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ESPP cost basis and taxes | If the $882 is reported on W2 as your income then it is added to your taxable income on W2 and is taxed as salary. Your basis then becomes $5882. If it is not reported on your W2 - you need to add it yourself. Its salary income. If its not properly reported on W2 it may have some issues with FICA, so I suggest talking ... |
Can the risk of investing in an asset be different for different investors? | The risk of the particular share moving up or down is same for both. however in terms of mitigating the risk, Investor A is conservative on upside, ie will exit if he gets 10%, while is ready to take unlimited downside ... his belief is that things will not go worse .. While Investor B is wants to make at least 10% l... |
Including the region where you live in your investment portfolio? | Diversification is a risk-mitigation strategy. When you invest in equities, you generally get a higher rate of return than a fixed income investment. But you have risks... a single company's market value can decline for all sorts of reasons, including factors outside of the control of management. Diversification lets y... |
How is not paying off mortgage better in normal circumstances? | Certainly there are people who do pay off their homes. Others do not. It's a question of risk tolerance and preference. Some considerations relevant to this question: Taxes - Interest on a mortgage is tax deductible. Particularly for high earners, this is a significant incentive to maintain a mortgage balance and p... |
Why can't the government simply payoff everyone's mortgage to resolve the housing crisis? | Could it be done? Yes, it could, subject to local law. A variant of such an approach has been suggested for those countries experiencing collapse of demand. One might consider whether whether it applied to secured loans (such as mortgages), unsecured loans, or both; whether it would be capped at a certain absolute (say... |
Capital Gains in an S Corp | These are all factually correct claims. S-Corporation is a pass-through entity, so whatever gain you have on the corporate level - is passed to the shareholders. If your S-Corp has capital gains - you'll get your pro-rata share of the capital gains. Interest? The same. Dividends? You get it on your K-1. Earned income? ... |
Advantage of Financial Times vs. free news sources for improving own knowledge of finance? | I recommend using Morning Brew. They email you a free daily newsletter with the top financial news stories and earnings events. I have subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times before. Morning Brew basically covers all of the headlines you would see on those sites. |
Why I cannot find a “Pure Cash” option in 401k investments? | This situation, wanting desperately to have access to an investment vehicle in a 401K, but it not being available reminds me of two suggestions some make regarding retirement investing: This allows you the maximum flexibility in your retirement investing. I have never, in almost 30 years of 401K investing, seen a pure... |
Is it common in the US not to pay medical bills? | Is it common in the US not to pay medical bills? Or do I misunderstood what had been said? There has definitely been a misunderstanding as it is not that common for people to not pay medical bills. Yes, there are those that cannot afford to pay them, and that does contribute to increasing prices, but overall people do ... |
How does a online only bank protect itself against fraud? | Much of what you're asking will not be disclosed for obvious security reasons, so don't be surprised when call center people say they "don't know". They may actually not know, but even if they did, they'd be fired if they were to say anything. Nothing could be a touchier subject than online security for the financial... |
Is it a good idea to teach children that work is linearly related to income? | Get a copy of Capitalism for Kids - finally back in print (after being out of print for years). It's a great introduction to being an entrepreneur, aimed at young people. Six years old might be a bit early, though - but definitely before the teenage years. |
In double entry book-keeping, how should I record writing of a check? | I'm no accounting expert, but I've never heard of anyone using a separate account to track outstanding checks. Instead, the software I use (GnuCash) uses a "reconciled" flag on each transaction. This has 3 states: n: new transaction (the bank doesn't know about it yet), c: cleared transaction (the bank deducted the ... |
Bank statements - should I retain hardcopies for tax or other official purposes (or keep digital scanned copies)? | Digital records are fine, but record-keeping practices are important. Be consistent. |
Is there a financial benefit for buyers from using community currencies? | Short answer: NO, there is no financial benefits for you to expect in a local currency even if some might give tiny discounts on local sales. Local currencies are attractive for small business or communities, they are perfectly legal and starting to be popular in a lot of places. Local currencies encourage individuals ... |
