpret an option transaction as a wash if it's ballpark to being exercisable. And, if the IRS throws paper, it always beats each of paper, rock and scissors :( A Schwab article ("A Primer on Wash Sales") says, if the CUSIPs match, bang, wash. This is the one that they may interpret unfavorably on in any case, supporting Schwab's "play it safe" position: "3. Acquire a contract or option to buy substantially identical stock or securities..." . This certainly nails buying a call. As to selling a put, well, it is at least conceivable that an IRS official would call that a contract to buy! SO it's simply not a slam dunk; there are varying opinions that you might describe as ranging from "hell no" to "only if blatant." If you can get an "official" predetermination, or you like to go aggressive in your tax strategy, there's that; they may act adversely, so Caveat Taxfiler! |
Take advantage of rock bottom oil prices | I'm really surprised more people didn't recommend UGA or USO specifically. These have been mentioned in the past on a myriad of sites as ways to hedge against rising prices. I'm sure they would work quite well as an investment opportunity. They are ETF's that invest in nearby futures and constantly roll the position to the next delivery date. This creates a higher than usual expense ratio, I believe, but it could still be a good investment. However, be forewarned that they make you a "partner" by buying the stock so it can mildly complicate your tax return. |
Making higher payments on primary residence mortgage or rental? | One advantage of paying down your primary residence is that you can refinance it later for 10-15 years when the balance is low. Refinancing a rental is much harder and interest rates are often higher for investors. This also assumes that you can refinance for a lower rate in the nearest future. The question is really which would you rather sell if you suddenly need the money? I have rental properties and i'd rather move myself, than sell the investments (because they are income generating unlike my own home). So in your case i'd pay off primary residence especially since the interest is already higher on it (would be a harder decision if it was lower) |
How do I deal with a mistaken attempt to collect a debt from me that is owed by someone else? | I can only speak for germany/europe. Inkasso companies/lawyer would write a letter with a bill, those letters have register numbers. If in doubt, one would call the company, ask who is the debtor/what is the origin of the bill. I certainly would not react on a phone call. However, if an official entity or lawyer is contacting you, you have to take action asap, at least calling them. |
For a car, what scams can be plotted with 0% financing vs rebate? | Here's a number-crunching example of how the "Zero interest rate" offer is misleading. Suppose the offer is that a car "costs $24,000.00 with zero percent financing over 24 months" or as an alternative, "$3,000.00 off for cash". Ignore the hype: the quoted prices and the quoted interest rates. Look at what really happens to two people who take advantage of the two offers, One person hands over $21,000.00 cash, and leaves with the new car. The second promises to make 24 payments of $1000.00, one a month, starting in one month's time, and also leaves with the same make and model new car. The two people have received exactly the same benefit, so the two payment schemes must have the same value. A mortgage program will tell you that paying off a $21,000.00 loan by making 24 monthly payments of $1000.00 requires an interest rate of 1.10% a month, or an effective annual rate of 14.03%. |
Totally new to finance, economy, where should I start? | If you're looking to invest using stocks and shares, I recommend you set up an account at something like Google Finance - it is free and user-friendly with lots of online help. You can set up some 'virtual cash' and put it into a number of stocks which it'll track for you. Review your progress and close some positions and open others as often as you want, but remember to enter some figure for the cost of the transaction, say $19.95 for a trade, to discourage you from high-frequency trading. Take it as seriously as you want - if you stick to your original cash input, you'll see real results. If you throw in more virtual cash than you could in real life, it'll muddle the outcome. After some evaluation period, say 3 months, look back at your progress. You will learn a tremendous amount from doing this and don't need to have read any books or spent any money to get started. Knowing which stocks to pick and when to buy or sell is much more subtle - see other answers for suggestions. |
How do financial services aimed at women differ from conventional services? | Less so today, but there was a time that women played a smaller role in the household finances, letting the husband manage the family money. Women often found themselves in a frightening situation when the husband died. Still, despite those who protest to the contrary, men and women tend to think differently, how they problem solve, how they view risk. An advisor who understands these differences and listens to the client of either sex, will better serve them. |
