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Employer options when setting up 401k for employees | If you were looking to maximize your ability to save in a qualified plan, why not setup a 401K plan in Company A and keep the SEP in B? Setup the 401K in A such that any employee can contribute 100% of their salary. Then take a salary for around 19K/year (assuming under age 50), so you can contribute and have enough to cover SS taxes. Then continue to move dividends to Company A, and continue the SEP in B. This way if you are below age 50, you can contribute 54K (SEP limit) + 18K (IRA limit) + 5500 (ROTH income dependent) to a qualified plan. |
Recent college grad. Down payment on a house or car? | As a car guy, I wouldn't spend 27 large on anything that wasn't "special" - you'll be looking at for at least the duration of the loan and for me it'll better be very special lest I get bored with it during that time. But that's just me. If you want a transport appliance - spend around $5k-$7k on a decent used vehicle, pay it off within a couple of years or less and keep throwing money at your downpayment. Now if you have any student loan debt, buy a $3k car, learn how to fix it if necessary and pay off the millstone, err, student loan ASAP. |
Yahoo finance vs SEC filings fundamentals | Sure, Yahoo Finance makes mistakes from time to time. That's the nature of free data. However, I think the issue here is that yahoo is aggregating several line items into one. Like maybe reporting cash equivalents plus total investment securities minus loans as "cash equivalents." This aggregation is done by a computer program somewhere and may or may not be appropriate for a particular purpose and firm. For this reason, if you are trying to do top quality research, it's always better to go to the original SEC filings, if you can. Then you will know for sure which items you are looking at. The only mistakes will be the ones made by the accountants at the firm in question. If there's a reason you prefer to use yahoo, like if it's easier for your code to scrape, then spend a little time comparing to the SEC filing to ensure you know where the numbers really come from before using it. |
Why is gold not a good investment? | Gold since the ancient time ( at least when it was founded) has kept its value. for example the french franc currency was considered valuable in the years 1400~ but in 1641 lost its value. However who owned Gold back then still got value. The advantage of having gold is you can convert it to cash easily in the world. it hedges against inflation: it is value rise when inflation happend. Gold has no income,no earnings. its not like a stock or a bond. its an alternative way to store value the Disadvantages of investing in Gold Gold doesnt return income , needs physical storage and insurance, Capital gains tax rates are higher on most gold investments. the best way to invest gold when there is inflation is expected. source |
splitting a joint mortgage - one owner in home | Get a lawyer to put this in contract form, with everything spelled out explicitly. What is fair is what the two of you agree upon. My own suggestion: Divide the property into things which are yours, his, and shared, then have each of you be responsible for all your costs plus half the shared costs, but get all the benefits of your half. That would mean that if he rents out his half, all the rental income is his; if you decide to live in your half, all the savings of not paying rent are yours. Each of you pays your half of mortgage, insurance, and other shared costs. Repairs to shared infrastructure should be done by someone both of you trust. If you agree the work is needed and he does it rather than your hiring someone, you owe him the appropriate percentage of the costs; the two of you will need to agree on whether you owe him for that percentage of his time as well. Make sure you agree on some mechanism for one person offering to buy the other out, or to sell their half to the other party... or potentially to someone else entirely. (Personally, I would try to do that at soonest opportunity, to avoid some of the ways this can go wrong -- see past comments about the hazards of guaranteeing a loan; this works or doesn't work similarly.) Does that address your question? |
Credit Card Purchase - 'it is the bank's money no[t] yours' ? | Yes, they're referring to the credit card dispute (chargeback) process. In the case of dispute, credit card company will refund/freeze your charge so you don't have to pay until the dispute is resolved (or at all, if resolved in your favor). If the dispute is resolved in your favor, your credit card company will charge back the merchant's service provider which in turn will charge back (if it can) the merchant itself. So the one taking the most risk in this scenario is the merchant provider, this is why merchants that are high risk pay significantly higher fees or get dropped. |
$200k in an IRA, unallocated. What's the safest investment? | The safest investment is probably a money market fund [originally I said a TIPS fund but they appear to be riskier than I had thought]. But you might not want to invest everything there because the returns are not going to be great. High returns come with high risk. The best portfolio has some percentage (which may be 0) of your money in a safe asset like a money market and some in a risky portfolio (this percentage may also be zero for some people). You should consult your own risk aversion and decide how much money to put in each. If you are super risk-averse, put almost all of it in the money market. If you want a little more return, put more of it in the risky portfolio. This is a fundamental result of finance theory. What's the risky asset? A fully diversified portfolio of bonds and stocks. People don't agree on exactly what the weights should be. The rule of thumb back in the day was 60% stock and 40% bonds. These days lots of financial planners recommend 120 minus your age in stock and the rest in bonds. But no one really knows what the perfect weights in the risky portfolio should be (the rules of thumb I just gave have little or no theoretical foundation) so you have to choose for yourself what you think makes sense. |
The U.S. National Debt: What is it, where did it come from, and how does it work? | nan |
Covered calls: How to handle this trade? | Your broker likely didn't close your position out because it is a covered position. Why interfere with a trade that has no risk to it, from their perspective? There's no risk for the broker since your account holds the shares available for delivery (definition of covered), for if and when the options you wrote (sold) are exercised. And buyers of those options will eventually exercise the options (by expiration) if they remain in-the-money. There's only a chance that an option buyer exercises prematurely, and usually they don't because there's often time value left in the option. That the option buyer has an (ahem) "option" to exercise is a very key point. You wrote: "I fully expected my position to be automatically liquidated by whoever bought my call". That's a false assumption about the way options actually work. I suggest some study of the option exercise FAQs here: Perhaps if your position were uncovered – i.e. you wrote the call without owning the stock (don't try this at home, kids!) – and you also had insufficient margin to cover such a short position, then the broker might have justifiably liquidated your position. Whereas, in a covered call situation, there's really no reason for them to want to interfere – and I would consider that interference, as opposed to helpful. The situation you've described is neither risky for them, nor out of the ordinary. It is (and should be) completely up to you to decide how to close out the position. Anyway, your choices generally are: |
Are COBRA premiums deductible when self-employed? | When you take the self employed health care deduction on on Line 29 of form 1040 for 2010 it also will lower your self employment tax. See line 3 of Schedule SE. You report your net earnings from self employment less line 29 from 1040. |
How can I make a profit by selling a stock short? | Being "long" - expecting the price to go up to make a profit - is a two step process: 1) buy 2) sell Being "short" - expecting the price to go down to make a profit - is a 5 step process: 1) borrow someone else's asset 2) sell their asset on the open market to somebody else a third party 3) pocket the proceeds of the sell for your own account 4) buy an identical asset for a cheaper price 5) return this identical asset to the person that let you borrow their asset if this is successful you keep the difference between 3) and 4) |
How separate individual expenses from family expenses in Gnucash? | These sort of issues in structuring your personal finances relative to expenses can get complicated quickly, as your example demonstrates. I would recommend a solution that reduces duplication as much as possible- and depending on what information you're interested in tracking you could set it up in very different ways. One solution would be to create virtual sub accounts of your assets, and to record the source of money rather than the destination. Thus, when you do an expense report, you can limit on the "his" or "hers" asset accounts, and see only the expenses which pertain to those accounts (likewise for liabilities/credit cards). If, on the other hand, you're more interested in a running sum of expenses- rather than create "Me" and "Spouse" accounts at every leaf of the expense tree, it would make much more sense to create top level accounts for Expenses:His:etc and Expenses:Hers:etc. Using this model, you could create only the sub expense accounts that apply for each of your spending (with matching account structures for common accounts). |
Is Amazon's offer of a $50 gift card a scam? | The 'store card' that Amazon offers gives 5% back on Amazon purchases. Some time ago, when I realized how much of my spending was going through Amazon, I chose that card over this one. If you want the card, that's fine, but if you are going to play the reward game, there are far higher bonuses available for card signups. No, it's not a scam. Many stores will offer a discount at the register the day you sign up for there card. In general, the store cards should also give a discount when used at that store, or airline for that matter. |
Am I considered in debt if I pay a mortgage? | Yes. A mortgage is a kind of debt. Someone lends you money to buy your house, and you owe them the money, so you have debt. |
View asset/holdings breakdown within fund | The full holdings will be listed in the annual report of the fund, obviously the holdings would only be completely accurate as of the date of the reporting. This is the most recent annual report for FMAGX. I got it from my Schwab research section under "All Fund Documents" but I'm sure you can find it other ways. When I use google to search for "fmagx annual report" this link was the first result. |
I have $10,000 sitting in an account making around $1 per month interest, what are some better options? | Based on your question, I am going to assume your criterion are: Based on these, I believe you'd be interested in a different savings account, a CD, or money market account. Savings account can get you up to 1.3% and money market accounts can get up to 1.5%. CDs can get you a little more, but they're a little trickier. For example, a 5 year CD could get up to 2%. However, now you're money is locked away for the next few years, so this is not a good option if this money is your emergency fund or you want to use it soon. Also, if interest rates increase then your money market and savings accounts' interest rates will increase but your CD's interest rate misses out. Conversely, if interest rates drop, you're still locked into a higher rate. |
Why does Warren Buffett say his fund performance, relatively, is likely to be better in a bear market than in a bull market? | To understand his comments about bear-market performance it's important to take them in context. (My research method was Crtl+F: bear; read around the highlights. This is not a complete survey of 60+ years of letters.) In his earlier letters, statements about bull market performance are always made in reference to Buffet's belief that many of BH's current holdings are in undervalued securities. Ex: To the extent possible, therefore, I am attempting to create my own work-outs by acquiring large positions in several undervalued securities. Such a policy should lead to the fulfillment of my earlier forecast – an above average performance in a bear market. It is on this basis that I hope to be judged (p 6; emphasis mine). Similar statements are made throughout the earlier letters, along with this interesting note: In a year when the general market had a substantial advance I would be well satisfied to match the advance of the Averages (p 6). So to your question of why BH fund performance is likely to be better in a bear market than in a bull market, I believe the implicit assertion is that undervalued securities are more resilient in a bear market (presumably because they don't have as far to fall, and are also less likely to be subject to a bubble). Buffet is also explicitly asserting that when facing a choice to either (a) position BH to weather a possible downturn or (b) position BH to enjoy a bullish stock that is outpacing the market, he would choose the former over the later. As to your assertion that he always says this, I can find no reference to bear market's in the letters past 1960. |
