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What part of buying a house would make my net worth go down? | Houses depreciate. Period. Things break: the hot water heater explodes, the AC cuts out in August, the roof leaks, the basement floods, toilets back up, raccoons dig up the garden. Each time something breaks, the house loses value. Every year the paint fades a little, the house loses value. Every time GE comes out with a more efficient washing machine, the house loses value. The only reason a house appears to maintain its value over time is because the money you spend repairing and improving it offsets this unavoidable depreciation. Even then, over extended periods of time it will typically just track inflation--so you're treading water. Not that there's anything wrong with that. You need to live somewhere. |
For a car loan, how much should I get preapproved for? | —they will pull your credit report and perform a "hard inquiry" on your file. This means the inquiry will be noted in your credit report and count against you, slightly. This is perfectly normal. Just don't apply too many times too soon or it can begin to add up. They will want proof of your income by asking for recent pay stubs. With this information, your income and your credit profile, they will determine the maximum amount of credit they will lend you and at what interest rate. The better your credit profile, the more money they can lend and the lower the rate. —that you want financed (the price of the car minus your down payment) that is the amount you can apply for and in that case the only factors they will determine are 1) whether or not you will be approved and 2) at what interest rate you will be approved. While interest rates generally follow the direction of the prime rate as dictated by the federal reserve, there are market fluctuations and variances from one lending institution to the next. Further, different institutions will have different criteria in terms of the amount of credit they deem you worthy of. —you know the price of the car. Now determine how much you want to put down and take the difference to a bank or credit union. Or, work directly with the dealer. Dealers often give special deals if you finance through them. A common scenario is: 1) A person goes to the car dealer 2) test drives 3) negotiates the purchase price 4) the salesman works the numbers to determine your monthly payment through their own bank. Pay attention during that last process. This is also where they can gain leverage in the deal and make money through the interest rate by offering longer loan terms to maximize their returns on your loan. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just how they have to make their money in the deal. It's good to know so you can form your own analysis of the deal and make sure they don't completely bankrupt you. —is that you can comfortable afford your monthly payment. The car dealers don't really know how much you can afford. They will try to determine to the best they can but only you really know. Don't take more than you can afford. be conservative about it. For example: Think you can only afford $300 a month? Budget it even lower and make yourself only afford $225 a month. |
Has anyone compared an in-person Tax Advisor to software like Turbo Tax? | Generally speaking no person or program is really going to be able to help you lower your current tax burden, most tax decisions are done well before you reach the tax time. You either qualify for the deduction/credit or your don't. Where a good accountant will really be able to help you out is in planning that will limit your future tax burden. Particularly if you run a small business or are very wealthy you will probably want to consider using an accountant. I would always avoid the large scale tax prep places like HR Block they provide the same or lower quality service for a higher price than the software. I run a small business and do my own taxes using turbo tax, but my business isn't overly complex Sole prop, no employees, couple 1099's simple expenses (nothing to amortize) etc. |
If a put seller closes early, what happens to the buyer? | You're assuming options traded on the open market. To close open positions, a seller buys them back on the open market. If there's little on offer, this will drive the price up. |
Will a stop order get triggered if the floor is hit and trading is halted? | quantycuenta is right, if a halt is in place, then no trading will occur, simple as that. But in the practice of risk management it is a little different. Want to remind you that you are assuming that trading is halted immediately upon the drop in price. That doesn't always happen, so if there is any time between the actual price drop and halt of trading, then it is possible that your order will be filled, depending on how liquid your security is. Also not every security has circuit breakers in place and the exact requirements to trigger a breaker is not public information. In some cases, trades are ordered to be rolled back (reversed) by the exchange but this is usually reserved for institutional traders who make some sort of mistake. This article below mentions day traders who bought at or near the bottom of the May 6, 2010 flash crash. This was before circuit breakers but I think it's a good story for someone looking to understand the finer workings of the electronic market. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/book-takes-a-look-inside-professional-day-traders-1339513989350 |
What exactly can a financial advisor do for me, and is it worth the money? | In my experience financial advisors do not normally assist with budgeting and personal everyday finance. There certainly are people who do that, but you would normally only consult them when you have financial difficulties, especially debt. The more common find of financial advisor is mostly focussed on advising you about savings and investments. A lot work for banks and investment companies. They will usually advise you for free, the downside being that they will only recommend their company's products. This may or may not be a bad thing, depending on the company. Others will charge you a commission on purchases, and their advice will be more neutral. This question will also be interesting: Are all financial advisors compensated in the same way? |
Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do? | First, there are MLM businesses that are legitimate and are not Ponzi schemes; I actually work with one (I will not name it lest I give the impression of trying to sell here). One thing I learned was how to respond when a prospect raises objections related to the actual scams, which are abundant; the answer being to point out, and you mentioned this yourself, that in an illegitimate scheme, there is no actual product being offered - the only thing money is ever spent on is the expectation of a future profit. Ask your friend, "Would you buy the product this company sells, at the price they ask, if there were not a financial opportunity attached to it?" If not, "How can you expect anyone else to buy it from you?" There are only 3 ways he can respond to this question: he can realize that you're right and get out now; he can change the subject to the concept of making money by climbing the ranks and earning off of a salesforce, in which case it's time to educate him on Ponzi; or he can claim to be able to sell something he doesn't believe in, in which case you should run fat, far away. If he does indicate that he would be a customer even without the chance to sell the product, then offer him the chance to prove it, by giving you one sales pitch on the condition that he is not allowed to breathe a word about joining the business. Do him the courtesy of listening with an open mind, and decide for yourself whether you could ever be a customer. If the possibility exists, even if not today, he has found one of the few legitimate MLM companies, and you should not try to stop him. If not, you'll have to determine whether it's because the product just isn't for you, or because it's inherently worthless, and whether you should encourage or discourage your friend going forward. |
Why did the Swiss National Bank fix the EUR/CHF exchange rate at CHF 1.20? | As the European crisis worsened the Swiss Franc (CHF) was seen as a safe currency so Europeans attempted to exchange their Euros for Francs. This caused the Franc to appreciate in value, against the Euro, through the summer and fall of 2011. The Swiss government and Swiss Central Bank (SNB) believe mercantilism will create wealth for the citizens of Switzerland. The Swiss central planners believe that having an abundance of export businesses in Switzerland will create wealth for the citizens of Switzerland as the exporters sell their good and services abroad and pocket a bunch of cash. Thus, the central planners tend to favor exporters. From the article: At the start of the year, when exporters urged for government and SNB action, ... The Swiss Central bank continued to intervene in currency markets in 2011 to prevent the CHF from appreciating. This was done to prevent a decrease in export business. Finally after many failed attempts they announced the 1.20 peg in September. The central planners give little consideration to imports, however, since manufacturers in foreign countries don't vote or contribute to the campaign funds of the central planners in Switzerland. As the CHF strengthened many imported items became very cheap for Swiss citizens. This was of little concern to the central planners. Currencies are like other goods in a market in that they respond to supply and demand. Their value can change daily or even hourly based on the continually varying demands of people. This can cause the exchange rate to rise and fall against other currencies and goods. Central planners mistakenly believe that the price of certain market items (like currency) should not fluctuate. The believe there is some magical number that will cause the market to operate "better" or "more correctly". How does the SNB maintain the peg? They maintain the peg by printing Francs and purchasing euros. |
Options “Collar” strategy vs regular Profit/Loss stops | There are a few differences: |
Stock stopped trading, what does this mean? | It looks like JP Morgan can convert your holding to unsponsored ADRs until July.. In any event, you should not completely lose the equity. Volvo still exists as a public company, it's just not tradable on US exchanges. Q1: Yes, you'd need a JPM account. Your broker should have offered a similar service. If they didn't they are not a broker. Q2: You own 30 shares in Volvo. You need to get your broker to either sell them (off-exchange now) or tell you how to gain access to them. |
Snowball debt or pay off a large amount? | You've already received good advice here, pay off the highest rate card first, in this case the Best Buy card. I completely agree. To answer your question about the minimum payment, I can't guarantee that this is how Citi does it on your particular card, but several online calculators seem to use the following formula. Minimum Payment = Fees + (APR / 12) x Balance + 1% x Balance. I plugged in your numbers and got really close to the minimum payment you mentioned. I ran calculations for balances of 8,500 and 6,500 and got payments of $184 and $141. You can use this calculator to plug in some numbers for yourself. I found the formula on this page along with a reference stating that Citi uses the formula. Edited to Add: As Bruce Alderman mentioned in his answer, it's probably not a good idea to just pay the minimum. That calculator I linked to shows the difference between paying the minimum and even a small amount ($50 or so) more than the minimum every month. Something like the difference between 3 and 10 years. |
