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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... |
Question about being a resident | This sort of involves personal finance, and sort of not. But it's an interesting question, so let's call it on topic? Short answer: yes. Long answer: it depends who's asking. If you're trying to qualify for in-state tuition, for example, you need to have been in state for a certain amount of time. For tax purposes, the... |
Remit money to India from balance transfer of credit card | As Dheer has already told you in his answer, your plan is perfectly legal, and there are no US tax issues other than making sure that you report all the interest that you earn in all your NRE accounts (not just this one) as well as all your NRO accounts, stock and mutual fund dividends and capital gains, rental income,... |
Given current market conditions, how / when should I invest a $200k inheritance? | E) Spend a small amount of that money on getting advice from a paid financial planner. (Not a broker or someone offering you "free" advice; their recommendations may be biased toward what makes them the most money). A good financial planner will talk to you about your plans and expectations both short and long term, a... |
How is initial stock price (IPO) of a stock determined | Who determines company value at IPO? The Owners based on the advice from Lead Bankers and other Independent auditors who would determine the value of the company at the time of listing. At times instead of determining a fixed price a range is given [lower side and higher side]. The Market participants [FI / Institution... |
What effect would currency devaluation have on my investments? | My question boiled down: Do stock mutual funds behave more like treasury bonds or commodities? When I think about it, it seems that they should respond the devaluation like a commodity. I own a quantity of company shares (not tied to a currency), and let's assume that the company only holds immune assets. Does ... |
Should I stockpile nickels? | Probably a big fat NO. Update re this edit: NOTE: I'm not suggesting that I melt the coins. I'm just suggesting that I hold onto the nickels and sell them later when they are worth more than 5 cents. For example, you can sell coins with silver in them for far above their face value. This is silly as an investment. Rig... |
Is it possible to block previously authorized ACH access? | I had a similar situation a while ago, and here's what I learned: What are our options here to ensure that this company can't retry to take our money again via ACH? Close existing account and create a new one that has different account number? Yes. As a temporary solution keep ~$0 balance in the account so that their r... |
Why does Charles Schwab have a Mandatory Settlement Period after selling stocks? | Another explanation is that they keep your money three days to make money with it, because they can. The other reasons might have been valid 100 years ago, and no bank would voluntarily cut that down until forced by law. Example: In Europe, bank to bank transfers used to take three days, until a law forced them to give... |
How can I buy government bonds from foreign countries? | Significantly less effort to buy into any of several international bond index funds. Off the top of my head, VTIBX. |
Paying Off Principal of Home vs. Investing In Mutual Fund | I wouldn't pay down your mortgage faster until you have a huge emergency fund. Like two years' worth of expenses. Once you put extra money toward principal you can't get it out unless you get a HELOC, which costs money. You're in a position now to build that up in a hurry. I suggest you do so. Your mortgage is exce... |
JCI headache part 1: How to calculate cost basis / tax consequences of JCI -> TYC merger? | I finally found it! Johnson Controls International PLC FORM 8-K/A (Amended Current report filing) Filed 10/03/16 for the Period Ending 09/02/16 from http://investors.johnsoncontrols.com/financial-information/johnson-sec-filings, says on page II-6: (my emphasis for the relevant paragraph) On September 2, 2016, Johnson C... |
Why do governments borrow money instead of printing it? | I believe there are two ways new money is created: My favorite description of this (money creation) comes from Chris Martenson: the video is here on Youtube. And yes, I believe both can create inflation. In fact this is what happened in the US between 2004 and 2007: increasing loans to households to buy houses created ... |
When is an IPO considered failure? | Just skimming through the Wikipedia article on airberlin, I notice there is more to the story than simply "airberlin's IPO failed, so they postponed it and did it anyways." 3 points to keep in mind about IPOs: 1) An IPO is the mechanism for taking a private company and setting it up for shares to be owned by "the publ... |
What's the difference when asked for “debit or credit” by a store when using credit and debit cards? | Just to add about using debit card as "credit" vs "debit" way: In addition to the difference of having to enter the PIN when using "debit" mode (vs having to sign in "credit" mode), for stores that offer cash back (i.e. get cash out of your account at the same time as paying), you can only get cash back when using "deb... |