How to calculate Price/Earnings - Price/Sales - Price/Free Cash Flow for given stock | To calculate you take the Price and divide it by the Earnings, or by the Sales, or by the Free Cash Flow. Most of these calculations are done for you on a lot of finance sites if the data is available. Such sites as Yahoo Finance and Google Finance as well as my personal favorite: Morningstar |
What intrinsic, non-monetary value does gold have as a commodity? | Borrowing Wikipedia for a bit, it seems like the intrinsic uses are these. I've ordered these approximately in technology-level order: The importance of any of these uses largely depends on the state of a civilization and the level of technology of that civilization. However, most of these applications have far cheaper... |
What should I do about proxy statements? | On most proxy statements (all I have ever received) you have the ability to abstain from voting. Just go down the list and check Abstain then return the form. You will effectively be forfeiting your right to vote. EDIT: According to this, after January 1, 2010 abstaining and trashing the voting materials are the same... |
Questrade - What happens if I buy U.S. stock with Canadian money? | I personally spoke with a Questrade agent about my question. To make a long story short: in a margin account, you are automatically issued a loan when buying U.S. stock with a Canadian money. Whereas, in a registered account (e.g. RRSP), the amount is converted on your behalf to cover the debit balance. Me: What happen... |
Why are typical 401(k) plan fund choices so awful? | I would point this out to the committee or other entity in charge of handling this at work. They do have a fiduciary responsibility for the participant's money and should take anything reasonable seriously. The flip side to this is 95% of participants -- especially participants under 35 or so -- really pay next to no a... |
Avoid Capital Gains on Rental | What you are looking for is a 1031 exchange. https://www.irs.gov/uac/like-kind-exchanges-under-irc-code-section-1031 Whenever you sell business or investment property and you have a gain, you generally have to pay tax on the gain at the time of sale. IRC Section 1031 provides an exception and allows you to postpone pay... |
I got my bank account closed abruptly how do I get money out? | If you can get to a physical branch, get a cashier's check (or call them and have them send you one by mail). When they draft the cashier's check they remove the money from your account immediately and the check is drawn against the bank itself. You could hold onto that check for a little while even after your accoun... |
How do the wealthy pay for things? | I was once the personal assistant to two wealthy NYC sisters. They did not pay for anything. For example, if we were riding the subway, I would pay, and be reimbursed by the Company. They had multiple residences and investment properties. Each property was purchased through a separate Limited Liablity Corporation, and ... |
Investing $50k + Real Estate | I have been on the same boat as you are right now. So basically, it depends on your goals, risk tolerance, upcoming life events! You want a plan not just for this particular 50K, but for your household assets and future earnings to come! My suggestion: Get a flat fee, online financial advisor to do the work for you. Yo... |
Why do shareholders participate in shorting stocks? | Why would a shareholder lend the investor the shares? Some brokers like IB will pay you to lend your shares: http://ibkb.interactivebrokers.com/node/1838 If you buy shares on margin, you don't have much of a choice. Your broker is allowed to lend your shares to short-sellers. |
Why is property investment good if properties de-valuate over time? | One reason for this is that many people don't simply allow their houses to rot and decay. If you're talking about a house built in 1980 and left vacant and unmaintained for 35 years, it probably will be in pretty poor shape. But a homeowner generally wants to preserve their house and maintain it in good condition, so ... |
Credit card grace period for pay, wait 1 day, charge? | You shouldn't be charged interest, unless possibly because your purchases involve a currency conversion. I've made normal purchases that happened to involve changes in currency. The prices were quoted in US$ to me. On the tail end, though, the currency change was treated as a cash advance, which accrues interest imme... |
How do public-company buyouts work? | As a TL;DR version of JAGAnalyst's excellent answer: the buying company doesn't need every last share; all they need is to get 51% of the voting bloc to agree to the merger, and to vote that way at a shareholder meeting. Or, if they can get a supermajority (90% in the US), they don't even need a vote. Usually, a buying... |
Is Bogleheadism (index fund investing) dead? | It's incredibly difficult to beat the market, especially after you're paying out significant fees for managed funds. The Bogleheads have some good things going for them on their low cost Vanguard style funds. The biggest winners in the financial markets are the people collecting fees from churn or setting up the deals ... |