Theoretically, if I bought more than 50% of a company's stocks, will I own the company? | You'll own whatever fraction you bought. To own the company (as in, boolean - yes or no) you need to buy 100% of the outstanding stock. RE controlling the company, in general the answer is yes - although the mechanism for this might not be so straight forward (ie. you may have to appoint board members and may only be able to do so at pre-set intervals) and there may be conditions in the company charter designed to stop this happening. Depending on your jurisdiction certain ownership percentages can also trigger the need to do certain things so you may not be able to just buy 50% - in Australia when you reach 20% ownership you have to launch a formal takeover bid. |
Connection between gambling and trading on stock/options/Forex markets | There is economic value added to the marketplace, by having many investors trading stocks. The stock market itself can be thought of as a tool which provides additional 'liquidity' to the marketplace. Liquidity is the ease with which you can convert your assets into cash (for example, how quickly could you sell your car if you needed money to pay a medical bill?). Without a stock market, funds would be very illiquid - an investor would likely need to post advertisements to have other people consider buying his/her shares. Until the match between a buyer and seller is found, the person with the shares can't use the cash they need. On the other side of the transaction, are people who have an appetite for risk. This means that, for various reasons, they are willing to take on more risk than you, if it pays off on average (they are young [and have many years of salary earnings in front of them], or they are rich [can afford to lose money sometimes if it pays off on average]). Consider this like a transaction between your insurance broker - you don't want to pay for a new car if you get in an accident, and you're willing to pay total annual premiums that, on average, will cost more than that same car over time. You don't want the risk, but the insurance company does - that's how they make money. So by participating in any marketplace, you are providing value, in the form of liquidity, and by allowing the market to allocate risk to those willing to take it on. |
At what age should I start or stop saving money? | While there is no age limit, bear in mind that saving money makes sense only if it doesn't delay your paying off expensive debt. If you have credit cards or expensive loans you would be best placed to focus on paying them down before saving a lot. If you save and keep debt, you'll effectively lose money as the interest on your debt will usually be higher than you can earn on savings. Having said that, it's worth saving a small amount anyway to have as an emergency fund. As you pay off your debt, start saving the money you no longer have to pay out and it will soon pay dividends. |
Should I pay off my student loan before buying a house? | Paying off your student loan before buying a house is certainly a great risk reduction move for you. It will lower your debt to income ratio allowing your mortgage approval to go easier and it will free up more of your dollars to pay for the many miscellaneous projects that come with buying a house. I think that if you are considering paying off your student loan before buying a house that means that your student loans are an amount you can fathom paying off and that you are motivated to be rid of your student loan debt. Go for it and pay off your student loan. |
Should I set a stop loss for long term investments? | The only time I've bothered with stop orders is when I think the position is in a particularly volatile state and there is an earnings report pending. In this situation it's an easily debatable thing to do. If I'm so concerned that the earnings report will be enough to cause a wild downswing that I'd place a stop order, maybe I should just drop the position now. I subscribe to the school of thought that you don't sell your MVPs. I've bought a few things on a whim that really performed well over the few years to follow. To me it doesn't make sense to pick a return at which I would turn off the spigot. So generally it doesn't make sense to hold orders that would force a sale, either after some upside or downside occurs. Additionally, if I've chosen something as a long term hold. I never spend all my cash opening up a position. I've frequently opened positions that subsequently experienced a decline, when that happens I buy more. Meaningless side thought: With the election coming I've been seriously considering pulling some of my gains off the table. My big apprehension with doing that is that I have no near-term alternative use for the money. So what's the point of selling a position I'm otherwise comfortable with just to pay taxes on the gain then probably buy back in? |
How does the wash sale rule work in this situation? | The way the wash sale works is your loss is added to your cost basis of the buy. So suppose your original cost basis is $10,000. You then sell the stock for $9,000 which accounts for your $1,000 loss. You then buy the stock again, say for $8,500, and sell it for $9,000. Since your loss of $1,000 is added to your cost basis, you actually still have a net loss of $500. You then buy the stock again for say $10,500, then sell it for $9,500. Your $500 loss is added to your cost basis, and you have a net loss of $1,500. Since you never had a net gain, you will not owe any tax for these transactions. |
