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Can I profit from anticipating a drop in value? | To summarize, there are three basic ways: (3) is the truly dangerous one. If there is a lot of short interest in a stock, but for some reason the stock goes up, suddenly a lot of people will be scrambling to buy that stock to cover their short position -- which will drive the price up even further, making the problem w... |
Brent crude vs. USD market value | I don't think the two are particularly linked. While Brick is right in that the price of oil is denominated in dollars, I don't think that's responsible for most of the movement here. Oil has been weak for intrinsic reasons related to oil: supply/demand imbalance, largely. (Oil also was way over-priced back when it w... |
Buying shares- Stocks & Shares ISA, or Fund & Share account? | The main difference is that the ISA account like a Cash ISA shelters you from TAX - you don't have to worry about Capital Gains TAX. The other account is normal taxable account. With only £500 to invest you will be paying a high % in charges so... To start out I would look at some of the Investment Trust savings scheme... |
Why is auto insurance ridiculously overpriced for those who drive few miles? | 4000 miles a year is not a few! European average is about 9000... But nevertheless... But when it comes to risk, then: 1) Nothing stops you from changing circumstances and drive 10 times as much as in previous yers. The insurance remains the same. The only thing the insurance company can do is to charge you more next y... |
Should I be claiming more than 1 exemption? | It's not possible to determine whether you can "expect a refund" or whether you are claiming the right number of exemptions from the information given. If your wife were not working and you did not do independent contracting, then the answer would be much simpler. However, in this case, we must also factor in how mu... |
How can I figure out how a stock's price would change after I buy shares? | It is possible to figure out the next price. Just not for Joe Average. A stock exchange has a orderbook. This has two sides. One side has alle the buyers, how many shares they want, and what they are willing to pay. The other side has all the sellers, how many shares they got, and what price they are willing to accept.... |
How to check the paypal's current exchange rate? | fx-rate.net offers a AUDUSD exchange rate comparison, which includes paypal: Currencyfair $1.14 Transferwise $ 2.29 Worldremit $ 3.50 Xendpay $ 3.71 Tranzfers $ 5.52 Ukforex $ 7.35 Skrill $ 15.13 Paypal $ 25.77 Kantox $ 27.76 http://fx-rate.net/currency-transfer/?c_input=AUD&cp_input=USD |
Should I really pay off my entire credit card balance each month or should I maintain some balance? | Always pay on time, and stop listening to whoever is telling you not to -- they are clueless. Credit cards are revolving accounts with a grace period. The balance owed is due on the statement date, and you have a grace period of 20-40 days to pay. Paying bills on time is the single most important thing that you can do... |
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. |
What ETF best tracks the price of gasoline, or else crude oil? | Do not buy any commodity tracking ETF without reading and understanding the prospectus. Some of these things get exposure to the underlying commodity via swaps or other hocus-pocus derivatives, so you're really buying credit obligations from some bank. Others are futures based, and you need to understand your potential... |
Why would a public company not initiate secondary stock offerings more often? | What prevents a company from doing secondary public stock offerings on regular basis? The primary goal of a company doing secondary public offering is to raise more funds, that can be utilized for funding the business. If no funding is needed [i.e. company has sufficient funds, or no expansion plans], this funding crea... |
Hedging against an acquisition of a stock | For a cheaper hedge , you can try a call spread. e.g if you shorted a stock at 40 but are worried that it can get bought out for 60. then buy a 50-60 bull call spread with appropriate number of contracts or even 50-55. this is better than just buying a 50 call as it will be expensive. Also the other option is not to sh... |
Money market account for emergency savings | From a quick look at sources on the web, it looks to me like Money Market Accounts and savings accounts are both paying about the same rate today: around 1%, give or take maybe 0.4%. I suppose that's better than nothing, but it's not a whole lot better than nothing. (I saw several savings accounts advertising 0.1% inte... |
Why is silver so volatile compared to the S&P 500? | Silver is a commodity. It's valuable for certain kinds of manufacturing, jewelry, and as a speculative financial instrument or hedge against the dollar. The S&P 500 includes companies which make money off of mining, manufacturing, medicine, media, technology, banking, dining, agriculture... There's a lot more variety t... |
