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How does pre-market trading work? | First of all, not all brokers allow trading during pre-market and post-market. Some brokers only allow trading during the regular hours (9:30am - 4pm ET). Second of all, while you can place orders using limit orders and market orders during regular trading hours, you can only use limit orders during pre-market and pos... |
Are there any risks from using mint.com? | Some banks allow mint.com read-only access via a separate "access code" that a customer can create. This would still allow an attacker to find out how much money you have and transaction details, and may have knowledge of some other information (your account number perhaps, your address, etc). The problem with even th... |
Are there common stock price trends related to employee option plans? | Whenever a large number of shares to be sold hit the market at the same time the expectation is that the price for each share will drop. The employees in a normal market would be expected to sell some of their shares at the first opportunity. Because during the dot com boom some companies employees were able to become ... |
Buying insurance (extended warranty or guarantee) on everyday goods / appliances? | Most of the consumer products that you buy at retail these days are commodity priced, and have been for a long time. Margins are thin, so if there are retail salespeople milling about, their compensation isn't coming from the TV or computer with a 6% gross margin. It comes from the extended warranty programs (which are... |
Where can one find intraday prices for mutual funds? | Like others have said, mutual funds don't have an intraday NAV, but their ETF equivalents do. Use something like Yahoo Finance and search for the ETF.IV. For example VOO.IV. This will give you not the ETF price (which may be at a premium or discount), but the value of the underlying securities updated every 15 seconds. |
Is there a difference between buying few shares of an expensive stock vs many shares of an inexpensive one? | One difference is the bid/ask spread will cost you more in a lower cost stock than a higher cost one. Say you have two highly liquid stocks with tiny spreads: If you wanted to buy say $2,000 of stock: Now imagine these are almost identical ETFs tracking the S&P 500 index and extrapolate this to a trade of $2,000,000 an... |
How do I refinance a car loan into someone else's name so it can be their car? | I don't know of any way to "transfer" a debt to another person without their consent or the lender's consent. You are responsible for the loan, and you need to either pay it or give up the asset that it's tied to (the car). At least you weren't just a cosigner with no title to the car - then you'd be in worse shape. ... |
How do freight derivatives like Forward Freight Agreements (FFAs) work? | To answer this part of the question: "How can you build an index based on shipping routes - what is the significance of that? Indexes are traditionally built based on companies: e.g. S&P Index is a basket of companies whose price varies. But here you need a basket of FFA contracts from different oil firms (Shell, BP), ... |
Using credit cards online: is it safe? | You're right that someone who, say, photographed the front of your card at the store could use it to make some online purchases. Schemes like Visa's 3-D Secure provide additional online security by having you enter your password on the issuer's website, but they aren't common yet in the US. But as littleadv says, you a... |
At Vanguard, can I transfer shares from regular investment account to a Roth IRA? | Since you are paying taxes on the distributions from your mutual funds anyway, instead of reinvesting the distributions back into the mutual funds, you could receive them as cash, then contribute them to your Roth IRA once you are able to open one. |
What should I do with the 50k I have sitting in a European bank? | Unfortunately I do not have much experience with European banks. However, I do know of ways to earn interest on bank accounts. CDs (Certificates of Deposit) are a good way to earn interest. Its basically a savings account that you cannot touch for a fixed rate of time. You can set it from an average of 6 months to 12 m... |
international student tax deduction while trading | So, my question is what is the limit below which I don't have to pay taxes while trading. I just invested $10. Do I have to pay taxes for this too? what are the slabs? Any income is subject to tax. That said, investing $10 will probably not generate much of income, even at the discount brokers most of it will be wasted... |
ESPP advantages and disadvantages | You should always always enroll in an espp if there is no lockup period and you can finance the contributions at a non-onerous rate. You should also always always sell it right away regardless of your feelings for the company. If you feel you must hold company stock to be a good employee buy some in your 401k which ha... |
Should I finance a new home theater at 0% even though I have the cash for it? | Debt creates risk. The more debt you take on, the higher your risk. What happens if you lose your job, miss a payment, or forget to write the final payment check for the exact amount needed, and are left with a balance of $1 (meaning the back-dated interest would be applied)? There is too much risk for little reward... |