Ideal investments for a recent college grad with very high risk tolerance? | If you have been putting savings away for the longer term and have some extra funds which you would like to take some extra risk on - then I say work yourself out a strategy/plan, get yourself educated and go for it. If it is individual shares you are interested then work out if you prefer to use fundamental analysis, technical analysis or some of both. You can use fundamental analysis to help determine which shares to buy, and then use technical analysis to help determine when to get into and out of a position. You say you are prepared to lose $10,000 in order to try to get higher returns. I don't know what percentage this $10,000 is of the capital you intend to use in this kind of investments/trading, but lets assume it is 10% - so your total starting capital would be $100,000. The idea now would be to learn about money management, position sizing and risk management. There are plenty of good books on these subjects. If you set a maximum loss for each position you open of 1% of your capital - i.e $1,000, then you would have to get 10 straight losses in a row to get to your 10% total loss. You do this by setting stop losses on your positions. I'll use an example to explain: Say you are looking at a stock priced at $20 and you get a signal to buy it at that price. You now need to determine a stop price which if the stock goes down to, you can say well I may have been wrong on this occasion, the stock price has gone against me so I need to get out now (I put automatic stop loss conditional orders with my broker). You may determine the stop price based on previous support levels, using a percentage of your buy price or another indicator or method. I tend to use the percentage of buy price - lets say you use 10% - so your stop price would be at $18 (10% below your buy price of $20). So now you can work out your position size (the number of shares to buy). Your maximum loss on the position is $2 per share or 10% of your position in this stock, but it should also be only 1% of your total capital - being 1% of $100,000 = $1,000. You simply divide $1,000 by $2 to get 500 shares to buy. You then do this with the rest of your positions - with a $100,000 starting capital using a 1% maximum loss per position and a stop loss of 10% you will end up with a maximum of 10 positions. If you use a larger maximum loss per position your position sizes would increase and you would have less positions to open (I would not go higher than 2% maximum loss per position). If you use a larger stop loss percentage then your position sizes would decrease and you would have more positions to open. The larger the stop loss the longer you will potentially be in a position and the smaller the stop loss generally the less time you will be in a position. Also as your total capital increases so will your 1% of total capital, just as it would decrease if your total capital decreases. Using this method you can aim for higher risk/ higher return investments and reduce and manage your risk to a desired level. One other thing to consider, don't let tax determine when you sell an investment. If you are keeping a stock just so you will pay less tax if kept for over 12 months - then you are in real danger of increasing your risk considerably. I would rather pay 50% tax on a 30% return than 25% tax on a 15% return. |
Smart to buy a house in college? | Of course, I know nothing about real estate or owning a home. I would love to hear people's thoughts on why this would or would not be a good idea. Are there any costs I am neglecting? I want the house to be primarily an investment. Is there any reason that it would be a poor investment? I live and work in a college town, but not your college town. You, like many students convinced to buy, are missing a great many costs. There are benefits of course. There's a healthy supply of renters, and you get to live right next to campus. But the stuff next to campus tends to be the oldest, and therefore most repair prone, property around, which is where the 'bad neighborhood' vibe comes from. Futhermore, a lot of the value of your property would be riding on government policy. Defunding unis could involve drastic cuts to their size in the near future, and student loan reform could backfire and become even less available. Even city politics comes into play: when property developers lobby city council to rezone your neighborhood for apartments, you could end up either surrounded with cheaper units or possibly eminent domain'd. I've seen both happen in my college town. If you refuse to sell you could find yourself facing an oddly high number of rental inspections, for example. So on to the general advice: Firstly, real estate in general doesn't reliably increase in value, at best it tends to track inflation. Most of the 'flipping' and such you saw over the past decade was a prolonged bubble, which is slowly and reliably tanking. Beyond that, property taxes, insurance, PMI and repairs need to be factored in, as well as income tax from your renters. And, if you leave the home and continue to rent it out, it's not a owner-occupied property anymore, which is part of the agreement you sign and determines your interest rate. There's also risks. If one of your buddies loses their job, wrecks their car, or loses financial aid, you may find yourself having to eat the loss or evict a good friend. Or if they injure themselves (just for an example: alcohol poisoning), it could land on your homeowners insurance. Or maybe the plumbing breaks and you're out an expensive repair. Finally, there are significant costs to transacting in real estate. You can expect to pay like 5-6 percent of the price of the home to the agents, and various fees to inspections. It will be exceedingly difficult to recoup the cost of that transaction before you graduate. You'll also be anchored into managing this asset when you could be pursuing career opportunities elsewhere in the nation. Take a quick look at three houses you would consider buying and see how long they've been on the market. That's months of your life dealing with this house in a bad neighborhood. |
Are there any caveats to withdrawing funds from brokerage? | Assuming a USA taxable account: Withdrawing funds from a brokerage account has nothing to do with taxes. Taxes are owed on the profit when you sell a stock, no matter what you do with the funds. Taxes are owed on any dividends the stock produces, no matter what you do with the dividend. The brokerage sends you a form 1099 each year that shows the amounts of dividends and profits. You have to figure out the taxes from that. |