Should I buy a house or am I making silly assumptions that I can afford it? | The (interest bearing) mortgage of £300,000 would be SIX times your salary. That's a ratio that was found in Japan, and (I believe) was a main reason for their depressed economy of the past two decades. Even with an interest free loan of nearly £150,000, it would be a huge gamble for someone of your income. Essentially, you are gambling that 1) your income will "grow" into your mortgage, (and that's counting income from renting part of the property) or 2) the house will rise in value, thereby bailing you out. That was a gamble that many Americans took, and lost, in the past ten years. If you do this, you may be one of the "lucky" ones, you may not, but you are really taking your future in your hands. The American rule of thumb is that your mortgage should be no more than 2.5-3 times income, that is maybe up to £150,000. Perhaps £200,000 if £50,000 or so of that is interest free. But not to the numbers you're talking about. |
Is there a good options strategy that has a fairly low risk? | There isn't really a generic options strategy that gives you higher returns with lower risk than an equivalent non-options strategy. There are lots of options strategies that give you about the same returns with the same risk, but most of the time they are a lot more work and less tax-efficient than the non-options strategy. When I say "generic" I mean there may be strategies that rely on special situations (analysis of market inefficiencies or fundamentals on particular securities) that you could take advantage of, but you'd have to be extremely expert and spend a lot of time. A "generic" strategy would be a thing like "write such-and-such sort of spreads" without reference to the particular security or situation. As far as strategies that give you about the same risk/return, for example you can use options collars to create about the same effect as a balanced fund (Gateway Fund does this, Bridgeway Balanced does stuff like it I think); but you could also just use a balanced fund. You can use covered calls to make income on your stocks, but you of course lose some of the stock upside. You can use protective puts to protect downside, but they cost so much money that on average you lose money or make very little. You can invest cash plus a call option, which is equivalent to stock plus a protective put, i.e on average again you don't make much money. Options don't offer any free lunches not found elsewhere. Occasionally they are useful for tax reasons (for example to avoid selling something but avoid risk) or for technical reasons (for example a stock isn't available to short, but you can do something with options). |
How to record a written put option in double-entry accounting? | Because you've sold something you've received cash (or at least an entry on your brokerage statement to say you've got cash) so you should record that as a credit in your brokerage account in GnuCash. The other side of the entry should go into another account that you create called something like "Open Positions" and is usually marked as a Liability account type (if you need to mark it as such). If you want to keep an accurate daily tally of your net worth you can add a new entry to your Open Positions account and offset that against Income which will be either negative or positive depending on how the position has moved for/against you. You can also do this at a lower frequency or not at all and just put an entry in when your position closes out because you bought it back or it expired or it was exercised. My preferred method is to have a single entry in the Open Positions account with an arbitrary date near when I expect it to be closed and each time I edit that value (daily or weekly) so I only have the initial entry and the current adjust to look at which reduces the number of entries and confusion if there are too many. |
What are the best software tools for personal finance? | I like You Need A Budget (YNAB) Pros: Cons: |
Historical stock prices: Where to find free / low cost data for offline analysis? | I also searched for some time before discovering Market Archive, which AFAIK is the most affordable option that basically gives you a massive multi-GB dump of data. I needed sufficient data to build a model and didn't want to work through an API or have to hand-pick the securities to train from. After trying to do this on my own by scraping Yahoo and using the various known tools, I decided my time was better spent not dealing with rate-limiting issues and parsing quirks and whatnot, so I just subscribed to Market Archive (they update the data daily). |
Can paying down a mortgage be considered an “investment”? | I think there are a few facets to this, namely: Overall, I wouldn't concentrate on paying off the house if I didn't have any other money parked and invested, but I'd still try to get rid of the mortgage ASAP as it'll give you more money that you can invest, too. At the end of the day, if you save out paying $20k in interest, that's almost $20k you can invest. Yes, I realise there's a time component to this as well and you might well get a better return overall if you invested the $20k now that in 5 years' time. But I'd still rather pay off the house. |
