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I'm 23, living at home, and still can't afford my own property. What could I do? | When I was 23, the Toronto housing market was approaching a record high, and I thought, "I must buy a place or I'll be locked out." And I did. Bad decision. I should have waited and saved my money. For the record, I thought I would never recover, but I did. Patience grasshopper. In actual fact the U.K. housing market i... |
Are assets lost in a bankruptcy valued at the time of loss, or according to current value? | You are not the person or entity against whom the crime was committed, so the Casualty Loss (theft) deduction doesn't apply here. You should report this as a Capital Loss, the same way all of the Enron shareholders did in their 2001 tax returns. Your cost basis is whatever you originally paid for the shares. The final ... |
Why I can't view my debit card pre-authorized amounts? | No money is stolen. They don't show you the hold for whatever reason (not so good a bank?), but the money is still yours. You just cannot use it, but it is still on your account. These holds usually go away after a week. In certain cases (like a security deposit) it may take up to 30 days. You can request from the merc... |
What are the costs to establish an LLC and to maintain it? | I'll answer in general terms, since I'm not familiar with the price ranges in Florida. The LLC formation costs $125 (state fee). In addition you'll need a registered agent. Registered agent could be your CPA/EA/bookkeeper/property manager/local friend, or you can pay firms specializing in providing registration and age... |
Emptying a Roth IRA account | nan |
Less than a year at my first job out of college, what do I save for first? | You should plan 1-3 months for an emergency fund. Saving 6 months of expenses is recommended by many, but you have a lot of goals to accomplish, and youth is impatient. Early in your life, you have a lot of building (saving) that you need to do. You can find a good car for under $5000. It might take some effort, and... |
What does the Fed do with the extra money it is printing? | First of all, just for the sake of clarity, the Federal Reserve doesn't actually "print" money - that's the job of the BEP. What they do is they buy US Treasury bonds - i.e., loan money to the US government. The money they do it with are created "from thin air" - just by adding some numbers in certain accounts, thus it... |
How did Bill Gates actually make his money? | Bill gates is founder of microsoft along with his friend allen.in microsoft as its vast empire increasing the wealth and enormous property of bill gates is increasing |
What happens when a (Internation) Central securities depository goes bankrupt? | There is no generic answer and it would depend on case to case basis. CSD are built on strong foundation in the sense they would have very low cost base and generally would not go bankrupt. However if such a situation as CSD provide an essential role, the regulator, central bank and Government would all step in to pr... |
Events that cause major movement in forex? | currency's central bank or treasury/finance department speeches that can announce a significant change in policy. That includes: Particularly when it is a high level figure within the department such as the President or Prime Minister making the announcement. Macroeconomic stats: GeoPolitical considerations, such as:... |
Do algorithmic trading platforms typically have live-data access to stock data? | Algorithmic trading doesn't necessarily require live feeds. It is a very generic term describing trading based on the decisions made by a machine and not a person. One very prominent type of algo-trading is "high frequency trading". For HFT to be effective, not only do you need live feeds (which are provided by the exc... |
401k compound interest vs other compound interest | A 401K (pre-tax or Roth) account or an IRA (Deductible or Roth) account is a retirement account. Which means you delay paying taxes now on your deposits, or you avoid paying taxes on your earnings later. But a retirement account doesn't perform any different than any other account year-to-year. Being a retirement acc... |
Deferring claim of significant purchase of RRSPs | You can't defer reporting of the RRSP purchases. The financial institution will report those purchases to CRA, and the CRA expects to see you report those purchases on your return. If they don't match, expect to be audited and to pay penalties. However, you can defer the tax deduction of those purchases until later ... |
Value investing | The June 2014 issue of Barclays Wealth's Compass magazine had a very nice succinct article on this topic: "Value investing – does a rules-based approach work?". It examines the performance of value and growth styles of investment in the MSCI World and S&P500 arenas for a few decades back, and reveals a surprisingly co... |
Conservative ways to save for retirement? | A 401(k) is just a container. Like real-world containers (those that are usually made out of metal), you can put (almost) anything you want in it. Signing up for your employer's match is a great thing to do. Getting into the habit of saving a significant portion of your take-home pay early in your career is even better... |