How fast does the available amount of gold in the world increase due to mining? | For the last few years around 2,500 metric tonnes of gold have been produced each year. This is on top of existing supply of 160,000 metric tonnes. Existing yearly production is around 1.5% of the existing supply. Charts from here. |
How should I begin investing real money as a student? | Without knowing what you are trying to achieve - make a bit of pocket money, become financially independent, invest for retirement, learn trading to become a trader - I'll give you a few thoughts ... The difficulty you will have trading with $400-600 is that brokerage will be a high proportion of your "profits". I'm n... |
How should I pay off my private student loans that have a lot of restrictions? | You might try to refinance some of those loans. It sounds like you are serious about minimizing interest expense, if you think you will be able to pay those loans in full within five years you might also try a loan that is fixed for five years before becoming variable. If you do not think you can repay the loans in f... |
Should I switch to this high rate checking account for my emergency fund? | I do this, and as you say the biggest downside is not having a separate account for your savings. If you're the type of person who struggles with restraint this is not for you. On the other hand this type of account gives more interest than any other type of US Checking or Savings account I've seen, so you will benefi... |
What does this statement regarding put options mean? | fennec has a very good answer but i feel it provides too much information. So i'll just try to explain what that sentence says. Put option is the right to sell a stock. "16 puts on Cisco at 71 cents", means John comes to Jim and says, i'll give you 71 cent now, if you allow me to sell one share of Cisco to you at $16 a... |
How do you invest in real estate without using money? | There is (almost) always money involved somewhere, but it doesn't have to come from you. It can be investors, credit cards, or even seller-financing (I've done all 3). Examples: If you can find partners with the money to make the deals happen, then your job is to put the deal together. Find the properties, negotiate ... |
How should I be contributing to my 401(k), traditional or Roth? | The Finance Buff discusses why the Roth 401k is often disadvantaged compared to a Traditional 401k in the article The Case Against the Roth 401k, including the following reasons (paraphrased): Contributions to the 401k come from the "top" of your highest tax bracket rate but withdrawals fill in from the "bottom". For ... |
Is 6% too high to trade stocks on margin? | That seems a little high in my experience. I've used a home equity line of credit instead, as the rates are much lower (~3.5%). |
How important is disability insurance, e.g. long-term, LTD? Employer offers none | The reason to have disability insurance is to replace your income if you become disabled and are no longer able to work. For this purpose, it is kind of similar to life insurance where you want to replace your income to take care of people that depend on your income if you die, but now you are included in the people t... |
Should I use an NRE or NRO account to transfer money from India to the US? Any reports needed? | NRE is better. It's a tax free account, exempt from income tax. NRE account is freely repatriable (Principal and interest earned) while the NRO account has restricted repatriability |
How to help a financially self destructive person? | You can't help people that don't want help, period. It just doesn't work, and you will waste your time and energy while making the other person mad. Both sides end up in the same place they started except now they are frustrated with each other. In a normal situation I would advise to stop enabling her by giving her mo... |
Not paying cash for a house | You could use the money to buy a couple of other (smaller) properties. Part of the rent of these properties would be used to cover the mortgage and the rest is income. |
Are lottery tickets ever a wise investment provided the jackpot is large enough? | The billion dollar jackpot is a sunk cost, a loss for prior bettors. If you had $250M and could buy every ticket combination, you'd be betting that not more than 4 other tickets will win on the next drawing. Even if 5 won, you'd have all the second place, third place, etc tickets, and would probably break even at worst... |
Are long-term bonds risky assets? | In truth there is no such thing as a risk-free asset. That is why your textbook feels the need to add the qualifier "for practical purposes," meaning that the risk of a money market account is so much lower than virtually any other asset class that it can reasonably be approximated as risk free. The main risk of any b... |