What should I do with my money? | Edit: I a in the United States, seek advice from someone who is also in Australia. I am getting about 5.5% per year by investing in a fund (ticker:PGF) that, in turn, buys preferred stock in banks. Preferred stock acts a bit like a bond and a bit like a stock. The price is very stable. However, a bank account is FDIC... |
Car finance (loan) insurance requirements (store car) | Very generally speaking if you have a loan, in which something is used as collateral, the leader will likely require you to insure that collateral. In your case that would be a car. Yes certainly a lender will require you to insure the vehicle that they finance (Toyota or otherwise). Of course, if you purchase a ve... |
What's a good personal finance management web app that I can use in Canada? | Now, if you're still intrested, Mint.com works also for Canadian banks. Mint Canada |
At what point is it most advantageous to cease depositing into a 401k? | You'd need to test the assumptions here - in effect you're saying that in 15 years your account will have a balance 10x your income. But normally you'd expect your income to grow over the years (e.g. promotions) and so you'd hope that your income in 15 years would be significantly larger than what it is now. But, eve... |
Digital money pots? | I guess it depends on your bank. My bank (Rabobank) recently did introduce this feature. You don't get a card per category, though. Instead you set up rules to match each expenditure to one of the existing pots. |
Does it make sense to trade my GOOGL shares for GOOG and pocket the difference? | To keep it simple, let's say that A shares trade at 500 on average between April 2nd 2014 and April 1st 2015 (one year anniversary), then if C shares trade on average: The payment will be made either in cash or in shares within 90 days. The difficulties come from the fact that the formula is based on an average price o... |
Why can't poor countries just print more money? | Printing money doesn't mean that their wealth increases. It just devalues the money they already have. So it will just take more money to buy goods from another country. Printing money will also lead to over inflation which has its own set of problems such as: |
Should I Use an Investment Professional? | Agree with the above poster regarding causation vs. correlation. Unless you can separate out the variables questions like this are somewhat impossible to answer. Additionally, one of the fundamental issues is the Agency Problem. Depending on the fee structure the advisor might be more interested in their own self bene... |
Borrow from 401k for down payment on rental property? | Another option you might consider is rolling over some of that 401K balance into a self-directed IRA or Solo 401K, specifically one with "checkbook privileges". That would permit you to invest directly in a property via your IRA/401K money without it being a loan, and preserving the tax benefits. (You may not be able t... |
What is the difference between a stock and a bond? | WilliamKF explained it pretty well, but I want to put it in a more simplistic form: |
Can saving/investing 15% of your income starting age 25, likely make you a millionaire? | The article links to William Bernstein’s plan that he outlined for Business Insider, which says: Modelling this investment strategy Picking three funds from Google and running some numbers. The international stock index only goes back to April 29th 1996, so a run of 21 years was modelled. Based on 15% of a salary of $... |
What would I miss out on by self insuring my car? | You lose your agent services. When my wife wrecked our car 3 years ago our agent took care of everything. He got us a rental car, made the arrangements to get it fixed, checked in to see how we were doing, and even helped us set up a second opinion on my wifes wrist surgery. The accident was ruled the fault of the un... |
What actions can I take against a bank for lack of customer service? | You can complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service in Australia. I've never used them in particular but generally organizations will respond much faster once you get the ombudsman involved. However, since you say they've now kept their promises, the ombudsman is unlikely to do much more than listen sympathetically. |
Is buying a lottery ticket considered an investment? | Buying lotteries tickets makes you the fish not the fisher. Just like casinos or drugs. If you like, you can call buying tickets an "investment" or better yet, a donation in the lottery's owner wealth. No real investor is dumb enough to get into a business where 99.9999999% of the "investors" lose EVERYTHING they inves... |
Are there any rules against penalizing consumers for requesting accurate credit reporting? | To answer the heart of your question, it would be illegal for any credit bureau or creditor to somehow "penalize" you just for trying to make sure that what's being reported about you is accurate. That's why the Fair Credit Reporting Act exists -- that's where the rights (and mechanisms) come from for letting you lear... |
