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Is there any downside to using temporary credit card numbers with subscription services?
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If you've agreed to pay the money, then you owe them whether they have a valid credit card number of yours or not. If they want to report your debt to a collections agency and/or credit bureau, they can. Which would suck for you. It may not be that likely over $9.99 or whatever, but my point is that it's still a small risk even with a temporary card number.
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Does an option trading below parity always indicate an arbitrage opportunity?
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Defining parity as "parity is the amount by which an option is in the money", I'd say there may be an arbitrage opportunity. If there's a $50 strike on a stock valued at $60 that I can buy for less than $10, there's an opportunity. Keep in mind, options often show high spreads, my example above might show a bid/ask of $9.75/$10.25, in which case the last trade of $9.50 should be ignored in favor of the actual ask price you'd pay. Mispricing can exist, but in this day and age, is far less likely.
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How to calculate the price of a bond based with a yield to Maturity, term and annual interest?
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The answer to almost all questions of this type is to draw a diagram. This will show you in graphical fashion the timing of all payments out and payments received. Then, if all these payments are brought to the same date and set equal to each other (using the desired rate of return), the equation to be solved is generated. In this case, taking the start of the bond's life as the point of reference, the various amounts are: Pay out = X Received = a series of 15 annual payments of $70, the first coming in 1 year. This can be brought to the reference date using the formula for the present value of an ordinary annuity. PLUS Received = A single payment of $1000, made 15 years in the future. This can be brought to the reference date using the simple interest formula. Set the pay-out equal to the present value of the payments received and solve for X I am unaware of the difference, if any, between "current rate" and "rate to maturity" Finding the rate for such a series of payments would start out the same as above, but solving the resulting equation for the interest rate would be a daunting task...
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Why don't some places require a credit card receipt signature, and some do?
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Merchants apply in advance for the program, and the amount is limited to less than $25.
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Cheapest way to “wire” money in an Australian bank account to a person in England, while I'm in Laos?
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You could use paypal to transfer money. You can pay with paypal and your UK contact could transfer the money to his bank account through paypal. I just received money this way from the US and paid 9 EUR for this. Receiving the funds is as quickly as clicking a button on the paypal site. Transfering it (without costs) took 1-3 days). It is by far the easiest way. If you are uncomfortable using paypal, the other option would be through your own bank account, where you would transfer using IBAN/SWIFT. The SWIFT bank account is usually the IBAN code plus a branch code. Often it is difficult to find the branch code, in that case you can use the IBAN+XXX. In the latter things might be delayed, but I actually haven't noticed the delay yet, since international transfer always seem to take between 1 and 10 days. The international transfering of money costs, except if it is within the EU region. The way to transfer money through Internet banking differs, from bank to bank. They keywords you need to look for are: SEPA, SWIFT, IBAN or international transfer.
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Selling To Close
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Yes, if there is liquidity you can sell your option to someone else as a profit. This is what the majority of option trading volume is used for: speculative trading with leverage.
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Living in my own rental property
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If it is a separate unit from the rest of the property, you can use that portion as an investment property. the part, or unit, you are living in is your primary residence. The remainder is your investment. You are eligible to not pay capital gains on the portion you live in After two years. As always consult a tax accountant For advice... Also, if this is less then 4 unit, you may he able to finance the sale of the home with an FHA loan.
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If I'm going to start doing my own taxes soon, do I need to start keeping receipts for everything?
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It's rare that you'd start to itemize before you have a house and the property tax and mortgage interest that brings. If your state has an income tax, that's first, but then you'll usually need far more in deductions to be over that standard deduction.
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How to find a good third-party, 401k management/advice service?
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Any fee based financial adviser should be able to help you. I don't think you need to worry about finding a 401K specific adviser. I'm not even sure that's a thing. A good place to start is the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. The reason I specifically mentioned a fee based adviser is that the free ones are working on sales commissions, which may influence them to give advice that is in their own best interest more than yours.
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Am I entitled to get a maintenance loan?
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According to GOV.UK, you can only apply for Student Finance if: Since you don't fulfill the criterion 2 and 3, you are technically not eligible for Student Finance. Since you have received information from Student Finance England that you can apply for the maintenance loan, you should either write to them or call them again, to confirm the information given to you.
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Can saving/investing 15% of your income starting age 25, likely make you a millionaire?
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Yes, becoming a millionaire is a reasonable goal. Saving 15% of your income starting at age 25 and investing in the stock market will likely get you there. The CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of the S&P 500 over the last 35 years has been about 11%. (That 35 years includes at least two fairly serious crashes.) You may get more or less than that number in the future, but let's guess that you'll average 9%. Let's say that you begin with nothing invested, and you start investing $100 per week at age 25. (If your annual income is $35,000, that is about 15% of your income.) You decide to invest your money in an S&P 500 index mutual fund. 35 years from now when you are 60 years old, you would be a millionaire ($1.2 Million, actually). You may earn less than the assumed 9%, depending on how the stock market does. However, if you stick with your 15% investment amount throughout your whole career, you'll most likely end up with more, because your income will probably increase during your career. And you will probably be working past age 60, giving your investments time to earn even more.
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Investments other than CDs?
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You're losing money. And a lot of it. Consider this: the inflation is 2-4% a year (officially, depending on your spending pattern your own rate might be quite higher). You earn about 1/2%. I.e.: You're losing 3% a year. Guaranteed. You can do much better without any additional risk. 0.1% on savings account? Why not 0.9%? On-line savings account (Ally, CapitalOne-360, American Express, E*Trade, etc) give much higher rates than what you have. Current Ally rates are 0.9% on a regular savings account. 9 times more than what you have, with no additional risk: its a FDIC insured deposit. You can get a slightly higher rate with CDs (0.97% at the same bank for 12 months deposit). IRA - why is it in CD's? Its the longest term investment you have, that's where you can and should take risks, to maximize your compounding returns. Not doing that is actually more risky to you because you're guaranteeing compounding loss, of the said 3% a year. On average, more volatile stock investments have shown to be not losing money over periods of decades, even if they do lose money over shorter periods. Rental - if you can buy a property that you would pay the same amount of money for as for a comparable rental - you should definitely buy. Your debt will be secured by the property, and since you're paying the same amount or less - you're earning the equity. There's no risk here, just benefits, which again you chose to forgo. In the worst case if you default and walk away from the property you lost exactly (or less) what you would have paid for a rental anyway. 14 years old car may be cheaper than 4 years old to buy, but consider the maintenance, licensing and repairs - will it not some up to more than the difference? In my experience - it is likely to. Bottom line - you think you're risk averse, but you're exactly the opposite of that.
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Can dividends be exploited?
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The moment the dividend is announced, especially from a company that doesn't normally pay dividends, the dividend is factored into everybody's analysis. In the absence of any other news the price of apple would be expected to drop once the dividend in locked in. Why would I buy shares from you at full price one day after the dividend is paid, if I will have to wait for the next dividend? Also keep in mind the dividend was announced on July 24th, and is given to shareholders of record on August 13th. You are way behind the curve.
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Does gold's value decrease over time due to the fact that it is being continuously mined?
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Mining/discovery of gold can be inflationary -- the Spanish looting of Central America for a few hundred years or the gold rush in the 19th century US are examples of that phenomenon. The difference between printing currency and mining is that you have to ability to print money on demand, while mining is limited to whatever is available to extract at a given time. The rising price of gold may be contributing to increased production, as low-grade ore that wasn't economically viable to work with in the 1980's are now affordable.
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Why do Americans have to file taxes, even if their only source of income is from a regular job?
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For two reasons: 1- People are entitled to deductions and credits that your employer cannot possibly know. Only you as an individual know about your personal situation and can therefore claim these deductions and credits by filing income tax returns. 2- Me telling you that you made $100,000 last year is not the same as telling you that you made $125,000 last year, but someone took $25,000 out of your pocket. Tax season is the one time of the year when citizens know exactly what chunk of their hard earned money was taken by the government, creating more collective awareness about taxation and giving politicians a harder time when they propose raising taxes.
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Would the purchase of a car for a business through the use of a business loan be considered a business expense?
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You don't say what country you live in. If it's the U.S., the IRS has very specific rules for business use of a car. See, for starters at least, http://www.irs.gov/publications/p463/ch04.html. The gist of it is: If you use the car 100% for business purposes, you NEVER use it to drive to the grocery store or to your friend's house, etc, then it is a deductible business expense. If you use a car party for business use and partly for personal use, than you can deduct the portion of the expense of the car that is for business use, but not the portion that is for personal use. So basically, if you use the car 75% for business purposes and 25% for personal use, you can deduct 75% of the cost and expenses. You can calculate the business use by, (a) Keeping careful records of how much you spent on gas, oil, repairs, etc, tracking the percentage of business use versus percentage of personal use, and then multiplying the cost by the percentage business use and that is the amount you can deduct; or (b) Use the standard mileage allowance, so many cents per mile, which changes every year. Note that the fact that you paid for the car from a business account has absolutely nothing to do with it. (If it did, then everyone could create a small business, open a business account, pay all their bills from there, and all their personal expenses would magically become business expenses.) Just by the way: If you are going to try to stretch the rules on your taxes, business use of a car or personal computer or expenses for a home office are the worst place to do it. The IRS knows that cars and computers are things that can easily be used for either personal or business purposes and so they keep a special eye out on these.
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What are the best software tools for personal finance?
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Emergency Account Vault (Windows) I use it to store info about all of my accounts/assets in an encrypted document. It's more for keeping track of everything that is in your name than managing money. Good for situations when you need to quickly look up info about a specific account you own.
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What is the point of owning a stock without dividends if it cannot be resold?
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Shares often come associated with a set of rights, such as ability to vote in the outcome of the company. Some shares do not have this right, however. With your ability to vote in the outcome of the company, you could help dictate that the company paid dividends at a point in time. Or many other varieties of outcomes. Also, if there were any liquidity events due to demand of the shares, this is typically at a much higher price than the shares are now when the company is private/closely held.
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What to do with $50,000?