Pay via Debit Card or Bank's portal | There are reward points that you have already mentioned. Some banks also give reward points for netbanking transfer, although very few and less than debit card. On a fraudulent site, debit card adds a layer, if compromised, easy to change. i.e just hot list the card, get a new card issued. Netbanking quite a few banks ... |
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... |
Meaning of capital market | 1) Are the definitions for capital market from the two sources the same? Yes. They are from two different perspectives. Investopedia is looking at it primarily from the perspective of a trader and they lead-off with the secondary market. This refers to the secondary market: A market in which individuals and instituti... |
I'm 23, living at home, and still can't afford my own property. What could I do? | You have made the most important first step by starting to think about your money, well done. Firstly pay of all credit cards as quickly as you can and start to live within your means. Until you have paid of your credits cards don’t spend any money of unnecessary items, e.g. Once your credit cards are paid off you can... |
Why I can't view my debit card pre-authorized amounts? | The hard hold is the bank holding your money for no reason but to make money of your. Like the hotel took deposit for my over night and they released the time checked out in there system but it never showed on my account . I had to call the bank why the numbers are not adding up to my current balance. It's illegal prac... |
Algorithmic trading in linux using python | You can have a look at betabrokers. It's an simulated stock trading platform which is entirely email-based. You start with 10 000$ and you make transactions with commands in the subject line of the email (e.g. "buy 250$ AAPL" or "cover 20 shares of AAPL"). It should be straightforward to add an email interface to your ... |
How can rebuilding a city/large area be considered an economic boost? | You are not wrong. This is called the "Broken Window" fallacy in economics. Imagine if 20% of a population was employed to go around breaking windows. This would stimulate the economy as many people would have to be employed to make new windows, repair the broken windows, etc.. The problem is that everyone would have... |
How much cash on hand should one have? | There are two or three issues here. One is, how quickly can you get cash out of your investments? If you had an unexpected expense, if you suddenly needed more cash than you have on hand, how long would it take to get money out of your Scott Trade account or wherever it is? I have a TD Ameritrade account which is prett... |
How do I adjust to a new social class? | I live in one of the highest cost of living areas in my country. For the cost of less than half the down payment my spouse and I have saved up for a house we could easily buy a home in most of the lower cost of living areas (and several homes in, say, Detroit). As for the rest of your question, though, we've chosen no... |
What should I do with my $10K windfall, given these options? | I've been listening to Dave Ramsey a lot lately, and he encourages (encourage might be too light of a word for him) this priority list for budgeting: I would strongly advise you to tackle this list before you start to think about any sizable "fun" spending. If you don't have #1, set that aside first. The options you m... |
What happens to my savings if my country defaults or restructures its debt? | My 0,02€ - I probably live in the same country as you. Stop worrying. The Euro zone has a 100.000€ guaranty deposit. So if any bank should fail, that's the amount you'll receive back. This applies to all bank accounts and deposits. Not to any investments. You should not have more than 100.000€ in any bank. So, lucky yo... |
Non US-resident, need to file 83b election TODAY with the IRS - I have an SSN but it says “valid for work only with DHS auth” - is this OK? | Google that "valid for work..." phrase. You'll find that you have a SSN; it is valid for many purposes; it is valid for obtaining work, only when accompanied by DHS authorization. Doesn't anyone know how to use commas anymore? |
If stock price drops by the amount of dividend paid, what is the use of a dividend | Another plus, besides supplemental income, to receiving dividend checks as opposed to reinvesting them is that those $$ are now out of the market and can't drop 50% or 60% like Y2K and 2008. The idea of investing for the long term is now fraught with worry after those two events, because the next time, (smart economis... |
Sale of jointly owned stock | It depends on when, where and how the account was setup. If the state has an UGMA (Uniform Gift to Minors) law, the account was probably opened under that -- in which case, your wife became the custodian by statute at age 18 or 21. She has always been the account owner. The "catch" is that if your wife's father died b... |
Are 'per trade' fees charged on every order or just once per stock? | In my experience they charge you coming and going. For example, if a brokerage firm is advertising that their commissions are only $7/trade, then that means you pay money to buy the stock, plus $7 to them, and later on if you want to sell that stock you must pay $7 to get out of the deal. So, if you want to make any m... |