What is good growth? | There isn't a single hard and fast return to expect. Securities, like all things in a free market, compete for your money. As the Fed sets the tone for the market with their overnight Fed funds rate, you might want to use a multiple of the 'benchmark' 10-year T-note yeald. So let's suppose that a good multiple is four.... |
At what damage amount should I pursue a homeowner's insurance claim? | Some builders -- if given the first chance to deal with the problem, instead of being presented with a bill after the fact -- will fix the problem at no charge to the homeowner. Good faith matters. My house was built by such a builder. If I have a problem that I am competent enough to diagnose and fix, I fix it mysel... |
When shorting a stock, do you pay current market price or the best (lowest) available ask price? | When you want to short a stock, you are trying to sell shares (that you are borrowing from your broker), therefore you need buyers for the shares you are selling. The ask prices represent people who are trying to sell shares, and the bid prices represent people who are trying to buy shares. Using your example, you cou... |
Cash flow implications of converting primary mortgaged residence to rental | The rental income is indeed taxable income, but you reduce the taxable portion of it by deducting expenses (including mortgage interest, maintenance, insurance, HOA, real estate tax, and of course depreciation). Due to the depreciation, you may end up breaking even, or having very little taxable income. Note that when ... |
Are those “auto-pilot” programs a scam or waste of time? | These have been around for decades. In the 80's and 90's they had you setup small ads in local newspapers and you would sell a brochure tells people how to make money, or solve some other problem. The idea was that money would roll in. The more ads you placed the more money you made. In the late 90's they had you setup... |
Does it make sense to buy an index ETF (e.g. S&P 500) when the index is at an all-time high? | The simple answer is: Where 'think' stands for "after your calculations, and guts/intuitions, and analysis", of course. |
Buying a truck to write off on taxes | Assuming your country is the United States there is. See schedule C line 9 and the corresponding instructions. There are many rules associated with this, in some cases the entire purchase can be written off but typically if the truck is only used for business. Most people write off partial usage in the form of cred... |
Whole life insurance - capped earnings | I need to see the policy you are referring to give a more accurate answer. However what could be happening, it’s again the way these instruments are structured; For example if the insurance premium is say 11,000 of which 1000 is toward expenses and Term insurance amount. The Balance 10,000 is invested in growth. The pr... |
Is it a wise decision to sell my ESPP stock based on this situation? | ESPP tax treatment is complicated. If you received a discount on the purchase of your stock, that discount is taxable as ordinary income when you sell the stock. Any profit about the market value when the stock was purchased is taxed based upon the holding period of the stock. If you have held the stock less than a y... |
Do I even need credit cards? | Credit cards are great. You get free money for 30+ days and a bunch of additional benefits like insurance, extended warranties and reward programs. When vendors don't behave, you dispute the charge with the credit card and they deal with it on your behalf. Just get a fee-free American Express card and pay the balance o... |
Incorporating real-world parameters into simulated(paper) trading | I think you're on the wrong track. Getting more and more samples from the real world does not make your backtest more accurate, it just confirms that your strategy can withstand one particular sample path of a stochastic process. The reason why you find it simple to incorporate fees, commissions, taxes, etc. is becaus... |
What are institutional investors? | FINRA defines institutional investors as: Institutional investors include banks, savings and loan associations, insurance companies, registered investment companies, registered investment advisors, a person or entity with assets of at least $50 million, government entities, employee benefit plans and qualified plans ... |
First time investor and online brokerage accounts | Most mutual funds are designed to make the investment banks that sell them money, not to make investers money. They do this by taking significant fees out. Because they make lots of money on these funds, they advertise them a lot, and give them important-sounding names, like "Advanced technology global diversity long t... |
Wash sale rule question | Yes. On December 10, you have a wash sale. As long as you don't buy the stock back for 30 days after that, the wash is of no consequence. In other words, you don't have a wash issue if you don't own the stock for 30 days. |
Who can truly afford luxury cars? | There's an aspect to this question that I really love. In general, it's a question about consumer behavior that can be expanded to inquire about the purchasing profile of any luxury good. Who buys $500 pocketbooks, $1000 wristwatches, etc? I can offer one observation regarding the car. Two close neighbors, both couples... |