If I have AD&D through my employer, should I STILL purchase term life insurance? | I think that mbhunter hit the nail on the head regarding your question. I just want to add that having a policy that isn't sponsored by your employer is a good idea... employer policies are regulated by the federal government via ERISA. Independent policies are state regulated, and usually have better protections. Also... |
Opening 5 credit cards at once with no history to ruin, is it a good idea? | I would not call this a "good" idea. But I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad idea either. Before you even consider it, you need to do a little bit of soul searching. If there is ANY chance that having multiple credit cards could entice you to spend more than you otherwise would, then this is definitely a bad idea. Avo... |
Why and why would/wouldn't a company split their stock? | The reason to do a stock split is to get the price of the stock down to an affordable range. If your stock costs $100,000 per share, you are seriously cutting in to the number of people who can afford to buy it. I can think of two reasons NOT to do a stock split. The biggest is, Why bother? If your stock is trading at ... |
What is the difference between “good debt” vs. “bad debt”? | None of the previous answers (which are all good) mention margin accounts (loans from your broker). You may also have heard them described as "leverage". It may seem odd to mention this rather narrow form of debt here, but it's important because overuse of leverage has played a large part in pretty much every financi... |
Are stories of turning a few thousands into millions by trading stocks real? | It's possible to make money in the market - even millions if you "play your cards right". Taking the course being offered can be educational but highly unlikely to increase your chances of making millions. Experience and knowledge of the game will make you money. The stock market is a game. |
Why do US retirement funds typically have way more US assets than international assets? | There are a few main economic reasons given why investors show a strong home bias: Interestingly, though if you ask investors about the future of their home country compared with other countries they will generally (though not always) significantly overestimate the future of their own country. It is difficult to defin... |
Online service that computes implied volatility | remember that IV is literally the volatility that would be present to equate to the latest price of a particular option contract, assuming the Black-Scholes-Merton model. Yahoo's free finance service lists the IV for all the options that it tracks. |
First time investing advice (Canada) | Question One: Question Two: Your best reference for this would be a brokerage account with data privileges in the markets you wish to trade. Failing that, I would reference the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME Group) website. Question Three: Considering future tuition costs and being Canadian, you are eligible to... |
How to rebalance a portfolio without moving money into losing investments | Also, almost by definition rebalancing involves making more trades than you would have otherwise; wouldn't the additional trading fees you incurred in doing so reduce the benefits of this strategy? You forgot to mention taxes. Rebalancing does or rather can incur costs. One way to minimize the costs is to use the p... |
When should I walk away from my mortgage? | The worth of a credit score (CS) is variable. If you buy your stuff outright with 100% down then your CS is worthless. If you take a loan to buy stuff then it is worth exactly what you save in interest versus a poor score. But there is also the "access" benefit of CS where loans will no longer be available to you, for... |
Does a growing economy mean the economy is becoming less efficient? | Growth and efficiency can occur independently of each other. For instance, if an economy consists of one inefficient business and then a second more efficient business opens to compete agains the first the overall efficiency increases while the economy grows. New industries tend to be inefficient at the beginning (sin... |
Can signing up at optoutprescreen.com improve my credit score? | If I had a business and was able to claim a feature, I would. It's simple marketing. If in fact, opting out helped your score, the site would promote that feature. Soft pulls for prescreened offers are not counted. No more than my constant peek at my score through Credit Karma. Opt out, if you wish. The benefit of co... |
What option-related strategies are better suited to increasing return potential? | I've traded covered calls now and then. This is a recent trade. Bought 1000 shares of RSH (Radio Shack) and sold 10 calls. So, I own the stock at a cost of $6.05, but have to let it go for $7.50. There's a 50c dividend in November, so the call buyer will call it away even if the stock trades below the strike. So, I'm e... |
Looking for a stock market simulation that's as close to the real thing as possible | Stock market is like poker: you don't take the same risks when it is fake money and thus you don't learn the same lessons from your mistakes. I would recommend instead to play with real market and real money (rule #0: use only money that you don't need). Start with safe products and go to the bath progressively. It too... |