Is it accurate to say that if I was to trade something, my probability of success can't be worse than random? | It seems to be that your main point is this: No matter what, my chances cannot be worse than random and if my trading system has an edge that is greater than the percentage of the transaction that is transaction cost, then I am probabilistically likely to make a profit? In general, yes, that is true, but... Consider th... |
Priced out of London property market. What are my accommodation investment options? | Real Estate is all local. In the United States, I can show you houses so high the rent on them is less than 1/3% of their value per month, eg. $1M House renting for less than $3500. I can also find 3 unit buildings (for say $200K) that rent for $3000/mo total rents. I might want to live in that house, but buy the tripl... |
Layman's guide to getting started with Forex (foreign exchange trading)? | Unless you have a lot of money to get rid of you should spend at least a year trading with a dummy account. It takes a long time to work out what is gong on and your training will get very expensive if you start using real money. Don't start trading with real money until you : Have a strategy. Never trade on a whim. On... |
what is this type of stock trade? | I think that pattern is impossible, since the attempt to apply the second half would seem to prevent executing the first. Could you rewrite that as "After the stock rises to $X, start watching for a drop of $Y from peak price; if/when that happens, sell." Or does that not do what you want? (I'm not going to comment on ... |
F-1 student investing in foreign markets | You cannot have off-campus employment in your first year, but investments are considered passive income no matter how much time you put into that effort. Obviously you need to stay enrolled full-time and get good enough grades to stay in good standing academically, so you should be cautious about how much time you spen... |
Should I use a credit repair agency? | Here's what my wife and I did. First, we stopped using credit cards and got rid of all other expenses that we absolutely didn't need. A few examples: cable TV, home phone, high end internet - all shut off. We changed our cell phone plan to a cheap one and stopped going out to restaurants or bars. We also got rid of ... |
Is it true that 90% of investors lose their money? | Very likely this refers to trading/speculating on leverage, not investing. Of course, as soon as you put leverage into the equation this perfectly makes sense. 2007-2009 for example, if one bought the $SPX at its highs in 2007 at ~$1560.00 - to the lows from 2009 at ~$683.00 - implicating that with only 2:1 leverage a... |
Is gold really an investment or just a hedge against inflation? | The problem I have with gold is that it's only worth what someone will pay you for it. To a degree that's true with any equity, but with a company there are other capital resources etc that provide a base value for the company, and generally a business model that generates income. Gold just sits there. it doesn't make... |
Why some things are traded in an exchange while others are traded OTC | All securities must be registered with the SEC. Securities are defined as (1) The term “security” means any note, stock, treasury stock, security future, security-based swap, bond, debenture, evidence of indebtedness, certificate of interest or participation in any profit-sharing agreement, collateral-trust certi... |
Shares Canceled after Merger | It seems like this was a "stock for stock" transaction. That is, your company was acquired, not for cash, but for the stock of Company X in a deal that your company's board of directors "signed off" on. Your company no longer exists, and that's why your stock was cancelled. The acquirer will be sending you an equivale... |
Should I sell my stocks when the stock hits a 52-week high in order to “Buy Low, Sell High”? | Though it seems unintuitive, you should rationally ignore the past performance of this stock (including the fact that it's at its 52-week high) and focus exclusively on factors that you believe should affect it moving forward. If you think it's going to go up even further, more than the return on your other options f... |
Must a company have a specific number of employees to do an IPO? | Working for a lot of startups, I have seen this cycle. Really it has little to do with making the IPO look good because of number of employees, and is more about making the IPO look good because of planning for the future. Many times an IPO is released, it will be valued at $1.00 (made up) and the market will soar and ... |
What percent of my salary should I save? | I am pretty sure you could find a number of financial planners whom you could pay to give you a very accurate number, but the rule of thumb I like best is Save a dime of every dollar. 10% (Savings means save for retirement, not vacations.) Here is a nice article from radio personality Clark Howard with some adjustment... |