What are the best software tools for personal finance? | KMyMoney Pros: Cons: |
Student loan payments and opportunity costs | If I understand correctly, your question boils down to this: "I have $X to invest over 25 years, are guaranteed returns at a 0.6% lower rate better than what I expect to get from the stock market over the same period?" Well, I believe the standard advice would go something like: Rational investors pay a premium to reduce risk/volatility. Or, put another way, guaranteed returns are more valuable than risky returns, all things equal. I don't know enough about student loans in America (I'm Australian). Here a student loan is very low interest and the minimum repayments scale with what you earn not what you owe, starting at $0 for a totally liveable wage - Here I'd say there's a case to just pay the minimum and invest extra money elsewhere. If yours is a private loan though, following the same rules as other loans, remember the organisation extending your loan has access to the stock market too! why would they extend a loan to you on worse terms than they would get by simply dumping money into an index fund? Is the organisation that extends student loans a charity or subsidised in some way? If not, someone has already built a business on the the analysis that returns at 6.4% (including defaults) beats the stock market at 7% in some way. What I would put back to you though, is that your question oversimplifies what is likely your more complex reality, and so answering your question directly doesn't help that much to make a persuasive case - It's too mathematical and sterile. Here are some things off the top of my head that your real personal circumstances might convince you to pay off your loan first, hit up Wall Street second: |
Should I use my non-tax advantaged investment account to pay off debt? | Paying off debts will reduce your monthly obligation to creditors (less risk) and also remove the possibility of foreclosure / repossession / lawsuit if you ever lost access to income (less risk). Risk is an important part of the equation that can get overlooked. It sounds like pulling that money out of the market will reduce your yearly tax bill as well. |
Abundance of Cash - What should I do? | Since your 401k/IRA are maxed out and you don't need a 529 for kids, the next step is a plain ol' "Taxable account." The easiest and most hassle-free would be automatic contributions into a Mutual Fund. Building on poolie's answer, I think mutual funds are much more automatic/hassle-free than ETFs, so in your case (and with your savings rate), just invest in the Investor (or Admiral) shares of VEU and VTI. Other hassle-free options include I-Bonds ($5k/year), and 5-year CDs. |
Paying over the minimum mortgage payment | Let's look at some of your options: In a savings account, your $40,000 might be earning maybe 0.5%, if you are lucky. In a year, you'll have earned $200. On the plus side, you'll have your $40,000 easily accessible to you to pay for moving, closing costs on your new house, etc. If you apply it to your mortgage, you are effectively saving the interest on the amount for the life of the loan. Let's say that the interest rate on your mortgage is 4%. If you were staying in the house long-term, this interest would be compounded, but since you are only going to be there for 1 year, this move will save you $1600 in interest this year, which means that when you sell the house and pay off this mortgage, you'll have $1600 extra in your pocket. You said that you don't like to dabble in stocks. I wouldn't recommend investing in individual stocks anyway. A stock mutual fund, however, is a great option for investing, but only as a long-term investment. You should be able to beat your 4% mortgage, but only over the long term. If you want to have the $40,000 available to you in a year, don't invest in a mutual fund now. I would lean toward option #2, applying the money to the mortgage. However, there are some other considerations: Do you have any other debts, maybe a car loan, student loan, or a credit card balance? If so, I would forget everything else and put everything toward one or more of these loans first. Do you have an emergency fund in place, or is this $40,000 all of the cash that you have available to you? One rule of thumb is that you have 3 to 6 months of expenses set aside in a safe, easily accessible account ready to go if something comes up. Are you saving for retirement? If you don't already have retirement savings in place and are adding to it regularly, some of this cash would be a great start to a Roth IRA or something like that, invested in a stock mutual fund. If you are already debt free except for this mortgage, you might want to do some of each: Keep $10,000 in a savings account for an emergency fund (if you don't already have an emergency fund), put $5,000 in a Roth IRA (if you aren't already contributing a satisfactory amount to a retirement account), and apply the rest toward your mortgage. |