Analysis of Valuation-Informed Indexing? | My reaction to this is that your observation @D.W. is spot on correct: It sounds like long-term market timing: trying to do a better job than the rest of the market at predicting, based upon a simple formula, whether the market is over-priced or under-priced. I read the post by the founder of Valuation Informed Ind... |
Why did gold dip in 2011 | The cause of the increase in 2006-2011 was the financial crisis, where, if you recall, the global banking system came close to collapse for reasons that are well documented. Rightly or wrongly, gold is seen as a safe haven asset in times of crisis. The price of gold began to decline in 2011 when the markets decided tha... |
Cosigning - cosigner won't pay and won't give any information or transfer asset | Is your name on the title at all? You may have (slightly) more leverage in that case, but co-signing any loans is not a good idea, even for a friend or relative. As this article notes: Generally, co-signing refers to financing, not ownership. If the primary accountholder fails to make payments on the loan or the reta... |
Are these really bond yields? | that would imply that a 30Y US Treasury bond only yields 2.78%, which is nonsensically low. Those are annualized yields. It would be more precise to say that "a 30Y US Treasury bond yields 2.78% per year (annualized) over 30 years", but that terminology is implied in bond markets. So if you invest $1,000 in a 30-year ... |
Is gold really an investment or just a hedge against inflation? | Gold is not an investment. Gold is a form of money. It and silver have been used as money much longer than paper. Paper money is a relatively recent invention (less than 350 years old) with a horrible track record of preserving wealth. When I exchange my paper US dollars for gold I'm exchanging one form of money fo... |
Does re-financing an FHA-insured mortgage incur the UFMIP again? | When you got your original HUD backed mortgage there were three options: monthly, annual and upfront payments. The plan is designed to insure the lender of the mortgage against your default. The plan is not expected to cover the mortgage for 30 years. If you are in the early years of the mortgage, you may be owed a re... |
Trading when you work for a market participant | Ask someone in Human Resources. I seriously doubt you are the first person to ask this question for their company and they should be more than happy to help. |
Why don't share prices of a company rise every other Friday when the company buys shares for its own employees? | This is an old question that has an accepted answer, but it has gotten bumped due to an edit and the answers given are incorrect. I am assuming this means that every other Friday, the company is going into the open public market, buying those shares and then giving it out to the employees. No. Companies will internally... |
Getting over that financial unease? Budgeting advice | You sound like you are budgeting too much for food. Try limiting yourself to $200 a month for food and take that out in cash. When it's up, it's up. It's a hard way to learn but if you can tackle that, then budgeting for other things gets easier. In terms of your fear of doing a financial bellyflop, which is valid... |
I am a contractor with revenue below UK's VAT threshold. Should I register for VAT? | If I remember correctly, once you're about to exceed the threshold you really don't have a choice and have to register for VAT. As DumbCoder mentions, the quarterly VAT returns isn't that much of a hassle, plus if you fall under a certain threshold, you can sign up for the annual accounting scheme for VAT, which means ... |
How to start investing/thinking about money as a young person? | nan |
Is there a good options strategy that has a fairly low risk? | Check out this site: http://www.m-x.ca/produits_options_actions_en.php (Under the Trading Strategies). If you have a background in math or eco or are comfortable with graphs, I suggest you graph the payoffs of each of these strategies. It will really help you understand it. If you need help with this, let me know an... |
How does high frequency trading work if money isn't available for 2-3 days after selling? | High frequency trades are intra day. The would buy a stock for 100 and sell for 100.10 multiple times. So If you start with 100 in your broker account, you buy something [it takes 2-3 days to settle], you sell for 100.10 [it takes 2-3 days to settle]. You again buy something for 100. It is the net value of both buys an... |
I carelessly invested in a stock on a spike near the peak price. How can I salvage my investment? | Is there anyway to salvage my investment for short-term? No. If by "salvage" you mean "get back as much as you paid", the only way to salvage it is to wait as long as you consider "short-term" and see if goes up again. If by "salvage" you mean "get some money back", the only thing you can do to guarantee that is sell... |