Help required on estimating SSA benefit amounts | The social security administration has a webpage to get your Social Security estimate. It replaces the yearly estimate they used to mail everybody. It shows the amount you paid for social security and medicare and what they estimate you will receive at your retirement age. They also discuss disability benefits. Everybody should do this every year. Though it does take a few months to get the previous years numbers updated into the system. If you notice a problem with the money they think you paid into the system in a particular year, you can send them an old W-2 and get the numbers corrected. |
How can I detect potential fraud in a company before investing in them? | Most of the information we get about how a company is running its business, in any market, comes from the company. If the information is related to financial statements, it is checked by an external audit, and then provided to the public through official channels. All of these controls are meant to make it very unlikely for a firm to commit fraud or to cook its books. In that sense the controls are successful, very few firms provide fraudulent information to the public compared with the thousands of companies that list in stock markets around the world. Now, there is still a handful of firms that have committed fraud, and it is probable that a few firms are committing fraud right now. But, these companies go to great lengths to keep information about their fraud hidden from both the public and the authorities. All of these factors contribute to such frauds being black swan events to the outside observer. A black swan event is an event that is highly improbable, impossible to foresee with the information available before the event (it can only be analyzed in retrospect), and it has very large impact. The classification of an event as a black swan depends on your perspective. E.g. the Enron collapse was not as unexpected to the Enron executives as it was to its investors. You cannot foresee black swan events, but there are a few strategies that allow you to insure yourself against them. One such strategy is buying out of the money puts in the stocks where you have an investment, the idea being that in the event of a crash - due to fraud or whatever other reason - the profits in your puts would offset the loses on the stock. This strategy however suffers from time and loses a little money every day that the black swan doesn't show up, thanks to theta decay. So while it is not possible to detect fraud before investing, or at least not feasible with the resources and information available to the average investor, it is possible to obtain some degree of protection against it, at a cost. Whether that cost is too high or not, is the million dollar question. |
Is a “total stock market” index fund diverse enough alone? | I don't think you are missing much, if anything, Brendan. You get massive diversification and low fees with a fund like VTI. I'm not sure if it is good to have everything with only one broker though. I would add to the conversation that the goal shouldn't be to have a giant pile of money in x years..and then spend it down in retirement. A much better/safer goal is to have enough dividends being generated that you never have to touch your capital. Looks like you are starting young so congrats. |
Is it common in the US not to pay medical bills? | In addition to the good answers already provided, I want to point out that many (most?) providers will handle filing your health insurance claim for you even though it's really your responsibility. So here's how medical bills "you don't have to pay" might come about: * It's possible that your balance is $4, or $20, or $65, or even still $100 depending on your particular insurance plan. Whatever is left at this step is what you pay. |
Getting started in stock with one special field of activity | I don't think investing in only one industry, which you may know well, is very wise. You may want to invest in that industry but you should not restrict yourself from investing solely in that industry. There are many times when your chosen industry may not be performing very well and other industries are performing much better. If you restrict yourself to just one industry you may be either out of the market for long periods of time or your portfolio may show negative returns for extended periods of time. You may want to know an industry or a number of companies very well but do not fall in love with them. The worst thing you can do is get emotional about an investment, an investment is there to make you money not for you to get emotional about. Don't restrict yourself, instead look to maximise your returns with investments that are performing better at the time. |
2008-2009 Stock Market Crash — what caused the second drop? | First, I would like to use a better chart. In my opinion, a close of day line chart obscures a lot of important information. Here is a daily OHLC log chart: The initial drop from the 1099.23 close on Oct 3 was to 839.8 intraday, to close at 899.22 on Oct 10. After this the market was still very volatile and reached a low of 747.78 on Nov 20, closing only slightly higher than this. It traded as high as 934.70 on Jan 6, 2009, but the whole period of Nov 24 - Feb 13 was somewhat of a trading range of roughly 800-900. Despite this, the news reports of the time were frequently saying things like "this isn't going to be a V shaped recovery, it is going to be U shaped." The roughly one week dip you see Feb 27 - Mar 9 taking it to an intraday low of 666.79 (only about 11% below the previous low) on first glance appears to be just a continuation of the previous trend. However... The Mar 10 uptrend started with various news articles (such as this one) which I recall at the time suggested things like reinstating the parts of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 which had been repealed by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. Although these attempts appear to have been unsuccessful, the widespread telegraphing of such attempts in the media seemed to have reversed a common notion which I saw widespread on forums and other places that, "we are going to be in this mess forever, the market has nowhere to go but down, and therefore shorting the market is a good idea now." I don't find the article itself, but one prominent theme was the "up-tick" rule on short selling: source From this viewpoint, then, that the last dip was driven not so much by a recognition that the economy was really in the toilet (as this really was discounted in the first drop and at least by late November had already been figured into the price). Instead, it was sort of the opposite of a market top, where now you started seeing individual investors jump on the band-wagon and decide that now was the time for a foray into selling (short). The fact that the up-tick rule was likely to be re-instated had a noticeable effect on halting the final slide. |
How does a company select a particular price for its shares? | First, keep in mind that there are generally 2 ways to buy a corporation's shares: You can buy a share directly from the corporation. This does not happen often; it usually happens at the Initial Public Offering [the first time the company becomes "public" where anyone with access to the stock exchange can become a part-owner], plus maybe a few more times during the corporations existence. In this case, the corporation is offering new ownership in exchange for a price set the corporation (or a broker hired by the corporation). The price used for a public offering is the highest amount that the company believes it can get - this is a very complicated field, and involves many different methods of evaluating what the company should be worth. If the company sets the price too low, then they have missed out on possible value which would be earned by the previous, private shareholders (they would have gotten the same share % of a corporation which would now have more cash to spend, because of increased money paid by new shareholders). If the company sets the price too high, then the share subscription might only be partially filled, so there might not be enough cash to do what the company wanted. You can buy a share from another shareholder. This is more common - when you see the company's share price on the stock exchange, it is this type of transaction - buying out other current shareholders. The price here is simply set based on what current owners are willing to sell at. The "Bid Price" listed by an exchange is the current highest bid that a purchaser is offering for a single share. The "Ask Price" is the current lowest offer that a seller is offering to sell a single share they currently own. When the bid price = the ask price, a share transaction happens, and the most recent stock price changes. |
super confused about bid and ask size. help | yes you are right as per my understanding while doing trade you must consider fol (specially for starters like me) The volume of the stock you are trading in should be high enough to keep you secure for quick in and out Whenever the bid volume is more than the ask volume the prices will move up and vice versa. to give an example if a stock is at 100 points and there are fol bids: The transaction will occur when either the bidder agrees to pay the ask price (case 1. he pays 101 . his bid offer will disappear and the next best ask will be 102. and the current price will be 101 which was the last transaction.) or when the person giving ask price agrees to deal at best bid which was 99 in which case the share will go down. |
Why do people take out life insurance on their children? Should I take out a policy on my child? | As you say life insurance is about covering the loss of income, so unless your child is an actor or musical prodigy or similar and already earning money, there is no income to cover, and in fact you would have less of a financial commitment without a child to provide for. The other angle is that child life insurance is cheap and they'll have lower premiums than an adult. I'll quote the referenced article directly to address that: Another ploy is that children's life insurance is cheap. It is inexpensive compared to adult life insurance because, plain and simply, children rarely die. While the numbers that the sales agent puts together may make children's life insurance sound like a great deal, take the time to run what you'd have if you instead invested the exact same amount used on the insurance fees into a Roth IRA and you'll find the true cost of purchasing this type of life insurance. |
Individual Client or Customer fining or charging a Company a penalty fee | What's the primary factor keeping a consumer from handing out fees as liberally as corporations or small businesses do? Power. Can an individual, or more appropriately, what keeps an individual from being able to charge, fine or penalize a Business? If it could be accomplished, but at a high cost, let's assume it's based on principal and not monetary gain. And have a legal entitlement to money back? No. You are of course welcome to send your doctor a letter stating that you would like $50 to make up for your two hour wait last time around, but there's no legal obligation for him to pay up, unless he signed a contract stating that he would do so. Corporations also cannot simply send you a fine or fee and expect you to pay it; you must have either agreed to pay it in the past, or now agree to pay it in exchange for something. In these cases, the corporations have the power: you have to agree to their rules to play ball. However, consumers do have a significant power as well, in well-competed markets: the power to do business with someone else. You don't like the restocking fee? Buy from Amazon, which offers free shipping on returns. You don't like paying a no-show fee from the doctor? Find a doctor without one (or with a more forgiving fee), or with a low enough caseload that you don't have to make appointments early. Your ability to fine them exists as your ability to not continue to patronize them. In some markets, though, consumers don't have a lot of power - for example, cable television (or other utilities). The FCC has a list of Customer Service Standards, which cable companies are required to meet, and many states have additional rules requiring penalties for missed or late appointments tougher than that. And, in the case of the doctor, if your doctor is late - find one that is. Or, try sending him a bill. It does, apparently, work from time to time - particularly if the doctor wants to keep your business. |
