Question
stringlengths 14
166
| Answer
stringlengths 3
13.1k
|
|---|---|
“Business day” and “due date” for bills
|
I don't believe Saturday is a business day either. When I deposit a check at a bank's drive-in after 4pm Friday, the receipt tells me it will credit as if I deposited on Monday. If a business' computer doesn't adjust their billing to have a weekday due date, they are supposed to accept the payment on the next business day, else, as you discovered, a Sunday due date is really the prior Friday. In which case they may be running afoul of the rules that require X number of days from the time they mail a bill to the time it's due. The flip side to all of this, is to pick and choose your battles in life. Just pay the bill 2 days early. The interest on a few hundred dollars is a few cents per week. You save that by not using a stamp, just charge it on their site on the Friday. Keep in mind, you can be right, but their computer still dings you. So you call and spend your valuable time when ever the due date is over a weekend, getting an agent to reverse the late fee. The cost of 'right' is wasting ten minutes, which is worth far more than just avoiding the issue altogether. But - if you are in the US (you didn't give your country), we have regulations for everything. HR 627, aka The CARD act of 2009, offers - ‘‘(2) WEEKEND OR HOLIDAY DUE DATES.—If the payment due date for a credit card account under an open end consumer credit plan is a day on which the creditor does not receive or accept payments by mail (including weekends and holidays), the creditor may not treat a payment received on the next business day as late for any purpose.’’. So, if you really want to pursue this, you have the power of our illustrious congress on your side.
|
A University student wondering if investing in stocks is a good idea?
|
I say, before investing your real capital into the Stock Market, play around on the virtual stock exchange game. It let's you invest with virtual capital and you can gain experience with the stock market. I wouldn't start investing in stock until I'm sure I can cover losses though. If you do intend to invest stocks so early in your career, then you should learn how to read SEC filings (not necessary, but helpful in understanding how investors think) such as 8-K/10-K/10-Q documents so you can predict profitability and growth of companies you invest in. Once you become a veteran of the stock market game, you probably won't need to read the SEC filings into too much detail - especially if you have a diverse portfolio. Good Luck. The one takeaway from this message would probably be: Stop! and play around on virtual stocks before immersing yourself in the real thing.
|
Should I use put extra money toward paying off my student loans or investing in an index fund?
|
Not all debt is bad. If it carries a reasonable interest rate, you don't need to clear it immediately. As for investing in an index fund, they're an affordable, easy way to spread your money over various assets. However, asset allocation is just one of many investment strategies. Ideally, you want to invest according to your goals, tax situation, and risk tolerance. You want a portfolio that dynamically allocates to various investment strategies, both beta and alpha, according to changing market conditions. Most importantly, you want systematic risk management for every aspect of your investments.
|
Retirement formula for annual compound interest with changing principal
|
The equation is the same one used for mortgage amortization. You first want to calculate the PV (present value) for a stream of $50K payments over 20 years at a10% rate. Then that value is the FV (future value) that you want to save for, and you are looking to solve the payment stream needed to create that future value. Good luck achieving the 10% return, and in knowing your mortality down to the exact year. Unless this is a homework assignment, which need not reflect real life. Edit - as indicated above, the first step is to get that value in 20 years: The image is the user-friendly entry screen for the PV calculation. It walks you though the need to enter rate as per period, therefore I enter .1/12 as the rate. The payment you desire is $50K/yr, and since it's a payment, it's a negative number. The equation in excel that results is: =PV(0.1/12,240,-50000/12,0) and the sum calculated is $431,769 Next you wish to know the payments to make to arrive at this number: In this case, you start at zero PV with a known FV calculated above, and known rate. This solves for the payment needed to get this number, $568.59 The excel equation is: =PMT(0.1/12,240,0,431769) Most people have access to excel or a public domain spreadsheet application (e.g. Openoffice). If you are often needing to perform such calculations, a business finance calculator is recommended. TI used to make a model BA-35 finance calculator, no longer in production, still on eBay, used. One more update- these equations whether in excel or a calculator are geared toward per period interest, i.e. when you state 10%, they assume a monthly 10/12%. With that said, you required a 20 year deposit period and 20 year withdrawal period. We know you wish to take out $4166.67 per month. The equation to calculate deposit required becomes - 4166.67/(1.00833333)^240= 568.59 HA! Exact same answer, far less work. To be clear, this works only because you required 240 deposits to produce 240 withdrawals in the future.
|
What should I do with $4,000 cash and High Interest Debt?
|
With all due respect to The David, the $1000 is best put against 20%+ debt, no sitting in checking as part of some emergency fund. I'd agree with the decision to pay off the lower rate card. Why? Because we can do the math, and can see the cost in doing so. Low enough that other factors come in, namely, a freed up card. That card can function as the emergency one in the short term. Long term, once these high rate cards are paid off, you'll build your proper emergency fund, but the cost is too high right now. The $4000 is a nice start, but the most important thing is to get your budget under control. Only you can decide how much you can cut back, and go after this debt as if it were life or death.
|
How do I figure out the next step in deciding to sell my home to the market or to a uniquely interested buyer?
|
You decide whether the improvements will result in a net higher price. You also need to figure on how long the house will be on the market and the cost of carrying the home, unoccupied. Some people would prefer the quickest sale. Others would wait to get the highest price. If you sell to a known buyer, you avoid using a real estate agent. If you plan to sell on your own and avoid the agent, there's a bit of effort dealing with the public, especially those who just want to look at houses with no real interest in buying. (As an agent, I can tell you, there's nothing like talking for nearly an hour, and then figuring out these people are from 1/2 mile away, but just attend every open house in the area.)
|
How to pick a state to form an LLC in?
|
There are very few circumstances where forming an out of state entity is beneficial, but a website is within these circumstances in certain instances. Businesses with no physical operations do not need to care what jurisdiction they are registered in: your home state, a better united state or non-united state. The "limited liability" does it's job. If you are storing inventory or purchasing offices to compliment your online business, you need to register in the state those are located in. An online business is an example of a business with no physical presence. All states want you to register your LLC in the state that you live in, but this is where you need to read that state's laws. What are the consequences of not registering? There might be none, there might be many. In New York, for example, there are no consequences for not registering (and registering in new york - especially the city - is likely the most expensive in the USA). If your LLC needs to represent itself in court, New York provides retroactive foreign registrations and business licenses. So basically, despite saying that you need to pay over $1000 to form your LLC "or else", the reality is that you get the local limited liability protection in courts whenever you actually need it. Check your local state laws, but more times than not it is analogous to asking a barber if you need a haircut, the representative is always going to say "yes, you do" while the law, and associated case law, reveals that you don't. The federal government doesn't care what state your form an LLC or partnership in. Banks don't care what state you form an LLC or partnership in. The United States post office doesn't care. Making an app? The Apple iTunes store doesn't care. So that covers all the applicable authorities you need to consider. Now just go with the cheapest. In the US alone there are 50 states and several territories, all with their own fee structures, so you just have to do your research. Despite conflicting with another answer, Wyoming is still relevant, because it is cheap and has a mature system and laws around business entity formation. http://www.incorp.com has agents in every state, but there are registered agents everywhere, you can even call the Secretary of State in each state for a list of registered agents. Get an employer ID number yourself after the business entity is formed, it takes less than 5 minutes. All of this is also contingent on how your LLC or partnership distributes funds. If your LLC is not acting like a pass through entity to you and your partner,but instead holding its own profits like a corporation, then again none of this matters. You need to form it within the state you live and do foreign registrations in states where it has any physical presence, as it has becomes its own tax person in those states. This is relevant because you said you were trying to do something with a friend.
|
How can I have credit cards without having a credit history or credit score?
|
That is an opinion. I don't think so. Here are some differences: If you use credit responsibly and take the time to make sure the reporting agencies are being accurate, a good report can benefit you. So that isn't like a criminal record. What is also important to know is that in the United States, a credit report is about you, not for you. You are the product being sold. This is, in my opinion, and unfortunate situation but it is what it is. You will more than likely benefit for keeping a good report, even if you never use credit. There are many credit scores that can be calculated from your report; the score is just a number used to compare and evaluate you on a common set of criteria. If you think about it, that doesn't make sense. The score is a reflection of how you use credit. Having and using credit is a commitment. Your are committing to the lender that you will repay them as agreed. Your choice is who you decide to make agreements with. I personally find the business practices of my local credit union to be more palatable than the business practices of the national bank I was with. I chose to use credit provided by the credit union rather than by the bank. I am careful about where I take auto loans from, and to what extent I can control it, where I take home loans from. Since it is absolutely a commitment, you are personally responsible for making sure that you like who you are making commitments with.
|
Looking for a stock market simulation that's as close to the real thing as possible
|
There is a site that treats you like a fund manager in the real market, Marketoracy, http://marketocracy.com/. Each user is given 1 million in cash. You can have multiple "mutual funds", and the site allows use to choose between two types of strategies, buy/sell, short/cover. Currently, options are not supported. The real value of the site is that users are ranked against each other (of course, you can op out of the rankings). This is really cool because you can determine the real worth of your returns compared to the rest of investors across the site. A couple years back, the top 100 investors were invited to come on as real mutual fund managers - so the competition is legitimate. Take a look at the site, it's definitely worth a try. Were there other great sites you looked at?
|
How do share buybacks work?