How to find a business consultant that would ensure that all your business activities are legal and compliant with all regulations? | Getting a specific service recommendation is off-topic, but the question of what type of professional you need seems on-topic to me. You may be looking for more than one professional in this case, but you could try these to start your search: Different people do things differently, but I think it would be pretty common to have a relationship (i.e. contract, retainer agreement, at least have met the person in case you have an "emergency") with a business law attorney and either a CPA or tax attorney. You may try not to use them too much to keep costs down, but you don't want to be searching for one after you have an issue. You want to know who you're going to call and may establish at least a basis working relationship. |
Is it a good idea to get an unsecured loan to pay off a credit card that won't lower a high rate? | nan |
Allocation between 401K/retirement accounts and taxable investments, as a young adult? | I would say yes, it makes sense to keep some money in taxable accounts. Retirement accounts are for retirement, and the various early withdrawal penalties are designed to enforce that. If you're anticipating using the money before retirement (e.g., for home purchase), it makes sense to keep it out of retirement accounts. On the other hand, be aware that, regardless of what kind of account it is in, you face the usual risk/return tradeoff. If you put your money in the S&P 500 and the S&P 500 tanks just before you were going to buy a house, your down payment evaporates and you will have to wait and buy a house later. You can manage this by shifting the allocation of this money and perhaps cashing it out if a certain amount is gained (i.e., it grows to the level of your target down payment) and you are close enough to the house purchase time that you don't want to risk it anymore. Basically, if you invest money for a pre-retirement use, you may want to keep it in a taxable account, but you also need to take account of when you'll need it and manage the risk accordingly. |
Contributing to a Roth IRA while income tax filing status is “Married Filing Separately”? | You must file as married for 2013 if you were married as of December 31, 2013. It is true that the Roth IRA contribution phaseout for Married Filing Separately is 0 - $10K. But you can still do backdoor Roth IRA contribution (contribute to a Traditional IRA, then convert it to a Roth IRA; assuming you do not have any pre-tax IRAs, this is identical to a Roth IRA contribution). But you already made a Roth IRA contribution for 2013, and did not do the backdoor. Let's assume that you want to turn it into a backdoor Roth IRA contribution, and that you don't have any pre-tax IRAs. There are two ways to do this: Withdraw the Roth IRA you contributed (including earnings). Then, do a normal backdoor Roth IRA contribution (contribute to a Traditional IRA, then immediately convert it to Roth IRA). The earnings you had in the Roth IRA that you withdrew will be treated as normal income and taxed. The conversion will not be taxable because all of the Traditional IRA was non-deductible when you converted. Re-characterize your original Roth IRA contribution as a Traditional IRA contribution, then convert it to Roth IRA. It will be treated as if you made a Traditional IRA contribution originally, and then waited until now to convert. The earnings in the IRA up till now will be taxed on conversion. So in both cases, you will need to pay income tax on the earnings in the account up to now. The difference between the two is in the amount of money in the IRA now. With the first way, you can only contribute $5500 now. With the second way, you will keep the same amount of money you have in the IRA now. |
Will progressively investing with moderate-to-high risk help secure a future? | I always thought high-risk investing is hit or miss, but this is working out very well with the stocks I've chosen High risk investing IS hit and miss. We are in an historic bull market. Do not pat yourself on the back too hard, the bear can be around any corner and your high risk strategy will then be put to the test. |
Why don't more people run up their credit cards and skip the country? | It's harder than you think. Once card companies start seeing your debt to credit line ratios climb, they will slash your credit lines quickly. Also, cash credit lines are always much smaller, so in reality, such a scheme would require you to buy goods that can be converted to cash, which dilutes your gains and makes it more likely that you're going to get detected and busted. Think of the other problems. Where do you store your ill-gotten gains? How do you get the money out of the country? How will your actions affect your family and friends? Also, most people are basically good people -- the prospect of defrauding $100k, leaving family and friends behind and living some anonymous life in a third world country isn't an appealing one. If you are criminally inclined, building up a great credit history is not very practical -- most criminals are by nature reactive and want quick results. |
How do you quantify investment risk? | The standard measure of risk is the variance of the asset. The return on investment of the asset is understood as a random variable with a particular distribution. One can make inferences about the underlying distribution using historical data. As you say, this is what the quants do. There are other, more sophisticated measures of risk that allow for such things as skewed distributions and Markov switching. If you are interested in learning more, I suggest starting with the foundations of Modern Portfolio Theory: "Portfolio Selection" by Harry Markowitz and "Capital Asset Prices" by William Sharpe. |