No-line-of-credit debit card? | I think what you are looking for is a secured credit card. They are mostly used by people who have ruined their credit and want to rebuild it, but it might also serve your purpose. Essentially you deposit some money in an account and the credit card can be used up to the amount left in the account. Each month when you... |
What happens when they run out of letters? | The 3-letter tickers are from a different era.... Nowadays the usage of tickers is more of a "legacy" tradition rather than a current necessity. As such they're no longer limited to 3 characters. And the characters don't have to be related to the actual name. For example a company named Alphabet is trading on NASDAQ un... |
Purpose of having good credit when you are well-off? | A $250K earner might have $4M in retirement savings and $500K in available funds, but doesn't wish to spend all his liquidity on the house. In general, a house might cost 2-3 times one's annual income. It would take many years to get that saved up. They might want to have the house sooner. It all goes back to choice, ... |
What happens if a purchase is $0.02 in Canada? | As someone who works for a company that deploys POS systems in Canada, I can tell you that your best bet would be to have a configuration option that lets the client decide what to do. If they have a business practice that would allow for a sale total to be $0.01 or $0.02, they should first evaluate their business prac... |
Teaching school kids about money - what are the real life examples of math, budgeting, finance? | If these are children that may be employed, in a few years, it may well be worth walking them through some basics of the deductions around employment, some basic taxes, uses of banks, and give them enough of a basis in how the economy of the world works. For example, if you get a job and get paid $10/hour, that may so... |
Why do people always talk about stocks that pay high dividends? | The answer, for me, has to do with compounding. That drop in price post-ex-div is not compounded. But if you reinvest your dividends back into the stock then you buy on those post-ex-div dips in price and your money is compounded because those shares you just bought will, themselves, yeald dividends next quarter. Also... |
How much is inflation? | There is a thing called the consumer price index (CPI) There is a basket of goods that the people who keep the index basically shop for. It is much more detailed for the sake of accuracy, but bottom line is they shop for the same stuff each year. They measure the difference from year to year and that gives you a pret... |
Why would a restaurant offer a very large cash discount? | This could be a case of the new chip card technology and dealing with slow reimbursement turnaround time. I recently visited a restaurant who was not using the chip technology, and it refused my card after several attempts. I found out from my bank it was because the restaurant was not set up for chip and I had not eat... |
Is it common in the US not to pay medical bills? | What you have here is an interesting argument. Right now, this is totally complicated by the state of "forced insurance" that is currently in such hot debate right now. As a general rule of thumb though, most Americans pay their medical bills in one way or another. Though It is also accurate to say that most Americans... |
How can I invest in an index fund but screen out (remove) certain categories of socially irresponsible investments? | It would involve manual effort, but there is just a handful of exclusions, buy the fund you want, plug into a tool like Morningstar Instant X Ray, find out your $10k position includes $567.89 of defense contractor Lockheed Martin, and sell short $567.89 of Lockheed Martin. Check you're in sync periodically (the fun... |
Tax consequences of changing state residency? | It also depends on where you work. If you move your home and your job then the date you establish residency in the new state is the key date. All income before that date is considered income for state 1, and all income on or after that date is income for state 2. If there is a big difference in income you will want t... |
Ghana scam and direct deposit scam? | The scammer is definitely up to something fishy. He (it's certain that the she is a he) may deposit some money into your father's account to gain his trust. After which, he will propose to come meet your dad. That's where the scamming begins. He will come up with a story about flight, VISA issues, or a problem he has t... |
TOCOM oil in USD | TOCOM Crude is a cash-settled blend of Oman and Dubai crude oil, both quoted in USD. The daily settlement price is mark to market, but the final settlement price is based on reported prices from Dubai and Oman (or calculated in some cases with a known procedure), averaged and then converted to Yen using monthly averag... |
Company is late in paying my corporate credit card statement - will it hurt my credit? | According to an article on Bankrate.com from 2011, yes, it can hurt your credit: With individual liability accounts, the employee holds all responsibility for the charges, even if the company pays the issuer directly. Joint liability means the company and employee share the responsibility for payments, says Mahendra Gu... |