|
Something to note is that when a company announces a share buyback program there is usually a time frame and amount of shares that are important details as it isn't like the company will make one big buy back of stock generally. Rather it may take months or even years as noted in the Wikipedia article about share repurchases. Wikipedia covers some of the technical details here but to give a specific set of answers: When a company announces a share buyback program, who do they actually buy back the shares from? From the Wikipedia link: "Under US corporate law there are five primary methods of stock repurchase: open market, private negotiations, repurchase 'put' rights, and two variants of self-tender repurchase: a fixed price tender offer and a Dutch auction." Thus, there are open market and a couple of other possibilities. Openly traded shares on a stock exchange? Possibly, though there are other options. Is there a fixed price that they buy back at? Sometimes. I'd think a "fixed price tender offer" would imply a fixed price though the open market way may take various prices. If I own shares in that company, can I get them to buy back my shares? Selective Buy-Backs is noted in Wikipedia as: "In broad terms, a selective buy-back is one in which identical offers are not made to every shareholder, for example, if offers are made to only some of the shareholders in the company. In the US, no special shareholder approval of a selective buy-back is required. In the UK, the scheme must first be approved by all shareholders, or by a special resolution (requiring a 75% majority) of the members in which no vote is cast by selling shareholders or their associates. Selling shareholders may not vote in favor of a special resolution to approve a selective buy-back. The notice to shareholders convening the meeting to vote on a selective buy-back must include a statement setting out all material information that is relevant to the proposal, although it is not necessary for the company to provide information already disclosed to the shareholders, if that would be unreasonable." Thus it is possible, though how probable is another question. While not in the question, something to consider is how the buybacks can be done as a result of offsetting the dilution of employees who have stock options that may exercise them and spread the earnings over more shares, but this is more on understanding the employee stock option scenario that various big companies use when it comes to giving employees an incentive to help the stock price.
|
Retirement formula for annual compound interest with changing principal
|
I've found the systems that seem to work. Firstly, you need to find how much money is required to pay for the withdrawals after retirement, while still accruing interest. I couldn't seem to do this with an equation, but this bit of javascript worked: yearsToLast: Number of years of yearly withdrawals yearlyWithdrawal: Amount to withdraw each year interest: Decimal form of yearly compounding interest Now that we have how much is required at the beginning of the retirement, to figure out how much to add yearly to hit this mark, you'd use: amount: Previously found required amount to reach interest: Decimal form of yearly compounding interest yearsSaving: Number of years saving till amount needs to be hit I hope this helps some other poor soul, because I could find squat on how to do this. Max
|
What are the differences between a REIT and an MLP?
|
A REIT is a real estate investment trust. It is a company that derives most of its gross income from and holds most of its assets in real estate investments, which, in this case, include either real property, mortgages, or both. They provide a way for investors to get broad exposure in a real estate market without going to buy a bunch of properties themselves. It also provides diversification within the real estate segment since REITs will often (but not necessarily) have either way more properties than an individual could get or have very large properties (like a few resorts) that would be too expensive for any one investor. By law, they must pay at least 90% of their taxable income as dividends to investors, so they typically have a good dividend rate (possibly but not necessarily) at the expense of growth of the stock price. Some of those dividends may be tax advantaged and some will not. An MLP is a master limited partnership. These trade on the exchange like corporations, but they are not corporations. (Although often used in common language as synonyms, corporation and company are not the same thing. Corporation is one way to organize a company under the law.) They are partnerships, and when you buy a share you become a partner in the company. This is an alternative form of ownership to being a shareholding. In this case you are a limited partner, which means that you have limited liability as with stock. The shares may appreciate or not, just like a stock, and you can generally sell them back to the market for a capital gain or loss under the same rules as a stock. The main difference here from a practical point of view is taxes: Partnerships (of any type) do no pay tax - Instead their income and costs are passed to the individual partners, who must then include it on their personal returns (Form 1040, Schedule E). The partnership will send each shareholder a Schedule K-1 form at tax time. This means you may have "phantom income" that is taxable even though cash never flowed through your hands since you'll have to account for the income of the partnership. Many partnerships mitigate this by making cash distributions during the year so that the partners do actually see the cash, but this is not required. On the other hand, if it does happen, it's often characterized as a return of capital, which is not taxable in the year that you receive it. A return of capital reduces your cost basis in the partnership and will eventually result in a larger capital gain when you sell your shares. As with any investment, there are pros and cons to each investment type. Of the two, the MLP is probably less like a "regular" stock since getting the Schedule K-1 may require some extra work at tax time, especially if you've never seen one before. On the other hand, that may be worth it to you if you can find one that's appreciating in value and still returning capital at a good rate since this could be a "best of everything" situation where you defer tax and - when you eventually do pay, you pay at favorable capital gains rates - but still manage to get your cash back in hand before you sell. (In case not clear, my comments about tax are specific to the US. No idea how this is treated elsewhere.) By real world example, I guess you meant a few tickers in each category? You can find whole lists online. I just did a quick search ("list of MLP" and "list of REIT"), found a list, and have provided the top few off of the first list that I found. The lists were alphabetical by company name, so there's no explicit or implicit endorsement of these particular investments. Examples of REIT: Examples of MLP:
|
Investing small amounts at regular intervals while minimizing fees?
|
I am not sure whether this hold in all countries, but at least in the Netherlands my bank allows for investment in funds without charging transaction costs. The downside is that these funds charge an annual fee of about 1%, but for the amounts you are talking about this definitely sounds more attractive than the alternative. As an alternative, you could ofcourse just take care of the transaction costs. That way your child can see their funds develop as you put it into different stocks without being distracted by the details. Of course you feel the 'pain' but I believe the main lesson stands out most this way.
|
How to make use of EUR/USD fluctuations in my specific case?
|
I would make this a comment but I am not allowed apparently. Unless your continent blows up, you'll never lost all your money. Google "EUR USD" if you want news stories or graphs on this topic. If you're rooting for your 10k USD (but not your neighbors), you want that graph to trend downward.
|
What is a subsidy?
|
subsidy - financial support. For example subsidized housing - when the government pays a part of your rent (usually for low income families). or subsidized student loan - when somebody else is paying interest on the money you borrowed while you are in school.
|
why do I need an emergency fund if I already have investments?
|
There are a few major risks to doing something like that. First, you should never invest money you can't afford to lose. An emergency fund is money you can't afford to lose - by definition, you may need to have quick access to that money. If you determine that you need, for example, $3000 in emergency savings, that means that you need to have at least $3000 at all times - if you lose $500, then you now only have $2500 in emergency savings. Imagine what could've happened if you had invested your emergency savings during the 2008 crash, for example; you could easily have been in a position where you lost both your job and a good portion of your emergency savings at the same time, which is a terrible position to be in. If the car breaks down, you can't really say "now's a bad time, wait until the stock market bounces back." Second, with brokerage accounts, there may be a delay before you can actually access the money or transfer it to an account that you can actually withdraw cash from or write checks against (but some of this depends on the exact arrangement you have with your bank). This can be a problem if you're in a situation where you need immediate access to the money - if your furnace breaks in the middle of winter, you probably don't want to wait a few days for the sale and transfer to go through before you can have it fixed. Third, you can be forced to sell the investments at an unfavorable price because you're not sure when you're going to need it. You'd also likely incur trading fees and/or early withdrawal penalties when you tried to withdraw the money. Think about it this way: if you buy a bond that matures in 5 years, you're effectively betting that you won't have an emergency for the next 5 years. If you do, you'll have to either sell the bond or, if you're allowed to get the money back early, you'll likely forfeit a good amount of the interest you earned in the process (which kind of kills the point of buying the bond in the first place). Edit: As @Barmar pointed out in the comments, you may also have to pay taxes on the profits if you sell at a favorable price. In the U.S. at least, capital gains on stuff held for less than a year is taxed at your ordinary income tax rate and stuff held longer than a year is taxed at the long-term capital gains tax rate. So, if you hold the investment for less than a year, you're opening yourself up to the risks of short-term stock fluctuations as well as potential tax penalties, so if you put your emergency fund in stocks you're essentially betting that you won't have an emergency that year (which by definition you can't know). The purpose of an emergency fund is just that - to be an emergency fund. Its purpose isn't really to make money.
|
(Arizona) Bought a car with financing, do I take it to DMV/DOT?
|
Based on your description of what you were given, then you should not need to contact DMV/DOT However if you are not comfortable with that answer then contact/visit the dealer, you can ask them how long it normally takes, and do you pick up the real plates at the dealer, DMV, or will they be mailed to you. Also call them if the temporary plates will run out in a few days, to make sure everything is good to go. One other note. If the dealer is in one state, and you live in another they can give you temporary plate for their state but may not be able to file for the real plates in your state. Once everything is finalized go online to DMV and make sure that the car registration is OK. A few years ago the dealer gave me real plates, they gave me a registration good for two years. But the info sent to DMV was corrupted: the VIN was in the system, but the description was wrong and the plates were listed as none. This was only noticed when I tried to re-register the car two years later. In fact according to DMV the plates on the car were listed as never issued. If I had ever been pulled over it would have taken hours to resolve.
|
The Benefits/Disadvantages of using a credit card
|
If you can use and pay off your credit card in full every month, there are plenty of benefits including improved credit, reward points and more. Many fall into the trap of just making the minimum payments and facing high interest charges or missing payments and getting a hit on their credit reports. To start off, put something small that you know you can pay off every month. It could be your Netflix or your gas. Make sure you pay it off before any interest is accrued. Over time, you can ask for higher limits to boost your utilization rate.
|
Ticker symbols differences between Yahoo Finance and BestInvest
|
It depends on what site you're looking on and what exchange they're pulling the data from. Even though funds and stocks are called the same thing, they have different ticker symbols in each country's exchange or could be traded as pink sheet stocks in the US. If a company or fund is based in another country (like Canada or the UK) they probably also trade on that country's exchange (Toronto or London) under a different symbol. This can cause a lot of confusion when researching these tickers.