What does “Settling your Debt” entail, and how does it compare to other options? | These agencies consolidate your debt and make it an easy monthly instalment for you. They also try to negotiate with credit cards. They do so for a fee. Other option is to not pay the debt. During this time , expect credit cards to keep sending you bills and reminders and ways to contact you. Once it is not paid for a ... |
Who can truly afford luxury cars? | I must say, I can't completely agree with the tone of most of these answers. I think there may be a good reason to buy a new car, or a luxurious used car. For years I drove old, second hand cars that were really cheap. and unreliable. I can't count the number of times I was left stranded because my car didn't start, ... |
How are stock buybacks not considered insider trading? | Companies already have to protect themselves against employees trading the company's shares with insider information. They typically do that in a number of ways: Taken together, this tends to mostly mitigate the risk of employees trading with insider information, though it's probably not perfect. In practice, the compa... |
What happens if a purchase is $0.02 in Canada? | I think it should be free. Why? I had a coupon for 35, I bought something for 35.01 including taxes and total to pay was 0.01, rounded to 0.00. I think it's almost the same scenario. |
How can I stop a merchant from charging a credit card processing fee? | You can report the violation to the payment network (i.e., Mastercard or Visa). For instance here is a report form for Visa and here is one for MasterCard. I just found those by googling; there are no doubt other ways of contacting the companies. Needless to say, you shouldn't expect that this will result in an immed... |
How much should I be contributing to my 401k given my employer's contribution? | JoeTapayer has good advice here. I would like to add my notes. If they give a 50% match that means you are getting a 50% return on investment(ROI) immediately. I do not know of a way to get a better guaranteed ROI. Next, when investing you need to determine what kind of investor you are. I would suggest you make yourse... |
How can I transfer and consolidate my 401k's and other options? | Every plan administrator has their own procedures for rollovers. In any case, you would start by browsing their website or calling them seeking information on rollover. You will need to arrange it with both your current and prior administrators. Usually the administrator will send the money directly to your current pla... |
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... |
Is there lesser or no tax on assets? | Tax Shield would be known as: A tax shield is a reduction in taxable income for an individual or corporation achieved through claiming allowable deductions such as mortgage interest, medical expenses, charitable donations, amortization and depreciation. These deductions reduce a taxpayer's taxable income for a ... |
How to safely exit a falling security? | If the stock is below its purchase price, there is no way to exit the position immediately without taking losses. Since presumably you had Good Reasons for buying that stock that haven't changed overnight, what you should probably do is just hold it and wait for the stock to come back up. Otherwise you're putting yours... |
What are the ins/outs of writing-off part of one's rent for working at home? | Before starting to do this, make sure that you are squeaky clean in all aspects of your tax preparation and are prepared to back up any claims that you make with documentation. Home office deductions are a huge red flag that often trigger audits. Follow mbhunter's advice and be incredibly meticulous about following the... |
How are Share Awards and Sales Treated? | You likely received the shares as ordinary income for services of $10k, since they withheld taxes at granting. Separately, you likely had a short term capital loss on sale of $2k, since your holding period seems to have been under one year. |
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... |
Is CFD a viable option for long-term trading? | Something really does seem seedy that if I invest $2500, that I'll make above 50k if the stock doubles. Is it really that easy? You only buy or sell on margin. Think of when the stock moves in the opposite direction. You will loose 50k. You probably didn't look into that. Investment will vanish and then you will have d... |
Credit card issued against my express refusal; What action can I take? | I believe it is so. It doesn't sound like they did anything outright illegal, just a pushy upsell. You can complain to the bank manager. If you want you can mention the employee by name (if you know who they are). Ultimately, you can change banks. From what you say it sounds like you are dissatisfied with this ban... |
Fund equalisation / dividend | Do all/most unit trusts have equalisation policy? It is really that some value of the fund is given to the investor, so the fund value goes down by that much per unit. It depends on the type of mutual funds. For example, there are growth type mutual funds that do not give any dividend and the total value of the fund is... |