Is it easier for brokers to find shares to short in premarket? | The shares available to short are a portion of those shares held by the longs. This number is actually much easier to determine outside of active trading hours, but either way doesn't really impact the matter at hand since computers are pretty good at counting things. If your broker is putting up obstacles to your issuing sell short limit orders in the pre-market then there is likely some other reason (maybe they reserve that function to "premium" account holders?) |
If early exercise is a bad idea, why American option is more expensive than European [duplicate] | There are a few situations in which it may be advantageous to exercise early. Wikipedia actually has a good explanation: Option Style, Difference in value To account for the American's higher value there must be some situations in which it is optimal to exercise the American option before the expiration date. This can arise in several ways, such as: An in the money (ITM) call option on a stock is often exercised just before the stock pays a dividend that would lower its value by more than the option's remaining time value. A put option will usually be exercised early if the underlying asset files for bankruptcy.[3] A deep ITM currency option (FX option) where the strike currency has a lower interest rate than the currency to be received will often be exercised early because the time value sacrificed is less valuable than the expected depreciation of the received currency against the strike. An American bond option on the dirty price of a bond (such as some convertible bonds) may be exercised immediately if ITM and a coupon is due. A put option on gold will be exercised early when deep ITM, because gold tends to hold its value whereas the currency used as the strike is often expected to lose value through inflation if the holder waits until final maturity to exercise the option (they will almost certainly exercise a contract deep ITM, minimizing its time value).[citation needed] |
What kind of life insurance is cheaper? I'm not sure about term vs. whole vs. universal, etc | TL;DR: Only term is pure insurance and is the cheapest. The rest are mixtures of insurance and savings/investment. Typically the mixtures are not as efficient as doing it yourself, except that there can be tax advantages as well as the ability to borrow from your policy in some cases. |
Can dues and subscriptions expenses be deducted 100% to calculate taxable income in an LLC company? | IRS Publication 529 is the go-to document. Without being a tax professional, I'd say if the dues and subscriptions help you in the running of your business, then they're deductible. You're on your own if you take my advice (or don't). ;) |
Free cash flow and capex on morningstar.com | Free Cash Flow (FCF) is not a metric/data point which represents any ACTUAL cash flow of a company. FCF is a data point which communicates how much cash a company has after Operating cash requirements and cash expenditures "required" to grow and maintain the existing business. FCF can be used to pay dividends, buy back stock, purchase companies, et cetera. None of which are REQUIRED to run the business. |
Is there a bank account that allows ACH deposits but not ACH withdrawals? | Nowadays, all checks you write will not be send to your bank anymore, but instead the bank where they get deposited does an ACH from your bank. That implies that not allowing this to happen, your bank would not be able to honor any checks you wrote (without enforcing paper check delivery in the mail, but the Check21 bill does not allow such enforcing anymore). Basically, your bank would not be able to do business with anyone. The obvious conclusion is that no such bank exists. |
Is giving my girlfriend money for her mortgage closing costs and down payment considered fraud? | you have 2 concerns: the lender and the irs. either way you should be fine the lender just wants to know that you have no legal claim to the property or other compensation. simply signing a gift declaration should clear that up, making this a "gift" from their perspective. they probably have some standard form you can sign. otherwise, just a simple note that says "i, so-and-so, gave whats-er-name x$ on the y of june, 20## as a gift, with no expectation of repayment". then, only way you could get charged with "fraud" is if you seek compensation for this "gift" in the future. even then, the bank would probably have to find out about the compensation and complain pretty strongly to get a prosecutor interested in a small dollar misrepresentation case with little or no provable intent. a bigger concern is the bank being uncomfortable with the future renter also giving a gift. that just "smells weird". and bankers hate anything weird. it probably won't prevent the mortgage from getting approved, but it might delay the underwriters a few days while the wring their hands about it. the irs is a bit more complicated. they tend to be the "heads we win, tails you lose" types. assuming they consider this a gift, then you are fine, since it is under the annual gift exclusion (~14k$ these days); you don't even have to tell them about it. however, if she gives you a large financial gift in the near future, they may decide to interpret those two events as a single transaction turning this into a no interest loan. even then, you should be fine since the irs generally doesn't care about loans under 100k$ with "missing" interest under 1k$/yr. since this is a small loan and interest rates are so low, you have no worries. further irs reading on gift loans: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7872 |
Why does my bank suddenly need to know where my money comes from? | Banks have a financial, and regulational duty called "Know your customer", established to avoid a number of historical problems occurring again, such as money laundering, terrorism financing, fraud, etc. Thanks to the scale, and scope of the problem (millions of customers, billions of transactions a day), the way they're handling this usually involves fuzzy logics matching, looking for irregular patterns, problem escalation, and other warning signs. When exceeding some pre-set limit, these signal clues are then filtered, and passed on for human inspection. Needless to say, these algorithms are not perfect, although, thanks to financial pressure, they are improving. In order to understand why your trading account has been suspended, it's useful to look at the incentives: false positives -suspending your trade, and assuming you guilty until proven otherwise- could cost them merely your LTV (lifetime value of customer -how much your business brings in as profit); while false negatives -not catching you while engaging in activities listed above- might cost them multi-month investigations, penalties, and court. Ultimately, this isn't against you. I've been with the bank for 15 years and the money in the accounts has been very slowly accumulated via direct-deposit paychecks over that time. From this I gather the most likely explanation, is that you've hit somekind of account threshold, that the average credit-happy customers usually do not exceed, which triggered a routine checkup. How do you deal with it? Practice puppetry! There is only one way to survive angry customers emotionally: you have to realize that they’re not angry at you; they’re angry at your business, and you just happen to be a convenient representative of that business. And since they’re treating you like a puppet, an iconic stand-in for the real business, you need to treat yourself as a puppet, too. Pretend you’re a puppeteer. The customer is yelling at the puppet. They’re not yelling at you. They’re angry with the puppet. Your job is to figure out, “gosh, what can I make the puppet say that will make this person a happy customer?” In an investigation case, go with boredom: The puppet doesn't care, have no feelings, and is eternally patient. Figure out what are the most likely words that will have the matter "mentally resolved" from the investigator's point of view, tell them what they have to hear, and you'll have case closed in no time. Hope this helps. |
Does a growing economy mean the economy is becoming less efficient? | A growing economy should become more efficient because of increased opportunity for division of labor: specialization. External regulation or monetary policy external to the free market can cause parts of the economy to grow in response to said regulations. This creates inefficiencies that are wrung out of the economy after the policies reverse. A couple of examples: Tinkering with the economy causes the inefficiencies. |
Where should I park my money if I'm pessimistic about the economy and I think there will be high inflation? | Apart from some of the excellent things others say, you could borrow money in AUD and invest that in another currency (that's risky but interesting) if the AUD interest rate is low and the other countries interest rate is higher, you'll eventually win. Also, look at what John Paulson did in 2007, 2008... I wish I'd thought of that when I was in your position (predicting a housing crisis) |
What would I miss out on by self insuring my car? | As others have pointed out, it's all about a fixed, small cost versus the potential of a large cost. If you have insurance, you know you will pay a fixed amount per month. There is a 100% probability that you will have to pay this premium. If you don't have insurance, there is a large chance that you will have no cost in any given month, and a small chance that you will have a large cost. Like my home-owners insurance costs me about $50 per month. If I didn't have insurance and my house burned down, I would be out something like $100,000. What's the chance that my house will burn down this month? Very small. But I'd rather pay $50 and not have to worry about it. On the other hand, I just bought a filing cabinet for $160 and the store offered me an "extended warranty" for something like $20 a year. What's the probability that some accident will happen that damages my filing cabinet? Pretty small. Even if it did, I think I could handle shelling out $160. I can imagine my stomach in knots and lying awake at nights worrying about the possibility of losing $100,000 or finding myself homeless. I can't imagine lying awake at nights worrying about losing $160 or being force to stuff my files under the bed. I'll take my chances. When I was young and had even less money than I have now, I bought cars that cost me a thousand dollars or. Even poor as I was, I knew that if the car was totaled I could dig up the cash to buy another. It wasn't worth paying the insurance premium. These days I'm driving a car that cost me $6,000. I have collision and comprehensive insurance, but I think it's debatable. I bought the car with cash to begin with, and if I had to I could scrape up the cash to replace it. Especially considering that my last payment for my daughter's college tuition is due next month and then that expense is gone. :-) |
Why do consultants or contractors make more money than employees? | All the existing answers are right and the general theme is: contracting is a different kind of relationship. It's a business-to-business relationship rather than a business-to-employee relationship. This has implications such as: Of course, some contractors are effectively just over-paid employees, and some of the above points don't apply to them, but that's the idea behind bona fide contracting. |
Placing bid in market price | Market price is just the bid or offer price of the last sell or buy order in the market. The price that you actually receive or pay will be the price that the person buying the stock off you or selling it to you will accept. If there are no other participants in the market to make up the other side of your order (i.e. to buy off you if you are selling or to sell to you if you are buying) the exchange pays large banks to be "market makers"; they fulfil your order using stocks that they don't want to either buy or sell just so that you get your order filled. When you place an order outside of market hours the order is kept on the broker's order books until the market reopens and then, at market opening time there is an opening "auction" at which orders are matched to opposing orders (i.e. each buy order will be matched with a sell) at a price determined by auction. You will not know what price the order was filled at until it has been filled. If you want to guarantee a price you can do so by placing a limit order that says not to pay more than a certain price for any unit of the stock. |