Assessed value of my house | It is very simple. You bought the house when prices were near their peak in 2008. Housing prices have dropped considerably since then which was the main cause of the mortgage debacle because people had houses that were worth less than their mortgages. |
Considering buying a house in town with few major employers (economic stability) | BLUF: Continue renting, and work toward financial independence, you can always buy later if your situation changes. Owning the house you live in can be a poor investment. It is totally dependent on the housing market where you live. Do the math. The rumors may have depressed the market to the point where the houses are cheaper to buy. When you do the estimate, don't forget any homeowners association fees and periodic replacement of the roof, HVAC system and fencing, and money for repairs of plumbing and electrical systems. Calculate all the replacements as cost over the average lifespan of each system. And the repairs as an average yearly cost. Additionally, consider that remodeling will be needful every 20 years or so. There are also intangibles between owning and renting that can tip the scales no matter what the numbers alone say. Ownership comes with significant opportunity and maintenance costs and is by definition not liquid, but provides stability. As long as you make your payments, and the government doesn't use imminent domain, you cannot be forced to move. Renting gives you freedom from paying for maintenance and repairs on the house and the freedom to move with only a lease to break. |
How does a limit order work for a credit spread? | As you probably know, a credit spread involves buying a call (or put) at one strike and selling another call (or put) at another with the same maturity, so you're dealing with two orders. Your broker will likely have to fill this order themselves, meaning that they'll have to look at the existing bid/asks for the different strikes and wait until the difference matches (or exceeds) your limit order. Obviously they can't place limit orders on the legs individually since they can't guarantee that they will both be executed. They also don't care what the individual prices are; they just care what the difference is. It's possible that they have computer systems that examine existing bids and asks that would fill your order, but it's still done by the broker, not the exchange. The exchange never sees your actual limit order; they will just see the market orders placed by your broker. |
What exactly do fund managers of index trackers do? | From How are indexes weighted?: Market-capitalization weighted indexes (or market cap- or cap-weighted indexes) weight their securities by market value as measured by capitalization: that is, current security price * outstanding shares. The vast majority of equity indexes today are cap-weighted, including the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100. In a cap-weighted index, changes in the market value of larger securities move the index’s overall trajectory more than those of smaller ones. If the fund you are referencing is an ETF then there may be some work to do to figure out what underlying securities to use when handling Creation and Redemption units as an ETF will generally have shares created in 50,000 shares at a time through Authorized Participants. If the fund you are referencing is an open-end fund then there is still cash flows to manage in the fund as the fund has create and redeem shares in on a daily basis. Note in both cases that there can be updates to an index such as quarterly rebalancing of outstanding share counts, changes in members because of mergers, acquisitions or spin-offs and possibly a few other factors. How to Beat the Benchmark has a piece that may also be useful here for those indices with many members from 1998: As you can see, its TE is also persistently positive, but if anything seems to be declining over time. In fact, the average net TE for the whole period is +0.155% per month, or an astounding +1.88% pa net after expenses. The fund expense ratio is 0.61% annually, for a whopping before expense TE of +2.5% annually. This is once again highly statistically significant, with p values of 0.015 after expenses and 0.0022 before expenses. (The SD of the TE is higher for DFSCX than for NAESX, lowering its degree of statistical significance.) It is remarkable enough for any fund to beat its benchmark by 2.5% annually over 17 years, but it is downright eerie to see this done by an index fund. To complete the picture, since 1992 the Vanguard Extended Index Fund has beaten its benchmark (the Wilshire 4500) by 0.56% per year after expenses (0.81% net of expenses), and even the Vanguard Index Trust 500 has beaten its benchmark by a razor thin 0.08% annually before (but not after) expenses in the same period. So what is going on here? A hint is found in DFA's 1996 Reference Guide: The 9-10 Portfolio captures the return behavior of U.S. small company stocks as identified by