UK Contractor with Limited Company | I know a guy on a much higher rate than me, about £500 per day, and he claims to pay around 18% tax which has me bewildered He will be showing expenses, which are deductible. Check with your accountant about expenses, which can be legally claimed as expenses. This is the main benefit of operating through a limited comp... |
Can expense ratios on investment options in a 401(k) plan contain part of the overall 401(k) plan fees? | I question the reliability of the information you received. Of course, it's possible the former 401(k) provider happened to charge lower expense ratios on its index funds than other available funds and lower the new provider's fees. There are many many many financial institutions and fees are not fixed between them. ... |
Why is being “upside down” on a mortgage so bad? | I can think of a few reasons why they seem like a bigger deal to people than similar situations with other loans. As you point out, though, being underwater on your home loan is a less serious condition than having large student loans and a poor paying job, for example. If the student loan situation ever comes to a he... |
Currently sole owner of a property. My girlfriend is looking to move in with me and is offering to pay 'rent'. Am I at risk here? | Edit #2 My whole answer was based on my misunderstanding that you were renting out a totally separate property to your girl friend. I finally understand now that you're renting out a room in YOUR apartment flat to your gf. So, based on my new understanding, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea. The answer below... |
Google Finance Cash Flow Statement | I'm a big believer in pulling the quarterly and or annual statements and deriving your own analysis. The automated parsing systems at Google, Yahoo, and others are a good starting point and they'll let you generally compare various metrics of different companies or market segments. With that in mind, there are any nu... |
Economics Books | The free Yale Course taught by Bob Shiller called Financial Markets is really good. Find it on youtube, iTunes U, academic earth, or yale's site. |
What actions should I be taking to establish good credit scores for my children? | Until they're old enough to be legally responsible for their own credit, the only thing you can really do is show them by example how to manage money and credit in your own finances. Teach them budgeting, immerse them in understanding how credit and financing work, and teach them smart ways to make their money work fo... |
My friend wants to put my name down for a house he's buying. What risks would I be taking? | If you really want to help your friend buy a house, make a counter-offer to buy the house yourself and lease it to your friend, with the option to buy for original purchase cost, plus all interest paid so far to the bank, plus closing costs and other expenses incurred by you, minus payments made so far by the friend. O... |
Exercises of employee share options | Many companies (particularly tech companies like Atlassian) grant their employees "share options" as part of their compensation. A share option is the right to buy a share in the company at a "strike price" specified when the option is granted. Typically these "vest" after 1-4 years so long as the employee stays with t... |
What is the relationship between the earnings of a company and its stock price? | I have heard that people say the greater earning means greater intrinsic value of the company. Then, the stock price is largely based on the intrinsic value. So increasing intrinsic value due to increasing earning will lead to increasing stock price. Does this make sense ? Yes though it may be worth dissecting ... |
Can after-hours trading affect options pricing? | Typically the settlement price for a financial instrument (such as AAPL stock) underlying a derivative contract is determined from the average price of trading in that instrument during some short time window specified by the exchange offering the derivative. (Read the fine print on your contract to learn the exact da... |
What should I be doing to protect myself from identity theft? | http://annualcreditreport.com gives you free access to your 3 credit bureau records. (Annual, not "free". The "free" guys will try to sell you something.) |
How do I screen for stocks that are near to their 52 weeks low | Although is not online, I use a standalone version from http://jstock.sourceforge.net It got drag-n-drop boxes, to let me design my own indicators. However, it only contain technical analysis information, not fundamental analysis information. It does come with tutorial http://jstock.sourceforge.net/help_stock_indicator... |
Should I deduct or capitalize the cost to replace a water heater in my rental property? (details Below) | If you're repairing an existing appliance - its an expense. If you're replacing an existing appliance with a new one - that's disposing of one capital asset and putting in service another. You depreciate the new one and you dispose of the old one (if not fully depreciated - talk to your tax adviser how to handle the re... |