Wash sale rule impact on different scenarios between different types of accounts | The wash sale rule only applies when the sale in question is at a loss. So the rule does not apply at all to your cases 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, and 16, which all start with a gain. You get a capital gain at the first sale and then a separately computed gain / loss at the second sale, depending on the case, BUT any gain or loss in the IRA is not a taxable event due to the usual tax-advantaged rules for the IRA. The wash sale does not apply to "first" sales in your IRA because there is no taxable gain or loss in that case. That means that you wouldn't be seeking a deduction anyway, and there is nothing to get rolled into the repurchase. This means that the rule does not apply to 1-8. For 5-8, where the second sale is in your brokerage account, you have a "usual" capital gain / loss as if the sale in the IRA didn't happen. (For 1-4, again, the second sale is in the IRA, so that sale is not taxable.) What's left are 9-10 (Brokerage -> IRA) and 13-14 (Brokerage -> Brokerage). The easier two are 13-14. In this case, you cannot take a capital loss deduction for the first sale at a loss. The loss gets added to the basis of the repurchase instead. When you ultimately close the position with the second sale, then you compute your gain or loss based on the modified basis. Note that this means you need to be careful about what you mean by "gain" or "loss" at the second sale, because you need to be careful about when you account for the basis adjustment due to the wash sale. Example 1: All buys and sells are in your brokerage account. You buy initially at $10 and sell at $8, creating a $2 loss. But you buy again within the wash sale window at $9 and sell that at $12. You get no deduction after the first sale because it's wash. You have a $1 capital gain at the second sale because your basis is $11 = $9 + $2 due to the $2 basis adjustment from wash sale. Example 2: Same as Example 1, except that final sale is at $8 instead of at $12. In this case you appear to have taken a $2 loss on the first buy-sell and another $1 loss on the second buy-sell. For taxes however, you cannot claim the loss at the first sale due to the wash. At the second sale, your basis is still $11 (as in Example 1), so your overall capital loss is the $3 dollars that you might expect, computed as the $8 final sale price minus the $11 (wash-adjusted) basis. Now for 9-10 (Brokerage->IRA), things are a little more complicated. In the IRA, you don't worry about the basis of individual stocks that you hold because of the way that tax advantages of those accounts work. You do need to worry about the basis of the IRA account as a whole, however, in some cases. The most common case would be if you have non-deductable contributions to your traditional IRA. When you eventually withdraw, you don't pay tax on any distributions that are attributable to those nondeductible contributions (because you already paid tax on that part). There are other cases where basis of your account matters, but that's a whole question in itself - It's enough for now to understand 1. Basis in your IRA as a whole is a well-defined concept with tax implications, and 2. Basis in individual holdings within your account don't matter. So with the brokerage-IRA wash sale, there are two questions: 1. Can you take the capital loss on the brokerage side? 2. If no because of the wash sale, does this increase the basis of your IRA account (as a whole)? The answer to both is "no," although the reason is not obvious. The IRS actually put out a Special Bulletin to answer the question specifically because it was unclear in the law. Bottom line for 9-10 is that you apparently are losing your tax deduction completely in that case. In addition, if you were counting on an increase in the basis of your IRA to avoid early distribution penalties, you don't get that either, which will result in yet more tax if you actually take the early distribution. In addition to the Special Bulletin noted above, Publication 550, which talks about wash sale rules for individuals, may also help some. |
What college degree should I pursue to learn about stock and forex markets? | Financial Economics, although, as I understand it, not all colleges offer this major. |
Why do financial institutions charge so much to convert currency? | As mentioned in several other answers, the main reason for high rates is to maximize profit. However, here is another, smaller effect: The typical flow of getting money from an ATM: Suppose you have a minute to consider the offer, then in that time the currency may drop or rise (which you can see from an external source of information). Therefore this opens a window for abuse. For real major currencies these huge switches are rare, but they do happen. And when 1 or 2 minor currencies are involved these switches are more common. Just looking at a random pair for today (Botswana Pula to Haitian Gourde) I immediately spotted a moment where the exchange rate jumped by more than 2 %. This may not be the best example, but it shows why a large margin is desirable. Note that this argument only holds for when the customer knows in advance what the exchange rate would be, for cases where it is calculated afterwards I have not found any valid excuse for such large margins (except that it allows them to offer other services at a lower price because these transaction). |
What are some factors I should consider when choosing between a CPA and tax software | Largely it comes down to the complexity of your return (likely relatively simple if it's your first time filing) and your comfort level with using software. More complex returns would include filing business claims, handling stocks and investments, special return forms, etc. One benefit to most of the software options out there such as TurboTax, HR Block, and Tax Slayer, are that they are free to use and you only pay when you're ready to file. You could give them a shot to see how easy/difficult they are and if you feel overwhelmed, then contact a CPA (whose time won't be free). Also remember that those HR Block seasonal places that open up are not CPA's, but are temps hired and trained to use the software that you would find online. You didn't indicate they were an option, but I like to point that out to those who might not know otherwise. My opinion would be to use one of the online options because of cost and their ease of use. They also allow you to take your time and save your progress, so you can start using it and go ask questions/do research on your own time. |
Credit card fee and taxes | Credit card fees on a credit card used for personal expenses are not tax deductible. Credit card fees on a business credit card are deductible on schedule C (or whatever form you're using to report business income and expenses). If you are using the same card for both business and personal ... well, for starters, this is a very bad idea, because it creates exactly the question you're asking. If that's what you're doing, stop, and get separate business and personal cards. If you have separate business and personal cards -- and use the business card only for legitimate business expenses -- then the answer is easy: You can claim a schedule C deduction for any service charges on the business card, and you cannot claim any deduction for any charges on the personal card. In general, though, if you have an expense that is partly business and partly personal, you are supposed to figure out what percentage is business, and that is deductible. In an admittedly brief search, I couldn't find anything specifically about credit cards, but I did find this similar idea on the IRS web site: Generally, you cannot deduct personal, living, or family expenses. However, if you have an expense for something that is used partly for business and partly for personal purposes, divide the total cost between the business and personal parts. You can deduct the business part. For example, if you borrow money and use 70% of it for business and the other 30% for a family vacation, you can deduct 70% of the interest as a business expense. The remaining 30% is personal interest and is not deductible. Refer to chapter 4 of Publication 535, Business Expenses, for information on deducting interest and the allocation rules. (https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/deducting-business-expenses) So, PROBABLY, you could add up all the charges you made on the card, figure out how much was for business and how much for personal, calculate the business percentage, and then deduct this percentage of the service fees. If the amount involved is not trivial, you might want to talk to an accountant or a lawyer. |
Why do stock prices of retailers not surge during the holidays? | That's a pretty good question for a six-year-old! In addition to the good answers which point out that expectations are priced in, let's deny the premises of the question: Sales do not increase the value of a company; a company could be, for example, losing money on every sale. Share prices are (at least in theory) correlated with profits. So let's suppose that company X is unprofitable 320 days a year and is relying upon sales in late November and December to be in the black for the year. (Hence "black Friday".) Carefully examine the supposition of this scenario: we have a company that is so unprofitable that it must gamble everything on successfully convincing bargain hunting consumers in a weak economy to buy stuff they don't actually need from them and not a competitor. Why would this inspire investor confidence? There are plenty of companies that fail to meet their sales targets at Christmas, for plenty of reasons. |
I have an extra 1000€ per month, what should I do with it? | Congratulations on getting started in life! John Malloy's (American) research suggests that you should take some time to get used to living on your own, make some friends, and settle into your community. During this time, you can build up an emergency fund. If/when the stock markets do not seem to be in a bear market, you can follow user3771352's advice to buy stock ETFs. Do you hope to get married and have children in the next few years? If so, you should budget time and money for activities where you make new friends (both men and women). Malloy points out that many Americans meet their spouses through women's networks of friends. |
How to read Google Finance data on dividends | However, you have to remember that not all dividends are paid quarterly. For example one stock I recently purchased has a price of $8.03 and the Div/yield = 0.08/11.9 . $.08 * 4 = $0.32 which is only 3.9% (But this stock pays monthly dividends). $.08 * 12 = $0.96 which is 11.9 %. So over the course of a year assuming the stock price and the dividends didn't change you would make 11.9% |
Is buying and selling Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) legal for a student on F-1 Visa doing OPT in USA? | Given your clarification that you re only intending to use cryptocurrency as a capital asset & a long term investment vehicle, and not as a business day trading or trading for others, I would say this definitely is NOT illegal. The tax man says cryptocurrency is property. The IRS made this clear in Notice 2014-21. As long as you report it every time you do transfer it and an income loss/gain is triggered, I see nothing wrong here. |