|
How can I escalate a credit dispute when the bureau “confirms” the item?
|
I was I a similar position as you, and sometimes credit bureaus might be difficult to deal with, especially when high amounts of money are involved. To make the long story short, someone opened a store credit card under my name and made a charge of around 3k. After reporting this to the bureaus, they did not want to remove the account from my credit report citing that the claim was "frivolous". After filing a police report, the police officer gave me the phone number for the fraud department of this store credit card, and after they investigated, they removed the account from my credit. I would suggest to do the following: Communicating with Creditors and Debt Collectors You have the right to: Stop creditors and debt collectors from reporting fraudulent accounts. After you give them a copy of a valid identity theft report, they may not report fraudulent accounts to the credit reporting companies. Get copies of documents related to the theft of your identity, like transaction records or applications for new accounts. Write to the company that has the documents, and include a copy of your identity theft report. You also can tell the company to give the documents to a specific law enforcement agency. Stop a debt collector from contacting you. In most cases, debt collectors must stop contacting you after you send them a letter telling them to stop. Get written information from a debt collector about a debt, including the name of the creditor and the amount you supposedly owe. If a debt collector contacts you about a debt, request this information in writing. I know that you said that the main problem was that your credit account was combined with another. But there might be a chance that identity theft was involved. If this is the case, and you can prove it, then you might have access to more tools to help you. For example, you can file a report with the FTC, and along with a police report, this can be a powerful tool in stopping these charges. Feel free to go to the identitytheft.gov website for more information.
|
Boyfriend is coowner of a house with his sister, he wants to sell but she doesn't
|
He doesn't have to follow through on this, but he could tell this sister that he will stop making mortgage payments, which will result in foreclosure and sale at lower price than might be realized by a voluntary sale. Translation: the house will sold, sis. Do you want to maximize your share of the proceeds? And, as I said in a comment above: I hope that he is keeping careful records of mortgage an utility payments, as he might (should) be entitled to a refund from the proceeds of an eventual sale (possibly adjusted by the fair rent value of the time which he spent living there)
|
When should I open a “Line of credit” at my bank?
|
I have a line of credit that I have attached to my checking account in case of an overdraft. Since I haven't over drafted my checking account in 4 years, I typically borrow the minimum $5 from the line of credit and then pay it back the next day. This usually costs me a couple of cents and I have to do it twice a year, but it keeps the account active and they don't close it down.
|
Book capital losses in gnucash
|
It depends on whether or not you are referring to realized or unrealized gains. If the asset appreciation is realized, meaning you've sold the asset and actually collected liquidity from it, then Derek_6424246 has provided a good route to follow. However, if the gains are unrealized, meaning only that the current value of the underlying asset(s) have increased or decreased, then you might want to record this under an Income:Unrealized Gains account. One of the main distinctions between the two are whether or not you have a taxable event (realized) or just want to better track your net worth at a given time (unrealized). For example, I generally track my retirement accounts increase in value sans interest, dividends and contributions, as income from an Income:Unrealized Gains account. I can still reconcile it with my statements, and it shows an accurate picture for my net worth, but the money is not liquid nor taxed and is more for informational purposes than anything. And no, I don't create an additional Expense account here to track losses. Just think of Unrealized Gains as an income account where the balance will fluctuate up and down (and potentially even go negative) over time.
|
What prevents investors from buying high yield stocks and selling them as soon as their dividend is paid out?
|
I remember my Finance Professor at b-school answering this question: The next moment the dividend is paid the total market cap is decreased by the amount paid This makes sense as cash leaves company, the value of the company is decreased by exactly the same amount. To summarise: the moment you paid dividend, the value of the stock is decreased by the same amount.
|
How to tell if an option is expensive
|
One way is to compare the implied volatility with the realised volatility over a period similar to the time left to expiry. However there are plenty of reasons why the implied may be higher than the historical, for example because the market volatility has increased overall or because the underlying company is going to report their results before the option expires.
|
Are precious metals/collectibles a viable emergency fund?
|
If it were me, I would convert it to cash and keep it in a liquid account. The assumption that silver will increase in value is misguided. From 1985 to 2002, it was flat. It's gone up and been far more volatile since then, and there has been significant declines which could eat at the stability of an emergency fund. Precious metals are speculation, not investing. They do not create wealth. Investing is typically considered too volatile for an emergency fund, more so keeping the money in metals. Making it more difficult to get to, like keeping it in a separate account might also fight against frivolous or accidental spending. Also there tends to be high transaction costs when liquidating metals. I found the best way is to use eBay. After some further comments and clarification here I suspect you are dealing with something else. Namely, the "white picket fence". Again, this is supposition, but perhaps she envisions the two of you married and hosting a dinner party using the passed down silver. This could be a strong emotional bond, and as such it could trump the logical arguments. Keeping it as an emergency fund: foolish. You helping her keep it because you are planning a life together: smart.
|
Should you keep your stocks if you are too late to sell?
|
You should distinguish between the price and the value of a company: "Price is what you pay, value is what you get". Price is the share price you pay for one share of the company. Value is what a company is worth (based on fundamental analysis, one of the principles of value investing). I would recommend selling the stock only if the company's value has deteriorated due to fundamental changes (e.g. better products from competitors, declining market) and its value is lower than the current share price.
|
What happens when the bid and ask are the same?
|
This question is impossible answer for all markets but there are 2 more possibilities in my experience:
|
Why are US target retirement funds weighted so heavily towards US stocks?
|
A target date fund is NOT a world market index. There is no requirement that it be weighted based on the weights of the various world stock markets. If anything, historically (since the invention of target date funds), a 2:1 ratio is actually pretty low. 6:1 is, or was, probably more common. Just a token amount to non-US investments.
|
Should I Purchase Health Insurance Through My S-Corp
|
I'm not sure about reimbursement, you'll have to talk to a tax adviser (CPA/EA licensed in your State). From what I know, if you pay your own insurance premiums - they're not deductible, and I don't think reimbursements change that. But again - not sure, verify. However, since you're a salaried employee, even if your own, you can have your employer cover you by a group plan. Even if the group consists of only you. Then, you'll pay your portion as part of the pre-tax salary deduction, and it will be deductible. The employer's portion is a legitimate business expense. Thus, since both the employee and the employer portions are pre-tax - the whole cost of the insurance will be pre-tax. The catch is this: this option has to be available to all of your employees. So if you're hiring an employee a year from now to help you - that employee will be eligible to exactly the same options you have. You cannot only cover owner-employees. If you don't plan on hiring employees any time soon, this point is moot for you, but it is something to keep in mind down the road as you're building and growing your business.
|
Do I even need credit cards?
|
The key part of your question is the "so far". So you didn't need a credit card today, or yesterday, or last month - great! But what about tomorrow? The time may come when you really need to spend a little more than you have, and a credit card will let you do that, at a very modest cost if you pay it off promptly (no cost, if paid within 30 days). I learned this when I was traveling and stranded due to bad weather. I had almost nothing in my bank account at the time, and while I actually did have a small student-type credit card, I came really close to having to sleep at the train station when I didn't have enough for another night in a hotel. As an example, if you have close friends or family living across the country, and something tragic were to happen, would you be able to pay for a flight to attend the funeral? What if you'd recently had an accident and a big medical bill (it doesn't take much, a broken arm can cost $10,000)? Perhaps you have a solid nest egg, but breaking a CD ahead of schedule or taking short-term capital gains on a mutual fund will usually cost more than one or two months of interest payments.
|
When is the right time to buy a new/emerging technology?
|
As you said, the next generation will be cheaper and more efficient. Same for the generation after that. From a financial standpoint, there isn't a steadfast theory that supports when to buy the technology. It comes down to primarily personal issues. As far as I know, Musk's claims about the cost were relating to a traditional slate roof, not a traditional asphalt shingle roof. I can't recall if he explicitly said one way or the other, but I have yet to see any math that supports a comparison to asphalt shingles. If you look at all of the demos and marketing material, it's comparisons to various styles of tile roofing, which is already more expensive than asphalt shingles. Do you feel it's worth it to invest now, or do you think it would be more worth it to invest later when the costs are lower? A new roof will last 10-20 years (if not longer...I'm not a roof expert). Do you need a new roof yet? Are your electricity bills high enough that the cost of going solar will offset it enough? Can you sell unused power back to your power company? I could go on, but I think you get the point. It's entirely a personal decision, and not one that will have a definitive answer. If you keep waiting to make a purchase because you're worried that the next generation will be cheaper and more efficient, then you're never going to make the purchase.
|
How to calculate P/E ratio for S&P500 sectors
|
For the S&P and many other indices (but not the DJIA) the index "price" is just a unitless number that is the result of a complicated formula. It's not a dollar value. So when you divide said number by the earnings/share of the sector, you're again getting just a unitless number that is incomparable to standard P-E ratios. In fact, now that I think about, it kinda makes sense that each sector would have a similar value for the number that you're computing, since each sector's index formula is presumably written to make all the index "price"s look similar to consumers.
|
Are stock prices purely (or mostly) only based on human action?