Personal Asset Protection - How to protect asset against a deficiency judgement? | You should talk to a bankruptcy attorney local to you. While bankruptcy laws are federal, there are a variety of local rules. As an example in CA, I've heard of a trustee going after a debtor's IRA account. Retirement accounts are generally off limits, but not always. Additionally, structuring your assets for the pu... |
If stock price drops by the amount of dividend paid, what is the use of a dividend | You buy stocks for dividends over the long term. If a share of stock pays $1.00 in dividends every quarter, that's four dollars a year. If you bought it for $40, it pays out $4 in a year, and it's still worth roughly $40 at the end of the year, you're $4 richer. People will often invest large amounts of money in sta... |
Do I make money in the stock market from other people losing money? | The stock market is no different in this respect to anything that's bought or sold. The price of a stock like many other things reflects what the seller is prepared to sell it at and what the buyer is prepared to offer for it. If those things match then a transaction can take place. The seller loses money but gains sto... |
Does the stock market create any sort of value? | I probably don't understand something. I think you are correct about that. :) The main way money enters the stock market is through investors investing and taking money out. Money doesn't exactly "enter" the stock market. Shares of stock are bought and sold by investors to investors. The market is just a mechanism f... |
List of web sites or online forums for stock picking and security analysis | This is a great forum, mostly focused around mutual funds though: http://www.bogleheads.org/ |
Job Offer - Explain Stock Options [US] | There are a few other items that you should be aware of when getting options: The strike price is usually determined by an independent valuation of the common shares (called a 409a valuation). This should give you a sense on what the options are worth. Obviously you are hoping that the value becomes many multiple of th... |
How to reconcile performance with dividends? | You didn't identify the fund but here is the most obvious way: Some of the stocks they owned could had dividends. Therefore they would have had to pass them on to the investors. If the fund sold shares of stocks, they could have capital gains. They would have sold stocks to pay investors who sold shares. They also coul... |
How does shorting ETFs work? What are the costs and tax implications? | No, the expense ratio would be something you wouldn't be charged. If you bought shares of the ETF long, then the dividends are usually reduced by the expense ratio if you wanted to know where to find that charge in general. You would have to make up for any dividends the underlying stocks as part of general shorting si... |
How do rich people guarantee the safety of their money, when savings exceed the FDIC limit? | Most people who have over $250,000 in liquid cash savings would not want to start putting their money into regular savings accounts in different banks, especially with interest rates as ridiculously low as they are now in 2014-15. People with money will want to diversify their investments in ways that will potentially... |
Can I use balance transfer to buy car? | You do not say what country you are in. This is an answer for readers in the UK. Most normal balance transfer deals are only for paying off other credit cards. However there are "money transfer" deals that will pay the money direct to your bank account. The deals aren't as good as balance transfer deals but they are of... |
Small investing for spending money? | The existing answers are good, I justed wanted to provide a simpler answer to your question: Would I be able to invest this in a reasonable way that it would provide me with say $200 spending money per month over the school year? No. There is no way to invest $10,000 to reliably get $200 every month. Any way that you ... |
Do Banks Cause Inflation? What are other possible causes? | No, it isn't generally believed that inflation is caused by individual banks printing money. Governments manage money supply through Central Banks (which may, or may not, be independent of the state). There are a number of theories about money supply and inflation (from Monetarist, to Keynesian, and so on). The Quanti... |
Consolidate my debt? Higher APR, but what does that actually mean? | No. It means each month the total amount you owe goes up by a factor of (1+0.298/12). So if you owed $23K at the beginning of the month, at the end you owe a total of 23K*1.0248=$23,571. Then subtract the $804 you are paying. If you want to think of it in terms of interest and principal, you are paying $571 a month... |
Looking to buy a house in 1-2 years. Does starting a Roth IRA now make sense? | Lets do the math (assuming a lot of stuff, like your interest rates and that you make the contribution at the beginning of the year, also your tax bracket at the withdrawal time frame.) 1.) Beginning of year 1 Roth Option $5k contribution Non Roth Option $5k contribution 2.) Beginning of year 2 Roth Option $5000 + $150... |