How to deal with the credit card debt from family member that has passed away? | First, if it is in any way a joint account, the debt usually goes to the surviving person. Assets in joint accounts usually have their own instructions on how to disperse the assets; for example, full joint bank accounts usually immediately go to the other name on the account and never become part of the estate. Non-ca... |
ETF S&P 500 with Reinvested Dividend | A DRIP plan with the ETF does just that. It provides cash (the dividends you are paid) back to the fund manager who will accumulate all such reinvested dividends and proportionally buy more shares of stock in the ETF. Most ETFs will not do this without your approval, as the dividends are taxed to you (you must include ... |
Employer 401K thru Fidelity - Investment options | The target date investment will automatically reduce equity exposure and increase bond exposure as it approaches retirement date. If you are unlikely to make adjustments as you get older, you may be setting yourself up for more risk down the road. Only you can decide what level of risk you can tolerate as you chase h... |
Opening 5 credit cards at once with no history to ruin, is it a good idea? | Yes, this is definitely possible. You can optimize your credit worthiness within 18 months, you would first start with a secured credit card just to establish a little bit of credit history and then use that as a jumping point 6 months later to do several unsecured credit card applications. As a student, your primary l... |
Calculate Estimated Tax on Hobby Business LLC | I assume your employer does standard withholding? Then what you need to do is figure what bracket that puts you in after you've done all your normal deductions. Let's say it's 25%. Then multiply your freelance income after business expenses, and that's your estimated tax, approximately. (Unless the income causes yo... |
How can I check my credit score? | Assuming you are asking about a credit score in the United States, the following applies. To find out your FICO score, navigate to AnnualCreditReport, the official site to help consumers receive their credit report from each of the three organizations providing these scores - Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. You are... |
Sanity check on choosing the term for a mortgage refinance | One thing you didn't mention is whether the 401(k) offers a match. If it does, this is a slam-dunk. The $303 ($303, right?) is $3636/yr that will be doubled on deposit. It's typical for the first 5% of one's salary to capture the match, so this is right there. In 15 years, you'll still owe $76,519. But 15 * $7272 is $... |
Does reading financial statements (quarterly or annual reports) really help investing? | Reading and analyzing financial statements is one of the most important tasks of Equity Analysts which look at a company from a fundamental perspective. However, analyzing a company and its financial statements is much more than just reading the absolute dollar figures provided in financial statements: You need to cal... |
Can paying down a mortgage be considered an “investment”? | Your mortgage represents a negative cash flow of $X for N months. The typical mortgage prepayment doesn't reduce your next payment, but does reduce the length of the mortgage. If you look at the amortization table of a 30 year loan, you might see a payment of $1000 but only $50 going to principal. So if on day one you ... |
Can I claim a tax deduction for working from home as an employee? I work there 90% of the time | The short answer is yes you probably can take the deduction for a home office because the space is used exclusively and you are working there for the convenience of your employer if you don't have a desk at your employers office. The long answer is that it may not be worth it to take the home office deduction as an emp... |
Should the poor consider investing as a means to becoming rich? | Given that a poor person probably has much less to invest, how can odds be in their favor? To add to Lan's great answer, if one is "poor" because they don't have enough income to build wealth (invest), then there are only two ways to change the situation - earn more or spend less. Neither are easy but both are usually... |
How can I find if I can buy shares of a specific company? | Hmm... Well there are several ways to do that: Go to any bank (or at the very least major ones). They can assist you with buying and/or selling stocks/shares of any company on the financial market. They keep your shares safe at the bank and take care of them. The downside is that they will calculate fees for every sing... |
Giving kids annual tax free gift of $28,000 | Why limit yourself to $28K per year? If you pay the tuition directly to the institution, it does not count against your annual or lifetime gift-giving totals. You could pay the entire tuition each year with no tax consequences. The only thing you can't do if you want to go this route is give the money to your childre... |
Is there a good rule of thumb for how much I should have set aside as emergency cash? | Many, many good answers here, but I like this one: One month's worth of expenses for each full percentage of unemployment. Therefore, it would normally float between, say five months and ten months. When the economy's hoppin' -- you have less to worry about. When times are tough -- beef up that fund. |