Smart to buy a house in college? | People have lost money buying houses in good to great neighborhoods. It's a pretty large red flag that you state this so clearly "the neighborhood is pretty bad." I'd rather buy a bad house in a great neighborhood, and spend my weekends fixing it up, turning sweat equity into real equity. A two year bet? I'd pass. Cl... |
How are people able to spend more than what they make, without going into debt? | Bezos made very little "money." But he is very wealthy because of stock grants and options, from his previous years. Banks or brokerage firms will lend him (or anyone else) up to half the value of his stock. In Bezos' case, we're talking about billions. So he could, if he wanted to, cash out half of those billions. If ... |
What things are important to consider when investing in one's company stock? | I would pass on their deal if they will only match if you invest in their stock. Think about when/if the company falls on bad times. What happens to the stock of a company when bad times come? The board of directors will reduce or eliminate the dividend payout. Current and potential investors will take notice. Curren... |
Finding Uncorrelated Assets | Have a look at: Diversify Portfolio. The site provides various tools all focused on correlation, diversification and portfolio construction. You can scan through every stock and ETF listed on the NASDAQ and NYSE to find any kind of correlation you're looking for. You can also create a portfolio and then analyze all the... |
Accounting for splits in a stock price graph | One way that is common is to show the value over time of an initial investment, say $10,000. The advantage of this is that it doesn't show stock price at all, so handles splits well. It can also take into account dividend reinvestment. Fidelity uses this for their mutual funds, as can be seen here. Another option w... |
Relation between inflation rates and interest rates | When the inflation rate increases, this tends to push up interest rates because of supply and demand: If the interest rate is less than the inflation rate, then putting your money in the bank means that you are losing value every day that it is there. So there's an incentive to withdraw your money and spend it now. If,... |
First time home buyer. How to negotiate price? | First of all, never ask a realtor for advice. The realtor represents the SELLER. Blankip's advice above is by far the most accurate of the previous answers. The first step is to estimate the market. Look at past sales in the neighborhood over time, and from them estimate the prospects for the house at different time du... |
Why is day trading considered riskier than long-term trading? | It's important to distinguish between speculation and investing. Buying something because you hope to make money on market fluctuations is speculation. Buying something and expecting to make money because your money is providing actual economic value is investing. If Person A buys 100 shares of a stock with the intent... |
If stock price drops by the amount of dividend paid, what is the use of a dividend | Best as i can tell, the simple answer is: the smartest approach to investing for dividends is to pick a company that is, has, and will continue to make a solid profits. there are lots of them out there. specifically, companies with no debt, a history of long-term and steady growth and a stable market share will, almost... |
Didn't apply for credit card but got an application denied letter? | This can be a case of someone trying to use your identity to obtain credit. I would put a fraud alert on my credit immediately. I went through something similar... got denial letters for credit I didn't apply to. A few months later I get hit with a credit ding from a pay day loan company that apparently allowed the ... |
Do I need to report to FInCEN if I had greater than $10,000 worth of bitcoin in a foreign bitcoin exchange? | Yes, I'd say you do. This is similar to reporting a brokerage account. Also, don't forget the requirements for form 8938. |
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 ... |
Getting started in stock with one special field of activity | Investing only in one industry may be problematic as it is highly correlated. There are factor outside your (or anyones) knowledge which may affect all the industry: If you are familiar with the industry it may happen that you work in that (ignore rest of paragraph if this is not the case). In such case you are likely ... |
Which brokerages offer the best streaming quotes (tick level) for the best price? | I have ScottradeElite on my desktop. I have played around with it but no longer use it. The transactions that I make through Scottrade are more dependent on my goals for the securities than what the market is doing at the moment. Keep in mind that there will always be others out there with better access to price chang... |