Can a company donate to a non-profit to pay for services arranged for before hand? | People put conditions on donations all the time. They donate to the Red Cross for a specific disaster. The donate money to a church for the building fund. They donate money to a hospital to buy a new x-ray machine. They donate money to the scouts for a new dining hall. It is possible to donate money to a non-profit fo... |
When paying estimated quarterly taxes, can I prorate the amount based on the irregular payment due dates? | You may want, or at least be thinking of, the annualized method described in Pub 505 http://www.irs.gov/publications/p505/ch02.html#en_US_2015_publink1000194669 (also downloadable in PDF) and referred to in Why are estimated taxes due "early" for the 2nd and 3rd quarters only? . This doesn't prorate your payments as su... |
Why Demat/Stock Market Brokers don't support Credit Card Payin | Most credit cards allow you to take "cash advances", but the fees and limits for cash advances are different than for regular purchases. You can buy stock after taking a cash advance from your credit card. When you make a cash advance, you normally pay the credit card company a fee. When you make a regular purchase, th... |
What should I do with my paper financial documents? | I won't add to the timelines, as I agree or don't care but my two cents are |
Buying a home with down payment from family as a “loan” | In effect, you are paying for 70% of the house but he gets half the gain. On the flip side, you're living there, so that probably makes up this difference. It will be toughest if the house jumps in value, to the point you might be forced to sell. You might want to think about that a bit. |
How can I calculate total return of stock with partial sale? | If you just want to know total return, either as dollars or a percentage, just add up the total amount spent on buys and compare this to current value plus money received on sales. In this case, you spent (310 x $3.15 + $19.95) + (277 x $3.54 + $19.95). So your total investment is ... calculator please ... $1996.98. Yo... |
When and how should I pay taxes on ForEx trades? | I guess Bitcoin are not that popular yet and hence there are no specific regulations. If currently it gets debated, it would be treated more like a Pre-Paid card or your Paypal account. As you have already paid taxes on the $$ you used to buy the Bitcoins there is no tax obligation as long as you keep using it to buy s... |
Where can I invest for the Short Term and protect against Inflation? | Your goals are mutually exclusive. You cannot both earn a return that will outpace inflation while simultaneously having zero-risk of losing money, at least not in the 2011 market. In 2008, a 5+% CD would have been a good choice. Here's a potential compromise... sacrifice some immediate liquidity for more earnings. Sa... |
Alternatives to Intuit's PayTrust service for online bill viewing and bill payment? | (Six years later...) I've used CheckFree for over 20 years, and my uncle started using it back in the early 1980s through a 300 baud modem. It has e-bills, EDI bills that you schedule yourself, and will also mail checks to people and small businesses. You can make your payments from an unlimited number of banks, can s... |
What are my tax-advantaged investment options at a university job? | Yes. Two years after your first contribution to the SIMPLE IRA, you can roll it to a traditional IRA. You can still contribute "pre-tax", but the mechanism will be slightly different, since with an employer plan the contribution was automatically deducted from your paycheck. With an individual plan, you make the cont... |
Unemployment Insurance Through Options | This is a snapshot of the Jan '17 puts for XBI, the biotech index. The current price is $65.73. You can see that even the puts far out of the money are costly. The $40 put, if you get a fill at $3, means a 10X return if the index drops to $10. A 70X return for a mild, cyclic, drop isn't likely to happen. Sharing yout... |
Are wash sale rules different for stocks and ETFs / Mutual Funds? | No, there's nothing special in mutual funds or ETFs. Wash sale rules apply to any asset. |
Anonymous CC: Does “Entropay” really not hand my personal data over to a company - are there alternatives? | Do you guys know any options that are accessible to any global citizen? Prepaid and stored value cards are anonymous. For an arbitrary reason, the really anonymous ones only allow you to load $500 but there is no regulation that dictates this amount. In the USA, these cards are exempt from being declared at border cros... |
Do ETF dividends make up for fees? | Any ETF has expenses, including fees, and those are taken out of the assets of the fund as spelled out in the prospectus. Typically a fund has dividend income from its holdings, and it deducts the expenses from the that income, and only the net dividend is passed through to the ETF holder. In the case of QQQ, it cer... |