How do online referal systems work? | Yeah, I'll take the challenge...:) How trustworthy these are and what are their sources of income? These are in fact two separate questions, but the answers are related. How trustworthy? As trustworthy as they're clear about their own sources of income. If you cannot find any clue as to why, what for and how they're paying you - you probably should walk away. What's too good to be true usually is indeed too good to be true. For those of the sites that I know of their sources of income, it is usually advertisements and surveys. To get paid, you have to watch advertisements and/or answer surveys. I know of some sites who are legit, and pay people (not money, but gift cards, airline miles, etc) for participating in surveys. My own HMO (Kaiser in California) in fact pays (small amounts) to members who participate in enough surveys, so its legit. Are these sites worthwhile to consider for extra income? Not something you could live off, but definitely can get you enough gift cards for your weekly trip to Starbucks. What do I need to consider tax wise? Usually the amounts are very low, and are not paid in cash. While it is income, I doubt the IRS will chase you if you don't report the $20 Amazon gift card you got from there. It should, strictly speaking, be reported (probably as hobby income) on your tax return. Most people don't bother dealing with such small amounts though. In some cases (like the HMO I mentioned), its basically a rebate of the money paid (you pay your copays, deductibles etc. Since the surveys are only for members, you basically get your money back, not additional income). This is in fact similar to credit card rebates. Is there a best practice for handling the income? If we're talking about significant amounts (more than $20-30 a year), then you need to keep track of the income and related expenses, and report it as any other business income on your taxes, Schedule C. Is there a good test to determine what is and isn't a scam? As I said - if it looks too good to be true - it most likely is. If you're required to provide your personal/financial information without any explanation as to why, what it will be used for, and why and what for you're going to be paid - I'd walk away. Otherwise, you can also check Internet reviews, BBB ratings, FTC information and the relevant state agencies and consumer watchdogs (for example: http://www.scamadviser.com) whether they've heard of that particular site, and what is the information they have on it. A very good sign for a scam is contact information. Do they have a phone number to call to? Is it in your own country? If its not in your own country - definitely go away (for example the original link that was in the question pointed to a service whose phone number is in the UK, but listed address is in Los Angeles, CA. A clear sign of a scam). If they do have a phone number - try it, talk to them, call several times and see how many different people you're going to talk to. If its always the same person - run and hide. Do they have an address? If not - walk away. If they do - look it up. Is it a PMB/POB? A "virtual" office? Or do they have a proper office set up, which you can see on the map and in the listings as their office? And of course your guts. If your guts tell you its a scam - it very likely is. |
Can saving/investing 15% of your income starting age 25, likely make you a millionaire? | I just want to point out a couple of things, and I do not have enough reputation to comment. Saving 50% is totally possible. I know people saving 65%. For more see here EDIT: Let me repeat that 4% it the maximum you can assume if you want to be sure to have at least that return in the long term. It's not the average, it's the minimum, the value you can expect and plan with. Just to reinforce the claim, I can cite Irrational Exuberance of Robert Schiller, who explicitly says, on page 135 of the 2015 edition, that from January 1966 to January 1992 the real annual return was just 4.1%. Sure, this does not matter so much if you are investing all the way through, but it's still a 26 year period. |
Does the low CAD positively or negatively impact Canadian Investors? | When you want to invest in an asset denominated by a foreign currency, your investment is going to have some currency risk to it. You need to worry not just about what happens to your own currency, but also the foreign currency. Lets say you want to invest $10000 in US Stocks as a Canadian. Today that will cost you $13252, since USDCAD just hit 1.3252. You now have two ways you can make money. One is if USDCAD goes up, two is if the stocks go up. The former may not be obvious, but remember, you are holding US denominated assets currently, with the intention of one day converting those assets back into CAD. Essentially, you are long USDCAD (long USD short CAD). Since you are short CAD, if CAD goes up it hurts you It may seem odd to think about this as a currency trade, but it opens up a possibility. If you want a foreign investment to be currency neutral, you just make the opposite currency trade, in addition to your original investment. So in this case, you would buy $10,000 in US stocks, and then short USDCAD (ie long CAD, short USD $10,000). This is kind of savvy and may not be something you would do. But its worth mentioning. And there are also some currency hedged ETFs out there that do this for you http://www.ishares.com/us/strategies/hedge-currency-impact However most are hedged relative to USD, and are meant to hedge the target countries currency, not your own. |
Are bonds really a recession proof investment? | Bonds by themselves aren't recession proof. No investment is, and when a major crash (c.f. 2008) occurs, all investments will be to some extent at risk. However, bonds add a level of diversification to your investment portfolio that can make it much more stable even during downturns. Bonds do not move identically to the stock market, and so many times investing in bonds will be more profitable when the stock market is slumping. Investing some of your investment funds in bonds is safer, because that diversification allows you to have some earnings from that portion of your investment when the market is going down. It also allows you to do something called rebalancing. This is when you have target allocation proportions for your portfolio; say 60% stock 40% bond. Then, periodically look at your actual portfolio proportions. Say the market is way up - then your actual proportions might be 70% stock 30% bond. You sell 10 percentage points of stocks, and buy 10 percentage points of bonds. This over time will be a successful strategy, because it tends to buy low and sell high. In addition to the value of diversification, some bonds will tend to be more stable (but earn less), in particular blue chip corporate bonds and government bonds from stable countries. If you're willing to only earn a few percent annually on a portion of your portfolio, that part will likely not fall much during downturns - and in fact may grow as money flees to safer investments - which in turn is good for you. If you're particularly worried about your portfolio's value in the short term, such as if you're looking at retiring soon, a decent proportion should be in this kind of safer bond to ensure it doesn't lose too much value. But of course this will slow your earnings, so if you're still far from retirement, you're better off leaving things in growth stocks and accepting the risk; odds are no matter who's in charge, there will be another crash or two of some size before you retire if you're in your 30s now. But when it's not crashing, the market earns you a pretty good return, and so it's worth the risk. |
I want to invest in a U.S.-based company with unquoted stocks, but I am a foreigner. How to do this? | Life would be nicer had we not needed lawyers. But for some things - you better get a proper legal advice. This is one of these things. Generally, the United States is a union of 50 different sovereign entities, so you're asking more about Texas, less about the US. So you'd better talk to a Texas lawyer. Usually, stock ownership is only registered by the company itself (and sometimes not even that, look up "street name"), and not reported to the government. You may get a paper stock certificate, but many companies no longer issue those. Don't forget to talk to a lawyer and a tax adviser in your home country, as well. You'll be dealing with tax authorities there as well. The difference between "unoted" (never heard of this term before) and "regular" stocks is that the "unoted" are not publicly traded. As such, many things that your broker does (like tax statements, at source withholding, etc) you and your company will have to do on your own. If your company plans on paying dividends, you'll have to have a US tax ID (ITIN or SSN), and the company will have to withhold the US portion of the taxes. Don't forget to talk to a tax adviser about what happens when you sell the stock. Also, since the company is not publicly traded, consider how will you be able to sell it, if at all. |
How to calculate the closing price percentage change for a stock? | The previous day's close on Thursday 10th October was 5,000.00 The close on Friday 11th October is 5,025.92 So the gain on Friday was 25.92 (5025.92 - 5000) or 0.52% (25.92/5000 x 100%). No mystery! |
How can I calculate a “running” return using XIRR in a spreadsheet? | I could not figure out a good way to make XIRR work since it does not support arrays. However, I think the following should work for you: Insert a column at D and call it "ratio" (to be used to calculate your answer in column E). Use the following equation for D3: =1+(C3-B3-C2)/C2 Drag that down to fill in the column. Set E3 to: =(PRODUCT(D$3:D3)-1)*365/(A3-A$2) Drag that down to fill in the column. Column E is now your annual rate of return. |
Is the very long-term growth of the stock market bound by aggregate net income? | I am a believer in that theory. My opinion is that over the long term, we can expect 25% of income to reflect the payment on one's mortgage, and if you drew a line over time reflecting the mortgage this represents plus the downpayment, you'd be very close to a median home price. The bubble that occurred was real, but not as dramatic as Schiller's chart implies. $1000 will support a $124K 30yr mortgage, but $209K at 4%. This is with no hype, and exact same supply/demand pressures. The market cap of all US companies adds to about $18T. The total wealth in the US, about $60T. Of course US stocks aren't just held by US citizens, it's a big world. Let me suggest two things - the world is poor in comparison to much of the US. A $100,000 net worth puts you in the top 8% in the world. The implication of this is that as the poorer 90% work their way up from poverty, money will seek investments, and there's room for growth. Even if you looked at a closed system, the US only, the limit, absent bubbles, would be one that would have to put a cap on productivity. In today's dollars we produce more than we did years ago, and less than we will in the future. We invent new things faster than the old ones are obsoleted. So any prognostication that our $18T market can grow to say, $30T, does not need to discuss P/Es or bubbles, but rather the creation of new products and businesses that will increase the total market. To summarize - Population growth (not really discussed), Productivity, and long term reduced Poverty will all keep that boundary to be a growing number. That said, this question may be economic, and not PF, in which case my analysis is bound for the Off-Topic barrel. Fascinating question. |
When to register for a bank account for a C-Corp with no official money | Technically, it's only when you need to pass money through. However consider that the length the account has been open builds history with the financial institution, so I'd open ASAP. Longer history with the bank can help with getting approved for things like business credit lines, business cards, and other perks, though if you're not making money with that business, seek out a bank that does not charge money to have a business account open with them. |
What do these options trading terms mean? | Can anyone explain what each of them mean and how they're different from each other? When you "buy to open", you are purchasing an option and opening a new position. When you "sell to open", you are creating a brand new options contract and selling it. "Covered" means that you have assets in your account to satisfy the terms of the options contract. A "covered call" is a call option for which you own shares of the underlying stock that you will sell to the buyer at the option's strike price if he exercises the option. If you previously made a "sell to open" trade to create a new position, and you want to close the position, you can buy back the option. If you previously made a "buy to open" trade, you can "sell to close" which will sell back your option and close your position. In summary: |
What are some pre-tax programs similar to FSA that I can take advantage of? | There is a dependent care spending account for child care related expenses. Also Medical and Dental expenses over a certain % of your income maybe deductible on your tax return. |