Can I pay off my credit card balance to free up available credit? | The card you have is one where you had to deposit an amount equivelent to your card limit -a secured limit credit card. Capital One is one if the primary cards of this type. The typical rules of credit card usage and building your credit, do not apply. So, yes, you want to use the card as much as possible and pay off your balance as often as is necessary to keep your limit freed up. You can actually pay the full balance plus 10%, and gain a little extra limit. Use your card as much as possible and call them and ask for a limit increase every three months. usually about 4 - 5 months in, they will increase your limit and do so without asking for a corresponding security deposit. This is really cool, because it means you are becoming credit-worthy. I know so much about this because I applied for this card for my son and am helping him in his attempt to repair his credit. His score increased by almost 200 points last year. |
Should you always max out contributions to your 401k? | A terrific resource is this article. To summarize the points given: PROS: CONS: There is no generic yes or no answer as to whether you ought to max out your 401(k)s. If you are a sophisticated investor, then saving the income for investing could be a better alternative. Long term capital gains are taxed at 15% in the US, so if you buy and hold on to good companies that reinvest their earnings, then the share price keeps going up and you'll save a lot of money that would go in taxes. If you're not a very good investor, however, then 401(k)s make a lot of sense. If you're going to end up setting up some asset allocation and buying ETFs and rebalancing or having a manager rebalance for you every year or so, then you might as well take the 401(k) option and lower your taxable income. Point #1 is simply wrong, because companies that reinvest earnings and growing for a long time are essentially creating tax-free gains for you, which is even better than tax-deferred gains. Nonetheless, most people have neither the time nor the interest to research companies and for them, the 401(k) makes more sense. |
How can I find a lost 401K from a past employer? | The Employee Benefits Security Administration within the US Department of Labor is tasked with keeping track of pension and 401K programs. The even have a website to search for abandoned plans: it helps participants and others find out whether a particular plan is in the process of being, or has been, terminated and the name of the Qualified Termination Administrator (QTA) responsible for the termination. The Employee Benefits Security Administration discuss all types of details regarding retirement programs. This document What You Should Know About Your Retirement Plan has a lot of details including this: If your former employer has gone out of business, arrangements should have been made so a plan official remains responsible for the payment of benefits and other plan business. If you are entitled to benefits and are unable to contact the plan administrator, contact EBSA electronically at askebsa.dol.gov or by calling toll free at 1-866-444-3272. There are also EBSA offices spread thought the United States |
What prevents investors from buying high yield stocks and selling them as soon as their dividend is paid out? | I remember my Finance Professor at b-school answering this question: The next moment the dividend is paid the total market cap is decreased by the amount paid This makes sense as cash leaves company, the value of the company is decreased by exactly the same amount. To summarise: the moment you paid dividend, the value of the stock is decreased by the same amount. |
I'm thinking of getting a new car … why shouldn't I LEASE one? | I agree with Speedbird389 - I leased an economy car 10 years ago, paid the residual at the end of the lease because I knew the car would last a long time, but that cost me $5000 more than if I had bought it in the first place... |
Identifying “Dividend Stocks” | If you don't have a good knowledge of finance, maybe you should not put too much money in individual stocks. But if you really want to invest, you can just compare the rate of return of the most known stocks available to you (like the one from the S&P for the US). The rate of return is very simple to compute, it's 100*dividend/share price. For example a company with a current share price of 50.12 USD that delivered a dividend of 1.26 USD last year would have a rate of return of 100 * 1.26/50.12= 2.51% Now if you only invest in the most known stocks, since they are already covered by nearly all financial institutions and analysts: If you are looking for lower risk dividend companies, take a sample of companies and invest those with the lowest rates of return (but avoid extreme values). Of course since the stock prices are changing all the time, you have to compare them with a price taken at the same time (like the closing price of a specific day) and for the dividend, they can be on several basis (yearly, quartely, etc..) so you have to be sure to take the same basis. You can also find the P/E ratio which is the opposite indicator (= share price/dividend) so an higher P/E ratio means a lower risk. Most of the time you can find the P/E ratio or the rate of return already computed on specialized website or brokers. |
Where can I borrow money for investing? | Have you considered social lending (for example: Lending Club)? |