Why can Robin Hood offer trading without commissions? | They make money off you by increasing the spread you buy and sell your stocks through them. So for example, if the normal spread for a stock was $10.00 for a buy and $10.02 for a sell, they might have a spread of $9.98 for the buy and $10.02 for the sell. So for an order of 1000 shares (approx. $10000) they would make... |
Where can I open a Bank Account in Canadian dollars in the US? | Everbank has offered accounts in foreign currencies for a while. https://www.everbank.com/currencies Takes a while to get it setup; and moving cash in and out is via wire transfer. Also you need to park $5K in USD in a money market account; which you use as a transfer point. |
Money transfer from India to USA | The liabilities are the same regardless of the route, besides tax evasion schemes such as handing the money to her as cash. Taxes will run up to half of the amount. The best routes are: Western union, moneygram, and similar services- about 2k You are allowed to gift 14k tax free. You can increase this amount by sending... |
Understanding the symbols next to the Ticker | I don't understand what the D, to the right of APPLE INC, means. This means the graph below is for the "D". There is selection at top and you can change this to Minutes [5,20,60,etc], Day, Week [W], Month [M] I'm not understanding how it can say BATS when in actuality AAPL is listed on the NASDAQ. Do all exchanges have... |
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 ... |
Medium-term money investment in Germany | Due to the zero percent interest rate on the Euro right now you won't find any investment giving you 5% which isn't equivalent to gambling. One of the few investment forms which still promises gains without unreasonable risks right now seems to be real estate, because real estate prices in German urban areas (not so i... |
Are tax deductions voluntary? | There are many people who have deductions far above the standard deduction, but still don't itemize. That's their option even though it comes at a cost. It may be foolish, but it's not illegal. If @littleadv citation is correct, the 'under penalty of perjury' type issue, what of those filers who file a Schedule A but ... |
What are my chances at getting a mortgage with Terrible credit but High income | I also am paying roughly twice as much in rent as a mortgage payment would be on the type of house I have been looking at, so I'd really like to purchase a house if possible. Sounds like I need to rain on your parade a bit: there's a lot more to owning a house than the mortgage. Property tax, insurance, PMI, and mainte... |
As a US Permanent Resident, how much money I can send from the US to India in my NRE account per year? | I assume that you are a citizen of India, and are what Indian law calls a NRI (NonResident Indian) and thus entitled to operate an NRE (NonResident External) account in India. You can deposit US dollars into the NRE account, but the money is converted to Indian Rupees (INR) and held as INR. You can withdraw the money... |
Is there any reason not to put a 35% down payment on a car? | If you know that you have a reasonable credit history, and you know that your FICO score is in the 690-neighborhood, and the dealer tells you that you have no credit history, then you also know one of two things: Either way, you should walk away from the deal. If the dealer is willing to lie to you about your credit s... |
Switching Accountants - who does the audit review for past years? | It depends on what you paid for, but usually audit support is an unrelated engagement to the return preparation. If the accountant made a professional mistake, you can request correction and compensation from that accountant, other than that any accountant can help you with audit regardless of who prepared the return. ... |
Prepaying a loan: Shouldn't the interest be recalculated like a shorter loan? | Forget about terms. Think about loans in terms of months. To simplify things, let's consider a $1000 loan with .3% interest per month. This looks like a ten month term, but it's equally reasonable to think about it on a month-to-month basis. In the first month, you borrowed $1000 and accrued $3 interest. With the... |
How to plan in a budget for those less frequent but mid-range expensive buys? | Personally I solve this by saving enough liquid capital (aka checking and savings) to cover pretty much everything for six months. But this is a bad habit. A better approach is to use budget tracking software to make virtual savings accounts and place payments every paycheck into them, in step with your budget. The big... |
Why is the fractional-reserve banking not a Ponzi scheme? | You are forgetting one crucial point regarding the money supply. The US Federal Reserve increases the money supply, meaning some of the money is not really loaned, it just appears out of nowhere. At first glance this seems even worse: over the short term, the Fed changes the money supply to help the economy in whatev... |