What are the fundamental levels that makes a Stock Ideal? (either to sell or buy) | I look at the following ratios and how these ratios developed over time, for instance how did valuation come down in a recession, what was the trough multiple during the Lehman crisis in 2008, how did a recession or good economy affect profitability of the company. Valuation metrics: Enterprise value / EBIT (EBIT = ope... |
How can I figure out how a stock's price would change after I buy shares? | Stock price is based on supply and demand. Unless the stock you are looking to buy usually has very low volume trading 100 shares isn't likely to have any effect on price. There are many companies that have millions or tens of millions of shares trade daily. For stocks like that 100 shares is barely a trivial percentag... |
Where can I open a Bank Account in Canadian dollars in the US? | Give Harris Bank a call; they might be able to help you As of August 21, 2015, Harris bank does NOT offer Canadian dollar accounts in the U.S. |
Does high inflation help or hurt companies with huge cash reserves? | Inflation is bad for people with lots of cash assets. It's good for debtors, particularly debtors with unsecured debt. |
Is it worth it to buy TurboTax Premier over Deluxe if I sold investments in a taxable account? | I have used turbo tax for years. Apart from the snafu in 2014, I have had no problem using deluxe, and I have lots of asset sales to report. I prefer form mode anyway. I can import the data from my broker, and I can e-file with no problem. So the only thing I'm missing is the support. I can usually find answers to ... |
How to diversify IRA portfolio given fund minimum investments and IRA contribution limits? | There are fund of funds,e.g. life cycle funds or target retirement funds, that could cover a lot of these with an initial investment that one could invest into for a few years and then after building up a balance large enough, then it may make sense to switch to having more control. |
What are “upstream investments” and “downstream investments” in this context? | Upstream is into businesses that supply the original business; downstream is into businesses that make use of the original product. So in that description, what they are saying is that the original business received products from plantations and sent products to manufacturing. This is also called vertical integration.... |
Pay for a cheap car or take out a loan? | If you buy a new car, the odds that it will require repairs are fairly low, and if it does, they should be covered by the warranty. If you buy a used car, there is a fair chance that it will need some sort of repairs, and there probably is no warranty. But think about how much repairs are likely to cost. A new car thes... |
How to account for personal baby sitter? | You said your mother-in-law lives with you. Does she pay rent, or are you splitting the cost of housing? That would also have to figured into the equation. If you had a business you would now have to declare the expense on your business taxes. This would also then be income for her, which she would have to account for... |
How does a stock operate when it is listed between two exchanges? | Say a stock is listed in Nasdaq, and the same company has a stock listed in Tsx. Does the Nasdaq price affect the Tsx price as trading commences? Not directly. Basically, an exchange is a market, and the price is defined only by supply and demand in that market. However, any substantial price differential for a commodi... |
Can I prove having savings without giving out the account number? | Ask your bank to write a letter asserting that you have $xxxxx on deposit with them, on their letterhead? Though realistically, the chance of your getting hit with identity theft In this situation, when you presumably know exactly who you're dealing with, are vanishingly small. |
For very high-net worth individuals, does it make sense to not have insurance? | The point about insurance is solidarity. Think about this: In London a few hundred years ago people first started insuring their houses against fire. There were several insurance companies, and if you used one you got a marker on your house. So if your house caught fire they would come and check, and they would put the... |
ESPP advantages and disadvantages | Advantage: more money. The financial tradeoff is usually to your benefit: Given these, for having your money locked up for the average length of the vesting periods (some is locked up for 3 months, some is locked up for nearly 0), you get a 10% return. Overall, it's like a 1.5% bonus for the year, assuming you were t... |
Is there any reason to buy shares before/after a split? | Assuming you plan to buy a whole number of shares and have a maximum dollar value you intend to invest, it may be better to wait for the split if the figures don't quite work out nicely. For example, if you are going to invest $1,000 and the stock pre-split is $400 and the split is 2 for 1, then you'd buy 2 shares befo... |