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Here is some good advice, read your UCO prospectus. It seems to hold 20% of it's value ($600MM out of $3B) via 13800 of the Apr 21st 2015 contracts. (expiring in 30 days) Those will be rolled very quickly into the May contracts at a significant loss of NAV. (based on current oil futures chains) Meaning if crude oil stays exactly the same price, you'd still lose 1% (5% spread loss * .20% the percentage of NAV based off futures contracts) on the roll each month. Their other $2.4Billion is held in swaptions or cash, unsure how to rate that exposure. All I know is those 13,800 contracts are in contango danger during roll week for the next few months (IMO). I wonder if there is a website that tracks inflows and outflows to see if they match up with before and after the roll periods. http://www.proshares.com/funds/uco_daily_holdings.html How Oil ETFs Work Many oil ETFs invest in oil futures contracts. An oil futures contract is a commitment to buy a given amount of crude oil at a given price on a particular date in the future. Since the purpose of oil ETFs is only to serve as an investment vehicle to track the price of oil, the creators of the fund have no interest in stockpiling actual oil. Therefore, oil ETFs such as USO periodically “roll over” their futures contracts by selling the contracts that are approaching expiration and buying contracts that expire farther into the future. The Contango Problem While this process of continually rolling over futures contracts may seem like a great way to track the price of crude oil, there’s a practical problem with the method: contango. The rollover method would work perfectly if oil funds could sell their expiring contracts for the exact same price that they pay for the futures contracts they buy each month. However, in reality, it’s often true that oil futures contracts get more expensive the farther their expiration date is in the future. That means that every time the oil ETFs roll over their contracts, they lose the difference in value between the contracts they sell and the contracts they buy. That’s why funds like USO, which invests only in WTI light, sweet crude oil futures contracts, don’t directly track the performance of the WTI crude oil spot price. http://www.etftrends.com/2015/01/positioning-for-an-oil-etf-rebound-watch-for-contango/ Due to these reasons, I'd deem UCO for swing trading, not for 'investing' (buy-and-hold). Maybe later I'll remember why one shouldn't buy and hold leveraged vehicles (leverage slippage/decay). Do you have an exit price in mind ? or are you buy and hold ?
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What does it mean when the broker does not have enough shares to short?
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For Canada No distinction is made in the regulation between “naked” or “covered” short sales. However, the practice of “naked” short selling, while not specifically enumerated or proscribed as such, may violate other provisions of securities legislation or self-regulatory organization rules where the transaction fails to settle. Specifically, section 126.1 of the Securities Act prohibits activities that result or contribute “to a misleading appearance of trading activity in, or an artificial price for, a security or derivative of a security” or that perpetrate a fraud on any person or company. Part 3 of National Instrument 23-101 Trading Rules contains similar prohibitions against manipulation and fraud, although a person or company that complies with similar requirements established by a recognized exchange, quotation and trade reporting system or regulation services provider is exempt from their application. Under section 127(1) of the Securities Act, the OSC also has a “public interest jurisdiction” to make a wide range of orders that, in its opinion, are in the public interest in light of the purposes of the Securities Act (notwithstanding that the subject activity is not specifically proscribed by legislation). The TSX Rule Book also imposes certain obligations on its “participating organizations” in connection with trades that fail to settle (see, for example, Rule 5-301 Buy-Ins). In other words, shares must be located by the broker before they can be sold short. A share may not be locatable because there are none available in the broker's inventory, that it cannot lend more than what it has on the books for trade. A share may not be available because the interest rate that brokers are charging to borrow the share is considered too high by that broker, usually if it doesn't pass on borrowing costs to the customer. There could be other reasons as well. If one broker doesn't have inventory, another might. I recommend checking in on IB's list. If they can't get it, my guess would be that no one can since IB passes on the cost to finance short sales.
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1040 or 1040NR this time?
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1040 or 1040NR depends on whether you are a resident alien or nonresident alien -- 1040/1040A/1040EZ for resident aliens, and 1040NR/1040NR-EZ for nonresident aliens. Determining whether you are a resident is somewhat complex, and there is not enough information in your question to determine it. Publication 519 is the guide for taxes for aliens. (It hasn't been updated for 2014 yet, so mentally shift all the years in the publication up by one year when you read it.) Since you don't have a green card, whether you are a resident is determined by the Substantial Presence Test. The test says that if (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2014) + 1/3 of (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2013) + 1/6 of (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2012) >= 183 days (half a year), then you are a resident alien for 2014. However, there are exceptions to the test. Days that you are an "exempt individual" are not counted toward the Substantial Presence Test. And "exempt individuals" include international students, trainees, teachers, etc. However, there are exceptions to the exceptions. Students are not "exempt individuals" for a year if they have been exempt individuals for any part of 5 previous calendar years. (Different exceptions apply for teachers and trainees.) So whether you are an "exempt individual" for one year inductively depends on whether you have been an "exempt individual" in previous years. Long story short, if before you came to the U.S. as an F-1 student, you haven't been in the U.S. on F-1 or J-1 status, then you will be a nonresident alien for the first 5 calendar years (calendar year = year with a number, not 365 days) that you've been on F-1. We will assume this is the case below. So if you started your F-1 in 2009 (any time during that year) or before, then you would have already been an exempt individual for 5 calendar years (e.g. if you came in 2009, then 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 are your 5 years), so you would not be an exempt individual for any part of 2014. Since you were present in the U.S. for most of 2014, you meet the Substantial Presence Test for 2014, and you are a resident alien for all of 2014. If, on the other hand, you started your F-1 in 2010 (any time during that year) or after, then you would still be an exempt individual for the part of 2014 that you were on F-1 status (i.e. prior to October 2014. OPT is F-1.). Days in 2014 in H1b status (3 months) are not enough for you to satisfy the Substantial Presence Test for 2014, so you would be a nonresident alien for all of 2014. If you fall into the latter case (nonresident alien), there are some alternative choices you have. If you were in the U.S. for most of those last 3 months, then you are eligible to choose to use the "First-Year Choice". I will not go into the steps to use this choice, but the result is that it makes you dual-status for 2014 -- nonresident until October, and resident since October. If you are single, then making this choice pretty much gives you no benefit. However, if you are married, then making this choice allows you to subsequently make another choice to become a resident for all of 2014. Being resident gives you some benefits, like being able to file as Married Filing Jointly (nonresidents can only file separately), being able to use the Standard Deduction, being able to use many other deductions and credits, etc. Though, depending on what country you're from, it may affect your treaty benefits, so check that before you consider it.
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Are American Eagle $20 gold coins considered “securities”, requiring dealers to be licensed to sell them as such?
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No. Securities brokers/dealers in the United States are licensed to broker debt and equity in corporations. (There are additional, commodities licenses to broker derivatives.) $20 American Eagle coins, or any other type of physical currency or physical precious metals can be traded or brokered by anyone without a specific license (except maybe a sales tax registration). The only situation where a securities license would be required is if a legal entity is holding the coins and you deal/broker an interest in that legal entity. For example, dealing in SPDR Gold Shares or a similar structure holding either physical assets or the right to purchase those assets (like a commodity pool) would require a securities and/or commodities dealing license.
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What's the fuss about identity theft?
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Real world case: IRS: You owe us $x. You didn't report your income from job y. My mother: I didn't work for y. I don't even know who y is. IRS: If the W-2 is wrong, talk to them to get it fixed. My mother: I can't find y. Please give me an address or phone. IRS: We can't. You talk to them and get it fixed. I know this dragged on for more than a year, they never mentioned the final outcome and they're gone now so I can't ask.
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What does “profits to the shareholders jumped to 15 cents a share” mean?
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It's a way to help normalize the meaning of the earnings report. Some companies like Google have a small number of publicly traded shares (322 Million). Others like Microsoft have much larger numbers of shares (8.3 Billion). The meaning depends on the stock. If it's a utility company that doesn't really grow, you don't want to see lots of changes -- the earnings per share should be stable. If it's a growth company, earnings should be growing quickly, and flat growth means that the stock is probably going down, especially if slow growth wasn't expected.
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Repaying Debt and Saving - Difficult Situation
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She seems to be paying an inordinate amount of money for car payments. $850/month is just too high. She may be able to get by on public transit, depending on where she lives, but if not, she needs to look at selling her car and picking up a cheap second-hand vehicle. Public transit would probably save her $750/month. Going to a cheaper car should still save her $300 - $400/month. Next, phone and cable. These are certainly nice, but they are rarely necessities. I do not have cable t.v., for example. I do have a cell phone, and I do have Internet (a requirement of my job), but no cable t.v. She may be able to save some money there. My guess is that she could save $125/month here, though I may be biased on how much it costs to heat a Canadian home in our cold, cold winters. And, of course, the college payment. $900 - $1000 a month? I understand that she is paying this so that your sister can attend college. That's very nice, but it certainly sounds like your mother cannot afford that. On the other hand, if this is repayment of college expenses already incurred, there may be no choice here. Rent, at $1625/month. I have no idea what that gets you in NJ, but perhaps she could rent out a room. It's not inconceivable that she could bring in $1000/month from doing so, though obviously that's going to very much depend on the real estate/rental market where you live. Alternatively, she could move out and move in with someone else and that should certainly get her share of the rent down to $800 - $1000/month or thereabouts, and most likely cut her utility bills, also. I've identified a number of places where she can save money. No doubt, the budget is tight, but I think she's spending on far more than just bare essentials. One thing that concerns me here is that she appears to have no emergency funds and very little for entertainment, other than cable t.v. If at all possible, she needs to cut her budget down so that she is not living paycheque to paycheque and has money to cover, for example, emergency car repairs. And I'd really like to see her have more than $50/month for expenses (which I'm guessing is entertainment). It may not be possible, of course, but I would most definitely say she should not be paying for your sister's college if this places her in such dire financial risk. Easier said than done, of course. Most certainly, I would not even consider cutting the health insurance, by the way. Another approach would be to look at how her expenses will go down when your sister is done school and perhaps cleared up other expenses. It may be worth borrowing from family and friends, knowing that in a year, her expenses will go down $500/month. That makes her budget manageable. Additionally, the debt repayment presumably will finish at some point. The point I'm trying to make is that, in a year, her budget will be just about manageable, and she may be able to get there with smaller trims in the immediate future.