Should I be worried that I won't be given a receipt if I pay with cash? | In some states, it is your responsibility to pay the sales tax on a transaction, even if the party your purchase from doesn't collect it. This is common with online purchases across state lines; for example, here in Massachusetts, if I buy something from New Hampshire (where there is no sales tax), I am required to pay... |
Who can truly afford luxury cars? | Keep in mind your household income is in the top 20%, which does not translate to wealth. Given a healthy income, and no debt, other then a small house payment, you probably have a decent amount of free cash flow. This could easily be used to buy a car on time… which a lot of people do. Congratulations on being diffe... |
Should I invest in the world's strongest currency instead of my home currency? | First, currencies are not an investment; they are a medium of exchange; that is, you use currency to buy goods and services and/or investments. The goods and services you intend to buy in your retirement are presumably going to be bought in your country; to buy these you will need your country's currency. The investmen... |
Any good software for value investment? | I had the same problem and was looking for a software that would give me easy access to historical financial statements of a company, preferably in a chart. So that I could easily compare earnings per share or other data between competitors. Have a look at Stockdance this might be what you are looking for. Reuters Ter... |
Financed medical expenses and tax deductions | You deduct expenses when you incur them (when you pay the hospital, for example). Medical expenses are deducted on Schedule A, subject to 7.5% AGI threshold. Financed or not - doesn't matter. The medical expense is deductible (if it is medically necessary), the loan interest is not. |
How can I know the minimum due credit card payment and date for an ANZ Visa card? | You are in luck, I have an ANZ credit card as well. I have just checked my paper statement with online, and was able to find a matching online statement in less than a minute. You simply click on your credit card account from the list of accounts. Under Date Range it will have the Current incomplete statement period. Y... |
How can I increase my hourly pay as a software developer? | Short term: ask for a raise or look for a new job that pays more. Longer term: |
Single investment across multiple accounts… good, bad, indifferent? | The other issue you could run into is that each deferred account is going to be subject to its own RMD's (Required Minimum Distributions) when you've retired or hit 70.5 years of age. Roth's don't generally care about RMD's at first, but are still subject to them once the person that created the Roth has passed. Havi... |
Negatives to increased credit card spending limit? [duplicate] | There is another drawback, and this is why I keep a low-limit card for online purchases and another for carrying in risky/unfamiliar situations (e.g. travelling) a small limit acts as as damage limitation in the event of theft. In theory you may not be liable if your card is stolen and used. In practice you may be out... |
What happens if someone destroy money? | Depending on the country, nothing. For example, the US has about $1.3 trillion dollars of cash in circulation. Which means that if you were to burn a million dollars of it, that would be 0.000077% of the circulating cash. But cash is a small portion of the actual money in the US. Only about 8% of all money is in c... |
How do I find an ideal single fund to invest all my money in? | While it is certainly easy to manage single fund, I am not sure it's the right strategy. It's been proven again and again that portfolio diversification is key to long term gains in wealth. I think your best option is to invest in low cost index funds and ETFs. While rebalancing your portfolio is hard, it is vastly sim... |
Ray Dalio - All Weather Portfolio | Making these difficult portfolio decisions for you is the point of Target-Date Retirement Funds. You pick a date at which you're going to start needing to withdraw the money, and the company managing the fund slowly turns down the aggressiveness of the fund as the target date approaches. Typically you would pick the ... |
How to quickly track daily cash expenses that don't come with a receipt? | Go the opposite approach. Budget a certain amount of cash and keep it combined. Don't exceed it (but next time budget more if you need to). If you were in the USA (where card acceptance is near universal) what I do is simply use my visa check card for all purchases and download it to my personal finance software, w... |
Is it wise for an independent contractor to avoid corporation tax by planning to only break even each year? | IANAL (and nor am I an accountant), so I can't give a definitive answer as to legality, but AFAIK, what you propose is legal. But what's the benefit? Avoiding corporation tax? It's simplistic – and costly – to think in terms like that. You need to run the numbers for different scenarios, and make a plan. You can end... |
Should I set a stop loss for long term investments? | This is the exactly wrong thing to do especially in the age of algorithmic trading. Consider this event from 2010: Chart Source Another similar event occurred in 2015 and there was also a currency flash crash in that year. As you can see the S&P 500 (and basically the entire market) dropped nearly 7% in a matter of ... |