Do Americans really use checks that often? | I receive checks from my tenant. Also, from our medical reimbursement account. I'm sure there's an option somewhere to get that direct deposited, just haven't yet. My wife will write checks for school functions. Funny, they haven't cashed one since february, and this is the one item to look for every time I reconcile h... |
How to decide which private student loan is right for me? | I speak from a position of experience, My BS and MS are both in Comp Sci. I know very little about loans or finances. That is very unfortunate as you are obviously an intelligent human being. Perhaps this is a good time to pause your formal education and get educated in personal finance. To me, it is that important. ... |
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... |
Calculate Finance Rate, Interest Amount when we have below line Fees | The equation for the payment is This board does not support Latex (the number formatting code) so the above is an image, the code is M is the payment calculated, n is the number of months or periods to pay off, and i is the rate per period. You can see that with i appearing 3 times in this equation, it's not possible ... |
The Benefits/Disadvantages of using a credit card | There are a couple of things to consider. First, in order to avoid interest charges you generally just need to pay the statement balance before the statement due date. This is your grace period. You don't need to monitor your activity every day and send immediate payments. If you're being really tight with money, ... |
How to Store Funds Generated through FX Trading | Earned income is what your software is doing, so it is taxable. So you can't really make it tax exempt. You can form a business and claim the revenues from that business as income and deduct expenses it costs you to earn that revenue. If you buy a server to run your software, then that is an acceptable expense to ded... |
Why do people always talk about stocks that pay high dividends? | Isn't it true that on the ex-dividend date, the price of the stock goes down roughly the amount of the dividend? That is, what you gain in dividend, you lose in price drop. Yes and No. It Depends! Generally stocks move up and down during the market, and become more volatile on some news. So One can't truly measure if t... |
Options vs Stocks which is more profitable | As already noted, options contain inherent leverage (a multiplier on the profit or loss). The amount of "leverage" is dictated primarily by both the options strike relative to the current share price and the time remaining to expiration. Options are a far more difficult investment than stocks because they require that ... |
Cashing a cheque on behalf of someone else | Anyone can walk into a bank, say "Hi, I'm a messenger, I have an endorsed check and a filled out deposit slip for Joe Blow who has an account here, please deposit this check for him, as he is incapacitated. Straight deposit." They'll fiddle on their computer, to see if they can identify the deposit account definitivel... |
What are the financial advantages of living in Switzerland? | In addition to what George said, there are other things that probably benefit Switzerland: |
Any tax advantage for registering a residential house as a business? (I want to apply legal pressure to my landlord) | To the best of my knowledge, in California there's no such thing as registering a place as a business. There's zoning (residential/commercial/mixed/etc), and there's "a business registered at a place". But there's no "place registered as a business". So you better clarify what it is that you think your landlord did. It... |
Why did the stock chart for Facebook's first trading day show an initial price of $42 when the IPO price was $38? | The IPO price is set between the underwriters and the specialist in the NASDAQ. There are a lot of complexities on how to get to this price, everyone is trying to pull to their own side. In the Facebook example, the price was $38 for all IPO participants. Then, once the IPO went to the secondary market, the bid/ask dro... |
Money-market or cash-type ETFs for foreigners with U.S brokerage account | Securities and ETFs are also subjected to Estate Tax. Some ways: Draft a "Transfer on Death" instruction to the broker, that triggers a transfer to an account in the beneficiary's name, in most cases avoiding probate. If the broker does not support it, find another broker. Give your brokerage and bank password/token ... |
How websites like Google have access to stock market data? | To quote their disclaimer: Data is provided by financial exchanges and may be delayed as specified by financial exchanges or our data providers. Google does not verify any data and disclaims any obligation to do so. That means that they buy it from a reseller such as IDC. It probably differs in source between the diffe... |
Why should one only contribute up to the employer's match in a 401(k)? | Unfortunately, I missed most of segment and I didn't get to understand the Why? To begin with, Cramer is an entertainer and his business is pushing stocks. If you put money into mutual funds (which most 401k plans limit your investments to), then you are not purchasing his product. Also, many 401k plans have limited se... |