|
Stock prices are indeed proportional to supply and demand. The greater the demand for a stock, the greater the price. If they are, would this mean that stock prices completely depend on HOW the public FEELS/THINKS about the stock instead of what it is actually worth? This is a question people have argued for decades. Literature in behavioral finance suggests that investors are not rational and thus markets are subject to wild fluctuation based on investor sentiment. The efficient market theory (EMT) argues that the stock market is efficient and that a stock's price is an accurate reflection of its underlying or intrinsic value. This philosophy took birth with Harry Markovitz's efficient frontier, and Eugene Fama is generally seen as the champion of EMT in the 1960's and onward. Most investors today would agree that the markets are not perfectly efficient, and that a stock's price does not always reflect its value. The renowned professor Benjamin Graham once wrote: In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine. This suggests that prices in the short term are mainly influenced by how people feel about the stock, while in the long run the price reflects what it's actually worth. For example, people are really big fans of tech stocks right now, which suggests why LinkedIn (stock: LNKD) has such a high share price despite its modest earnings (relative to valuation). People feel really good about it, and the price might sustain if LinkedIn becomes more and more profitable, but it's also possible that their results won't be absolutely stellar, so the stock price will fall until it reflects the company's fundamentals.
|
How does UpWork allow US companies to make payments outside of the US?
|
Permanent employees are the distinct opposite of contractors. Upwork can easily have business entities (limited liability company equivalents) in multiple countries, and it can make payments between them. Or they can merely use existing payment infrastructure (paypal, amazon) to accomplish the same thing. Their corporate structure is a red herring and most likely unrelated to what they've accomplished.
|
Why can't you just have someone invest for you and split the profits (and losses) with him?
|
A 'indexed guaranteed income certificate' (Market Growth GIC) fits the criteria defined in the OP. The "guaranteed" part of the name means that, if the market falls, your capital is guaranteed (they cover the loss and return all your capital to you); and the "index linked" or "market growth" means that instead of the ROI being fixed/determined when you buy the GIC, the ROI depends on (is linked to) the market growth, e.g. an index (so you get a fraction of profit, which you share with the fund manager). The upside is that you can't 'lose' (lose capital). The fund manager doesn't just share the losses with you, they take/cover all the losses. The downside is that you only make a fraction of whatever profit you might make by investing directly in the market (e.g. in an index fund). Another caveat is that you buy a GIC over some fixed term, e.g. you have to give them you money for a year or more, two years.
|
What credit card information are offline US merchants allowed to collect for purposes other than the transaction?
|
Zip code, as well as billing address, is used in conjunction with the Address Verification Service (AVS). AVS is a web (or phone) service that actually verifies the address with the billing address on file with the issuing bank. It does not use the credit card stripe. You can see more information from various sources such as bank merchant help pages like Bank of America's. As far as what is stored on the stripe, it varies some by bank (as there are some "optional" areas). The standards are discussed here. Fields include your account number, name, the expiration date, some card-specific stuff, and then the discretionary section. I would not expect much in terms of address type information there. So - the answer to your question is that they can't really take much more than your name and CC #, unless you give it to them. If you give a false zip code, you may have your purchase rejected. They certainly do keep track of the credit card number, and I would suppose that is the most valuable piece to them; they can see you make purchases across time and know for a fact that it's the same exact person (since it's the same card). Additionally, zip codes for AVS from pay-at-the-pump are supposedly not generally used for marketing (see this article for example). That is probably not true at at-the-register (in-person) collections, most of those aren't for AVS anyway. Even California permits the pay-at-the-pump zip verification as long as it's only used for that (same article). I would assume any information given, though, is collected for marketing purposes.
|
Can signing up at optoutprescreen.com improve my credit score?
|
Sounds like a case of false causality. If somebody is taking the time to sign up at opt out sites, then that same person is probably making other smart decisions with their credit, causing scores to rise. Optoutprescreen.com does not help your score, the other actions taken might. People seeing different results can probably be tied to the timeframe they signed up. People who signed up then took care of their credit vs. people whose credit was already good and then signed up. A 10 pt bounce one way or the other is not significant.
|
Are there online brokers in the UK which don't require margin account?
|
Disclosure: I am working for an aggregation startup business called Brokerchooser, that is matching the needs of clients to the right online broker. FxPro and similar brokers are rather CFD/FX brokers. If you want to trade stocks you have to find a broker who is registered member of an exchange like LSE. Long list: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/traders-and-brokers/membership/member-firm-directory/member-firm-directory-search.html From the brokers we have tested at Brokerchooser.com I would suggest:
|
Ways to get individual securities from ETF's
|
Assuming that the ETF is tracking an index, is there a reason for not looking at using details on the index? Typically the exact constituents of an index are proprietary, and companies will not publish them publicly without a license. S&P is the heavyweight in this area, and the exact details of the constituents at any one time are not listed anywhere. They do list the methodology, and announcements as to index changes, but not a full list of actual underlying constituents. Is there a easy way to automatically (ie. through an API or something, not through just reading a prospectus) get information about an ETF's underlying securities? I have looked for this information before, and based on my own searches, in a word: no. Index providers, and providers of APIs which provide index information, make money off of such services. The easiest way may be to navigate to each provider and download the CSV with the full list of holdings, if one exists. You can then drop this into your pipeline and write a program to pull the data from the CSV file. You could drop the entire CSV into Excel and use VBA to automagically pull the data into a usable format. For example, on the page for XIU.TO on the Blackrock site, after clicking the "All Holdings" tab there is a link to "Download holdings", which will provide you with a CSV. I am not sure if all providers look at this. Alternatively, you could write the ETF company themselves.
|
Why do some companies (like this company) have such a huge per share price?
|
Simple answer is because the stocks don't split. Most stocks would have a similar high price per share if they didn't split occasionally. Why don't they split? A better way to ask this is probably, why DO most stocks split? The standard answer is that it gives the appearance that stocks are "cheap" again and encourages investors to buy them. Some people, Warren Buffett (of Berkshire Hathaway) don't want any part of these shenanigans and refuse to split their stocks. Buffett also has commented that he thinks splitting a stock also adds unnecessary volatility.
|
How will Brexit affect house mortgages?
|
Only you can decide whether it's wise or not given your own personal circumstances. Brexit is certainly a big risk, and noone can really know what will happen yet. The specific worries you mention are certainly valid. Additionally you might find it hard to keep your job or get a new one if the economy turns bad, and in an extreme "no deal" scenario you might find yourself forced to leave - though I think that's very unlikely. House prices could also collapse leaving you in "negative equity". If you're planning on staying in the same location in the UK for a long time, a house tends to be a worthwhile investment, particularly as you always need somewhere to live, so owning it is a "hedge" against prices rising. Even if prices do fall, you do still have somewhere to live. If you're planning on going back to your home country at some point, that reduces the value of owning a house. If you want to reduce your risk, consider getting a mortgage with a long-term fixed rate. There are some available for 10 years, which I'd hope would be enough to get us over most of the Brexit volatility.
|
Is 'days to cover' a useful metric in identifying the potential for a short squeeze?
|
SeekingAlpha has an article about short squeezes that states: The higher the number of days to cover means the possibility for a short squeeze is greater, and the potential size of the short squeeze is also greater Logically, this makes sense. A short squeeze occurs when a lack of supply meets excess demand for a stock, so the potential for a squeeze increases when supply and demand begin to get out of equilibrium. Think of two things that would cause the days to cover to increase and what effect they would have on supply and demand. The current short interest (numerator) increases. This implies that if some event triggers short sellers to cover their position, there are a higher number of short sellers who will need to do so. This heightens the chances that demand will exceed supply. The average daily volume (denominator) decreases. This implies that fewer investors are trading the stock, so if an event triggers short sellers to cover their positions, there might not be enough traders in the market willing to sell their shares. (Obviously, if a short-squeeze occurs, volume may increase because traders who were unwilling to sell their shares become willing).
|
Are there any benefits to investing with a group of friends vs. by myself?
|
The benefits of pooling your money with others: The drawbacks of pooling your money with others: Practically Speaking - I say go for it. You stand to gain a lot of knowledge about how money works without having too much on the line. Good luck!
|
Incentive Stock Option (ISO) tax question - more specific this time
|
Alternatively you could exercise 12000 shares for $36000 and immediately sell 7200 shares to recover your exercise price. Then you use the remaining 4800 share to pay the exercise price of the remaining 8000 options. Both scenarios are equivalent but may have different fees associated, so it's worth checking the fine print. Tax wise: The above example is "cash neutral before taxes". The taxes associated with these transaction are substantial, so it's highly recommended to talk with a tax adviser. "cash neutral after taxes" depends highly on your specific tax situation.
|
What's the smartest way to invest money gifted to a child?
|
American Century has their Heritage Fund: https://www.americancentury.com/sd/mobile/fund_facts_jstl?fund=30 It has a good track record. Here are all the mutual funds from American Century: https://www.americancentury.com/content/americancentury/direct/en/fund-performance/performance.html A mutual fund is a good wayway to go as it is not subject to fluctuations throughout the day whereas an ETF is.
|
Help! I've cancelled their service, but this company continues to bill my credit card an annual fee. What can I do?
|
Short of canceling the card, you could just report the card as lost and ask for a new card number on the same account. Another option is to just make a note to look for the charge and keep disputing it. It has been a while since I did credit card processing at my business, but I think the company gets dinged if too many customers dispute charges and kicks them into a higher fee schedule with the credit card company.
|
If a stock doesn't pay dividends, then why is the stock worth anything?