Dividends - Why the push to reinvest? | There can be a good reason if you own shares issued in a different country: For example, if you are in the UK and own US shares and take the dividend payments, you get some check in US dollars that you will have to exchange to UK£, which means you pay fees - mostly these fees are fixed, so you lose a significant percen... |
How to know which companies enter the stock market? | For months prior to going public a company has to file financial documents with the SEC. These are available to the public at www.sec.gov on their Edgar database. For instance, Eagleline is listed as potentially IPOing next week. You can find out all the details of any IPO including correspondence between the company a... |
Selling on eBay without PayPal? | It's been a short while since I sold on eBay, but I had a feedback rating of about 4,500 so I've done a lot of transactions. The trump card is, and always will be, the buyer's ability to contact their credit card company and reverse the charges. PayPal has no policy to stop this even though they claim to "vigorously d... |
How does the importance of a cash emergency fund change when you live in a country with nationalized healthcare? | Unanticipated unemployment is usually the triggering factor for drawing on an emergency fund. Ask yourself: what happens if I lose my job tomorrow? Or my spouse becomes unemployed? What happens if I become disabled and can't work for x amount of time? Sure, you can discount your chances of needing such a fund if you ha... |
Is inflation a good or bad thing? Why do governments want some inflation? | Inflation is theft! It is caused when banks lend money that someone deposited, but still has claim to - called fractional reserve banking. On top of that, the Federal Reserve Bank (in the US) or the Central Bank of the currency (i.e. Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, etc.) can increase the monetary base by writi... |
Why have candlestick charts overlaps? | Remember that prices refer to discrete events in the market - trades - it is easily possible that the highest price for a trade in the next period is lower than the highest price in the current one as someone in the current period may be willing to pay more in this period than anyone in the next. The ending price of a ... |
How do you determine the dividend payout date for Mutual Funds? | Mutual funds generally make distributions once a year in December with the exact date (and the estimated amount) usually being made public in late October or November. Generally, the estimated amounts can get updated as time goes on, but the date does not change. Some funds (money market, bond funds, GNMA funds etc) di... |
Can I move my 401k to another country without paying tax penalty? | There are two significant drawbacks to this type of transfer. They were the reasons why I kept my American 401(k) as-is and started funding my Canadian RRSP from zero balance. 1. Taxes - a large chunk of your 401(k) will be lost to taxes. There is probably no way to transfer the funds without making a 401(k)/IRA withdr... |
Investing for Dummys | Books are a great place to start, Jason Kelly's The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing will give you a broad foundation of the stock & bond market. |
Organizing Expenses/Income/Personal Finance Documents (Paperless Office) | If you're curious, here are my goals behind this silly madness You said it... The last two words, I mean...:-) If you're auditing your statements - why do you need to keep the info after the audit? You got the statement for last month, you verified that the Starbucks charge that appears there is the same as in your rec... |
When does giving a gift “count” for tax year? | Generally it goes by when they receive the check, not when they cash the check. Though if the check was received prior to midnight on December 31st, but after the bank closes, they would probably let the tax payer decide to count it for the next year. Of course if the check is from person A to person B then the only is... |
Tax rules for United States citizens living in the US but being paid from outside the US | You can and are supposed to report self-employment income on Schedule C (or C-EZ if eligible, which a programmer likely is) even when the payer isn't required to give you 1099-MISC (or 1099-K for a payment network now). From there, after deducting permitted expenses, it flows to 1040 (for income tax) and Schedule SE (f... |
Why invest in becoming a landlord? | The value of getting into the landlord business -- or any other business -- depends on circumstances at the time. How much will it cost you to buy the property? How much can you reasonably expect to collect in rent? How easy or difficult is it to find a tenant? Etc. I owned a rental property for about ten years and I l... |
Why would anyone want to pay off their debts in a way other than “highest interest” first? | This is a slightly different reason to any other answer I have seen here about irrationality and how being rationally aware of one's irrationality (in the future or in different circumstances) can lead you to make decisions which on the face of it seem wrong. First of all, why do people sometimes maintain balances on h... |