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Why call option price increases with higher volatility
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The entire premise of purchasing a call option is your expectation that the prices will rise. So even though there is a possibility of prices falling, you wouldn't mind paying higher premiums in a volatile market for a call option because you're bullish and are expecting the volatility to eventually turn out in your favour i.e. prices to rise
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Condo Purchase - Tax Strategies [US]
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If it's a rental, you will write off the losses via Schedule E. You should read this document and its instructions to understand this fully. You will also take depreciation on the value of the building, not the land, over 27.5 years. If you don't understand this, search here, there are discussions that cover this. If it's not a rental, but your home or second home, you take the interest and real estate tax off you tax via Schedule A, if you itemize. (I see the tag 'rental' but leave this line for sake of a complete answer.)
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Can I claim GST/HST Input Tax Credits (ITCs) on Uber, taxi, or limousine fares?
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The Canada Revenue Agency describes in detail here what information businesses must generally include on their invoices so that GST/HST registrants can claim Input Tax Credits (ITCs) for the expenses. Quote: Sales invoices for GST/HST registrants You have to give customers who are GST/HST registrants specific information on the invoices, receipts, contracts, or other business papers that you use when you provide taxable goods and services. This information lets them support their claims for input tax credits (ITCs) or rebates for the GST/HST you charged. [...] The page quoted continues with a table describing what, specifically, needs to be on a sales invoice based on the total amount of the invoice; the requirements differ for: total sale under $30, total sale between $30 to $149.99, and total sale $150 or more. For the total sale under $30 category, the only things a sales invoice must contain to support an ITC claim are (1) the provider's business name, (2) the invoice date, and (3) the total amount paid/payable. i.e. When the total sale is under $30, there is no requirement for any GST/HST amount to be indicated separately, nor for a business number to be present on the invoice. Hence, IMHO (and I am neither an accountant nor a lawyer), if your Uber rides are for $30 or less, then you shouldn't expect a GST/HST number anyway, and a simple invoice as described should be enough for you to claim your ITCs. Whether or not the provider is registered in fact for GST/HST is beside the point. For amounts over $30, you need a bit more. While the page above specifies that the provider's business number should be included beginning with the next level of total sales, there are exceptions to those rules described at another page mentioned, Exceptions to invoice requirements, that specifically apply to the taxi/limousine case. Quote: Exceptions to invoice requirements GST/HST registrants are required to keep the necessary documentation to support their claim for ITCs and rebates. In certain circumstances the documentation requirements have been reduced. [...] For taxi or limousine fares your books and records must show: So at a minimum, for fare in excess of $30 total, you should ask the driver to note either (a) the amount of GST/HST charged, or (b) a statement that the fare includes GST/HST. The driver's business number need not be specified. Consequently, if your receipt for a ride in excess of $30 does not contain any such additional information with respect to GST/HST, then I would expect the receipt does not satisfy the CRA's requirements for supporting your ITC claim. i.e. Keep your individual rides under $30 each, or else get a better receipt from the driver when it is above that amount. p.s. It should go without saying, but your rides, of course, must be considered reasonable business expenses in order to qualify for GST/HST ITCs for your business. Receipts for rides of a personal nature are not eligible, so be sure to maintain proper records as to the business purpose and destination for each ride receipt so claimed.
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Borrowing share with a covered call for short?
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No, if your stock is called away, the stock is sold at the agreed upon price. You cannot get it back at your original price. If you don't want your stock to be called, make sure you have the short call position closed by expiration if it is ITM. Also you could be at risk for early assignment if the option has little to no extrinsic value, although probably not. But when dividends are coming, make sure you close your short ITM options. If the dividend is worth more than the extrinsic value, you are pretty much guaranteed to be assigned. Been assigned that way too many times. Especially in ETFs where the dividends aren't dates are not always easy to find. It happens typically during triple witching. If you are assigned on your short option, you will be short stock and you will have to pay the dividend to the shareholder of your short stock. So if you have a covered call on, and you are assigned, your stock will be called away, and you will have to pay the dividend.
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Do shares purchased on FTSE AIM move with company to other markets?
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Any shares you buy when a company is listed on one market will remain yours if the company moves to another market. Markets and exchanges like AIM are just venues for dealing in shares - indeed you can deal in those shares anywhere else that will allow you as well as on the AIM. The benefit of being listed in a market is that trade in the shares will be more "liquid" - there's more likely to be people who want to buy and sell them at any given time. The bigger concern would be what happens if the company does badly and drops out of the AIM entirely. You'd still be able to sell your shares to any willing buyer, but finding that buyer might get harder.
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What is the tax treatment of scrip dividends in the UK?
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I wrote about this in another answer: You can sell the scrip dividend in the market; the capital gain from this sale may fall below the annual tax-free allowance for capital gains, in which case you don't pay any capital gains tax on that amount. For a cash dividend, however, there isn't a minimum taxable amount, so you would owe dividend tax on the entire dividend (and may therefore pay more taxes on a cash dividend). Since you haven't sold the shares in the market yet, you haven't earned any income on the shares. You don't owe taxes on the scrip until you sell the shares and earn capital gains on them. HMRC is very explicit about this, in CG33800: It is quite common for a company, particularly a quoted company, to offer its shareholders the option of receiving additional shares instead of a cash dividend. The expression `stock or scrip dividend' is used to describe shares issued in such circumstances. The basic position under tax law is that when a company makes a bonus issue of shares no distribution arises, and the bonus issue of shares is not income for tax purposes in the hands of the recipient. Obviously, if this is an issue for you, talk to a tax professional to make sure you get it right.
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How to calculate how far a shorted stock's price can rise before broker issues a margin call?
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Most brokers have a margin maintenance requirement of 30%. In your example, it would depend on how much money you're borrowing from your broker on margin. Consider this: You have $250, and short AAPL at $500 on margin. This would be a common scenario (federal law requires investors to have at least 50% of their margin equity when opening a transaction). If your broker had a requirement of 30%, they would require that for your $500 position, you have at least $500 * .3 = $150 equity. Since you are currently above that number at $250, you will not be hit with a margin call. Say the price of AAPL doubles, and now your position is worth $1000. $1000 * .3 = $300, which is $50 above your initial equity. Your broker will now consider you eligible for a margin call. Most will not execute the call right away, you will often have some time to either sell/cover stock or add funds to your account. But not all brokers will warn you if you are breaking margin requirements, and sometimes margin calls can take you by surprise if you are not paying attention. Also, many will charge interest on extra margin borrowed.
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Why is it that stock prices for a company seem to go up after a layoff?
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If the market believes that the company is overstaffed, then management acknowledging the issue and resolving the problem can result in the price going up. It can also mean that external events drove the price up, and the bad news was lost in the other issues of the day. Sometimes layoffs are a sign of the company entering a long downward spiral; in other cases it is a sign of the beginning recovery. The layoffs can also be viewed as good news if they weren't as big as some experts feared. You have to look at the exact situation to understand why news x impacts the companies price.
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Why do some symbols not have an Options chain for specific expiration dates?
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The answer is actually very simple: the cost of data. Seriously. Call the CBOE tomorrow and ask yourself. They have two big programs: 1) the penny pilot program, where options trade at penny increments instead of 5 cent increments. This is only extended to a select few symbols because of the amount of data this can generate is too much for the data vendors. Data vendors store and sell historical data. The exchanges themselves often have a big data vending business too. 2) the weekly options program, where only select symbols get these chains because of the amount of data they will generate. Liquidity and demand are factors in determining if the CBOE will consider enabling those series on new issues. (although they have to give the list of which symbols are on these programs to the SEC)
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In a house with shared ownership, if one person moves out and the other assumes mortgage, how do we determine who owns what share in the end?
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I second (or fifth?) the answers of the other users in that this should have been foreseen and discussed prior to entering the partnership. But to offer a potential solution: If the mortgage company allows you to assume the whole mortgage (big if) you could buy the other partner out. To determine what a fair buyout would be, take the current value of the house less the remaining mortgage to get the current equity. Half that is each partner's current gain (or potentially loss), and could be considered a fair buyout. At this point the partner realizes any gains made in the last 5 years, and from now on the whole house (and any future gains or losses) will be yours. Alternatively your partner could remain a full partner (if s/he so desires) until the house sells. You would see the house as a separate business, split the cost as you have, and you would pay fair market rent each month (half of which would come back to you). A third option would be to refinance the house, with you as a sole mortgage holder. To factor in how much your partner should receive out of the transaction, you can take his/her current equity and subtract half of the costs associated with the refi. I would also recommend both of you seek out the help of a real estate lawyer at this point to help you draft an agreement. It sounds like you're still on good terms, so you could see a lawyer together; this would be helpful because they should know all the things you should look out for in a situation like this. Good luck!
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Are parking spaces and garage boxes a good investment?
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No no no no!!!! Do not spend 25k on a damn slab of concrete when you don't even own the land! You are not "truly" the owner unless you legally own the land. I don't care what country your talking about. If you like I'll come over to your place, mix and pour some concrete on the floor, and you can pay me 5 euro. Deal? Buy the smallest parcel of land you can find. Own the land. Pour some concrete on it and viola!!!
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HSBC Hong Kong's “Deposit Plus” Product: What is it, and what strategies to employ?
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HSBC Hong Kong's “Deposit Plus” Product" the same as "Dual Currency Product" . it's Currency link Sell base Currency Call / Alternative Currency Put FX Option It's not protected by the Deposit Insurance System in HK You can search Key Word "Dual Currency Product" & "Dual Currency Investment" & "Dual Currency Deposit" The only one of the world's foreign exchange structured product book 『雙元貨幣產品 Dual Currency Product』 ISBN 9789574181506
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401k Transfer After Business Closure
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You should probably consult an attorney. However, if the owner was a corporation/LLC and it has been officially dissolved, you can provide an evidence of that from your State's department of State/Corporations to show that their request is unfeasible. If the owner was a sole-proprietor, then that may be harder as you'll need to track the person down and have him close the plan.
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Currently sole owner of a property. My girlfriend is looking to move in with me and is offering to pay 'rent'. Am I at risk here?