Rolf Banz and other academic researchers. Dimensional employs a "patient buyer" discount block trading strategy which has resulted in negative total trading costs, despite the poor liquidity of small company stocks. Beginning in 1982, Ibbotson Associates of Chicago has used the 9-10 Portfolio results to calculate the performance of small company stocks for their Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation yearbook. A small cap index fund cannot possibly own all of the thousands of stocks in its benchmark; instead it owns a "representative sample." Further, these stocks are usually thinly traded, with wide bid/ask spreads. In essence what the folks at DFA learned was that they could tell the market makers in these stocks, "Look old chaps, we don't have to own your stock, and unless you let us inside your spread, we'll pitch our tents elsewhere. Further, we're prepared to wait until a motivated seller wishes to unload a large block." In a sense, this gives the fund the luxury of picking and choosing stocks at prices more favorable than generally available. Hence, higher long term returns. It appears that Vanguard did not tumble onto this until a decade later, but tumble they did. To complete the picture, this strategy works best in the thinnest markets, so the excess returns are greatest in the smallest stocks, which is why the positive TE is greatest for the DFA 9-10 Fund, less in the Vanguard Small Cap Fund, less still in the Vanguard Index Extended Fund, and minuscule with the S&P500. There are some who say the biggest joke in the world of finance is the idea of value added active management. If so, then the punch line seems to be this: If you really want to beat the indexes, then you gotta buy an index fund. |
Need small buisness ideas with 100k $ budjet in a 3rd world country | Firstly, I highly doubt anyone on this site will be able to provide you with accurate input on this matter regarding what TO DO. It's the what not to do that may be possible. That said, if you want to offer equipment for rent, which in a developing country is probably a decent idea, I'd start by asking around and doing some research on what people really need and are wanting to rent. I would suggest studying other developing/developed countries histories to see what companies were successful around a similar stage as well. I'd start small: pressure washers, generators, concrete mixers, fork lifts, hydraulic ladders, etc. Getting things that are just a bit too expensive for someone to own and something they don't need all the time. These can be great revenue generators because they're cheap to purchase, but can be rented at a premium. |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | Here in Germany there is a special case. I am studying (and working a little on the side) and still receiving child benefits from the state which is like 190€/m. Because I am getting this I don't have to pay tuition which is 1k/y. If my side income would get over the boundary (which is like 9k/y) I would lose those benefits (~3.3k) and would have to pay insurance myself (I dont know how much that would be. 50-100/m I guess.) So getting a raise from 8k to 10k sounds nice as it is a 25% raise, but it actually means getting less. |
How can I improve my credit score if I am not paying bills or rent? | Buy a car. Vehicle loans, like mortgages, are installment loans. Credit cards are revolving lines of credit. In the US, your credit score factors in the different types of credit you have. Note that there are several methods for calculating credit scores, including multiple types of FICO scores. You could buy a car and drive for Uber to help cash flow the car payments and/or save for your next purchase. As others have suggested, you should be very careful with debt and ask critical questions before taking it on. Swiping a credit card is more about your behavior and self-control than it is logic and math. And if you ever want to start a business or make multi-million dollar purchases (e.g. real estate), or do a lot of other things, you'll need good credit. |
What emergencies could justify a highly liquid emergency fund? | You are not wrong - just about anything can be charged and paid off in 30 days with a sale of non-liquid investments. So there are not any emergencies I can think of that require completely liquid funds (cash). For me, the risks are more behavioral than financial: I'm not saying it's a ridiculous, stupid idea, and these are all "what-if"s that can be countered with discipline and wise decisions, but having an emergency fund in cash certainly makes all of this simpler and reduces risk. If you have investments that you would have no hesitation liquidating to cover an emergency, then you can make it work. For most people, the choice is either paying cash, or charging it without having investment funds to pay it off, and they're back in the cycle of paying minimum payments for months and drowning in debt. |