Offered a job: Should I go as consultant / independent contractor, or employee? | Your comment to James is telling and can help us lead you in the right direction: My work and lifestyle will be the same either way, as I said. This is all about how it goes "on the books." [emphasis mine] As an independent consultant myself, when I hear something like "the work will be the same either way", I thi... |
What ways are there to invest in stocks, options, indexes, etc, and where should one start (what funds)? | I take the route of the tortoise. I subscribe to the adage that you invest in an excellent index fund like VFINX and forget about day trading and trying to make short term gains. Just like I would do at a casino I do gamble a bit for fun. Using etrade you can purchase some Vanguard or a billion of other things. I pu... |
Why would a bank need to accept deposits from private clients if it can just borrow from the Federal Reserve? | Borrowing money from the Federal Reserve (or other central banks) requires full collateral, generally in terms of treasury bonds. In that sense it is only a source of liquidity - getting short term money by pledging guaranteed future cash flows, not random commercial loans. To get a dollar from FR today requires freezi... |
Why are typical 401(k) plan fund choices so awful? | The managers of the 401(k) have to make their money somewhere. Either they'll make it from the employer, or from the employees via the expense ratio. If it's the employer setting up the plan, I can bet whose interest he'll be looking after. Regarding your last comment, I'd recommend looking outside your 401(k) for in... |
What are the best software tools for personal finance? | Excel Pros: Cons: |
How do I get a list of the top performing funds between two given dates? | I found one such tool here: Point-to-Point Returns tool |
ACH debit blocks/filters on consumer account | The technical feature exists to (1)block all ACH activity, (2)block all ACH credits, or (3)block all ACH debits attempting to post to the deposit account. The large financial institutions will not deviate from their company policies and won't offer something like this for a personal account. The smaller institutions ... |
Can I negotiate a 0% transaction fee with my credit card company? | There is nothing called free lunch. The 2% fee indirectly covers the cost of funds and in effect would be a personal loan. Further the repayment period would typically be 3 months and roughly would translate into 7-9% loan depending of repayment schedule etc. There is no harm in trying to get the fee waived, however on... |
I cosigned for a friend who is not paying the payment | I came across such a situation and I am still facing it. My friend borrowed my credit card for his expenses as he had misplaced his debit card and for the time being had asked for my credit card to handle the expenses he does. He paid for initial 2 months and then was not able to make payments, mainly due to not being ... |
Trading on forex news, Interactive Brokers / IDEALPRO, and slippage | Slippage is tied to volatility, so when volatility increases the spread will also increase. There is no perfect formula to figure out slippage but from observations, it might make sense to look at the bar size in relation to previous bars to determine slippage (assuming fixed periods). This is because when there is a s... |
What are the tax implications on selling the Share ISA portfolio? | Assets held within an ISA or New ISA are completely free of CGT, so you won't have to pay either income tax or capital gains tax. |
Claiming business expense from personal credit card | or just input it in my accounting software along with receipts, and then when I'm doing taxes this would go under the investment or loses (is it somewhere along that line)? Yes, this. Generally, for the long term you should have a separate bank account and charge card for your business. I started my business (LLC) ... |
Further Understanding of Wash Sale Rules | Disallowed losses due to the wash sale rule are added to the basis of the repurchased shares. In your example, on day two you paid $0.70 per share. Then the disallowed $0.30 loss from the previous day gets added to the basis, making your total basis $1.00 per share. When you sell at the end of the day for $1.00 per sh... |
Once stock prices are down, where to look for good stock market deals? | Indexes are down during the summer time, and I don't think it has something to do with specific stocks. If you look at the index history you'll see that there's a price drop during the summer time. Google "Sell in May and go away". The BP was cheap at the time for a very particular reason. As another example of a simil... |
What economic, political and other factors influence mortgage rates (and how)? | Without commenting on whether or not it's needed I don't think we are going to see a QE3 and all the political pressure is for some reason to start raising rates. Regardless of how it plays out it's safe to say that the Fed Rate isn't going any lower. You should also watch closely what happens to Fannie and Freddie.... |
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