In a competitive market, why is movie theater popcorn expensive? | People have moods, that mean they don't have the same level of demand for luxuries every day. There might be some days when I'm feeling a bit poor, or feel like I need to save money, and the price I'm prepared to pay for a box of popcorn might be 50c. There might be other days, for example, the day after I receive my... |
What U.S. banks offer two-factor authentication (such as password & token) for online banking? | E*Trade offers banking services, and will provide you with a security token free if you have sufficient assets there ($50,000). Otherwise they'll charge you a $25 fee. |
Why is RSU tax basis based on remaining shares after shares are witheld? | You only got 75 shares, so your basis is the fair market value of the stock as of the grant date times the number of shares you got: $20*75. Functionally, it's the same thing as if your employer did this: As such, the basis in that stock is $1,500 ($20*75). The other 25 shares aren't yours and weren't ever yours, so t... |
What one bit of financial advice do you wish you could've given yourself five years ago? | Planned my grocery shopping better. You can't just wake up on Saturday hungry go to the grocer and buy what looks good. Take the time to clip some coupons and more importantly make a shopping list. |
What would be the signs of a bubble in silver? | In my opinion, you're in a precious metals "bubble" when rising prices are driven by the people's desire the own the commodity without a reason other than "the market is going up". Usually "bubble" markets are fueled by lots of debt. IMO, this isn't a bubble. I don't think that silver and gold values are shooting up li... |
Is investing exlusively in a small-cap index fund a wise investment? | If the OP is saving 33% if his/her current income, he/she doesn't want or need yet more income from investments right now. The advice on "diversifying" in the other answers is the standard "investment advisor" response to beginner's questions, and has two advantages for the advisor: (1) they won't get sued for giving b... |
Paid credit card bill, but money didn't leave my checking account [duplicate] | The fact that your credit card has seen the payment is strong evidence that the transaction did in fact take place. But it's not unusual for there to be a delay of one or two business days before transactions show up in your online banking records. Saturday and Sunday are not business days. I bet you will see it on... |
In the event of a corporate spin-off, how can I calculate the correct cost basis for each company's shares? | Having all of the numbers you posted is a start. It's what you need to perform the calculation. The final word, however, comes from the company itself, who are required to issue a determination on how the spin-off is valued. Say a company is split into two. Instead of some number of shares of each new company, imagine... |
Td Ameritrade Roth IRA question | Since you're 20-30 years out of retirement, you should be 90% to 100% in stocks, and in one or two broad stock market funds likely. I'm not sure about the minimums at TD Ameritrade, but at Vanguard even $3k will get you into the basic funds. One option is the Targeted Retirement Year funds, which automatically rebalanc... |
Who buys variable annuities? | There is always some fine print, read it. I doubt there is any product out there that can guarantee an 8% return. As a counter example - a 70 yr old can get 6% in a fixed immediate annuity. On death, the original premium is retained by the insurance company. Whenever I read the prospectus of a VA, I find the actual m... |
Should I pay off my car loan within the year? | Personally, I don't think that the interest from the car loan is worth the credit history you're building through it. There are other ways to build credit that don't require you to pay interest, like the credit card you mentioned (so long as you keep paying off the balance). So I'd go that route: ditch the auto loan an... |
Advice on low-risk long-term strategy for extra cash? | You can buy dividend stocks, just buy and hold. you will get cash or extra stock every quarter. You can also sell covered calls on your dividend stocks, this will give you even more cash. you can also... actually this rabbit hole goes very deep. just stick with my first sentence. |
What's a good free checking account? | Online banks are the future. As long as you don't need a clerk to talk to (and why would you need?) there's nothing you can't do with an online bank that you can with a brick and mortar robbers. I use E*Trade trading account as a checking account (it allows writing paper checks, debit card transactions, ACH in/out, fre... |
Who can truly afford luxury cars? | It comes down to individual priorities. Some people prefer to spend their money on a luxury car or SUV, rather than on computer gear, a bigger house, having three extra kids, eating in restaurants, or whatever. Some people are quite happy to take out a loan to get more expensive products, and service that loan over se... |
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