Have plenty of cash flow but bad credit | Set up a meeting with the bank that handles your business checking account. Go there in person and bring your business statements: profit and loss, balance sheet, and a spreadsheet showing your historical cash flow. The goal is to get your banker to understand your business and your needs and also for you to be on a first-name basis with your banker for an ongoing business relationship. Tell them you want to establish credit and you want a credit card account with $x as the limit. Your banker might be able to help push your application through even with your credit history. Even if you can't get the limit you want, you'll be on your way and can meet again with your banker in 6 or 12 months. Once your credit is re-established you'll be able to shop around and apply for other rewards cards. One day you might want a line of credit or a business loan. Establishing a relationship with your banker ahead of time will make that process easier if and when the time comes. Continue to meet with him or her at least annually, and bring updated financial statements each time. If nothing else, this process will help you analyze your business, so the process itself is useful even if nothing comes of it immediately. |
Cashing a cheque on behalf of someone else | If the cheque is not crossed, then your friend can write "payable to [your name]" above his signature when he endorses it. If it is crossed, you'll have to deposit it into his account. Given that one can deposit cheques at ATMs, this shouldn't require his presence. Just make sure he endorses it before you leave! It also might take a few more days to clear. |
First time home buyer. How to negotiate price? | Advice from a long-time flipper You negotiate price based on four factors and none of these are set in stone: How much you love the house. Is this house a 100 out of 100 for you or a 85 or a 75. How much have you compromised. What is the likelihood that you will find a house that will make you just as happy or at least close. You might have a house that is a 95 out of 100 but there are five other houses that you rated between 93-95. What is your timeframe. Know that playing hardball takes longer and can knock you out of the game sometimes and takes a little while to find a new game. What is the relative housing market. Zillow and other such sites are crap. Yes the give you a generalized feel for a community but their estimates are off sometimes by 30-40%. Other factors like street/noise/updates to house/ and so on are huge factors. You will have to really navigate the area and look for very comparable houses that have recently sold. Then use average housing movements to extrapolate your future houses cost. As a buyer you have two jobs. Buy the house you want and manage your agent. Your agent wants you to buy a house as soon as possible and to increase their reputation. Those are their only two factors of working. By you offering closer to the asking price they are able to get their sales as quick as possible. Also other agents will love working with them. In fact your agent is selling you on the home and the price. Agents hardly worry about you paying too much - as most buyers oversell the deal they get on their home. Admitting that you paid too much for your house is more of an admission of ignorance of yourself, compared to agent incompetency. If you decide to low-ball the owner, your agent spends more time with you and possibly reduces their reputation with the selling agent. So it is common for agents to tell you that you should not offer a low price as you will insult the owner. My advice. Unless the home is truly one of a kind for the market offering anything within 20% of the asking price is DEFINITELY within range. I have offered 40% less. If a house is asking too much and has been on the market for 8 months there is no way I am going in with an offer of even 15% lower. That leaves you no room. What you do? First think about how much you think this house could sell for in the next 3 months. In your example let's say 80K based on conservative comps. Then take the most you would actually pay for it. Let's say 75K. 70K is about as high of an opening offer I would go. Do NOT tell your agent your true breaking points. If you tell your agent that you would go to 75K on the house. Then that is what their negotiations will start at. Remember they want the sale to happen as soon as possible. Very likely the other agent - especially if they know each other - will ask if how flexible you are going to be. Then next thing you know your agent calls you back and says would you be willing to go 77K or the owner is firm at 80K. Do not give up your position. You should never forecast to your agent what your next bid or offer would be for the house. Never get into scenarios or future counters. So you offer 70K. If your agent asks you how firm that is? "Very firm". If your agent doesn't want to take the offer to them, "Thank you for being my agent, but I am going to be working with someone that represents what I want." If the owner says "You are done too me cheapskate." Well that's how it goes. If the owner stays firm at asking or lowers - then you can come up if you feel comfortable doing so. But understand what your goal is. Is it to get a house or to get a good deal on a house? Mine was always to get a good deal on a house. So I might offer 72K next. If they didn't budge, I am out. If they moved down I went from there. Easy Summary The fact is if they aren't willing to negotiate with you enough it always ends the same. You give them your take-it-or-leave-it offer. You tell your agent that if he/she comes back with one penny over it comes from their commission (god I have said this 100 times in my life and it is the best negotiation tactic you have with your agent). The owner says yes or no and it is over. |
Why do people buy US dollars on the black market? | The main reason people buy dollars (or other currency) on the black market is because they are prevented from exchanging currency on the official government market. Venezuela for example restricts citizens to a maximum number of dollars the citizen can buy or sell per year, depending on various factors such as whether or not the person is studying at a foreign university. If the citizen wants to exchange more dollars than legally allowed, that person must buy or sell at the "black" market rate, rather than through the official/government market. |
Is the I.T. function in banking considered to be on the expense side, as opposed to revenue side? | I must point that without the IT - no-one in the bank generates any revenue. Not to mention the fraud prevention and informational security. To the best of my knowledge - IT in banks and financial institutoins are paid very well for their services, and they earn every penny of it. IT is not just online banking or computer support. IT is the whole underlying infrastructure of the modern banking. Investor without the proper links to the stock exchanges will go elsewhere, loans that cannot be evaluated fast enough (using of course the IT infrastructure) will be taken from someone else, CD's for which the interest is calculated manually will probably not be as attractive as the CD's managed by the computers at the bank next door, credit and debit transactions, ACH, direct deposit, etc - cannot be done without IT. So IT is not expense, IT is infrastructure (and that is "operations" in the budget books). Every function of the bank that generates revenue - relies and depends on it. |
What exactly is a “bad,” “standard,” or “good” annual raise? If I am told a hard percentage and don't get it, should I look elsewhere? | TLDR: You will probably need to move to a different employer to get the raise you want/need/deserve. Some employers, in the US, punish longevity through a number of practices. My wife worked as a nurse for about 20 years. During that time she had many employers, leveraging raises with job changes. She quit nursing about 6 years ago and was being paid $38/hour at the time. She had a friend that worked in the same system for 18 years. They had the same position in the same hospital that friend's current rate of pay: $26/hour. You probably don't want to be that person. Given your Stack Overflow participation, I would assume you are some type of web developer. I would recommend updating your resume, and moving for a 20% increase or more. You'll get it as it is a great time to be a web developer. Spending on IT tends to go in cycles, and right now budgets are very healthy for hiring new talent. While your current company might not have enough money in the budget to give you a raise, they would not hesitate hiring someone with your skills at 95K if they had an opening. Its common, but frustrating to all that are involved except the bean counters that looks at people like us as commodities. Think about this: both sides of the table agree that you deserve a 5K raise. But lets say next year only 3k is in the budget. So you are out the 5k you should have been given this year, plus the 2k that you won't get, plus whatever raise was fair for you next year. That is a lot of money! Time to go! Don't bother on holding onto any illusions of a counter offer by your current employer. There will be too much resentment. Shake the dust off your feet and move on. Edit: Some naysayers will cite short work histories as problems for future employment. It could happen in a small number of shops, but short work histories are common in technology that recruiters rarely bat an eye. If they do, as with any objection, it is up to you to sell yourself. In Cracking the Code Interview the author cites that no one is really expecting you to stay beyond 5 years. Something like this would work just fine: "I left Acme because there were indications of poor financial health. Given the hot market at the time I was able to find a new position without the worry of pending layoffs." If you are a contractor six month assignments are the norm. Also many technology resumes have overlapping assignments. Its what happens when someone is in demand. |
How to increase my credit score | I've been in the UK for 3.5 years, and I have the same problem: I can't get even a small loan from my bank; no one will give me a phone contract; it's a nightmare. I have 8 direct debits, I pay everything on time and I earn decent money, but still my credit is seen as no good. I have got a few ideas for you though: Good luck! |
Can I deduct the cost of software and/or computer that I need to do my job? | Yes, this is a miscellaneous itemized deduction. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p529/ar02.html For this to impact your taxes, you have to be itemizing deductions (have total deductions greater than standard deduction), and the total of all miscellaneous deductions needs to exceed the "2% floor" described in the IRS link above. |
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 options change the fact that it is still "profit" - they all just affect the balance sheet, not the income statement: Note that when a company issues dividends, it reduces its per-share value since cash is leaving the door with nothing in return. In Apple's case, since a significant amount of its profit was earned in other countries (where it was not taxed by the US), it would pay a significant amount in US corporate tax by bringing it back to the US by investing it or paying dividends. They are betting that at some point, the US will change the rules to make it more favorable to "repatriate" the money and reduce their tax significantly. |
Is it true that more than 99% of active traders cannot beat the index? | Obviously, these numbers can never be absolute simply because not all the information is public. Any statistic will most likely be biased. I can tell you the following from my own experience that might get you closer in your answer: Hence, even though I cannot give you exact numbers, I fully agree that traders cannot beat the index long term. If you add the invested time and effort that is necessary to follow an active strategy, then the equation looks even worse. Mind you, active trading and active asset allocation (AAA) are two very different things. AAA can have a significant impact on your portfolio performance. |
Why do some companies offer 401k retirement plans? | Stated plainly... it's a benefit. Companies are not required to offer you any compensation above paying you minimum wage. But benefits attract higher quality employees. I think a big part of it is that it is the norm. Employees want it because of the tax benefits. Employees expect it because almost all reputable companies of any significant size offer it. You could run a great company, but if you don't offer a 401k plan, you can scare away good potential employees. It would give a bad impression the same way that not offering health insurance would. |
Can you explain why it's better to invest now rather than waiting for the market to dip? | Your chance of even correctly recognizing the actual lowest point of a dip are essentially zero, so if you try to time the market, you'll most likely not get the "buy cheap" part perfectly right. And as you write yourself, while you wait for the dip, you have an ongoing opportunity cost. Cost averaging is by far the best strategy for non-professional and risk averse investors to deal with this. And yes, over the long run, it's far more important to invest at all than when you do it. |