If a stock doesn't pay dividends, then why is the stock worth anything? | This is an excellent question, one that I've pondered before as well. Here's how I've reconciled it in my mind. Why should we agree that a stock is worth anything? After all, if I purchase a share of said company, I own some small percentage of all of its assets, like land, capital equipment, accounts receivable, cash and securities holdings, etc., as others have pointed out. Notionally, that seems like it should be "worth" something. However, that doesn't give me the right to lay claim to them at will, as I'm just a (very small) minority shareholder. The old adage says that "something is only worth what someone is willing to pay you for it." That share of stock doesn't actually give me any liquid control over the company's assets, so why should someone else be willing to pay me something for it? As you noted, one reason why a stock might be attractive to someone else is as a (potentially tax-advantaged) revenue stream via dividends. Especially in this low-interest-rate environment, this might well exceed that which I might obtain in the bond market. The payment of income to the investor is one way that a stock might have some "inherent value" that is attractive to investors. As you asked, though, what if the stock doesn't pay dividends? As a small shareholder, what's in it for me? Without any dividend payments, there's no regular method of receiving my invested capital back, so why should I, or anyone else, be willing to purchase the stock to begin with? I can think of a couple reasons: Expectation of a future dividend. You may believe that at some point in the future, the company will begin to pay a dividend to investors. Dividends are paid as a percentage of a company's total profits, so it may make sense to purchase the stock now, while there is no dividend, banking on growth during the no-dividend period that will result in even higher capital returns later. This kind of skirts your question: a non-dividend-paying stock might be worth something because it might turn into a dividend-paying stock in the future. Expectation of a future acquisition. This addresses the original premise of my argument above. If I can't, as a small shareholder, directly access the assets of the company, why should I attribute any value to that small piece of ownership? Because some other entity might be willing to pay me for it in the future. In the event of an acquisition, I will receive either cash or another company's shares in compensation, which often results in a capital gain for me as a shareholder. If I obtain a capital gain via cash as part of the deal, then this proves my point: the original, non-dividend-paying stock was worth something because some other entity decided to acquire the company, paying me more cash than I paid for my shares. They are willing to pay this price for the company because they can then reap its profits in the future. If I obtain a capital gain via stock in as part of the deal, then the process restarts in some sense. Maybe the new stock pays dividends. Otherwise, perhaps the new company will do something to make its stock worth more in the future, based on the same future expectations. The fact that ownership in a stock can hold such positive future expectations makes them "worth something" at any given time; if you purchase a stock and then want to sell it later, someone else is willing to purchase it from you so they can obtain the right to experience a positive capital return in the future. While stock valuation schemes will vary, both dividends and acquisition prices are related to a company's profits: This provides a connection between a company's profitability, expectations of future growth, and its stock price today, whether it currently pays dividends or not. |
How do I evaluate reasonability of home improvement projects? | The exact answers depend on what you're going to do and what you started with and what your local market is like ... But a bit of websearching (and/or asking a good general contractor) will yield a table of typical improvement in sale price from various renovations. One thing you'll discover is that unless you are staring with something almost unsellable, few if any if thgem return more than you paid for them; getting back 85% is exceptionally good. A possible exception is energy-saving measures; basic air-seaking and attic insulation improvements pay back their cost relatively quickly, and solar can do so if you have a decent site for that -- and these are often subsidized in one way or another by government or utilities. For most things, thoiugh, the real answer is to ask yourself what would make the house better for you and your family, and what that would be worth to you. If you can get it done for less than that, go for it. It's a good idea to put together as complete a list vas possible before starting, since some will be considerably less expensive if done in the right order or at the same time. (Redo your roofing before installing rooftop solar panels, if possible; as one example.) Then prioritize thiose by what will improve your enjoyment of the house most. You'll probably get better specific advice over in the Home Improvement area of Stack Exchange. |
How can all these countries owe so much money? Why & where did they borrow it from? | Here is an overview of who owns US Debt from Wikipedia, it indicates that approximately 1/3rd of US debt is held by foreigners (mainly the central banks of other countries), approximately 1/2 of US Debt is held by the federal reserve, and the rest is owned by various America organizations (mutual funds, pension funds, etc). The money is loaned via bonds, treasury bills, etc. When you put money in your pension fund, you very likely buying US debt. The US Treasury department all has a comprehensive page about how public debt works in the United States here: an overview of public debt from the treasury. I wasn't able to find a similar breakdown for other countries, but Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of how much debt is owed by other countries: a list of countries by public debt. |
Which close price (adjusted close or close price) shall be used when calculating a stock's daily percent change? | The adjusted close price takes into account stock splits (and possibly dividends). You want to look at the adjusted close price. Calculating percentage changes gets computationally tricky because you need to account for splits and dividends. |