Lump sum annuity distribution — do I owe estate tax? | There can be Federal estate tax as well as State estate tax due on an estate, but it is not of direct concern to you. Estate taxes are paid by the estate of the decedent, not by the beneficiaries, and so you do not owe any estate tax. As a matter of fact, most estates in the US do not pay Federal estate tax at all bec... |
Where was the huge scandal in the Wells Fargo scandal? | The Wells Fargo scandal was and still is a big deal because Wells Fargo opened over 1.5 million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts. The credit card accounts were opened without authorization, which means people's credit scores and reports were pulled without permission. That is considered fraud and identity the... |
How can I determine which stores are regarded as supermarkets for a rewards credit card? | Contact AmEx. They are the only ones who might have a current list. |
How does the Pension system work in Poland? | littleadv's answer gives a concise summary of the system as it stands now, but much more changed than just the portion of the mandatory contribution that was diverted to the private plan. In broad terms, the balances of your accounts and your future benefit won't change. It's only the source of these benefits that's ch... |
Co- Signed car loan and need to have the other signer relinquish claim to ownership | Your arrangements with the bank are irrelevant. Whoever is named on the title of the vehicle owns it. If she is the "primary", then I assume her name is on the title, therefore she owns the car. If you drive off with the car and it is titled in her name, she can report it stolen and have you arrested for grand theft au... |
Where can I find a good online fundamental data provider for Hong Kong stocks? | If you check out China Stock Markets Web provides details on all things that trade on there. It covers the Hang Seng Index, SSE Index, and SSE Component Index. There is also tons of information for investors on the exchange website here. |
Is foreign stock considered more risky than local stock and why? | Foreign stocks have two extra sources of risk attached to them; exchange rate and political. Exchange rate risk is obvious; if I buy a stock in a foreign currency and there is a currency movement that makes that investment worth less I lose money no matter what the stock does. This can be offset using exchange rate sw... |
Shared groceries expenses between roommates to be divided as per specific consumption ratio and attendance | For a personal finance forum, this is too complicated for sustained use and you should find a simpler solution. For a mathematical exercise, you are missing information required to do the split fairly. You have to know who overlaps and when to know how to do the splits. For an extreme example, take your dates given:... |
What is the difference between fund and portfolio? | A "Fund" is generally speaking a collection of similar financial products, which are bundled into a single investment, so that you as an individual can buy a portion of the Fund rather than buying 50 portions of various products. e.g. a "Bond Fund" may be a collection of various corporate bonds that are bundled togethe... |
What is a good rental yield? | You will find Joe.E, that rents have increased considerably over the last 4 to 5 years in Australia. You can probably achieve rental yields of above 5% more than 20km from major Cities, however closer to cities you might get closer to 5% or under. In Western Sydney, we have been able to achieve rental yields close to 7... |
ETF vs Mutual Fund: How to decide which to use for investing in a popular index? | What is your time horizon? Over long horizons, you absolutely want to minimise the expense ratio – a seemingly puny 2% fee p.a. can cost you a third of your savings over 35 years. Over short horizons, the cost of trading in and trading out might matter more. A mutual fund might be front-loaded, i.e. charge a fixed init... |
Should I sell when my stocks are growing? | You should constantly look at your investment portfolio and sell based on future outlook. Don't get emotional. Selling a portfolio of stocks at once without a real reason is foolish. If you have a stock that's up, and circumstances make you think it's going to go up further, hold it. If prospects are not so good, sell... |
Is there an online cost-basis calculator that automatically accounts for dividend re-investments and splits? | Google Finance portfolios take into account splits and cash deposits/withdrawals. |
Investing in low cost index fund — does the timing matter? | When you start investing makes a very large difference to the outcome, but that is on the time scale of what generation you were born into, not what week you choose to open your 401(k). As you note in your last sentence, there is nothing that you can do about this, so there is no point in worrying about it. If you cou... |
Does getting a 1099 from another state count as working in another state if I was physically in my home state? | You might need to check yes... but I would check out New York's nonresident income tax requirements... My guess is yes if you meet the requirements, but I am not an expert nor do I work in the accounting or legal field. Check out New York's nonresident tax page explaination |