|
Stock has value to the buyer even if it does not currently pay dividends, since it is part ownership of the company (and the company's assets). The owners (of which you are now a part) hire managers to make a "dividend policy decision." If the company can reinvest the profits into a project that would earn more than the "minimum acceptable rate of return," then they should do so. If the company has no internal investment opportunities at or above this desired rate, then the company has an obligation to declare a dividend. Paying out a dividend returns this portion of profit to the owners, who can then invest their money elsewhere and earn more. For example: The stock market currently has, say, a 5% rate of return. Company A has a $1M profit and can invest it in a project with an expected 10% rate of return, so they should do so. Company B has a $1M profit, but their best internal project only has an expected 2% rate of return. It is in the owners' best interest to receive their portion of their company's profit as a dividend and re-invest it in other stocks. (Others have pointed out the tax deferrment portion of dividend policy, so I skipped that)
|
Trading US stocks from India
|
You can easily go to somebody like icici ask for the demat section and enable overseas stock trading.
|
Mutual Fund with Dividends
|
There are two independent sets of terms we need to define in order to answer your question. I am trying to understand the difference between Value, Blend, and Growth These are different categories of mutual funds: Value: discounted or undervalued stocks. This is often measured by a difference between the stock's price and the Net Asset Value (NEV). Growth: stocks that fund managers believe are poised for significant growth (increase in stock price and NEV). Blend: a blend of two categories of stocks. In this context it probably refers to a combination of growth and value stocks, but it just depends on the context. I want to receive dividend and Growth These are ways to receive earnings from a stock or fund. Dividend: a direct cash payment from owning a stock or a fund. Stocks and funds who pay out 100% of their profits don't have any money leftover to grow themselves and either stagnate or shrink. Growth: an increase manifesting itself in capital gains. If a stock or fund pays out zero dividends, then all profits are invested back into the company for fund, increasing its value. If you intend to automatically reinvest dividends, then receiving dividends is essentially the same as receiving profit through capital gains. If you intend to sell stocks or funds periodically to get some extra spending cash, then receiving profits through capital gains is essentially the same as dividends.
|
Where can I find information on corporate bonds (especially those rated as “junk”) ?
|
Bond information is much tougher to get. Try to find access to a Bloomberg terminal. Maybe you have a broker that can do the research for you, maybe your local university has one in their business school, maybe you know someone that works for a bank/financial institution or some other type of news outlet. Part of the reason for the difference in ease of access to information is that bond markets are dominated by institutional investors. A $100 million bond issues might be 90% owned by 10-20 investors (banks, insurance co's, mutual funds, etc.) that will hold the bonds to maturity and the bonds might trade a few times a month/year. On the other hand a similar equity offering may have several hundred or thousand owners with daily trading, especially if it's included in an active stock index. That being said, you can get some information on Fidelity's website if you have an account, but I think their junk data is limited. Good luck with the hunt.
|
Why does a stock's price fluctuate so often, even when fresh news isn't available?
|
In addition to what @George Marian said, a very large portion of trades are from computer programs trained to make trades when certain apparent patterns are observed. Since these programs are not all designed in the same way, much of the supply and demand is a result of different algorithms with different "opinions" on what the stock is doing.
|
Valuation Spreadsheet
|
In general spreadsheets can do all of what you ask. Have a try of some online training like these to get started.
|
How to share income after marriage and kids?
|
My own personal point of view. I earn about twice what my wife to be earns. We are planning on getting married next year. I ultimately do all the finances (basically because she hates that kind of thing) not because I'm in charge or whatever. To work out how we do this I wrote a spreadsheet: At the top it has my monthly pay in one column and her's in another. I add all our bills (against me initally). At the bottom I have a total of both of our "spending money". Spending money is wage - bills - savings I then move money out of my column into her column. My goal is that we pay all the bills and save a decent amount and have roughly the same amount to spend each month. So each persons spending money should be roughly equal. I then fine tune this as things change (if we get a pay rise we alter it, if a bill goes up or down we alter it) To manage this we have 4 accounts, a joint account to pay bills (both give a set amount to each mont), a savings acount (both give a set amount to each month) and our own accounts (where we get paid and where our spending money lives). Like everyone else says, this seems fair to me. I don't earn more, we both earn "an amount" and this should be split equally.
|
Getting a USD cheque, without too many fees, and with a sensible exchange rate?
|
UPDATE: Unfortunately Citibank have removed the "standard" account option and you have to choose the "plus" account, which requires a minimum monthly deposit of 1800 sterling and two direct debits. Absolutely there is. I would highly recommend Citibank's Plus Current Account. It's a completely free bank account available to all UK residents. http://www.citibank.co.uk/personal/banking/bankingproducts/currentaccounts/sterling/plus/index.htm There are no monthly fees and no minimum balance requirements to maintain. Almost nobody in the UK has heard of it and I don't know why because it's extremely useful for anyone who travels or deals in foreign currency regularly. In one online application you can open a Sterling Current Account and Deposit Accounts in 10 other foreign currencies (When I opened mine around 3 years ago you could only open up to 7 (!) accounts at any one time). Citibank provide a Visa card, which you can link to any of your multi currency accounts via a phone call to their hotline (unfortunately not online, which frequently annoys me - but I guess you can't have everything). For USD and EUR you can use it as a Visa debit for USD/EUR purchases, for all other currencies you can't make debit card transactions but you can make ATM withdrawals without incurring an FX conversion. Best of all for your case, a free USD cheque book is also available: http://www.citibank.co.uk/personal/banking/international/eurocurrent.htm You can fund the account in sterling and exchange to USD through online banking. The rates are not as good as you would get through an FX broker like xe.com but they're not terrible either. You can also fund the account by USD wire transfer, which is free to deposit at Citibank - but the bank you issue the payment from will likely charge a SWIFT fee so this might not be worth it unless the amount is large enough to justify the fee. If by any chance you have a Citibank account in the US, you can also make free USD transfers in/out of this account - subject to a daily limit.
|
Buying real estate with cash
|
If they really want cash, you notify your bank in advance of the amount and have it put in your account, then you both sign the paperwork at the bank and after everything is signed you have the bank hand them the money. Guarding it after that is entirely their problem. Personally, I would consider this a stupid request and tell them to have their lawyer discuss it with my lawyer in the hope they can be talked out of it. As far as where to get the money: Same as for any purchase, find a bank willing to write a mortgage for you on this new house. What you choose to do about the other two houses is an independent question. You can sell one or both, but that may take money so you probably won't finish doing so before needing to pay for the new house. Of course when they do sell you can use the money toward paying down/paying off the new mortgage.
|
What are “preferred” stocks? How are they different from normal (common) stocks?
|
I know this has already been answered and I know its frowned upon to dump a link, however, when it comes to investments it's best to get data from an 'official' source to avoid misinterpretations and personal opinions. The attached pdf is from the S&P and provides detailed, but not overwhelming, information regarding the types of preferreds, the risks & common terminology: http://us.spindices.com/documents/education/practice-essentials-us-preferreds.pdf Page 1: PREFERRED SECURITIES DEFINED Borrowing from two worlds, a preferred security has both equity and fixed income characteristics. As such, the preferred structure offers a flexible approach to structuring a preferred offering for an issuer. Companies have many reasons to issue preferred securities. Financial institutions, for example, need to raise capital. Many times they will use the preferred market because of any required regulatory requirements, in addition to cost considerations. Banks and financial institutions are required to maintain a certain level of Tier 1 capital—which includes common equity and perpetual non-cumulative preferreds—as protection against the bank’s liabilities. Issuing more common equity comes at a cost, including the dilution of existing shares, which a company may not want to bear. Preferred securities are a cheaper alternative approach to raising the capital. Companies often use preferred stock for strategic reasons. Some of these uses include:
|
Is it adventageous to expedite my wedding before the new year for tax savings?
|
You are correct. If you get married by December 31, you will file as married for this year (Married Filing Jointly or Married Filing Separately) instead of Single. That could indeed save you some amount of taxes, if your situation is as you described. Some people do plan their date of marriage in such a way to optimize tax savings. Whether your marriage date should be set in such a way is your personal decision.
|
Are there any benefits to investing with a group of friends vs. by myself?
|
In most markets, there are fixed fees known as commissions. For instance, with a retail broker in the stock market, you can expect every trade to cost you $7.00 as an example, it is $7.00 regardless of if you place a trade for $25 or $25,000. You will see that just opening the trade, with a smaller amount, will eat up all of your profits and a majority of your capital, but if you opened the trade with more capital through the investment group, then the $7.00 commission will be much less of a tax on your trade. Basically, the only advantage is that the tax of commissions will be less if you have a larger account, if the commission is a fixed dollar value, which is not always true either. regardless, at $25 per month, not many markets will be accessible. There is also the possible educational aspect of investing with a group of people, or it can simply be clashing ideals.
|
Is it ok to just report to 1 credit bureau instead of all 3
|
The reason you would want to report to all three is because lenders don't usually query all three. Thus, it may be that your negative mark will be missed by a future lender because that lender didn't query the agency you chose to report to. Generally, it is cheaper to report to more agencies than to query more agencies, and since those reporting are also those querying, it is in their best interest to continue reporting to all agencies, and expecting others to do the same. Each agency calculates the score independently based on the information reported to that agency. Thus only reporting a negative item to Experian will mean that TransUnion and Equifax scores for the same person will be higher.
|
Is there any circumstance in which it is necessary to mark extra payments on a loan as going to “principal and not interest”?
|
It could be a couple of things besides extra principal: I seem to remember hearing that some (shady?) lenders would just pocket extra payments if you didn't specify where they were headed, but I've also been told that this just isn't true.
|
When does selling (writing) options count for tax purposes?
|
Generally speaking, you realize options gains or losses for (US) tax purposes when you close out the option position, or when it expires so in your example, if you're discussing an equity option, you'd realize the gain or loss next year, assuming you don't close it out prior to year end. But options tax treatment can get messy fast: Still, if you have no other stock or option positions in the underlying during or within 30 days of the establishment of the naked put, and assuming the option isn't assigned, you won't realize any gains or losses until the year in which the option is closed or expires.