How should I deal with my long term gain this year? | Long term capital gains are taxed at 15% this year, so the most you stand to save is $150. I wouldn't sell anything at a loss just to offset that, unless you planned on selling anyways. A few reasons: The Long term capital gains rate will go up to 20% next year, so your losses will be "worth more" next year than this ... |
Renting out rooms in my home, what's the proper way to deal with utilities for tax purposes? | It's the same result either way. Say the bills are $600, and you are reimbursed $400. You'd be able to write off $400 as part of the utilities that are common expenses, but then claim the $400 as income. I'd stick with that, and have contemporaneous records supporting all cash flow. You also can take 2/3 of any other... |
How could I find someone to find a room for me to live in? (For a fee, of course.) | Many colleges have offices that can help students find off campus housing. They will have information about rooms being let by families, and about houses being shared by groups of students. The biggest issue is that many of the best places were filled months ago. With only a month to go before classes start time is tig... |
What taxes are involved for LLC in Georgia? | Your best course of action is to gather your paperwork, ask around your personal network for a recommendation for a good CPA, and pay that person to do your taxes (business and personal). Read through the completed package and have them walk you through every item you do not understand. I would continue doing this un... |
How much total salary to allocate to defer $17,500 to 401(k)? | You're on the right track, and yes, that small difference is subject to income taxes. Do you use a payroll service? I do the same thing and use my payroll software to tweak the salary until the paycheck is just a few dollars every month (we run payroll once a month), with the rest going to the 401(k) and payroll taxes.... |
Recommendation on Options Back Testing tool please | As JoeTaxpayer says, there's a lot you can do with just the stock price. Exploring that a bit: Stock prices are a combination of market sentiment and company fundamentals. Options are just a layer on top of that. As such, options are mostly formulaic, which is why you have a hard time finding historical option data -- ... |
In a house with shared ownership, if one person moves out and the other assumes mortgage, how do we determine who owns what share in the end? | The ownership of the house depends on what the original deed transferring title at the time of purchase says and how this ownership is listed in government records where the title transfer deed is registered. Hopefully the two records are consistent. In legal systems that descended from British common law (including ... |
Valuation Spreadsheet | Yes, all of that is possible with google sheets... |
I've tracked my spending and have created a budget, now what do I do with it? | Use the budget to drive down spending so you can save (for retirement, for college, for expenses) and so you can pay off your mortgage early. Some, (Dave Ramsey, for example) advocate for an "Envelope system"... If your budget says 100 a month for restaurants, then at the beginning of the month, you put 100 into that... |
How can the Samsung Upgrade Programme offer 0% APR? | Having just purchased an upcoming Samsung phone using their 0% interest I can tell you that the justification is to give you credit. I have the same with Best Buy which is 0% for a specific initial purchase. The bank (in the Samsung case is TD Bank) establishes a rotating credit line for you. The APR after is well esta... |
Excessive Credit Check from Comcast | In general, it is unusual for a credit check to occur when you are terminating a contract, since you are no longer requesting credit. If the credit check was a "hard pull" it will stay on your credit report for 2 years, but will only have an impact on your credit score for up to 12 months. If the check is a "soft pull"... |
Is it possible to borrow money to accrue interest, and then use that interest to pay back the borrower + fees? | No. The WSJ prime rate is 4.25%, even the Fed prime rate is 1.75%, way above the 1.20% you'll be making from your savings account. If you are high worth individual with great credit history, the bank might give you a personal loan at 4.25%. They won't care what you do with it as long as they get their payments. If you... |
How often are preferred shareholders made whole after a company goes bankrupt? | From the Times A Reader Q.&A. on G.M.’s Bankruptcy Q. I own G.M. preferred shares. Should I be looking to sell them, or hold on? I bought them at $25 a share when they were issued in late 2001. — Karen, Manhattan A. When a company files for bankruptcy, its various stock and bondholders essentially get in line. Th... |
Changes in Capital Gains Tax in the US - Going to 20% in 2011? | For the record, now that 2011 is here we know that the capital gains tax rate didn't change. Congress extended it for two more years. This shows the uncertainty in trying to maximize earnings based on future changes to the tax code. |