Paying extra on a mortgage. How much can I save? [duplicate] | When is the best time to pay? At the end of each year? If you save $1,000 each month at 1% so as to pay $12,000 at EOY on a 4.75% loan, you've lost "4.75% - 1% = 3.75%" over that year. (And that's presuming you put the money in a "high yield" online savings account.) Thus, the best time to pay is as soon as you have t... |
Should I Pay Off my Student Loan Debts First or Invest in an Index Fund? | Pay off the debt first. Life circumstances change without notice, and starting any stage of life with a debt puts you at a disadvantage. Luckily, your debt is small. Please also consider accumulating a 6 month emergency fund before making investments. This will further protect you when life hands you a curveball. |
Are stocks always able to be bought and sold at market price? | In general stock markets are very similar to that, however, you can also put in limit orders to say that you will only buy or sell at a given price. These sit in the market for a specified length of time and will be executed when an order arrives that matches the price (or better). Traders who set limit orders are call... |
Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do? | Go to the police. This is fraud and is illegal. Sure, this will hurt your friend but better now then when he starts abusing of his position to fraud even more people... Original comment by Bakuriu sorry for not giving credit |
I have around 60K $. Thinking about investing in Oil, how to proceed? | If you've decided to ignore the sound advice re: oil company stocks, and you want something directly linked to the price of oil, do the following: Understand that oil producers would like avoid the risk of a price drop, and oil consumers (refiners, electric utilities, etc.) would like to avoid the risk of a price rise.... |
For very high-net worth individuals, does it make sense to not have insurance? | I'm going to take a very crude view of this: Suppose that you have an event that would cost $100,000 if it occurred. If there's a 10% chance that it'll happen to you and the insurance costs less than $10,000, you'll make a profit "on average." This is, of course, assuming that you could afford a $100,000 loss. If you c... |
Can I cash a cashier's check at any bank? | Normally if the amount of a cashiers check is over $5,000, a bank (like Wells Fargo) may put a 10 business day hold on it to make sure the transaction is sound. |
What headaches will I have switching from Quicken to GnuCash? | The best way to answer this question is to try. GnuCash is free, so setting it up and giving it a go shouldn't be too hard. After all, what really matters is how helpful the program is for your purposes. One aspect of personal finance that stops me from jumping to GnuCash/KMyMoney/MoneyDance is the ability to download ... |
What return are you getting on your money from paying down a mortgage on a rental property? | As Chris pointed out: If your expenses are covered by the income exactly, as you have said to assume, then you are basically starting with a $40K asset (your starting equity), and ending with a $200K asset (a paid for home, at the same value since you have said to ignore any appreciation). So, to determine what you hav... |
How to avoid getting back into debt? | I'm going to subtly and cheekily change the obvious advice. There are three ways to deal with negative cashflow, not two: You're currently studying for a degree. You don't say what country you're in or how your studies are funded, but most people in the US, UK, and a fair number of other countries, run up debts while s... |
Money Structuring | See "Structuring transactions to evade reporting requirement prohibited." You absolutely run the risk of the accusation of structuring. One can move money via check, direct transfer, etc, all day long, from account to account, and not have a reporting issue. But, cash deposits have a reporting requirement (by the bank)... |
Calculating theoretical Present Value | The example from the following website: Investopedia - Calculating The Present And Future Value Of Annuities specifically the section 'Calculating the Present Value of an Annuity Due' shows how the calculation is made. Using their figures, if five payments of $1000 are made over five years and depreciation (inflation... |
Tracking down stocks I own | My best answer is to simply fish out that old email account. DumbCoder makes a good point - the company whose shares you own can probably figure out what brokerage firm is holding the shares, but it'd take a lot on their end. Honestly you're better off just hitting up random brokerage firms until you find the right one... |
What is a Student Loan and does it allow you to cover a wide range of expenses relating to school? | The short answer is that you can use student loans for living expenses. Joe provides a nice taxonomy of loans. I would just add that some loans are not only guaranteed, but also subsidized. Essentially the Government buys down the rate of the loan. The mechanics are that a financial aid package might consist of gran... |
Is it wise to sell company stock to pay down a mortgage? | If by "Company Stock" you mean "stock in the company I work for" then absolutely sell your stock. It is too big a risk to have your investments tied into the same company that is also providing your salary. If you mean stock as in general investments, I like to look at it this way. If you have $25,000 stock and a $1... |