Is engaging in stocks without researching unwise? | I don't see balance sheet in what you're looking at, and I'd definitely suggest learning how to read a balance sheet and looking at it, if you're going to buy stock in a company, unless you know that the recommendations you're buying on are already doing that and you're willing to take that risk. Also, reading past ba... |
Should we park our money in our escrow account? | The likely outcome of adding extra money to your escrow account is that the bank will send you a check for excess funds at the end of the year (or whenever your property tax and insurance payments are processed). Could you just redeposit that money immediately? Possibly. I bet most banks wouldn't care and would just fo... |
Purchasing first car out of college | I respectfully disagree with @JohnFX's comment regarding new vs used. (John knows what is talking about though; he gave an awesome answer on buying a car: What are some tips for getting the upper hand in car price negotiations?) The answer to your question is based on whether or you not you can stand to have a small,... |
Is paying off your mortage a #1 personal finance priority? | Paying off your house quickly should be a #2-level priority, behind making sure you have some basic savings but definitely ahead of any investing concerns, because your house is not an investment; it's your home. (If you're brave/foolish enough to try buying houses-as-investments in the current climate, this obviously... |
Why is tax loss harvesting helpful for passive investing? | You also may want to consider how this interacts with the stepped up basis of estates. If you never sell the stock and it passes to your heirs with your estate, under current tax law the basis will increase from the purchase price to the market price at the time of transfer. In a comment, you proposed: Thinking mo... |
How can I diversify $7k across ETFs and stocks? | You don't really have a lot of money, and that isn't a criticism as much as that you are limited to diversification. For example, I would estimate you can only have one or two stocks for a buy-write scheme. Secondly you may be only to buy one fund with a high minimum investment, and a second fund with a smaller minim... |
Where can publicly traded profits go but to shareholders via dividends? | If a company earns $1 Million in net profit (let's say all cash, which is not entirely realistic), it can do one of three things with it: On the balance sheet - profits that have not been distributed show up as "retained earnings". When dividends are paid, Retained Earnings and cash are reduced. None of the other opti... |
Why does money value normally decrease? | You expect interest because you forgo the opportunity of using the money as well as the risk of losing the money if the borrower can not pay you back. This is true also with gold - you would expect interest if you loaned someone your gold for a time period. When you deposit your money in the bank you are loaning your ... |
Renting or Buying an House | I actually didn't do the math with your numbers, but I recall Sal from Khan Academy did a nice video about your question, challenging the notion that it is always better to buy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL10H_EcB-E |
How to interpret a 1,372.55% dividend payout ratio (GSK)? | I don't think it makes sense to allow accounting numbers that you are not sure how to interpret as being a sell sign. If you know why the numbers are weird and you feel that the reason for it bodes ill about the future, and if you think there's a reason this has not been accounted for by the market, then you might thi... |
If I have a lot of debt and the housing market is rising, should I rent and slowly pay off my debt or buy and roll the debt into a mortgage? | What you propose is to convert unsecured debt into secured debt. Conversion of unsecured debt into secured debt is not generally a good idea (several reasons). The debt you currently owe does not have assets securing the debt, so the creditor knows they are exposed to risk, and may be more willing to negotiate or rela... |
When an investor makes money on a short, who loses the money? | The correct answer to this question is: the person who the short sells the stock to. Here's why this is the case. Say we have A, who owns the stock and lends it to B, who then sells it short to C. After this the price drops and B buys the stock back from D and returns it to A. The outcome for A is neutral. Typically... |
I am the sole owner of an LLC. Does it make a difference if I file as an S-Corp or a sole-member LLC? | S-Corp are taxed very different. Unlike LLC where you just add the profit to your income with S-Corp you have to pay yourself a "reasonable" salary (on w-2) which of course is a lot more paperwork. I think the advantage (but don't hold me accountable for this) is if your S-Corp makes a lot more than a reasonable salary... |
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