New vending route business, not sure how to determine taxes | You're not paying taxes three times but you are paying three different taxes (or more). Sales tax is a business expense, just like costs of goods sold or interest on a loan. Then, depending on how you structure the business, the net income of the business just hits you personally and you pay income taxes. You can wor... |
Can I get a discount on merchandise by paying with cash instead of credit? | Slightly off topic... Not merchandise, but I paid for various doctor's appointments with cash (as opposed to paying with health insurance). I'd call ahead of time and notify them that I'd be paying in cash. I got ridiculous discounts, sometimes even less than the copay. I do not know why this discrepancy exists and ... |
Bi-weekly payment option | Your question is unclear about whether you are moving from bi-weekly payments or to bi-weekly payments. Let's calculate each case. Bi-weekly pay means you will be paid every two weeks. The amount for each payment will be your annual salary divided by 26, possibly with a small decrease (around 0.3%) to account for the f... |
Payroll reimbursments | What they are doing is wrong. The IRS and the state might not be happy with what they are doing. One thing you can ask for them to do is to give you a credit card for business and travel expenses. You will still have to submit receipts for expenses, but it will also make it clear to the IRS that these checks are not i... |
Is it sensible to keep savings in a foreign currency? | I don't think that it's a good idea to have cash savings in different currencies, unless you know which will be the direction of the wind for that currency. You can suffer a lot of volatility and losses if you just convert your savings to another currency without knowing anything about which direction that pair will ta... |
Will ADR owner enjoy same benefit as common shares holders | I would say you should invest in the market that is more convenient for you, bearing in mind that if you buy ADRs you may have some things to keep an eye on depending on certain events as mentioned by duffbeer703. So, if you are investing with an account in the U.S., go with the ADRs as that will avoid some currency co... |
What assets would be valuable in a post-apocalyptic scenario? | This is a long term investment but can be very useful during tough times. Be prepared not only to take but to give as well. Moreover: |
What rules govern when a new option series is issued? | The CBOE Rule Book, Section 5.5 explains exactly what programmes are available, how and when they will start listing and expire. The super-concise summary is: It's a per-underlying decision process, though there's some rules that may provide you with a minimum set of options (e.g. the quarterly programme on highly capi... |
How do you invest in real estate without using money? | This is one way in which the scheme could work: You put your own property (home, car, piece of land) as a collateral and get a loan from a bank. You can also try to use the purchased property as security, but it may be difficult to get 100% loan-to-value. You use the money to buy a property that you expect will rise in... |
Events that cause major movement in forex? | Look for unsustainable policies and actions by policy makers, both before and possibly during, when looking at the ForEx markets. Consider some examples: Each of those events could be seen in the growing unsustainability of local policies. ForEx markets and local policies can appear to stay on an unsustainable path f... |
To pay off a student loan, should I save up a lump sum payoff payment or pay extra each month? | As someone in the very same position as you here is what I suggest: Have $1,000 for each possible large expense you currently have. For example, house, car, pregnant wife, etc. As someone who only has a car (living at home still) I only have $1,000 in my eFund (emergency fund). The ABSOLUTE rest of my money goes to pay... |
Why are there hidden bids and offers in the US stock market for the more illiquid stocks? | When you place a bid between the bid/ask spread, that means you are raising the bid (or lowering the ask, if you are selling). The NBBO (national best bid and offer) is now changed because of your action, and yes, certain kinds of orders may be set to react to that (a higher bid or lower ask triggering them), also many... |
Remote jobs and incidental wage costs: What do I have to consider? | An employee costs the company in four ways: Salary, taxes, benefits, and capital. Salary: The obvious one, what they pay you. Taxes: There are several taxes that an employer has to pay for the privilege of hiring someone, including social security taxes (which goes to your retirement), unemployment insurance tax (your ... |
Are Index Funds really as good as “experts” claim? | Comparing index funds to long-term investments in individual companies? A counterintuitive study by Jeremy Siegel addressed a similar question: Would you be better off sticking with the original 500 stocks in the S&P 500, or like an index fund, changing your investments as the index is changed? The study: "Long-Term Re... |