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Edit #2 My whole answer was based on my misunderstanding that you were renting out a totally separate property to your girl friend. I finally understand now that you're renting out a room in YOUR apartment flat to your gf. So, based on my new understanding, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea. The answer below is my answer to a different question ;) Original Answer My answer has nothing to do with business, but is totally relationship based. If you care about her in a "we might be together a long time" way, then I wouldn't do this. I don't care what arrangements you setup before hand, at some point, you're bound to feel like she owes you something at some point. Let alone the easiest of situations to imagine (she's late on the rent, she loses her job and can't pay, etc) you'll be forced to make decisions about how much your desire to love and care for her outweighs your need to pay your mortgage. You can argue how magnanimous your are all day long, but is this something you want to bring into your relationship? Now, if you don't really care to stay with her that long and you could do life with or without her, then go for it. I think the big question is, is your relationship worth £200? Edit In the interest of supporting my opinion, here are a few articles I found on the subject: Unfortunately, the way renting to friends or family often works out is far from what would be expected between people who care about one another. For the most part, friends and family members will actually make bad renters, because they’ll expect more from you than a tenant who doesn’t know you. You may get a lot of requests for maintenance and repairs, even for minor things, and you may also find that family members and friends think they should be entitled to perks because of your personal relationship with them. When they don’t get special treatment, they can get angry with you, and that hurts both your professional relationship and your personal relationship. American Apartment Owners Association "In my experience, landlords renting to relatives doesn't work out perfectly," said Ceyhun Doker, a REALTOR® associate at Keller Williams Realty in Burlingame, CA. "When you don't know each other, there are fewer problems." realator.com
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What makes a stock get 40 times avg daily volume without any news?
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Probably the biggest driver of the increased volumes that day was a change in sentiment towards the healthcare sector as a whole that caused many healthcare companies to experience higher volumes ( https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2017-07-11/asset-acquisitions-accelerate-in-healthcare-sector-boosting-potential-revenue-growth ). Following any spike, not just sentiment related spikes, the market tends to bounce back to about where it had been previously as analysts at the investment banks start to see the stock(s) as being overbought or oversold. This is because the effect of a spike on underlying ratios such as the Sharpe ratio or the PE ratio makes the stock look less attractive to buyers and more attractive to sellers, including short sellers. Note, however, that the price is broadly still a little higher than it was before the spike as a result of this change in sentiment. Looking at the price trends on Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/CDNA:US) the price had been steadily falling for the year prior to the spike but was levelling out at just over $1 in the few months immediately prior to the spike. The increased interest in the sector and the stock likely added to a general change in the direction of the price trend and caused traders (as opposed to investors) to believe that there was a change in the price trend. This will have lead to them trading the stock more heavily intraday exacerbating the spike. Note that there traders will include HFT bots as well as human traders. You question the legality of this volume increase but the simple answer is that we may never know if it was the target of traders manipulating the price or a case of insider trading. What we can see is that (taking "animal spirits" into account) without any evidence of illegality there are plenty of potential reasons why the spike may have occurred. Spikes are common where traders perceive a change in a trend as they rush to cash in on the change before other traders can and then sell out quickly when they realise that the price is fundamentally out of sync with the firm's underlying position. You yourself say that you have been watching the stock for some time and, by that fact alone, it is likely that others are for the same reasons that you are. Otherwise you wouldn't be looking at it. Where people are looking at a stock expecting it to take off or drop you expect volatility and volatility means spikes!
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Why do companies have a fiscal year different from the calendar year?
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Maybe it's just because of the foundation date. If I start a company on August 1st, I would like its FY starts on that date too, in order to track my first whole year. Would be quite useless to finish my year on December, after just five months. I want to have data of my first year after a twelve months activity.
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Got charged ridiculous amount for doctor's walk in visit. What are my options?
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You will often receive a lower bill if you simply wait for a second or third billing statement. I was once given the advice to never pay a medical bill until after they had sent three notices, because they will almost certainly reduce the amount due. Sounds crazy, right? I have excellent credit, so the idea of risking it by ignoring bills disturbed me greatly, and I scoffed at the advice. I then had a similar experience to you, and decided to take the advice. By the third statement, the bill was reduced to less than half of the original, with zero intervention on my part. I then paid it without any impact to my credit whatsoever. I've since done that every time I receive healthcare services, and the bill is always reduced on subsequent statements, generally to less than half of the original bill. Sometimes it's because insurance finally got around to paying. Sometimes a credit is mysteriously added. Sometimes line items disappear without explanation. (Line items sometimes appear over time, too, but the overall balance generally goes down.) I don't know the reason for it, but it works. This has happened with a variety of providers, so it's not just one company that does it. Granted, I never called to negotiate the price, so I can't say if I would've gotten a better deal by doing that. I like it because it requires no time or effort on my part, and it has greatly reduced my medical bills with zero impact to my credit. I only have personal anecdotes to back it up, but it's worked for me.
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Why UK bank charges are not taken account when looking on interest for taxation?
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When I left the UK four years ago, free banking is still an option and I'm pretty sure it still is. Therefore, you have chosen to have a bank account with a 5.00/month charge. In return for this charge, you will be eligible to receive certain benefits. For example; reduced borrowing costs, discounted mortgage rates, free overdraft on small amounts, "rewards" for paying household bills by direct debit, and things of this sort. Amongst these benefits may be preferential savings rates. However, from HMRC's point of view it will be the extra perks you are paying for with your monthly charge. You have chosen to pay for the account and HMRC is not interested in how you choose to spend your money, only in the money you earn. While I agree with you that it does have an element of unfairness, the problem is how would you divide the cost amongst the various benefits.
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Is there any way to buy a new car directly from Toyota without going through a dealership?
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If there's one reasonably close to you, you could go to a no-haggle dealership. Instead of making you haggle the price downward, they just give a theoretically fixed price that's roughly what the average customer could negotiate down to at a conventional dealer. Then just do your best broken record impression if they still try to sell you dubious addons: "No. No. No. No. No..." The last time I bought a new car (06), a no haggle dealer offered the second best deal I got out of 4 dealerships visited. The one I ended up buying with made an exceptional offer on my trade (comparable to 3rd party sale bluebook value). - My guess is they had a potential customer looking for something like my old car and were hoping to resell it directly instead of flipping it via auction.
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“Infinite Banking” or “Be Your Own Bank” via Whole Life Insurance…where to start?
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Can't tell you where to go for a good policy, but I can tell you that most brokers make a hefty commission out of your payments for at least a year before you even start funding the tax sheltered investment account that you're trying to buy under the umbrella of life insurance. You'll have to do a lot of homework to hunt down a reputable discount broker or a direct policy purchase from the insurance company. Life insurance requires insurable need. The description is vague enough, that you can probably still get the account despite being a single male with no apparent heirs to benefit, but it raises the question of why you are buying the insurance. Whole life policies require you to maintain a certain ratio of investment to premium payment and you will likely never be able access all of the money in the account for your own personal usage. Compare several policies from several brokers and companies. Read all the critical sources you can about the pitfalls and dangers of commissions, fees and taxes eating the benefits of your account. Verify that the insurance company you buy the policy from is financially stable after the market crash. You are paying a commission to pool your money into their investment fund, and if your insurer goes under, you'll have to get a portion of your money (possibly only the principle) back from the state insurance commissioner. Some companies sold pretty generous policies during the bubble and have cut their offerings way down without fixing their marketing literature and rosy promises. Finally, let us know what you find. It never hurts to see hard numbers and to run multiple eyes over the legalese in these contracts.
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Understanding stock market terminology
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One of the most useful ways to depict Open, High, Low, Close, and Volume is with a Candlestick Chart. I like to use the following options from Stockcharts.com: http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=SPY&p=D&yr=0&mn=3&dy=0&id=p57211761385
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Should I sell when my stocks are growing?
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In my view, it's better to sell when there's a reason to sell, rather than to cap your gains at 8%. I'm assuming you have no such criteria on the other side - i.e. hold your losses down to 8%. That's because what matters is how much you make overall in your portfolio, not how much you make per trade. Example: if you own three stocks, equal amounts - and two go up 20% but one falls 20%. If you sell your gains at 8%, and hold the loser, you have net LOST money. So when do you actually sell? You might say a "fall of 10%" from the last high is good enough to sell. This is called a "trailing" stop, which means if a stock goes from 100 to 120, I'll still hold and sell if it retraces to 108. Needless to say if it had gone from 100 to 90, I would still be out. The idea is to ride the trend for as long as you can, because trends are strong. And keep your trailing stops wide enough for it to absorb natural jiggles, because you may get stopped out of a stock that falls 4% but eventually goes up 200%. Or sell under other conditions: if the earnings show a distinct drop, or the sector falls out of favor. Whenever you decide to sell, also consider what it would take for you to buy the stock back - increased earnings, strong prices, a product release, whatever. Because getting out might seem like a good thing, but it's just as important to not think of it as saying a stock is crappy - it might just be that you had enough of one ride. That doesn't mean you can't come back for another one.
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Why can't a US state default, but a EU state can?
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US or EU states are sovereigns which cannot go bankrupt. US states have defaulted in the 1840's, but in most of those cases creditors were eventually repaid in full. (I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that Indiana was an exception with regard to costs incurred building a canal system) The best modern example of a true near-default was New York City in the late 1970's. Although New York City isn't a state, the size and scope of its finances is greater than many US states. What happened then in a nutshell: Basically, a default of a major state or a city like NYC where creditors took major losses would rock the financial markets and make it difficult for all states to obtain both short and long term financing at reasonable rates. That's why these entities get bailed out -- if Greece or California really collapse, it will likely create a domino effect that will have wide reaching effects.
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Why is auto insurance ridiculously overpriced for those who drive few miles?
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One reason is because car insurance is mandated. Mandated insurance means the government is forcing people to purchase it, which also means that everyone must have the opportunity to purchase it at a reasonable cost, even if the insurer would normally not choose to insure them. In mandated industries, risk pools are formed which means that as a whole, lower risk members partially subsidize higher risk members. In mandated industries that have a large risk variance, the insurance system would break down if everyone was charged their "fair share" because high risk members would be unable to afford a policy. (This is even more prominent with health insurance than car insurance because the difference in risk is vastly greater.) On a positive note, perhaps you may get a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing that you are helping out others "in need".