I carelessly invested in a stock on a spike near the peak price. How can I salvage my investment? | It would be useful to forget about the initial price that you invested - that loss happened, it's over and irreversible, it's a sunk cost; and anchoring on it would only cause you to make worse decisions. Getting "back" from a loss is done exactly the same as growing an investment that didn't have such a loss. You have... |
Ballpark salary equivalent today of “healthcare benefits” in the US? | Healthcare for the employee is more valuable to the employer than is providing healthcare for the rest of the family members. Depending on the family situation, you're going to see significant differences in price between out of pocket costs for insurance of just the employee, vs cost for insuring the entire family. ... |
What is the rough estimate of salary value for a taxpayer to pay AMT? | Turbox Tax states the following: "For 2015, the AMT exemption amounts are $53,600 for individual taxpayers, $83,400 for married taxpayers filing jointly and surviving spouses, and $41,700 for married persons filing separately. This is the amount you're allowed to deduct from your taxable income before applying the AMT... |
Question about ex-dividend date timing | Here is the definition of Ex-dividend date from the SEC: Once the company sets the record date, the stock exchanges or the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. fix the ex-dividend date. The ex-dividend date is normally set for stocks two business days before the record date. If you purchase a stock on its e... |
How can I find data on delisted stocks? | You need a source of delisted historical data. Such data is typically only available from paid sources. According to my records, AULT (Ault Inc) began as an OTC stock in the 1980s prior it having an official NASDAQ listing. It was delisted on 27 Jan 2006. Its final traded price was $2.94. It was taken over at a pric... |
What does “balance sheet banks” mean in this context? | The balance sheet for a bank is the list of assets and liabilities that the bank directly is responsible for. This would be things like loans the bank issues and accounts with the bank. Banks can make both "balance sheet" loans, meaning a loan that says on the balance sheet - one the bank gains the profits from but ho... |
How can I make a profit by selling a stock short? | Being "long" - expecting the price to go up to make a profit - is a two step process: 1) buy 2) sell Being "short" - expecting the price to go down to make a profit - is a 5 step process: 1) borrow someone else's asset 2) sell their asset on the open market to somebody else a third party 3) pocket the proceeds of the... |
Why do I get a much better price for options with a limit order than the ask price? | There are people whose strategy revolves around putting orders at the bid and ask and making money off people who cross the spread. If you put an order in between the current bid/ask, people running that type of strategy will usually pick it off, viewing it as a discount to the orders that they already have on the bid... |
What does a high operating margin but a small but positive ROE imply about a company? | The operating margin deals with the ability for a company to make a profit above the costs of running the company and generating sales. While ROE is how much money the company makes relative to the shareholders equity. I'd be willing to bet that if a company has a small ROE then it also has a quite large P/E (price to ... |
Freelancing and getting taxes taken out up front instead of end of year? | Maybe I can explain a little clearer: Your LLC is not a person, and cannot have taxes withheld on its behalf. Therefore, anyone paying your company should not withhold taxes. If they are paying you directly, and withholding taxes, they are treating you as an employee, and will probably issue a W2 instead of a 1099. Pu... |
Is it a gift or not? | Part of 'consideration', I imagine, would be the obligation of either party to follow through on an agreement, not only fair market value. Look at the thought experiment from the opposite perspective. If you did not pay him $150 (maybe just $50 or even $0), would you be breaking a contractual obligation to him? If he... |
Is there any way to know how much new money the US is printing? | The Fed doesn't exactly have a specific schedule when they decide to create a new dollar. Instead, they engage in open market operations, creating and destroying money as is necessary to preserve a certain interest rate for lending and borrowing. It's an ongoing process. When the Fed meets periodically and they see tha... |
Starting a new online business | Most US states have rules that go something like this: You will almost certainly have to pay some registration fees, as noted above. Depending on how you organize, you may or may not need to file a separate tax return for the business. (If you're sole proprietor for tax purposes, then you file on Schedule C on your pe... |
I'm 20 and starting to build up for my mortgage downpayment, where should I put my money for optimal growth? | The highest growth for an investment has historically been in stocks. Investing in mature companies that offer dividends is great for you since it is compound growth. Many oil and gas companies provide dividends. |