|
Effect of company issued options on share price
|
A company has 100,000 shares and 100,000 unexercised call options (company issued). Share price and strike price both at $1. What country is this related to? I ask because, in the US, most people I know associate a "call" option with the instrument that is equivalent to 100 shares. So 100,000 calls would be 10,000,000 shares, which exceeds the number of shares you're saying the company has. I don't know if that means you pulled the numbers out of thin air, or whether it means you're thinking of a different type of option? Perhaps you meant incentive stock options meant to be given to employees? Each one of those is equivalent to a single share. They just aren't called "call options". In the rest of my answer, I'm going to assume you meant stock options. I assume the fact that these options exist will slow any price increases on the underlying shares due to potential dilution? I don't think the company can just create stock options without creating the underlying shares in the first place. Said another way, a more likely scenario is that company creates 200,000 shares and agrees to float 50% of them while reserving the other 50% as the pool for incentive employee stock. They then choose to give the employees options on the stock in the incentive pool, rather than outright grants of the stock, for various reasons. (One of which is being nice to the employees in regards to taxes since there is no US tax due at grant time if the strike price is the current price of the underlying stock.) An alternative scenario when the company shares are liquidly traded is that the company simply plans to buy back shares from the market in order to give employees their shares when options are exercised. In this case, the company needs the cash on hand, or cash flow to take money from, to buy those shares at current prices. Anyway, in either case, there is no dilution happening WHEN the options get exercised. Any dilution happened before or at the time the options were created. Meaning, the total number of shares in the company was already pre-set at an earlier time. As a result, the fact that the options exist in themselves will not slow price changes on the stock. However, price changes will be impacted by the total float of shares in the company, or the impact to cash flow if the company has to buy shares to redeem its option commitments. This is almost the same thing you're asking about, but it is technically different as to timing. If this is the case, can this be factored into any option pricing models like black-scholes? You're including the effect just by considering the total float of shares and net profits from cash flow when doing your modelling.
|
Married, 55, grown kids: Should I buy life insurance, or invest in stocks? The ultimate decision
|
The following is from Wikipedia - Term life insurance (with very minor editing) Because term life insurance is a pure death benefit, its primary use is to provide coverage of financial responsibilities, for the insured. Such responsibilities may include, but are not limited to, consumer debt, dependent care, college education for dependents, funeral costs, and mortgages. Term life insurance is generally chosen in favor of permanent life insurance because it is usually much less expensive (depending on the length of the term). Many financial advisors or other experts commonly recommend term life insurance as a means to cover potential expenses until such time that there are sufficient funds available from savings to protect those whom the insurance coverage was intended to protect. For example, an individual might choose to obtain a policy whose term expires near his or her retirement age based on the premise that, by the time the individual retires, he or she would have amassed sufficient funds in retirement savings to provide financial security for their dependents. This suggests the questions "why do you have this policy?" also "how many term life policies do you need?" or "how much insurance do you need?" Clearly you will be better off investing the premiums in the market. Your beneficiaries may be better off either way (depends when you die and to a lesser extent on market performance). If you are not able to retire now but expect to be able to later, you should strongly consider having sufficient insurance to provide income replacement for your spouse. This is a fairly common why.
|
Why is stock dilution legal?
|
Stock issuing and dilution is legal because there must be some mechanism for small companies to grow into big companies. A company sees a great investment opportunity. It would be a perfect extension of their activities ... but they cannot afford it. To get the necessary money they can either take out a loan or issue shares. Taking a loan basically means that this is temporary, but the company will go back to being small when the loan is paid back. Issuing new shares basically means that the Board means that this growth is permanent and the company will be big for the foreseeable future. It is utterly necessary that companies have this option for raising cash, and therefore it is legal. As detailed in the other answers, you end up with a smaller percentage of a larger company, usually ending up with more or less the same value.
|
Does high inflation help or hurt companies with huge cash reserves?
|
Inflation will damage the value of those cash reserves. This will harm the company's value. (Other factors may or may not be harmed. or helped.) Borrowing costs may be related to inflation, but they're not directly tied. Inflation happens, in fact, when it's easy to borrow money and more money gets created than new economic activity. (Also, if a competitor really needs to raise money, they can also issue new equity. It's not all borrowing.)
|
Strange values in ARM.L price data 1998-2000 from Yahoo
|
This is just a shot in the dark but it could be intermarket data. If the stock is interlisted and traded on another market exchange that day then the Yahoo Finance data feed might have picked up the data from another market. You'd have to ask Yahoo to explain and they'd have to check their data.
|
Should I buy a house because Mortgage rates are low
|
How can people afford 10% mortgage? Part of the history of housing prices was the non-bubble component of the bubble. To be clear, there was a housing bubble and crash. Let me offer some simple math to illustrate my point - This is what happened on the way down. A middle class earner, $60K/yr couple, using 25% of their income, the normal percent for a qualified mortgage, was able to afford $142K for the mortgage payment. At 10% fixed rate. This meant that after down payment, they were buying a house at $175K or so, which was above median home pricing. Years later, obviously, this wasn't a step function, with a rate of 4%, and ignoring any potential rise of income, as in real term, income was pretty stagnant, the same $1250/mo could pay for a $260K mortgage. If you want to say that taxes and insurance would push that down a bit, sure, drop the loan to $240K, and the house price is $300K. My thesis ('my belief' or 'proposal', I haven't written a scholarly paper, yet) is that the relationship between median home price and median income is easily calculated based on current 30 year fixed rate loans. For all the talk of housing prices, this is the long term number. Housing cannot exceed income inflation long term as it would creep up as a percent of income and slow demand. I'm not talking McMansion here, only the median. By definition, the median house targets the median earners, the middle class. The price increase I illustrate was just over 70%. See the famous Shiller chart - The index move from 110 to 199 is an 81% rise. I maintain, 70 of that 81 can be accounted for by my math. Late 80's, 1987 to be exact, my wife got a mortgage for 9%, and we thought that was ok, as I had paid over 13% just 3 years earlier.
|
Why are currency forwards needed?
|
To speak to this a little more broadly: apart from groups like hedge funds and other investors investing for purely speculative purposes, one of the major purposes of forwards (and, for that matter, futures) for companies in the "real economy" is to "lock in" a particular price in advance (or to reduce the risk of some kind of investment or transaction). Investopedia defines a currency forward as follows (with a few key points emphasized): [A currency forward is] a binding contract in the foreign exchange market that locks in the exchange rate for the purchase or sale of a currency on a future date. A currency forward is essentially a hedging tool that does not involve any upfront payment. The other major benefit of a currency forward is that it can be tailored to a particular amount and delivery period, unlike standardized currency futures. This can be a major advantage for planning and risk management purposes. For example, if I know I'm going to have to pay $1 million USD in the future and most of my revenue is in Euros, the actual amount I'll have to pay will vary based on the exchange rate between Euros and dollars. Thus, it's very worthwhile for me to be able to "lock in" a particular exchange rate so that I know exactly how much I'm going to pay relative to my projected revenue. The goal isn't necessarily to make money off the transaction (maybe they do, maybe they don't) as much as to reduce risk and improve planning ability. The fact that it doesn't involve an up-front payment is also a major advantage. It's usually a bad practice to "sit on" cash for a year if you can avoid it. Another key point: savings accounts pay less interest than inflation. If inflation is 3% and your savings account pays 1%, that looks remarkably like a guaranteed 2% loss to me.
|
Specifically when do options expire?
|
Here is the answer from my brokerage: Regular equity monthly options expire on the 3rd Friday of every month. The last time to trade them is by market close at 4 PM Eastern time. The weekly options will expire on the Friday of that week, also with a last trading time of 4 PM Eastern time. Options that expire in the money by .01 or more are automatically exercised. If you are long an option that is out of the money at expiration, it will expire worthless. If you are short an option, even if it expires out of the money, you are still at risk for possible assignment since the long option holder always has the right to exercise an option prior to expiration.*
|
Choose online stock trading companies
|
Lower fees are always better, everything else equal. A lower fee makes your transaction overall a better deal, all else equal. Other transactions costs (like the SEC fee on sales) are mostly the same across brokers and there is unlikely to be any difference in execution quality either. When comparing brokers be sure to consider the other issues: To me, most of these are minor issues. For that reason, I'd say let transaction cost be your guide. I hear a lot of talk about the quality of the interface. If you just want to buy or sell a stock, they are all pretty easy. Some brokers have better tools for monitoring the market or looking at technical indicators, if you are into that.
|
Clear example of credit card balance 55 days interest-free “trick”?
|
I think this stuff was more valid when grace periods were longer. For example, back in the 90's, I had an MBNA card with a 35 day grace period. Many business travellers used Diner's Club charge cards because they featured a 60 day grace period. There are valid uses for this: As JoeTaxpayer stated, if you are benefiting from "tricks" like this, you probably have other problems that you probably ought to deal with.
|
Should I early exercise unvested ISOs when the FMV is above the strike price?
|
In the question you cited, I assumed immediate exercise, that is why you understood that I was talking about 30 days after grant. I actually mentioned that assumption in the answer. Sec. 83(b) doesn't apply to options, because options are not assets per se. It only applies to restricted stocks. So the 30 days start counting from the time you get the restricted stock, which is when you early-exercise. As to the AMT, the ISO spread will be considered AMT income in the year of the exercise, if you file the 83(b). For NQSO it is ordinary income. That's the whole point of the election. You can find more detailed explanation on this website.