For very high-net worth individuals, does it make sense to not have insurance? | Yes, and the math that tells you when is called the Kelly Criterion. The Kelly Criterion is on its face about how much you should bet on a positive-sum game. Imagine you have a game where you flip a coin, and if heads you are given 3 times your bet, and if tails you lose your bet. Naively you'd think "great, I should play, and bet every dollar I have!" -- after all, it has a 50% average return on investment. You get back on average 1.5$ for every dollar you bet, so every dollar you don't bet is a 0.5$ loss. But if you do this and you play every day for 10 years, you'll almost always end up bankrupt. Funny that. On the other hand, if you bet nothing, you are losing out on a great investment. So under certain assumptions, you neither want to bet everything, nor do you want to bet nothing (assuming you can repeat the bet almost indefinitely). The question then becomes, what percentage of your bankroll should you bet? Kelly Criterion answers this question. The typical Kelly Criterion case is where we are making a bet with positive returns, not an insurance against loss; but with a bit of mathematical trickery, we can use it to determine how much you should spend on insuring against loss. An "easy" way to undertand the Kelly Criterion is that you want to maximize the logarithm of your worth in a given period. Such a maximization results in the largest long-term value in some sense. Let us give it a try in an insurance case. Suppose you have a 1 million dollar asset. It has a 1% chance per year of being destroyed by some random event (flood, fire, taxes, pitchforks). You can buy insurance against this for 2% of its value per year. It even covers pitchforks. On its face this looks like a bad deal. Your expected loss is only 1%, but the cost to hide the loss is 2%? If this is your only asset, then the loss makes your net worth 0. The log of zero is negative infinity. Under Kelly, any insurance (no matter how inefficient) is worth it. This is a bit of an extreme case, and we'll cover why it doesn't apply even when it seems like it does elsewhere. Now suppose you have 1 million dollars in other assets. In the insured case, we always end the year with 1.98 million dollars, regardless of if the disaster happens. In the non-insured case, 99% of the time we have 2 million dollars, and 1% of the time we have 1 million dollars. We want to maximize the expected log value of our worth. We have log(2 million - 20,000) (the insured case) vs 1% * log(1 million) + 99% * log(2 million). Or 13.7953 vs 14.49. The Kelly Criterion says insurance is worth it; note that you could "afford" to replace your home, but because it makes up so much of your net worth, Kelly says the "hit it too painful" and you should just pay for insurance. Now suppose you are worth 1 billion. We have log(1 billion - 20k) on the insured side, and 1%*log(999 million) + 99% * log(1 billion) on the uninsured side. The logs of each side are 21.42 vs 20.72. (Note that the base of the logarithm doesn't matter; so long as you use the same base on each side). According to Kelly, we have found a case where insurance isn't worth it. The Kelly Criterion roughly tells you "if I took this bet every (period of time), would I be on average richer after (many repeats of this bet) than if I didn't take this bet?" When the answer is "no", it implies self-insurance is more efficient than using external insurance. The answer is going to be sensitive to the profit margin of the insurance product you are buying, and the size of the asset relative to your total wealth. Now, the Kelly Criterion can easily be misapplied. Being worth financially zero in current assets can easily ignore non-financial assets (like your ability to work, or friends, or whatever). And it presumes repeat to infinity, and people tend not to live that long. But it is a good starting spot. Note that the option of bankruptcy can easily make insurance not "worth it" for people far poorer; this is one of the reasons why banks insist you have insurance on your proprety. You can use Kelly to calculate how much insurance you should purchase at a given profit margin for the insurance company given your net worth and the risk involved. This can be used in Finance to work out how much you should hedge your bets in an investment as well; in effect, it quantifies how having money makes it easier to make money. |
Should I open a credit card when I turn 18 just to start a credit score? | I also feel it's important to NOT get a credit card. I'm in my mid 30's and have had credit cards since I was 20, as has everyone I know. Every single one of those people, with the exception of my dad, is currently carrying some amount of credit card debt - almost always in the thousands of dollars. Here is the essential problem with credit cards. Everyone sets out with good intentions, to use the credit card like a debit card, and pay charges off before interest accrues. However, almost no-one has the discipline to remember to do this, and a balance quickly builds up on the card. Also, it's extremely easy to prioritize other bill payments before credit card payments, resulting in a balance building up on the card. It's almost magical how quickly a balance will build up on a credit card. Ultimately, they are simply too convenient, too tempting for most human beings. The world, and especially the North American world, is in a massive debt crisis. It is very easy to borrow money these days, and our culture is at the point where "buy now pay later" is an accepted practice. Now that I have young children, I will be teaching them the golden rule of "don't buy something until you have cash to pay for it in full!" It sounds like an over simplification but this one rule will save you an incredible amount of financial grief over time. |