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Is it a good idea to get an unsecured loan to pay off a credit card that won't lower a high rate?
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Why not just get another credit card and transfer the balance? Many of them will give you special perks like x months of no interest for doing so. Also, once you call to actually cancel the card you will see for sure whether they really have any power to negotiate rates. From their perspective 15% APR is more than 0%APR which is what they'd get if they lose your business.
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Did my salesman damage my credit? What can I do?
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You can sue them for damages. It would be hard to convince the court that the drop in the credit score was because of that loan, but not unthinkable. Especially if you sue through the small-claims court, where the burden of proof is slightly less formal, you have a chance to win and have them pay the difference in rates that it cost you.
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Should I be worried that I won't be given a receipt if I pay with cash?
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If this is because he wants to avoid paying taxes, will I get in trouble if I agree to have him work on my vehicle? You should check your state and local sales tax laws to be certain, but in my state you have no liability if he does not pay his taxes. That's his problem, not yours. The biggest risk for you is if something goes wrong, you have no proof that the work was ever done, so it's possible he could deny that any transaction ever took place and refuse to correct it or refund your money. So at worst you're out what you paid for the service, plus what it would cost you to fix it if you needed to and chose to do so. If you don't want to take that risk, then insist on a receipt or take you business elsewhere, but there's no criminal liability for you if he chooses not to report the income. EDIT Be aware, though that state tax is levied at the state and local level, so the laws of your individual state or city may be different.
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Tax withheld by USA working in UK (Form 1042-S and Form 1099)
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Why was I sent both 1042-S and 1099. Which amount is the right amount that has been withheld. Generally, each tax form you get will be about a separate income; for instance, you might get a 1099-DIV for dividends you earned from an investment and then a 1099-B for the profit or loss on selling that investment, in which case you'd report them both to the IRS. In this case, you've also had money withheld as a non-resident alien, which is why you've been issued a 1042-S. So you need to report both amounts to the IRS.
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Why does the stock market index get affected when a terrorist attack takes place?
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There are more than a few different ways to consider why someone may have a transaction in the stock market: Employee stock options - If part of my compensation comes from having options that vest over time, I may well sell shares at various points because I don't want so much of my new worth tied up in one company stock. Thus, some transactions may happen from people cashing out stock options. Shorting stocks - This is where one would sell borrowed stock that then gets replaced later. Thus, one could reverse the traditional buy and sell order in which case the buy is done to close the position rather than open one. Convertible debt - Some companies may have debt that come with warrants or options that allow the holder to acquire shares at a specific price. This would be similar to 1 in some ways though the holder may be a mutual fund or company in some cases. There is also some people that may seek high-yield stocks and want an income stream from the stock while others may just want capital appreciation and like stocks that may not pay dividends(Berkshire Hathaway being the classic example here). Others may be traders believing the stock will move one way or another in the short-term and want to profit from that. So, thus the stock market isn't necessarily as simple as you state initially. A terrorist attack may impact stocks in a couple ways to consider: Liquidity - In the case of the attacks of 9/11, the stock market was closed for a number of days which meant people couldn't trade to convert shares to cash or cash to shares. Thus, some people may pull out of the market out of fear of their money being "locked up" when they need to access it. If someone is retired and expects to get $x/quarter from their stocks and it appears that that may be in jeopardy, it could cause one to shift their asset allocation. Future profits - Some companies may have costs to rebuild offices and other losses that could put a temporary dent in profits. If there is a company that makes widgets and the factory is attacked, the company may have to stop making widgets for a while which would impact earnings, no? There can also be the perception that an attack is "just the beginning" and one could extrapolate out more attacks that may affect broader areas. Sometimes what recently happens with the stock market is expected to continue that can be dangerous as some people may believe the market has to continue like the recent past as that is how they think the future will be.
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Buying Fixed Deposit in India from Europe
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About the inflation or low interest rates in both the countries is out of the equation especially since rupee is always a low currency compared to Euro. You cannot make profit in Euros using rupee or vice-versa. It all depends on where you want to use the money, in India or Europe? If you want use the money from fixed deposit in Europe, then buy fixed deposit in euros from Europe. If you want to use the money in India, then convert the euros and buy FD in India.
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Why do stocks priced above $2.00 on the ASX sometimes move in $0.005 increments?
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Like in the US, more flexibility is extended to hidden orders. Australia has taken an aggressive approach to hidden orders in the direction of lower ticks. Aussies have a rich financial that evolved differently than the Dutch custom more familiarly known in the UK and US. They, like Chicago evolved out of commodities trade rather than trade. When commodities are worth nearly nothing per unit, larger precision comes naturally. For the Dutch, it was the opposite. A single ship would trade in 1/64 share or for the largest vessels, 1/128 share. Here, there's no point to high precision. New York, founded by the Dutch specialized in logistics just the same. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, so both Chicago, Australia, and other financial systems built by commodities rather than trade have extended the higher precision logic to everything else, and pricing is fantastic. It should not be a surprise why Australia has taken a lead in pushing infinite precision.
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Where to Park Proceeds from House Sale for 2-5 Years?
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There are some high-yield savings accounts out there that might get you close to 1 percent. Shorter term CDs might also serve you well here- rates are above 1 percent, even with 1-2 year terms: http://www.nerdwallet.com/rates/cds/best-cd-rates/
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What happens to an ETF if one of the companies in the ETF gets aquired?
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There are a number of ways this can result. In a broad ETF, such as SPY, the S&P 500 spider, the S&P index will have 500 stocks no matter what, so a buyout would simply result in a re-shuffling of the index makeup. No buyout will happen so quickly that there's no time to choose the next stock to join the index. In your case, if the fund manager (per the terms of the prospectus) wishes to simply reallocate the index to remove the taken-over stock that's probably how he handle it. Unless of course, the prospectus dictates otherwise. In which case, a cash dividend is a possible alternative.
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How does high frequency trading work if money isn't available for 2-3 days after selling?
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Margin accounts do not have the problem you are imagining, which is unique to cash accounts
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Can I contribute to an IRA from investment income?
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Traditional IRA contributions can be made if you have compensation and the amount of the contribution is limited to the smaller of your compensation and $5500 ($6000 if age 50 or more). Note that compensation (which generally means earnings form working) is not just what appears on a W-2 form as salary or wages; it can be earnings from self-employment too, as well as commissions, alimony etc (but not earnings from property, pensions and annuities, certain types of partnership income) You must also not have attained age 70.5 in the year for which the contribution is made. Even if you don't have any compensation of your own, you can nonetheless make a Traditional IRA contribution if your spouse has compensation as long as you are filing a joint tax return with your spouse. For spouses filing a joint return, the limits are still the same $5500/$6000 for each spouse, and the sum total of Traditional IRA contributions for both spouses also must not exceed the sum total of earned income of both spouses. The age limits etc are all still applicable. Note that none of this says anything about whether the contributions are deductible. Everyone meeting the above requirements is eligible to make contributions to a Traditional IRA; whether the contributions can be deducted from current income depends on the income: those with high enough incomes cannot deduct the contribution. This is different from Roth IRAs to which people with high incomes are not permitted to make a contribution at all. Finally, the source of the cash you contribute to the IRA can be the proceeds of the stock sale if you like; you are not required to prove that the cash received from compensation is what you sent to the IRA custodian. Read Publication 590 (available on the IRS website www.irs.gov) if you need an authoritative reference.
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How to chose index funds, mutual funds from a plethora of options (TD Ameritrade)
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One thing to be aware of when choosing mutual funds and index ETFs is the total fees and costs. The TD Ameritrade site almost certainly had links that would let you see the total fees (as an annual percentage) for each of the funds. Within a category, the lowest fees percentage is best, since that is directly subtracted from your performance. As an aside, your allocation seems overly conservative to me for someone that is 25 years old. You will likely work for 40 or so years and the average stock market cycle is about 7 years. So you will likely see 5 or so complete cycles. Worrying about stability of principal too young will really cut into your returns. My daughter is your age and I have advised her to be 100% in equities and then to start dialing that back in about 25 years or so.
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Ex-dividend date and time zones
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Ex-Date is a function of the exchange, as well as the dividend. Consider Deutsche Bank AG, DB on the NYSE, DKR on Xetra. For a given dividend, each exchange sets the ex-date for trades on that exchange. (See http://www.sec.gov/answers/dividen.htm for a description of how it works in the US; other exchanges/countries are similar.) This ex-date is normally based on the dividends record date, which is when you must be on the company's books as a shareholder to receive the dividend, and based on when trades for an exchange are settled. The ex-date is the first date for which trades on that date will not settle until after the record date. This means that the ex-date can be different for different exchanges. If you sell your shares on an exchange before the ex-date for that exchange, you will not get the dividend. If you sell your shares on or after the ex-date for the exchange, you do not get the dividend. So it depends on the time zone of the exchange. Most stock exchanges trade T+3, but this can still come into play if there are bank holidays in different countries at different times.
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Do money markets fluctuate during market crashes?
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Wikipedia has a solid article on Money Market Funds which includes a section on "Breaking the Buck" when the money market fund fails to return its full dollar. Money market funds smoothing out the daily (generally small) fluctuations of investing in short-term treasuries directly but have similar risk over longer periods. Some funds can and have lost money in market crashes, though even the worst performers still returned 95+ cents on the dollar. While few investments are guaranteed and likely none in your retirement account, money-market funds are likely the choice you have with the least fluctuation and similar minimal risk to short term treasuries. However, a second important risk to consider is inflation. Money market funds generally have returns similar or less than the inflation rate. While money markets funds help you avoid the fluctuations of the stock market the value of your retirement account falls behind the cost of goods over time. Unless the investor is fairly old most financial professionals would recommend only a small portion of a retirement account be in money market instruments. Vanguard also has a set of target retirement investment funds that are close to what many professionals would recommend. Consulting a financial professional to discuss your particular needs is a good option as well.