|
Does high frequency trading (HFT) punish long-term investment?
|
Not really. High frequency traders affect mainly short term investors. If everyone invested long-term and traded infrequently, there would be no high frequency trading. For a long term investor, you by at X, hold for several years, and sell at Y. At worst, high frequency trading may affect "X" and "Y" by a few pennies (and the changes may cancel out). For a long term trader that doesn't amount to a "hill of beans" It is other frequent traders that will feel the loss of those "pennies."
|
What resources can I use to try and find out the name of the manager for a given fund?
|
The fund prospectus is a good place to start.
|
What can I replace Microsoft Money with, now that MS has abandoned it?
|
www.mint.com is a very good web site that can upload your financial data from your bank and analyze it for you. Security concerns seem to have been addressed reassuringly.
|
Why is the regulation of “swaps” important to failing systemically significant institutions?
|
Have you ever considered how much faith and confidence play a role in the financial sector? The calling in of swaps could cause issues similar to a Bank Run, which may or may not involve others coming into play. While this is cleaning up the mess from a few years ago, there is something to be said for how complicated are various financial instruments in this situation. If you want something similar to ponder, what would make any institution be considered major and would this be agreed by various countries given how connected things are within the world? What makes an institution major in the United States may not be quite the same standards in Brazil and this where one has to consider how to maintain faith in the system that could unravel rather badly if everyone tries to cash out at the same time. The Bank Run link above is something to consider that could cause a bank that appears fine to suddenly have speculators cause more disruptions which isn't likely to help. The global credit markets aren't likely to freeze overnight and thus there can be the question how does this get handled if another mess could arise. The idea here is to set up the framework to prevent the panic that could lead to a global depression. The idea is to create for derivatives something similar to the stock market's trading curbs that exist to contain panic on a macro level. The psychology is quite important in figuring out how to handle the obligations of a company that was perceived to be infallible as well as making sure what is agreed works across various cultures and currencies.
|
How to invest for the event of a US default?
|
If the US economy crashes at all suddenly, the global economy goes with it. In that case, yes, the postapocalyptic scenarios may be the best answer. But that's got so low a probability of happening that you'd be a fool to invest in it. If you really feel the need, consider investing in the companies which supply those activities. The big winners in the California gold rush were the general stores that sold supplies to the speculators.
|
Sale of jointly owned stock
|
The question seems to be from the point of view actual sales and not its impact on one's taxation. In case you just want to sell, why brokers will respond differently each times. Either there may be issues with ownership and/or the company whose shares it is? In case you feel that the issues lies with brok
|
Take advantage of rock bottom oil prices
|
A long call options spread. In this case, a bet that the USO ETF would recover to $35. You can see, I got in when USO was $28, and it's continued to drop, but it has till Jan '17 to recover. The spread is set up to give leverage, when I entered the trade, a 50% recovery would result in a 200% gain, or 3X my bet. An option spread can be bought using any two strikes, and with different payouts depending on how far out of the money the strikes are.
|
Stock Certificate In two names
|
The common way to frame the "should I sell" question is ask yourself "would you buy it today at the current price". If you wouldn't, sell it. Is sounds like this may be a paper certificate. You will have to research how to present the certificate to a broker to trade it, or if the company has a direct shareholder program. I have periodically been offered to sell "odd lots" to shareholder programs which, if one exists, may be less hassle than other options. As a part of this, your mother's estate administrator should decide if the estate is selling it's interest, or giving it's interest to heirs before the sale.
|
Why is property investment good if properties de-valuate over time?
|
Real estate is not a good investment. In fact, it's easy to make a case for it being the worst possible investment imaginable: Imagine over a cup or coffee or a glass of wine we get to talking about investments. Then maybe one of us, let’s say you, says: “Hey I’ve got an idea. We’re always talking about good investments. What if we came up with the worst possible investment we can construct? What might that look like?” Well, let’s see now (pulling out our lined yellow pad), let’s make a list. To be really terrible: -- Why Your House Is A Terrible Investment There are plenty of good reasons to own a home, but the key word there is "home". Owning housing as an investment property is a horrible idea, and anyone who does it, especially right now with as bubbly as the market is looking again, (or, better put, still, since the last bubble never did fully pop and clear out the underlying systemic instability,) is an idiot. And even after the current housing market bubble pops, it's likely to remain a bad idea for decades. We're never getting the early 2000s back, for basic supply-and-demand reasons: with the Baby Boom generation retiring, aging and dying off, they're not likely to do much more home-buying, and no generation after them is as big as they are, which means a glut of oversupply and weak demand for the entirety of the foreseeable future.
|
Paying off student loan or using that money for a downpayment on a house
|
Yes, one is certainly better than the other. Which one depends on your priorities and the interest and tax rates on your student loan, your savings, and your (future) mortgage plus how much you can afford to save and still enjoy the lifestyle you want as well as how soon you want to move out. Basically, you havn't given enough information.
|
Having a separate bank account for business/investing, but not a “business account?”
|
You don't specify which country you are in, so my answers are more from a best practice view than a legal view.. I don't intend on using it for personal use, but I mean it's just as possible. This is a dangerous proposition.. You shouldn't co-mingle business expenses with personal expenses. If there is a chance this will happen, then stop, make it so that it won't happen. The big danger is in being able to have traceability between what you are doing for the business, and what you are doing for yourself. If you are using this as a "staging" account for investments, etc., are those investments for yourself? Or for the business? Is tax treatment on capital gains and/or dividends the same for personal and business in your jurisdiction? If you buy a widget, is the widget an expense against business income? Or is it an out of pocket expense for personal consumption? The former reduces your taxable income, the latter does not. I don't see the benefit of a real business account because those have features specific to maybe corporations, LLC, and etc. -- nothing beneficial to a sole proprietor who has no reports/employees. The real benefit is that there is a clear delineation between business income/expenses and personal income/expenses. This account can also accept money and hold it from business transactions/sales, and possibly transfer some to the personal account if there's no need for reinvesting said amount/percentage. What you are looking for is a commonly called a current account, because it is used for current expenses. If you are moving money out of the account to your personal account, that speaks to paying yourself, which has other implications as well. The safest/cleanest way to do this is to: While this may sound like overkill, it is the only way to guarantee that income/expenses are allocated to the correct entity (i.e. you, or your business). From a Canadian standpoint:
|
Paid cash for a car, but dealer wants to change price
|
I've been an F&I Manager at a new car dealership for over ten years, and I can tell you this with absolute certainty, your deal is final. There is no legal obligation for you whatsoever. I see this post is a few weeks old so I am sure by now you already know this to be true, but for future reference in case someone in a similar situation comes across this thread, they too will know. This is a completely different situation to the ones referenced earlier in the comments on being called by the dealer to return the vehicle due to the bank not buying the loan. That only pertains to customers who finance, the dealer is protected there because on isolated occasions, which the dealer hates as much as the customer, trust me, you are approved on contingency that the financing bank will approve your loan. That is an educated guess the finance manager makes based on credit history and past experience with the bank, which he is usually correct on. However there are times, especially late afternoon on Fridays when banks are preparing to close for the weekend the loan officer may not be able to approve you before closing time, in which case the dealer allows you to take the vehicle home until business is back up and running the following Monday. He does this mostly to give you sense of ownership, so you don't go down the street to the next dealership and go home in one of their vehicles. However, there are those few instances for whatever reason the bank decides your credit just isn't strong enough for the rate agreed upon, so the dealer will try everything he can to either change to a different lender, or sell the loan at a higher rate which he has to get you to agree upon. If neither of those two things work, he will request that you return the car. Between the time you sign and the moment a lender agrees to purchase your contract the dealer is the lien holder, and has legal rights to repossession, in all 50 states. Not to mention you will sign a contingency contract before leaving that states you are not yet the owner of the car, probably not in so many simple words though, but it will certainly be in there before they let you take a car before the finalizing contract is signed. Now as far as the situation of the OP, you purchased your car for cash, all documents signed, the car is yours, plain and simple. It doesn't matter what state you are in, if he's cashed the check, whatever. The buyer and seller both signed all documents stating a free and clear transaction. Your business is done in the eyes of the law. Most likely the salesman or finance manager who signed paperwork with you, noticed the error and was hoping to recoup the losses from a young novice buyer. Regardless of the situation, it is extremely unprofessional, and clearly shows that this person is very inexperienced and reflects poorly on management as well for not doing a better job of training their employees. When I started out, I found myself in somewhat similar situations, both times I offered to pay the difference of my mistake, or deduct it from my part of the sale. The General Manager didn't take me up on my offer. He just told me we all make mistakes and to just learn from it. Had I been so unprofessional to call the customer and try to renegotiate terms, I would have without a doubt been fired on the spot.
|
Can you short a stock before the ex-div. date to make a profit?
|
When you short a stock and the stock goes ex-div. you have to pay out an amount equal to the dividend. So in your example, GG would short the stock at $10.00, buy back at $9.00 and be charged $1.00 for the dividend. Net effect $0.00.
|
Splitting Hackathon Prize Money to minimize tax debt
|
I would just take $2000 and multiply by your marginal tax rate, weight that between the 5 other people according to their share of the prize money and ask them to give you that. From your question it seems like you all have a good working relationship, I'm sure the other partners would agree to that. I think it's the simplest solution that is also fair and equitable. Basically, you pay the tax on 2000 and they pay you back for their share of the tax. Much easier than trying to pass it through your tax return for 5 separate people for a minimal amount of $'s. In hindsight, the best way to do it would have been to 1099 the person with the lowest marginal tax rate for the year to minimize the total tax paid on the 2000. Probably only would've been a few dollars difference but still the most efficient way to do it.