What happens to an ETF if one of the companies in the ETF gets aquired? | There are a number of ways this can result. In a broad ETF, such as SPY, the S&P 500 spider, the S&P index will have 500 stocks no matter what, so a buyout would simply result in a re-shuffling of the index makeup. No buyout will happen so quickly that there's no time to choose the next stock to join the index. In your... |
How do I adjust to a new social class? | Housing, eh? Housing costs are driven by salaries and land availability. Over in the Bay Area, $1500/mo for a nice 1-bedroom apartment is a good deal... but a decent software engineer with ~4 years' experience can get $120k, easily. The standard benchmark of affordability of housing is spending a third of your income o... |
Where can end-of-day data be downloaded for corporate bonds? | Here is one from a Bloomberg partnership, it is free. To get the end of day prices, you may need some programming done. PM me if you need help with that. Getting bond quotes and general information about a bond issue is considerably more difficult than researching a stock or a mutual fund. A major reason for this is th... |
Is there any sort of tax write off for unfulfilled pay checks? | If you don't receive a W2, there are 2 scenarios you should consider: If you have reason to believe that scenario 1 is accurate, then you could file your taxes based on the last valid paycheck you received. If you have reason to believe that scenario 2 is accurate, then you need to do some extra math, but fortunately i... |
Should I re-allocate my portfolio now or let it balance out over time? | Personally I'm not a huge fan of rebalancing within an asset class. I would vote for leaving the HD shares alone and buying other assets until you get to the portfolio you want. Frequent buying and selling incurs costs and possible tax consequences that can really hurt your returns. |
Is buying a lottery ticket considered an investment? | From a mathematical expected-value standpoint, there is no difference between gambling (e.g. buying a lottery ticket) and investing (e.g. buying a share of stock). The former probably has negative expected value while the latter probably has positive expected value, but that is not a distinction to include in a defini... |
Buying a building with two flats, can I rent one out and still get a residential mortgage? | The simple answer is to get a residential mortgage first, and once you have secured the loan, do whatever you want. The bank only cares about what risk they are taking on the day of closing and won't care afterwards so long as you pay the mortgage on time. Residential mortgages are going to give you better rates than ... |
Is there any reason to choose my bank's index fund over Vanguard? | Your bank's fund is not an index fund. From your link: To provide a balanced portfolio of primarily Canadian securities that produce income and capital appreciation by investing primarily in Canadian money market instruments, debt securities and common and preferred shares. This is a very broad actively managed fund. ... |
What's an economic explanation for why greeting cards are so expensive? | Why do people buy them when they would be cheap to make for themselves? Convenience. While you could easily find some pictures and lay them out with a sentiment, buy some card stock, print in colour, trim it, and perhaps glue on some glitter or whatnot, and then find an envelope that fits it, it's likely to take you an... |
Snowball debt or pay off a large amount? | There are some calculators that you can use to figure out the best approach, such as this one by CNN. But in general the rule of thumb tends to be the following: For the purposes of the Best Buy card, I would put it up there at number one so you don't get hit with the deferred interest. No point in giving them more mon... |
Best personal finance software for Mac for German resident | I haven't used it in years, but look at GnuCash. From the site, one bullet point under Feature Highlights: |
Why I cannot find a “Pure Cash” option in 401k investments? | There is no zero risk option! There is no safe parking zone for turbulent times! There is no such thing as a zero-risk investment. You would do well to get this out of your head now. Cash, though it will retain its principle over time, will always be subject to inflation risk (assuming a positive-inflation environmen... |
Credit card closed. Effect on credit score (USA) | As documented in MyFICO (http://www.myfico.com/credit-education/whats-in-your-credit-score/), there are several factors that affect credit scores. Payment history (35%) The first thing any lender wants to know is whether you've paid past credit accounts on time. This is one of the most important factors in a FICO® ... |
When are equal-weighted index funds / ETFs preferable to market-cap-weighted funds? | As Dheer pointed out, the top ten mega-cap corporations account for a huge part (20%) of your "S&P 500" portfolio when weighted proportionally. This is one of the reasons why I have personally avoided the index-fund/etf craze -- I don't really need another mechanism to buy ExxonMobil, IBM and Wal-Mart on my behalf. I l... |
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