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First time investor wanting to invest in index funds especially Vanguard
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Congratulations on deciding to save money and choosing to invest it. One thing to know about mutual funds including index funds is that they typically require a minimum investment of a few thousand dollars, $3000 being a typical amount, unless the investment is in an IRA in which case $1000 might be a minimum. In some cases, automated monthly investments of $50 or $100 might need to be set up if you are beginning with a small balance. There is nothing wrong with your approach. You now should go and look at the various requirements for specific index funds. The Fidelity and Vanguard families are good choices and both offer very low-cost index funds to choose from, but different funds can have different requirements regarding minimum investments etc. You also have a choice of which index you want to follow, the S&P 500 Index, MidCap Indexes, Small-Cap Indexes, Total Stock Market Indexes etc., but your choice might be limited until you have more money to invest because of minimum investment rules etc. Most important, after you have made your choice, I urge you to not look every day, or even every month, to see how your investment is doing. You will save yourself a lot of anxiety and will save yourself from making wrong decisions. Far too many investors ignore the maxim "Buy Low, Sell High" and pull money out of what should be long-term investments at the first flicker of a downturn and end up buying high and selling low. Finally, the time is approaching when most stock funds will be declaring dividends and capital gains distributions. If you invest now, you may end up with a paper profit on which you will have to pay taxes (in non-tax-advantaged accounts) on your 2012 tax return (this is called "buying a dividend"), and so you might want to spend some time investigating now, but actually make the investment in late December after your chosen fund has made its distributions (the date for this will be on the fund's web site) or in early 2013.
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How to make a decision for used vs new car if I want to keep the car long term?
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In a perfect world scenario you would get a car 2-5 years old that has very little mileage. One of the long standing archaic rules of the car world is that age trumps mileage. This was a good rule when any idiot could roll back an odometer. Chances are now that if you rolled your odometer back the car was serviced somewhere, had inspection or whatever and it is on a report. If seller was found to do this they could face jail time and obviously now their car is almost worthless. Why do I mention this? Because you can take a look at 2011 cars. Those with 20K miles go for just a little more than those with 100K miles. As an owner you will start incurring heavy maintenance costs around 100K on most newer cars. By buying cars with lower mileage, keeping them for a year or two, and reselling them before they get up in miles, you can stay in that magic area where you can drive a pretty good car for $200-300 a month. Note that this takes work on both the buying and selling side and you often need cash to get these cars (dealers are good about siphoning really good used cars to employees/friends). This is a great strategy for keeping costs down and car value up but obviously a lot of people try to do this and it takes work and you have to be willing to settle sometimes on a car that is fine, but not exactly what you want. As for leasing this really gets into three main components: If you are going to do EVERYTHING at a dealership and you want something new or newish you might as well lease. At least then you can shop around for apples to apples. The problem with buying a new/used car from the dealers in perpetuity isn't the buying process. It is the fact that they will screw you on the trade-in. A car that books for 20K may trade-in for 17K. Even if the dealer says they are giving you 20K, then they make you pay list price for the car. I have many many times negotiated a price of a car and then wife brought in our car separately and I can count on ZERO fingers how many times that the dealership honored both sides of the negotiations. Not only did they not honor them but most refused to talk with us after they found out. With a lease you don't have to worry about losing this money in the negotiations. You might pay a little extra (or not since you can shop around) but after the lease you wash your hands of the car. The one caveat to this is the high-end market. When you are talking your Acura, Mercedes, Lexus... It is probably better to buy and trade in every couple years. You lose too much equity by leasing, where it won't cover the trade-in gap and cost of your money being elsewhere. I have a friend that does this and gets a slightly better car every 2-3 years with same monthly payment. Another factor to consider is the price of a car. If your car will be worth over $15K at time of sale you are going to have a hard time selling it by owner. When amounts get this high people often need financing. Yes they can get personal financing but most people are too lazy to do this. So the number of used car buyers on let's say craigslist are way way fewer as you start getting over $10-12K and I have found $15K to be kind of that magic amount. The pro-buy-used side is easy. Aim for those cars around $12-18K that are out there (and many still under warranty). These owners will have issues finding cash buyers. They will drop prices somewhere between book price and dealer trade-in. In lucky cases where they need cash maybe below dealer trade-in. And remember these sellers aren't dealing with 100s let alone 10 buyers. You drive the car for 3-4 years. Maybe it is $7-10K. But now you will get much much closer to book price because there will be far more buyers in this range.
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Why are American Express cards are not as popular as Visa or MasterCard?
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Those extra treat points have to come from somewhere, and they come from American Express charging merchants a higher percentage than Visa or Mastercard. So it's less attractive for those merchants to accept it.
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Can someone help me understand my student loans?
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First to actually answer the question "how long at these rates/payments?"- These is nothing magic or nefarious about what the bank is doing. They add accrued interest and take your payment off the new total. I'd make higher payments to the 8.75% debt until it's gone, $100/mo extra and be done. The first debt, if you bump it to $50 will be paid in 147 months, at $75/mo, 92 months. Everything you pay above the minimum goes right to the principal balance and gets you closer to paying it off. The debt snowball is not the ideal way to pay off your debt. Say I have one 24% credit card the bank was nice enough to give me a $20,000 line of credit on. I also have 20 cards each with $1000 in credit, all at 6%. The snowball dictates that the smallest debt be paid first, so while I pay the minimum on the 24% card, the 6% cards get paid off one by one, but I'm supposed to feel good about the process, as I reduce the number of cards every few months. The correct way to line up debt is to pay off the (tax adjusted) highest rate first, as an extra $100 to the 24% card saves you $2/mo vs 50 cents/mo for the 6% cards. I wrote an article discussing the Debt Snowball which links to a calculator where you can see the difference in methods. I note that if the difference from lowest to highest rate is small, the Snowball method will only cost you a small amount more. If, by coincidence, the balances are close, the difference will also be small. The above aside, it's the rest of your situation that will tell you the right path for you. For example, a matched 401(k) deposit should take priority over most debt repayment. The $11,000 might be better conserved for a house downpayment as that $66/mo is student loan and won't count as the housing debt, rather "other debt" and part of the higher ratio when qualifying for the mortgage. If you already have taken this into account, by all means, pay off the 8.75% debt asap, then start paying off the 3% faster. Keep in mind, this is likely the lowest rate debt one can have and once paid off, you can't withdraw it again. So it's important to consider the big picture first. (Are you depositing to a retirement account? Is it a 401(k) and are you getting any matching from the company?)
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How much more than my mortgage should I charge for rent?
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I just wanted to add one factor to the other answers. The cost of maintenance etc. is not a fraction of the cost of financing - it is more likely a fraction of the value of the house, and a function of its age. If you say you need to replace a roof every 25 years, and that costs $10,000 (depends on the size of the house, obviously), then you need to set aside $400 a year for roof repair. Other costs (painting, flooring, kitchen, bathrooms, water heaters, heating, AC, yard upkeep etc) can be roughly estimated in the same way. A rule of thumb is 1% of the value of the house per year to cover all big-ticket maintenance. If you pay 4% mortgage, that would increase the reserve by 25%; but if interest rates rise, the fraction may be smaller (I remember paying over 10% mortgage...). In general, whether keeping a property for long term rental income (with the potential for appreciation - but prices can go up and down) is a good idea will largely depend on your ability to predict future costs and value. If you have a variable mortgage, that will be harder to do.
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What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time?
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People rave about Basecamp by 37signals. The impressive part is all the add-ins you can get for it. There are add-ins for invoicing, billing, accounting, and time tracking.
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Are stocks always able to be bought and sold at market price?
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There needs to be a buyer of the shares you are offering. There are a lot of feature rich options for buying and selling. I don't understand them all in depth, but for example on TD Ameritrade here are some of the order types "Limit", "Market", "Stop Market", "Stop Limit", "Trailing Stop %", "Trailing Stop $". This web page will explain the different order types https://invest.ameritrade.com/cgi-bin/apps/u/PLoad?pagename=tutorial/orderTypes/overview.html Stock with a higher volume will allow your trade to execute faster, since there are more frequent trades than stocks with lower volume. (UPDATE: More specifically, not more frequent trades, but more shares changing hands.) I'm a bit of a noob myself, but that's what I understand.
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Is inflation a good or bad thing? Why do governments want some inflation?
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Inflation is what happens, it is not good or bad in and of itself. But consider the following. In a thriving economy with low unemployment, people are buying, buying, buying. People are not saving for later, they are buying now. Industry is also making purchases. Now. From economics 101: high demand for goods/services leads to relative scarcity leading to higher prices. Inflation tends to be one byproduct of a thriving economy. Governments want the thriving economy that brings inflation with it.
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Why having large capital is advantageous to trading
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Excess capital is the primary means of navigating around a trade which is moving against you. In a very basic case, consider a long position moving against you. With additional capital you could average in as the price drops or you could write options against your position. If you don't have the capital to handle when (not if) a trade move against you then you're at a significant disadvantage as your only option may be a liquidation.
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What are the ins/outs of writing-off part of one's rent for working at home?
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Before starting to do this, make sure that you are squeaky clean in all aspects of your tax preparation and are prepared to back up any claims that you make with documentation. Home office deductions are a huge red flag that often trigger audits. Follow mbhunter's advice and be incredibly meticulous about following the rules and keeping records.
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Can you have a positive return with a balance below cost basis?
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Have you owned the stock for longer than 2015? The stock appears to have grown in value since December 2014 from 72.85 to 73.5 which is about 0.89% growth in the year to date (2015).
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How do I make a small investment in the stock market? What is the minimum investment required?
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Many brokers offer a selection of ETFs with no transaction costs. TD Ameritrade and Schwab both have good offerings. Going this route will maximize diversification while minimizing friction.
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Why might it be advisable to keep student debt vs. paying it off quickly?
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Liquidity Say you have $50k in student loan debt. You come into a large amount of money and throw $10k at it. Yes, it's now down to $40k, saving you a lot of money in interest over the long run, but it's money you can no longer 'use'. Now if you invest that same $10k instead, you still potentially have access to it if needed. Paying $10k towards a debt at a 5% interest rate has essentially the same rate of return as investing the $10k at a 5% return. You're 'making' the same amount of money either way. But if you say, get laid off or need money for medical expenses or a down payment on a house, you can tap into that $10k investment if needed. It is a liquid asset.