If a country can just print money, is global debt between countries real? | Debt can be denominated either in a currency the country controls or a currency the country doesn't control. If the debt is denominated in a currency the country controls then they have the option of "printing their way out of it". That option doesn't come for free, it will devalue their currency on the global market and hurt savers in their country but it is an option. If the debt is denominated in a currency the country does not control then they don't have that option. As I understand it the US debt is in the first category. It's denominated in US dollars so the US government could if they so wished print their way out of it. On the other hand greece's debt is denominated in euros putting them at the mercy of european bankers. |
How can I buy and sell the same stock on the same day? | You should not have to wait 3 days to sell the stock after purchase. If you are trading with a cash account you will have to wait for the sale to settle (3 business days) before you can use those funds to purchase other stock. If you meet the definition of a pattern day trader which is 4 or more day trades in 5 business days then your brokerage will require you to have a minimum of $25,000 in funds and a margin account. |
What are the reasons to get more than one credit card? | Another good reason: if you have to replace a card due to damage, loss, or identity theft it's nice to have a backup you can use until the new card for your primary account arrives. I know folks who use a secondary card for online purchases specifically so they can kill it if necessary without impacting their other uses, online arguably being at more risk. If there's no yearly fee, and if you're already paying the bill in full every month, a second card/account is mostly harmless. If you have trouble restraining yourself with one card, a second could be dangerous. |
Why does ExxonMobil's balance sheet show more liabilities than assets? | You are reading the balance sheet wrong. Everything Joe says is completely correct, but more fundamentally you have missed out on a huge pile of assets. "Current assets" is only short term assets. You have omitted more than $300B in long-term assets, primarily plant and equipment. The balance sheet explicitly says: Net tangible Assets (i.e. surplus of assets over liabilities) $174B |
Freelance trading of products in India | For most goods there is no license required, unless you are trading in restricted goods. Remittance need to be routed via banks and they should comply with FMEA. Your Bank or a qualified CA can guide you. |
Can I participate in trading Facebook shares on their IPO day from any brokerage? | Yes. The real question is whether you should. You should consider your investment options, and take into the account that there's much more hype than value in many companies. |
How to make a decision for used vs new car if I want to keep the car long term? | Hard to say in general. It depends on the actual numbers. First you need to check the suggested retail price of a new car, and the price that you can actually get it for. The difference between these prices is between non-existing and huge, depending on the car. Some dealers will sell you a car that has done 50 miles for a huge rebate - that means they can't sell their cars at full price but don't want to reduce the price. Used cars can be quite expensive compared to a new car or not, also depending on the brand. Estimate that a brand new car should drive 12 years and 200,000 miles without major repairs (go for a car with generous warranty or check reviews to make sure you are buying a long lasting car). Calculate the cost per year. Since you prefer driving a nicer new car, increase the cost for the first four years and reduce the cost for the last four years. With that information, check what the used car costs and if that is reasonable. Assuming 12 years life, a six your old car should be quite a bit less than 50% of a new one. You can improve your cost a bit: If your annual mileage is low, you might find a rather new car with huge mileage quite cheap which will still last many years. Or if your annual mileage is excessively high, you can look for a car that is a bit older with low mileage. Anyway, paying 70% of the price of a new passenger car for a used car that is six years old (you say <7 years, so I assume six years) seems excessive; it would mean the first user effectively paid 30% of the new price to drive the car for six years, and you pay 70% to drive another six years (estimated). You'd be much much better off buying a new car and selling it for 70% after six years. |