Are stocks suitable for mid term money storage? | The volatility of an index fund should usually be a lot lower than that of an individual stock. However even with a broad index fund you should consider the fact that being down by 10% in the time frame you refer to is quite possible! So is being up by 10% of course. A corporate bond might be a better choice if you can find one you trust. |
How to find out the amount of preferred stock of Coca Cola Company? | From The Coca-Cola Company website, section for Investors: Stock History, Issues Year 1919 Original issue -- 600,000 shares 100,000 preferred, par $100 each 500,000 common, without nominal or par value 1926 Eliminated 100,000 preferred in November. This means there were preferred shares issued in 1919. However, all preferred shares were "eliminated" (not sure what that means) as of 1926. There has been no subsequent reissuance of preferred shares of Coca-Cola since then. I think the company is still authorized to issue them, should they choose to do so in the future. |
Transfer from credit to debit | As revised, the answer is still that you're asking the wrong question. If your father wants to make money available on your debit card, all he has to do is deposit the money into your checking account. Where he gets that money from -- as an AmEx casH advance, by selling your bicycle for you, or simply out of one of his own bank accounts -- is irrelevant. |
How do I adjust to a new social class? | Under what conditions did you move? My favourite method of judging prices objectively comes from concepts written in Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez. Essentially it normalizes money spent by making you figure out how much an item costs with respect to the number of hours you needed to work to afford it. I prefer that method versus comparing with others since it is objective for yourself and looks beyond just the bare prices. |
What is the best way to invest in US stocks from India? | Quite a few stock broker in India offer to trade in US markets via tie-up brokers in US. As an Indian citizen, there are limits as to how much FX you can buy, generally very large, should be an issue. The profits will be taxed in US as well as India [you can claim relief under DTAA] |
Credit cards: How is a cash advance different from a purchase? Why are the fees so high? | Essentially speaking, when you purchase goods worth $100 using your card, the store has to pay about $2 for the transaction to the company that operates that stores' credit card terminal. If you withdraw cash from an ATM, you might be charged a fee for such a transaction. However, the ATM operator doesn't pay the credit processor such a transaction fee - thus, it is classified as a cash transaction. Additionally, performing cash advances off a CC is a rather good indicator of a bad financial health of the user, which increase the risk of default, and in some institutions is a factor contributing to their internal creditworthiness assessment. |
Can the U.S. government retroactively tax gains made earlier in the fiscal year? | You're certainly referring to "Ex Post Facto" laws, and while the US is constitutionally prohibited from passing criminal laws that are retroactive, the US Supreme Court has upheld many tax laws that apply tax code changes retroactively. You might ask a similar question on Law.SE for a more thorough treatment of the legalities of congress passing those laws, but I will stick to the personal finance portion of the question. What this means is that you can't expect that the current tax laws will be in force in the future, and your investment/retirement plans should be as flexible as possible. You may wish to have some money in both Roth and traditional 401(k) accounts. You might not want to have millions of dollars in Roth accounts, because if congress does act to limit the tax benefits of those accounts, it will probably be targeting the larger balances. If you are valuing tax deductions, you should put slightly more weight on deductions that you can take today than deductions that would apply in the future. If you do find yourself in trouble because of a retroactive change, be sure to consult a tax lawyer that specializes in dealing with the IRS to possibly negotiate a settlement for a lower amount than the full tax bill that results from the changes. |
Is it possible to lower the price of a stock while buying? | The strategy could conceivably work if you had sufficient quantity of shares to fill all of the outstanding buy orders and fill your lower buy orders. But in this case you are forcing the market down by selling and reinforcing the notion that there is a sell off by filling ever lower buy orders. There is the potential to trigger some stop loss orders if you can pressure it low enough. There is a lot of risk here that someone sees what you are doing and decides to jump in and buy forcing the price back up. Could this work sure. But it is very risky and if you fail to create the panic selling then you risk losing big. I also suspect that this would violate SEC Rules and several laws. And if the price drops too far then trading on the stock would be halted and is likely to return at the appropriate price. Bottom line I can not see a scenario where you do not trigger the stop, net a profit and end up with as many or more stock that you had in the first place. |
I carelessly invested in a stock on a spike near the peak price. How can I salvage my investment? | You probably bought the stock near the peak because "it's been up a lot lately." That's the easiest way to lose money. You need to go back and do some basic research. The stock appears to have been expensive around 75. Why is that? The stock seems to be in a "comfortable" level around 45. Why is THAT? Maybe it's too expensive around 45 (based on the P/E ratio, or other measures); maybe you should buy more at 45, where it is cheap, even though 75 is too expensive. The key is to study the stock where it is today (45-47). Ask yourself what you would do at TODAY's price, and today's "fundamentals." That will also save you from paying 75 for a stock worth 45, and should save you from paying 45 for a stock if it is only worth 35. |
Why does my checking/savings account offer a higher interest rate than a standalone savings account? | The key is that you need to use your debit card to earn the higher interest rate. The bank can offer a higher interest rate on accounts connected with a debit card because: They earn additional income through debit card fees charged towards account holders, among other things. They offer the higher interest rate specifically to encourage people to use their debit cards. By offering a joint checking/savings account that requires you to use your debit card, the bank is assuming that you'll keep more money in your account than you would in a standard checking-only account. Your higher balance translates into more money the bank can loan out or invest, which usually leads to higher profit for them. Businesses pay fees to the bank to accept debit cards. These fees represent another source of profit for the bank. The more you use your debit card, the more the bank earns in fees, so the bank encourages you to use your debit card more frequently through incentives like a higher interest rate or waiving fees on your account if you use your card enough. Plus, since it's likely that an individual who maintains a fairly high balance in an account linked to a debit card is going to spend more (simply because they can spend more), banks will sometimes waive fees on the consumer side for balances over a certain amount. |
What should I do with my $10K windfall, given these options? | I recommend fixing the roof. You're going to pay for it eventually, either as an emergency repair or a concession at sale. |
How can you possibly lose on investments in stocks? | If you're talking about a single stock, you greatly underestimate the chances of it dropping, even long-term. Check out the 12 companies that made up the first Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896. There is probably only one you've heard of: GE. Many of the others are long gone or have since been bought up by larger companies. And remember these were 12 companies that were deemed to be the most representative of the stock market around the turn of the 20th century. Now, if you're talking about funds that hold many stocks (up to thousands), then your question is a little different. Over the long-term (25+ years), we have never experienced a period where the overall market lost value. Of course, as you recognize, the psychology of investors is a very important factor. If the stock market loses half of its value in a year (as it has done a few times), people will be inundated with bad news and proclamations of "this time it's different!" and explanations of why the stock market will never recover. Perhaps this may be true some day, but it never has been thus far. So based on all the evidence we have, if you hold a well-diversified fund, the chances of it going down long-term (again, meaning 25+ years) are basically zero. |
Make your money work for you | First of all, never is too late to develop good habits. So, you know what you want to do and you are going about the how now... First, you should pay off any consumer debt except from mortgage which should be planned for. Prioritize your consumer debt (credit cards, consumer loans, etc) according to the interest rates, starting with the one with the highest interest and going to the one with the lowest one. Because you should make quite the investments to pay off this interest debt and still make a profit. Second, you should start saving some money. The 10% rule of thumb is a good one and for starters having aside the money you need to get by for at least 3 months is quite okay. As they say, cash is king. Now, that you actually realize the amount you can spare each month to start investing (assuming you had to do something of the aforementioned) it's time to see the risk you are comfortable taking. Different risk-taking views lead to different investing routes. So, assuming once again that you are risk averse (having a newborn baby and all) and that you want something more than just a savings account, you can start looking for things that don't require much attention (even more so if you are going on you own about it) such as low risk mutual funds, ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) and index funds to track indexes like FTSE and S&P500 (you could get an average annual return of 10-12%, just google "top safe etfs" for example and you could take a quick look at credible sites like forbes etc). Also, you can take a look at fixed income options such as government bonds. Last but not least, you can always get your pick at some value companies stocks (usually big companies that have proven track record, check warren buffet on this). You should look for stocks that pay dividends since you are in for the long run and not just to make a quick buck. I hope I helped a bit and as always be cautious about investing since they have some inherent risks. If you don't feel comfortable with making your own investment choices you should contact a specialist like a financial planner or advisor. No matter what the case may be on this, you should still educate yourself on this... just to get a grasp on this. |
Does exposure to financials in corporate bond funds make sense? | One reason a lot of bond ETFs like Financials are because of how financial companies work. They usually have amazing cash flows due to deposits and fees and therefore have little risk associated with paying their debts in the short term. The rest of VCSH contains companies with low default risk and good cash flow generation as well: This is of course the objective of VCSH: Banks themselves issue a lot of bonds to raise cash to lend for other purposes. Banks are intermediary and help make funds liquid for investors and spenders. Hope that helped answer your question. If not comment below and I'll try to adjust the answer to be more complete. |
How long should I keep my bills? | I'd imagine you want to keep the utility bills around to dispute any historical billing errors or anomalies for perhaps 6 months to a year. Beyond that, you always have the financial records of making the payments -- namely, your bank statements. So what benefit is there in keeping the paper receipts for utility payments around for longer than that? I say shred them, with extreme prejudice -- while wearing black Chuck Norris style. |