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Options for dummies. Can you explain how puts & calls work, simply?
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Great answer by @duffbeer. Only thing to add is that the option itself becomes a tradeable asset. Here's my go at filling out the answer from @duffbeer. "Hey kid... So you have this brand-new video game Manic Mazes that you paid $50 for on Jan 1st that you want to sell two months from now" "Yes, Mr. Video Game Broker, but I want to lock in a price so I know how much to save for a new Tickle Me Elmo for my baby sister." "Ok, for $3, I'll sell you a 'Put' option so you can sell the game to me for $40 in two months." Kid says "Ok!", sends $3 to Mr Game Broker who sends our kid a piece of paper saying: The holder of this piece of paper can sell the game Manic Mazes to Mr Game Broker for $40 on March 1st. .... One month later .... News comes out that Manic Mazes is full of bugs, and the price in the shops is heavily discounted to $30. Mr Options Trader realizes that our kid holds a contract written by Mr Game Broker which effectively allows our kid to sell the game at $10 over the price of the new game, so maybe about $15 over the price in the second-hand market (which he reckons might be about $25 on March 1st). He calls up our kid. "Hey kid, you know that Put option that Mr Game Broker sold to you you a month ago, wanna sell it to me for $13?" (He wants to get it a couple of bucks cheaper than his $15 fair valuation.) Kid thinks: hmmm ... that would be a $10 net profit for me on that Put Option, but I wouldn't be able to sell the game for $40 next month, I'd likely only get something like $25 for it. So I would kind-of be getting $10 now rather than potentially getting $12 in a month. Note: The $12 is because there could be $15 from exercising the put option (selling for $40 a game worth only $25 in the second-hand market) minus the original cost of $3 for the Put option. Kid likes the idea and replies: "Done!". Next day kid sends the Put option contract to Mr Options Trader and receives $13 in return. Our kid bought the Put option and later sold it for a profit, and all of this happened before the option reached its expiry date.
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What are the differences between gold/siver “coin” vs. “round”?
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littleadv gave a great answer, but neglected to mention one thing. Modern minted coins usually only contain a (high) percentage of a precious metal. For example pre-1965 quarters are 90% silver and 10% other, to maintain strength and durability. Rounds of silver bullion are usually .9999%, or fine, silver, which is considerably softer.
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Are these really bond yields?
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It's worth pointing out that a bulk of the bond market is institutional investors (read: large corporations and countries). For individuals, it's very easy to just put your cash in a checking account. Checking accounts are insured and non-volatile. But what happens when you're GE or Apple or Panama? You can't just flop a couple billion dollars in to a Chase checking account and call it a day. Although, you still need a safe place to store money that won't be terribly volatile. GE can buy a billion dollars of treasury bonds. Many companies need tremendous amounts of collateral on hand, amounts far in excess of the capacity of a checking account; those funds are stored in treasuries of some sort. Separately, a treasury bond is not a substitute investment for an S&P index fund. For individuals they are two totally different investments with totally different characteristics. The only reason an individual investor should compare the return of the S&P against the readily available yield of treasuries is to ensure the expected return of an equity investment can sufficiently pay for the additional risk.
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What effect would a company delisting from the LSE to move to china have on shareholders?
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You would still be the legal owner of the shares, so you would almost certainly need to transfer them to a broker than supports the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (which allows you to trade on the Shanghai exchange). In order to delist they would need to go through a process which would include enabling shareholders to continue to access their holdings.
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Good book-keeping software?
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The short answer is that there are no great personal finance programs out there any more. In the past, I found Microsoft Money to be slick and feature rich but unfortunately it has been discontinued a few years ago. Your choices now are Quicken and Mint along with the several open-source programs that have been listed by others. In the past, I found the open source programs to be both clunky and not feature-complete for my every day use. It's possible they have improved significantly since I had last looked at them. The biggest limitation I saw with them is weakness of integration with financial service providers (banks, credit card companies, brokerage accounts, etc.) Let's start with Mint. Mint is a web-based tool (owned by the same company as Quicken) whose main feature is its ability to connect to nearly every financial institution you're likely to use. Mint aggregates that data for you and presents it on the homepage. This makes it very easy to see your net worth and changes to it over time, spending trends, track your progress on budgets and long-term goals, etc. Mint allows you to do all of this with little or no data entry. It has support for your investments but does not allow for deep analysis of them. Quicken is a desktop program. It is extremely feature rich in terms of supporting different types of accounts, transactions, reports, reconciliation, etc. One could use Quicken to do everything that I just described about Mint, but the power of Quicken is in its more manual features. For example, while Mint is centred on showing you your status, Quicken allows you to enter transactions in real-time (as you're writing a check, initiating a transfer, etc) and later reconciles them with data from your financial institutions. Link Mint, Quicken has good integration with financial companies so you can generally get away with as little or as much data entry as you want. For example, you can manually enter large checks and transfers (and later match to automatically-downloaded data) but allow small entries like credit card purchases to download automatically. Bottom line, if you're just looking to keep track of where you are at, try Mint. It's very simple and free. If you need more power and want to manage your finances on a more transactional level, try Quicken (though I believe they do not have a trial version, I don't understand why). The learning curve is steep although probably gentler than that of GnuCash. Last note on why Mint.com is free: it's the usual ad-supported model, plus Mint sells aggregated consumer behaviour reports to other institutions (since Mint has everyone's transactions, it can identify consumer trends). If you're not comfortable with that, or with the idea of giving a website passwords to all your financial accounts, you will find Quicken easier to accept. Hope this helps.
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For a major expensive home renovation (e.g. addition, finished basement, or new kitchen) should one pay cash or finance with a loan? Would such a loan be “good” debt?
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Good debt is very close to an oxymoron. People say student loans are "good debt," but I beg to differ. The very same "good debt" that allowed me to get an education is the very same "bad debt" that doesn't allow me to take chances in my career - meaning, I would prefer to have a 'steady' job over starting a business. (That's my perogative, of course, but I am not willing to take that 'risk.' /endtangent @Harmanjd provided the two really good reason for using cash over borrowing. We have a tendency in this culture to find reasons to borrow. It is better for you to make a budget, based on what you want, and save up for it. Make a "dream list" for what you want, then add up the costs for everything. If that number makes your head hurt, start paring down on things you 'want.' Maybe you install just a wine cooler instead of a wine cooler and a beer tap, or vice-versa. And besides, if something comes up - you can always stop saving money for this project and deal with whatever came up and then resume saving when you're done. Or in the case of the kitchen, maybe you do it in stages: cabinets one year, countertops the next, flooring the year after that, and then the appliances last. You don't have to do it all at once. As someone who is working toward debt freedom, it feels nice whenever we have one less payment to budget for every month. Don't burden yourself to impress other people. Take your time, get bids for the things you can't (or won't) do yourself, and then make a decision that's best for your money.
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Why would a company with a bad balance sheet be paying dividends?
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Having a debt on a balance sheet does impact the capability and willingness of the company to pay dividend. But more than this it depends on the profitability of the company. If the company is profitable, there is no reasons why it's share holders should not be rewarded. If the company does not have debt, lot of money and no profit, normally no or a symbolic dividend is paid. It is a good move by Fort. Dividend is the effective way of paying something back to the shareholders.
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Why not just invest in the market?
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Perhaps someone has an investment objective different than following the market. If one is investing in stocks with an intent on getting dividend income then there may be other options that make more sense than owning the whole market. Secondly, there is Slice and Dice where one may try to find a more optimal investment idea by using a combination of indices and so one may choose to invest 25% into each of large-cap value, large-cap growth, small-cap value and small-cap growth with an intent to pick up benefits that have been seen since 1927 looking at Fama and French's work.
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How safe is a checking account?
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US checking accounts are not really secure, though many people use them. One form of check fraud has been highlighted by Prof. Donald Knuth and carried out by Frank Abagnale, as portrayed in the film Catch Me If You Can. Basically, anyone can write a check that would draw from your account merely by knowing your account number and your bank's ABA routing number. With those two pieces of information (which are revealed on every check that you write), anyone can print a working check, either using a laser printer with MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) toner, or by placing an order with a check-printing company. The only other missing element is a signature, which is a pretty weak form of authentication. When presented with such a check, your bank would probably honor it before finding out, too late, that it is fraudulent. A variant of this vulnerability is ACH funds transfers. This is the mechanism through which you could have, say, your utility company automatically withdraw money from your account to pay your bill. Unfortunately, the transfer is initiated by the recipient, and the system relies largely on trust with some statistical monitoring for suspicious patterns. Basically, the whole US checking system is built with convenience rather than security in mind, since other institutions are able to initiate withdrawal transactions by knowing just the ABA number and account number. In practice, it works well enough for most people, but if you are paranoid about security, as you seem to be, you don't want to be using checks. The European system, which has largely eliminated checks in favor of payer-initiated push transactions, is safer by design.
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Investment / Savings advice in uncertain economy
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$23,000 Student Loans at 4% This represents guaranteed loss. Paying this off quickly is a conservative move, while your other investments may easily surpass 4% return, they are not guaranteed. Should I just keep my money in my savings account since I want to keep my money available? Or are there other options I have that are not necessarily long term may provide better returns? This all depends on your plans, if you're just trying to keep cash in anticipation of the next big dip, you might strike gold, but you could just as easily miss out on significant market gains while waiting. People have a poor track record of predicting market down-turns. If you are concerned about how exposed to market risk you are in your current positions, then you may be more comfortable with a larger cash position. Savings/CDs are low-interest, but much lower risk. If you currently have no savings (you titled the section savings, but they all look like retirement/investment accounts), then I would recommend focusing on that first, getting a healthy emergency fund saved up, and budgeting for your car/house purchases. There's no way to know if you'd be better off investing everything or piling up cash in the short-term. You have to decide how much risk you are comfortable with and act accordingly.
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Are the guaranteed returns of regulated utilities really what they sound like?