Is foreign stock considered more risky than local stock and why? | Foreign stocks have two extra sources of risk attached to them; exchange rate and political. Exchange rate risk is obvious; if I buy a stock in a foreign currency and there is a currency movement that makes that investment worth less I lose money no matter what the stock does. This can be offset using exchange rate sw... |
Any reason to keep around my account with my old, 'big' bank? | I'd add that bigger banks tend to have experience doing more complicated things. As an example, my local credit union (~12 offices), simply didn't have the software to wire money to a Canadian bank, as where Chase did. The Canadian routing number wasn't in the format of a US institution, and their software user interf... |
Is giving my girlfriend money for her mortgage closing costs and down payment considered fraud? | Sheesh, are people kidding here? It's a gift. It's not fraud. Just keep in mind that, because it's a gift, you cannot get it "back" if you break up--you are giving it to her. If you happen to get married at some point in the future, you will then own part of the apartment, but that is a completely separate matter. Give... |
Visiting vacation rental with immediate family | If you and your wife are owners, your tickets might be a business expense against the rental income. 'Might' as in the IRS will be happy to audit you, seeing the kids went as well and prorating the expense as say 25% was really business, the rest, family vacation. If this $4000 write off is the make or break for this ... |
Should I Use an Investment Professional? | Ask yourself the same question for furniture making. Would you feel more comfortable sitting in a chair that you made yourself versus one that you bought from a furniture store? How about one that you bought from IKEA and assembled? For an experienced, competent furniture maker, you might be able to make an equivalent... |
Where can I find the nominal price of a stock prior a split into multiple companies? | Yahoo Finance provides the proper closing price. HP's historical data around the split date can be found here. The open, high and low of the day are wrong prior the split, but the closing price is right and for HP, it was $26.96 USD. The next day the closing price was $13.83 USD. |
Cashing a cheque on behalf of someone else | Anyone can walk into a bank, say "Hi, I'm a messenger, I have an endorsed check and a filled out deposit slip for Joe Blow who has an account here, please deposit this check for him, as he is incapacitated. Straight deposit." They'll fiddle on their computer, to see if they can identify the deposit account definitivel... |
How much time would I have to spend trading to turn a profit? | Don't go for the 'fast buck'. There's no such thing. There are two types of people that make money on the stock market: Investors and Speculators. Investors are people that pick a stock that's relatively low, relatively secure, and buy the stock for the long run, 5, 10 years or more. Warren Buffet said his ideal period... |
New vending route business, not sure how to determine taxes | Actually, calculating taxes isn't that difficult. You will pay a percentage of your gross sales to state and local sales tax, and as a single-owner LLC your profits (after sales taxes) should pass through to your individual tax tax return (according to this IRS article. They are not cumulative since they have differen... |
How exactly does dealing in stock make me money? | If you buy a stock and it goes up, you can sell it and make money. But if you buy a stock and it goes down, you can lose money. |
Who Bought A Large Number Of Shares? | Schedule 13D (or the abbreviated version, schedule 13G) would be the most likely place to find this info. When a person or group of persons acquires beneficial ownership of more than 5% of a voting class of a company’s equity securities registered under Section 12 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, they are requir... |
What low-fee & liquid exchange-traded index funds / ETFs should I consider holding in a retirement portfolio? | Here's a dump from what I use. Some are a bit more expensive than those that you posted. The second column is the expense ratio. The third column is the category I've assigned in my spreadsheet -- it's how I manage my rebalancing among different classes. "US-LC" is large cap, MC is mid cap, SC is small cap. "Intl-Dev" ... |
Why is auto insurance ridiculously overpriced for those who drive few miles? | First you have to understand that insurance is basically a social system, just with Shareholders. Insurance costs consist of 3 factors: Now, to encourage a low-risk behavior a separating factor is search in the vast amount of statistical data. Drivers experience, miles and type of car being the most common, but also ot... |
How smart is it really to take out a loan right now? | You are not "the economy". The economy is just the aggregate of what is going on with everyone else. You should make the decision based on your own situation now and projected into the future as best you can. Loan rates ARE at historical lows, so it is a great time to take a loan if you actually need one for some reaso... |
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