|
Plan/education for someone desiring to achieve financial independence primarily through investing?
|
Stay in school, learn everything you can, and spend as little money as possible. And realize that the chances of you dropping out and becoming a millionaire are much lower than the chances of you staying in school and becoming a millionaire. You're unlikely to be a good investor if you make bets with negative expected payoffs.
|
Why buy insurance?
|
First of all, insurance never covers the cost of the item, it is almost always a partial payout at best. For example, a typical house in the Northeast US where I live that costs $300,000 will have the actual house valued at maybe $100,00 and rest of the value will be in the land. Therefore, the insured value will typically be $100,000. The only problem is that to actually rebuild the house might easily cost $250,000. So, your idea that some kinds of insurance allows the beneficiary to recoup their loss is usually never true. As you say, from an actuarial point of view insurance is a sheer waste of money. For example, a typical house has maybe a 0.5% chance of burning down every year. In other words out of 2000 houses, maybe 1 will burn down every year. So, lets say you got $100,000 of insurance on your house. Then the value of that policy would be $100,000 / 2000 = $50 per year. An insurance company will charge around $700 per year for the policy. That means you are basically flushing $650 down the toilet every year to maintain that policy. The reason why they do this is what blankip says above, they are buying "peace of mind", a psychological product. In other they imagine they are somehow safe. So, even though they are losing money, paying it makes them feel as though they are not losing money. It's delusional, but then again most people have a lot of delusions of which insurance is just one of many.
|
What's the catch with biweekly mortgage payments?
|
I'll preface this with saying that I'm not a finance or real estate professional, this is just how I understand the situation and what I'm doing: We just got a 30year/FHA mortgage, there's no prepayment penalty, and no fees associated with paying it biweekly. In fact (Wells Fargo), while the payments get withdrawn biweekly, they don't actually post to the mortgage until there's enough for a full payment. So essentially here are the benefits I'm realizing:
|
To pay off a student loan, should I save up a lump sum payoff payment or pay extra each month?
|
As a new graduate, aside from the fact that you seem to have the extra $193/mo to pay more towards your loan, we don't know anything else. I wrote a lengthy article on this in response to a friend who had a loan, but was also pondering a home purchase in the future. Student Loans and Your First Mortgage discusses the math behind one's ability to put a downpayment on a house vs having that monthly cash to pay towards the mortgage. In your case, the question is whether, in 5 years, the $8500 would be best spent as a home down payment or to pay off the 6.8% loan. If you specifically had plans toward home ownership, the timing of that plan would affect my answer here, as I discuss in the article. The right answer to your question can only come by knowing far more of your personal situation. Meanwhile, the plan comes at a cost. Your plan will get rid of the loan in about 5 years, but if you simply double up the payments, advising the servicing company to apply the extra to principal, it would drop to just a couple month over over 4. As you read more about personal finance, you'll find a lot of different views. Some people are fixated on having zero debt, others will focus on liquidity. In the end, you need to understand each approach and decide what's right for you.
|
Should I negotiate a lower salary to be placed in a lower tax bracket?
|
No, absolutely not. Income tax rates are marginal. The tax bracket's higher tax rate only applies to extra dollars over the threshold, not to dollars below it. The normal income tax does not have any cliffs where one extra dollar of income will cost more than one dollar in extra taxes. Moreover, you are ignoring the personal exemption and standard deduction. A gross salary of $72,000 is not the same as taxable income of $72,000. The deduction will generally be $12,200 and the exemptions will be $3,900 for you, your spouse, and any kids. So married-filing-jointly with the standard deduction will get an automatic $20,000 off of adjusted gross income when counting taxable income. So the appropriate taxable income is actually going to be more like $52,000. Note that getting your compensation package reshuffled may result in different tax treatment. But simply taking a smaller salary (rather than taking some compensation as stock options, health insurance, or fringe benefits), is not a money-saving move. Never do it.
|
Stocks vs. High-yield Bonds: Risk-Reward, Taxes?
|
When credit locks up, junk bond prices fall rapidly, and you see more defaults. The opportunity to make money with junk is to buy a diversified collection of them when the market declines. Look at the charts from some of the mutual funds or ETFs like PIMCO High Yield Instl (PHIYX), or Northeast Investors (NTHEX). Very volatile stuff. Keep in mind that junk bonds are not representative of the economy as a whole -- they cluster in certain industries. Retail and financials are big industry segments for junk. Also keep in mind that the market for these things is not as liquid as the stock market. If your investment choice is really a sector investment, you might be better served by investing in sector funds with stocks that trade every day versus bonds whose market price may be difficult to determine.
|
Making an offer on a property - go in at market price?
|
Firstly, the agent doesn't work for you. He works for himself. It's in his interest not to get you a house at the lowest cost but to sell you a house. The higher the price the higher his commission is, or the higher the probability that the seller will sell it meaning less work for him. It depends on the market what price you should give. If I were you, I would do my own research about this area and not just trust the agent's assessment of it being a "seller's" market. Not sure where we are talking about but as you know, house prices have fallen a lot in the last few years and the economy isn't doing that well. It also depends on yourself. Every house is different and there's an emotional attachment to buying property. How much do you really want this house? Would it matter if you didn't get it? Are you prepared to keep looking? If this is your dream house, then maybe it is worth offering a bit more to ensure that you get it. If not, and you are prepared to wait, then yeah, I would shoot a little lower and see what they say. One thing I will say though is generally even if you give them a low offer, unless they're getting lots of other offers or they have to sell urgently, alot of the times the seller will come back and try to negotiate with you anyway. After all, it's business and they're there to get the highest price.
|
Ways to establish credit history for international student
|
I came to US as an international student several years ago, and I have also experienced the same situation like most of the international students in finding ways to build credit history. Below I list out some possible approaches you may want to consider: I. Get a student job at campus (recommended) I think the best way is to get a student job in university, say a teaching assistant or student helper. In this case, you can be provided with a social security number and start to build your own credit history. II. Get credit card You can also consider to apply for a credit card. There are indeed some financial institutions that can provide credit cards for international students with no or limited credit scores requirement, say Discover and Bank of America. However, it is relatively hard to get approved, simply because hey may put more restriction in other aspects. For example, you may be required to keep sufficient bank balance above several thousand dollars during a period of time, or you should prove that you have relatives with citizenship in US who can provide your financial aid if needed. III. Apply for a loan (recommended) Getting a loan product is another alternative to get out of this difficult situation, but most of people don’t realize that. There are some FinTech start-ups in United States that specifically focus on international students’ loan financing. One representative example is Westbon (Westbon ), an online lending company that specializes in providing car loan for international students with no SSN or credit history. I once used their loan product to finance a Honda Accord, and Westbon reported my loan transaction records to US credit bureau during my repayment process. Later when I officially got my SSN number, I found my credit history has been automatically synchronized and I don’t have to start from all over again. It never be an easy journey for international students to build credit history in United States. What approach you should make really depends on you own situation. I hope the information above can be useful and good luck for your credit journey!
|
What is the best way to determine if you should refinance a mortgage?
|
Yes, take the new rate, but instead of using the new 30 year term, calculate the payment as though the new mortgage were at the remaining term. 3 years into a 30? You calculate the payment as if the new mortgage were 27 years. This will tell you what you are really saving. Now, take that savings and divide into your closing costs if any. That will give you the break even. Will you be in the house that long? If you can find a no closing cost deal, it's worth it for even 1/8% savings.
|
Does borrowing from my 401(k) make sense in my specific circumstance?
|
The set of circumstances that 401k loans make sense, are very small. As you would expect yours is not one of them. You make 70K per year and need 6500. Interest rate is not your problem, budgeting is the problem. Pay this off in three months not the 48 you are proposing. Why is borrowing from your 401K a bad idea, especially in this case? Look, been there done that, been the over spender. The sooner that you learn how to handle your money the better. I was in my 40s when I learned, if you can do this now you can be really wealthy by the time you get to be my age. Dream a bit. How much margin would you have in your life if you were able to pay this off in 3 months? How much better would your life be? Go forth and do great things. I believe in you.
|
interest rate on online banks
|
I beg to differ: Israel has an incredibly well managed central bank, and the usury market is wonderfully competitive. It's a shame Stanley Fischer has retired. His management is the case study in central bank management. Rates are low because inflation is low. The nominal rate is irrelevant to return because a 2% nominal return with 1% inflation is superior to a 5% nominal return with 9% inflation. A well-funded budget is the best first step, so now a tweak is necessary: excess capital beyond budgeting should be moved quickly to internationally diversified equities after funding, discounted and adjusted, longer term budgets. Credit will not pay the rate necessary for long term investment. Higher variance is the price to pay for higher returns.
|
Typically how many digits are in a cheque number?
|
Checks are normally numbered sequentially, to keep them unique for record-keeping purposes. The check number takes as many digits as it takes, depending on how long the account has been open and thus how many checks have been written. The most recent check I looked at had a four-digit number, but as has been pointed out businesses may run through thousands per year. I recommend storing this in an unsigned long or long-long, which will probably be comparable to the bank's own limits. I don't know whether there is an explicit maximum value; we would need to find someone who knows the banking standards to answer that.
|
Do I have to pay the internet installation charges for my home's company internet?
|
It appears so. I suppose you could try saying that you don't want to pay for it and won't have Internet installed, but that could be detrimental to your career. There is no law that says your company has to pay for your Internet unless you have some kind of contract with them that says you will. If anything, your best option might be to try to claim it is a business expense and deduct it on your taxes.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.