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No. That return on equity number is a target that the regulators consider when approving price hikes. If PG&E tried to get a 20% RoE, the regulator would deny the request. Utilities are basically compelled to accept price regulation in return for a monopoly on utility business in a geographic area. There are obviously no guarantees that a utility will make money, but these good utilities are good stable investments that generally speaking will not make you rich, but appreciate nicely over time. Due to deregulation, however, they are a more complex investment than they once were. Basically, the utility builds and maintains a bunch of physical infrastructure, buys fuel and turns it into electricity. So they have fixed costs, regulated pricing, market-driven costs for fuel, and market-driven demand for electricity. Also consider that the marginal cost of adding capacity to the electric grid is incredibly high, so uneven demand growth or economic disruption in the utility service area can hurt the firms return on equity (and thus the stock price). Compare the stock performance of HE (the Hawaiian electric utlity) to ED (Consolidated Edison, the NYC utility) to SO (Southern Companies, the utility for much of the South). You can see that the severe impact of the recession on HE really damaged the stock -- location matters. Buying strategy is key as well -- during bad market conditions, money flows into these stocks (which are considered to be low-risk "defensive" investments) and inflates the price. You don't want to buy utilities at a peak... you need to dollar-cost average a position over a period of years and hold it. Focus on the high quality utilities or quality local utilities if you understand your local market. Look at Southern Co, Progress Energy, Duke Energy or American Electric Power as high-quality benchmarks to compare with other utilities.
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What is the fastest way to retire, using passive income on real estate
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Rule of thumb: To retire with a yearly income of $X, you need to save $(20*X) -- in other words, the safe assumption is that you'll average 4% returns on your stabilized savings/investments. In the case of retiring with a $50k passive pretax income, that means you need savings of $1M by the time you retire. If you want the $50,000 to be real post-tax spendable dollars, and your savings aren't in something like a Roth 401k or Roth IRA, increase that proportionately to account for taxes. How you get there depends on what you start with, how much you put into it every year, how you invest it and how many years you have before your retirement date. Passive investment alone will not do it unless you start with a lot of money; passive ongoing investment may depending on how much you can make yourself save when. To find out whether any specific plan will do what you need, you have to work with real numbers.
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What does a contract's worth mean?
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The amount stated is the total amount of money the customer will be paying to the company. How much profit that will translate into is dependent on the type of contract. Some types of contracts: Cost plus fixed fee: they are paid what it costs to complete the contract plus a fee on top of that. That fee represents their profits. The costs will include salary, benefits, overhead, equipment, supplies. Firm fixed price: They perform the service, and they get paid a fixed amount. If their costs are higher than they forecast, then they may lose money. If they can be more efficient than they forecast, then they make more money. Time and materials: They are paid for completing each sub-task based on the number of hours it takes to complete each sub task, plus materials. This is used to hire a company to maintain a fleet of trucks. If the trucks are used a lot they will need more standard maintenance, plus additional repairs based on the type of use. They pay X for labor and Y for materials for an oil change, but A for labor and B for materials for a complete engine rebuild. There are many variations on these themes. Some put the risk on the customer, some on the company. How and when the company is paid is based on the terms of the contract. Some pay X% a month, others pay based on meeting milestones. Some pay based on the number of tasks completed in each time period. Some contracts run for a specific period of time, others have an initial period plus option years. The article may or may not specify if the quoted amount is the minimum amount of the contract or the maximum amount. The impact on the stock price is much more complex. Much more needs to be known about the structure of the contract, and who will be providing the service to determine if there will be profits. Some companies will bid to lose money, if it will serve as a bridge to another contract or to fill a gap that will allow them to delay layoffs.
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How to calculate/reconcile conflicting P/E ratios?
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The user who wrote the Zerohedge item: The CBS article: The Quora estimate is similar to the Zerohedge one (estimated a round value of 1000 PE and a price of 70-80). Note that it was 30 days after the first 2 items you quoted. You used the CBS numbers except you used the zerohedge price. It depends on which earnings were for each calculation. Past or future. The CBS numbers make the most sense because you can trace where they come from based on the links in their article. CBS based their price on the estimates made the day before the stock went on sale. The price in the zerohedge item was based on the early trading numbers.
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How do I protect money above the FDIC coverage limit?
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Be very careful to hold on tight to your money! I agree with paying for an investment advisor, but I would say use at least two to get different viewpoints, and get credentials and references! Don't let relatives convince you to invest in their business, or help them out, or any other such nonsense. Real estate still is one of the best investments out there in my opinion. You could buy a fixer upper and rent it out?
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Why haven't there been personal finance apps or softwares that use regression modeling or A.I.?
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Consumer facing finance is heavily regulated. You are liable for the recommendations you make; if they are based on a black box you risk problems when sued. It is difficult to explain in a court of law why a neural network came to a particular conclusion. It is much easier to provide advice (models) in the "educated counterparty" market. Not only do institutional investors in general expect to pay for a quality advice (consumers in general expect to get online advice for free) but the legal implications are different.
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At Vanguard, can I transfer shares from regular investment account to a Roth IRA?
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Since you are paying taxes on the distributions from your mutual funds anyway, instead of reinvesting the distributions back into the mutual funds, you could receive them as cash, then contribute them to your Roth IRA once you are able to open one.
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In-laws moving in (financial/tax implications)?
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You are "pool[ing] the sales from both houses as downpayment on the new house." But they are going to pay you rent. Your question as it stands, just opens more questions. What, exactly is the ownership of the new house? If your's (and your wife's) was the money a gift? Ignoring the gift, if that's what it is, and if the in-law suite is 25% of the house value, you have a rental. You claim 25% of the expenses, including property tax and mortgage interest, along with 25% of the utilities, unless their part has its own meters. That's a start, if you add details, I may edit my answer. (Not to be pedantic, but whose parents are they. They can't be "our in-laws," can they?)
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Is it ever a good idea to close credit cards?
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Credit scoring has changed recently and the answer to this question will have slightly changed. While most points made here are true: But now (as of July 2017) it is possible having a large available credit balance can negatively effect your credit score directly: ... VantageScore will now mark a borrower negatively for having excessively large credit card limits, on the theory that the person could run up a high credit card debt quickly. Those who have prime credit scores may be hurt the most, since they are most likely to have multiple cards open. But those who like to play the credit card rewards program points game could be affected as well. source
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Do I pay a zero % loan before another to clear both loans faster?
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Allen, welcome to Money.SE. You've stumbled into the issue of Debt Snowball, which is the "low balance" method of paying off debt. The other being "high interest." I absolutely agree that when one has a pile of cards, say a dozen, there is a psychological benefit to paying off the low balances and knocking off card after card. I am not dismissive of that motivation. Personal Finance has that first word, personal, and one size rarely fits all. For those who are numbers-oriented, it's worth doing the math, a simple spreadsheet showing the cost of the DS vs paying by rate. If that cost is even a couple hundred dollars, I'll still concede that one less payment, envelope, stamp, etc, favors the DS method. On the other hand, there's the debt so large that the best payoff is 2 or 3 years away. During that time, $10000 paid toward the 24% card is saving you $2400/yr vs the $500 if paid toward 5% debt. Hard core DSers don't even want to discuss the numbers, strangely enough. In your case, you don't have a pile of anything. The mortgage isn't even up for discussion. You have just 2 car loans. Send the $11,000 to the $19K loan carrying the 2.5%. This will save you $500 over the next 2 years vs paying the zero loan down. Once you've done that, the remaining $8000 will become your lowest balance, and you should flip to the Debt Snowball method, which will keep you paying that debt off. DS is a tool that should be pulled out for the masses, the radio audience that The David (Dave Ramsey, radio show host) appeals to. They may comprise the majority of those with high credit card debt, and have greatest success using this method. But, you exhibit none of their symptoms, and are best served by the math. By bringing up the topic here, you've found yourself in the same situation as the guy who happens to order a white wine at a wedding, and finds his Mormon cousin offering to take him to an AA meeting the next day. In past articles on this decision, I've referenced a spreadsheet one can download. It offers an easy way to see your choice without writing your own excel doc. For the situation described here, the low balance total interest is $546 vs $192 for the higher interest. Not quite the $500 difference I estimated. The $350 difference is low due to the small rate difference and relatively short payoffs. In my opinion, knowledge is power, and you can decide either way. What's important is that if you pay off the zero interest first, you can say "I knew it was a $350 difference, but I'd rather have just one outstanding loan for the remain time." My issue with DS is when it's preached like a religion, and followers are told to not even run the numbers. I wrote an article, Thinking about Dave Ramsey a number of years back, but the topic never gets old.
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How can all these countries owe so much money? Why & where did they borrow it from?
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Others have pointed out that the entities loaning money to the government are typically people and institutions. Recently, however, the US federal government borrowings were largely funded by money printed by the Federal Reserve. The government had to borrow $1.1 trillion from October, 2010 through June, 2011. During this period the FED printed around $0.8 trillion new dollars to purchase US debt. Thus, the US government was not borrowing money from people, it was being funded by money printing. The central bankers call this "quantitative easing".
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How meaningful is the “stock price” of a stock?
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Prices quoted are primarily the offer prices quoted by the numerous market makers on the stock exchange(s) willing to sell you the stock. There is another price which generally isn't seen on these websites, the bid prices, which are lower prices quoted by buyers and market makers willing to buy your shares from you. You wouldn't see those prices, unless you login to your trade terminal. How meaningful are they to you depends on what you want to do buy or sell. If you want to buy then yes they are relevant. But if you want to sell, then no. And remember some websites delay market information by 15 minutes, in case of Google you might have seen that the volume is delayed by 15 minutes. So you need to consider that also while trading, but mayn't be a concern unless you are trying to buy out the company.
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IRA for work and my business
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Yes, you can have both. You'll need business income to contribute to a SEP IRA though.
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Should I set a stop loss for long term investments?
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Stop loss orders are the exact opposite of what you should be doing if you are implementing a long term buy-and-hold strategy. The motivation of a buy-and-hold strategy is that in the long term, the market rises even despite the occasional crash or recession. Setting a stop loss simply increases the probability that you will sell for a low price in a temporary market downturn. Unless you are likely to need near-term liquidity (in which case you're not a long term investor), that makes no sense.
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