Potential pitfalls of this volume trading strategy | First challenge: Creating a system which can understand written English well enough to read the news. Nothing short of IBM's Watson has proven very good at extracting meaning from unstructured text. Second challenge: By the time it reaches "the news", the big actors already know and have responded. Third challenge: It's not uncommon for a stock to drop on good news, or rise on bad, because the price had previously adjusted to an expectation of even better/worse news and is now correcting itself. Basic principle: It it was simple and obvious, everyone would already be doing it. |
Are my purchases of stock, mutual funds, ETF's, and commodities investing, or speculation? | This depends on what your definition of the word is is. Strictly speaking, you are only investing in a company when you buy stock from them somehow. This is usually done during an IPO or a secondary offering. Or, if you are someone like Warren Buffet or an institutional investor, you strike a deal with the company to buy shares directly from them. Otherwise, your money goes to someone else. Merriam-Webster defines speculate as 1b: to review something idly or casually and often inconclusively However, it also defines it as: 2: to assume a business risk in hope of gain; especially : to buy or sell in expectation of profiting from market fluctuations The typical use of the term stock speculation vs stock investing involves definition 1b. This alludes to the idea that little to no research was done about the stock. This may be due to a lack of time, interest, knowledge, etc., or it may be due to a lack of information. The former usually has a negative connotation. The latter may have a negative connotation, though usually the connotation is one of greater risk. Strictly speaking, definition 2 includes investing as you define it along with investing in securities/commodities. |
Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids? | It is simple: G-d provides :). EDIT: By "it" I mean the answer to the question asked. Raising kids is not so simple; G-d does provide :). |
Is there such a thing as a deposit-only bank account? | Usually the most significant risk scenarios here are: Third parties can abuse your routing/account numbers to initiate debits, but this is a type of fraud that is easily traced. It can happen, but it is more likely that it would be a scenario where you were specifically targeted vs. the victim of some random fraud. Defending against someone who is specifically going after you is very difficult, especially if you don't know about it. Your SSN isnt used for the bank transfer, you are providing it so that the entity making the payments can report on payments to you for tax purposes. If you are truly worried about this type of scenario, I suggest setting up a dedicated savings account for the purpose of receiving these payments and then sweeping (either manually or automatically) the funds into another account. Most stock brokers will allow you to automate this, and most banks will let you do this manually. |
How are various types of income taxed differently in the USA? | Many individual states, counties, and cities have their own income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc., you will need to consult your state and local government websites for information about additional taxes that apply based on your locale. Wages, Salaries, Tips, Cash bonuses and other taxable employee pay, Strike benefits, Long-term disability, Earnings from self employment Earned income is subject to payroll taxes such as: Earned income is also subject to income taxes which are progressively higher depending on the amount earned minus tax credits, exemptions, and/or deductions depending on how you file. There are 7 tax rates that get progressively larger as your income rises but only applies to the income in each bracket. 10% for the first 18,650 (2017) through 39.6% for any income above 470,700. The full list of rates is in the above linked article about payroll taxes. Earned income is required for contributions to an IRA. You cannot contribute more to an IRA than you have earned in a given year. Interest, Ordinary Dividends, Short-term Capital Gains, Retirement income (pensions, distributions from tax deferred accounts, social security), Unemployment benefits, Worker's Compensation, Alimony/Child support, Income earned while in prison, Non-taxable military pay, most rental income, and S-Corp passthrough income Ordinary income is taxed the same as earned income with the exception that social security taxes do not apply. This is the "pure taxable income" referred to in the other linked question. Dividends paid by US Corporations and qualified foreign corporations to stock-holders (that are held for a certain period of time before the dividend is paid) are taxed at the Long-term Capital Gains rate explained below. Ordinary dividends like the interest earned in your bank account are included with ordinary income. Stocks, Bonds, Real estate, Carried interest -- Held for more than a year Income from assets that increase in value while being held for over a year. Long term capital gains justified by the idea that they encourage people to hold stock and make long term investments rather than buying and then quickly reselling for a short-term profit. The lower tax rates also reflect the fact that many of these assets are already taxed as they are appreciating in value. Real-estate is usually taxed through local property taxes. Equity in US corporations realized by rising stock prices and dividends that are returned to stock holders reflect earnings from a corporation that are already taxed at the 35% Corporate tax rate. Taxing Capital gains as ordinary income would be a second tax on those same profits. Another problem with Long-term capital gains tax is that a big portion of the gains for assets held for multiple decades are not real gains. Inflation increases the price of assets held for longer periods, but you are still taxed on the full gain even if it would be a loss when inflation is calculated. Capital gains are also taxed differently depending on your income level. If you are in the 10% or 15% brackets then Long-term capital gains are assessed at 0%. If you are in the 25%, 28%, 33%, or 35% brackets, they are assessed at 15%. Only those in the 39.6% bracket pay 20%. Capital assets sold at a profit held for less than a year Income from buying and selling any assets such as real-estate, stock, bonds, etc., that you hold for less than a year before selling. After adding up all gains and losses during the year, the net gain is taxed as ordinary income. Collectibles held for more than a year are not considered capital assets and are still taxed at ordinary income rates. |
Can I buy a new house before selling my current house? | I sold my house and had been in the market looking for a replacement house for over 6 months after I sold it. I found someone willing to give me a short term, 3 month lease, with a month to month after that, at an equitable rate, as renters were scarcer than buyers.By the time I found a house, there were bidding wars as surplus had declined (can be caused seasonally), and it was quite difficult to get my new house. However, appraisers help this to a degree because whatever the seller wants, is not necessarily what they get, even if you offer it. I offered $10k over asking just to get picked out of the large group bidding on the house. Once the appraisal came in at $10k below my offer, I was able to buy the house at what I expected. Of course I had to be prepared if it came in higher, but I did my homework and knew pretty much what the house was worth. The mortgage is the same as the lease I had, the house is only 10 years' old and has a 1 year warranty on large items that could go wrong. In the 3 months I've been in the house, I have gained nearly $8k in equity....and will have a tax writeoff of about $19,000 off an income off a salary of $72,000, giving me taxable income of $53,000... making by tax liability go down about $4600. If I am claiming 0 dependents I will get back about $5,000 this year versus breaking even. |
Will a stop order get triggered if the floor is hit and trading is halted? | During a circuit breaker, no trading occurs. These policies have been implemented to maintain exchange liquidity since the NYSE nearly went bankrupt during the 1987 crash because many members had become insolvent. If an order is filled before the halt, it will stand unless busted. During the Flash Crash, many orders were busted. |
I have about 20 000 usd. How can invest them to do good in the world? | I'd suggest you to separate "doing good" from "earning profit". Look at the guys like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (or Carnegie and Ford for that matters). They understand that you can't reconcile the two goals, so they donate for free what they earned for profit. If you want to make a social impact with your money, you can check the charity programs that have a confirmed record of a positive impact on people's lives. Non-profits that studied such programs publish their results extensively: AidGrade compiles this research and suggests direct donations to the programs that demonstrated best outcomes per dollar invested: |
What prevents interest rates from rising? | To protect yourself from an increase in interest rates get a fixed rate loan. The loan terms: interest rate, number of payments, monthly payments will be fixed for the loan. Of course if rate for the rest of the market drops during the period of the loan, you may be able to refinance the loan. But if you can't refinance, or won't refinance, the drop in rates for the rest of the market doesn't help you. If you want to be able to have your rate float you can get a variable rate loan. Of course it can float up, or it can float down. So you take that risk. Because of that risk adjustable rate loans start at a lower rate. If the market interest rate drops far enough many people will refinance into a fixed rate loan at a lower rate than they could have gotten at the start. For adjustable rate loans the lender, during the application process, details how the rate is determined. It is pegged to be x% above some national or international interest rate that they don't have any control over. If that base rate moves then your loan rate may move. They also specify how often it will adjust, and the maximum it can adjust between each adjustments and over the entire life of the loan. That rate that starts initially lower than the fixed rate loan is the enticement that many people have to pick an adjustable rate loan. Some do it because they believe they will payoff the loan before the rates get too high, or they will see enough increase in income so they can afford the higher monthly payment if rates rise. If they are wrong about these things they may find themselves in trouble. The terms of the adjustable rate loan still have to follow the terms of the contract: the lender can't change the % offset or the source used to used to set interest rate. |
Where can one find intraday prices for mutual funds? | Like others have said, mutual funds don't have an intraday NAV, but their ETF equivalents do. Use something like Yahoo Finance and search for the ETF.IV. For example VOO.IV. This will give you not the ETF price (which may be at a premium or discount), but the value of the underlying securities updated every 15 seconds. |
What tax-free retirement accounts are available for self-employed individuals? | You can open a self-employed 401k, here's an example. You can deposit up to 50K (including the personal cap and the profit sharing/matching portion). |
Is This A Scam? Woman added me on LinkedIn first, then e-mailed offering me millions of dollars [duplicate] | Yes. If you reply back, they'll confirm that Uncle Alex did indeed leave you $7 million, and you just need to send them a few thousand dollars for taxes and estate fees and then they'll wire you the money. And then there'll be customs fees. And then more taxes. And of course, there will be separate import fees. And so on until you run out of money. |
How do I explain why debt on debt is bad to my brother? | I'm not good at persuasion, and I'm not an expert at any of this, but here's what I've been thinking. Rather than telling him that he shouldn't rack up more debt, I'd ask him whether he's planning for his debt levels to increase, remain static, or decrease over the next five years. Try to make it feel like he's the one reaching the conclusion that he should be decreasing his debt load. If he says that he's fine with his debt levels remaining static or increasing, then I don't have any further advice. If he says he's trying to decrease his debt level, but it's actually increasing, then maybe he's in denial. |
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