Should I re-allocate my portfolio now or let it balance out over time? | This depends completely on your investing goals. Typically when saving for retirement younger investors aim for a more volatile and aggressive portfolio but diversify their portfolio with more cautious stocks/bonds as they near retirement. In other words, the volatility that owning a single stock brings may be in line with your goals if you can shoulder the risk. |
Average Price of a Stock | Edit3: Regarding the usefulness of the bare number itself, it is not useful unless, for example, an employer uses that average in the computation of how many options the employer grants to the employee as part of the compensation paid. One of my employers used just such an average. What is far more common is to use two or more moving averages, of different periods, plotted on a chart. My original response continues below... Assuming there are 252 trading days a year, the following chart does what you have done but with a moving average: AAPL on Stockcharts.com Edit: BTW, I looked up the number of Federal holidays, there are 9. The average year has 365.2422 days. 365.2422 × 5/7 = 260.8873. Subtract 9 and you get 251.8873 trading days in the average year. So 252 is a better number for the SMA than 250 if you want to average a year. Edit2: Here is the same chart with more than one average included: AAPL chart w/indicators |
Importance of dividend yield when evaluating a stock? | Probably the most important thing in evaluating a dividend yield is to compare it to ITSELF (in the past). If the dividend yield is higher than it has been in the past, the stock may be cheap. If it is lower, the stock may be expensive. Just about every stock has a "normal" yield for itself. (It's zero for non-dividend paying stocks.) This is based on the stock's perceived quality, growth potential, and other factors. So a utility that normally yields 5% and is now paying 3% is probably expensive (the price in the denominator is too high), while a growth stock that normally yields 2% and is now yielding 3% (e.g. Intel or McDonald'sl), may be cheap. |
How much time would I have to spend trading to turn a profit? | It depends on how you define trading. If you're looking at day-trading, where you're probably going to be in a highly-leveraged position for minutes or hours, the automated traders are probably going to kill you. But, if you have a handful (less than a dozen) equities, and spend about an hour or so every week conducting research, you have a good chance of doing pretty well. You need to understand the market, listen to the earnings calls, and understand the factors that contribute to the bottom line of your investments. You should not be trading for the sake of trading, you're trading to try to achieve the best returns. Beware of dogmatists and people selling products that align with their dogma. Warren Buffet invests in companies for an extremely long investment window. Mr. Buffet also expends significant resources to gain a deep understanding of the fundamentals of the businesses that he invests in and the factors affecting those fundamentals. Buffet does not buy an S&P 500 index fund and whistle dixie. |
Should I have a higher credit limit on my credit card? | I wouldn't say you should have any particular limit, but it can't hurt to have a higher limit. I'd always accept the increase when offered, and feel free to request it sometimes, just make sure you find out if it will be a hard or soft inquiry, and pass on the hard inquires. From my own experience, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the increases. I believe each bank acts differently based on the customer's credit, income, and even the bank's personal quotas or goals for that period. Here is some anecdotal evidence of this: I got my first credit card when I was 18 years old and a freshman in college. It had a limit of $500 at the time. I never asked for a credit line increase, but always accepted when offered one, and sometimes they didn't even ask, and in the last 20 years it worked it's way up to $25K. Another card with the same bank went from $5K to $15K in about 10 years. About 6 years ago I added two cards, one with a $5K limit and one with a $3K limit. I didn't ask for increases on those either, and today the 5K is up to $22K, and the 3K is still at $3K. An even larger disparity exists on the business side. Years ago I had two business credit cards with different banks. At one point in time both were maxed out for about 6 months and only minimums were being paid. Bank 1 started lowering my credit limit as I started to pay off the card, eventually prompting me to cancel the card when it was paid in full. At the same time Bank 2 kept raising my limit to give me more breathing room in case I needed it. Obviously Bank 1 didn't want my business, and Bank 2 did. Less than a year later both cards were paid off in full, and you can guess which bank I chose to do all of my business with after that. |
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