Does Joel Greenblatt's “Magic Formula Investing” really beat the market? | In addition to other answers consider the following idea. That guy could have invented say one thousand formulas many years ago and been watching how they all perform then select the one that happened to be beat the market. |
How to calculate money needed for bills, by day | Trying to figure out how much money you have available each day sounds like you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. Unless you're extremely tight and you're trying to squeeze by day by day, asking "do I have enough cash to buy food for today?" and so on, you're doing too much work. Here's what I do. I make a list of all my bills. Some are a fixed amount every month, like the mortgage and insurance premiums. Others are variable, like electric and heating bills, but still pretty predictable. Most bills are monthly, but I have a few that come less frequently, like water bills in my area come every 3 months and I have to pay property taxes twice a year. For these you have to calculate how much they cost each month. Like for the water bill, it's once every 3 months so I divide a typical bill by 3. Always round up or estimate a little high to be safe. Groceries are a little tricky because I don't buy groceries on any regular schedule, and sometimes I buy a whole bunch at once and other times just a few things. When groceries were a bigger share of my income, I kept track of what I spent for a couple of months to figure out an average per month. (Today I'm a little richer and I just think of groceries as coming from my spending money.) I allocate a percentage of my income for contributions to church and charities and count this just like bills. It's a good idea to put aside something for savings and/or paying down any outstanding loans every month. Then I add these up to say okay, here's how much I need each month to pay the bills. Subtract that from my monthly income and that's what I have for spending money. I get paid twice a month so I generally pay bills when I get paid. For most bills the due date is far enough ahead that I can wait the maximum half a month to pay it. (Worst case the bill comes the day after I pay the bills from this paycheck.) Then I keep enough money in my checking account to, (a) Cover any bills until the next paycheck and allow for the particularly large bills; and (b) provide some cushion in case I make a mistake -- forget to record a check or make an arithmetic error or whatever; and (c) provide some cushion for short-term unexpected expenses. To be safe, (a) should be the total of your bills for a month, or as close to that as you can manage. (b) should be a couple of hundred dollars if you can manage it, more if you make a lot of mistakes. If you've calculated your expenses properly and only spend the difference, keeping enough money in the bank should fall out naturally. I think it's a lot easier to try to manage your money on a monthly basis than on a daily basis. Most of us don't spend money every day, and we spend wildly different amounts from day to day. Most days I probably spend zero, but then one day I'll buy a new TV or computer and spend hundreds. Update in response to question What I do in real life is this: To calculate my available cash to spend, I simply take the balance in my checking account -- assuming that all checks and electronic payments have cleared. My mortgage is deducted from my checking every month so I post that to my checking a month in advance. I pay a lot of things with automatic charges to a credit card these days, so my credit card bills are large and can't be ignored. So subtract my credit card balances. Subtract my reserve amount. What's left is how much I can afford to spend. So for example: Say I look at the balance in my checkbook today and it's, say, $3000. That's the balance after any checks and other transactions have cleared, and after subtracting my next mortgage payment. Then I subtract what I owe on credit cards. Let's say that was $1,200. So that leaves $1,800. I try to keep a reserve of $1,500. That's plenty to pay my routine monthly bills and leave a healthy reserve. So subtract another $1,500 leaves $300. That's how much I can spend. I could keep track of this with a spreadsheet or a database but what would that gain? The amount in my checking account is actual money. Any spreadsheet could accumulate errors and get farther and farther from accurate values. I use a spreadsheet to figure out how much spending money I should have each month, but that's just to use as a guideline. If it came to, say, $100, I wouldn't make grandiose plans about buying a new Mercedes. If it came to $5,000 a month than buying a fancy new car might be realistic. It also tells me how much I can spend without having to carefully check balances and add it up. These days I have a fair amount of spending money so when, for example, I recently decided I wanted to buy some software that cost $100 I just bought it with barely a second thought. When my spending money was more like $100 a month, lunch at a fast food place was a big event that I planned weeks in advance. (Obviously, I hope, don't get stupid about "small amounts". If you can easily afford $100 for an impulse purchase, that doesn't mean that you can afford $100 five times a day every day.) Two caveats: 1. It helps to have a limited number of credit cards so you can keep the balances under control. I have two credit cards I use for almost everything, so I only have two balances to keep track of. I used to have more and it got confusing, it was easy to lose track of how much I really owed, which is a set up for getting in trouble. |
Is it possible to eliminate PMI (Personal/Private Mortgage Insurance) on a mortgage before reaching 20% down on principal? | Banks are currently a lot less open to 'creative financing' than they were a few years ago, but you may still be able to take advantage of the tactic of splitting the loan into two parts, a smaller 'second mortgage' sometimes called a 'purchase money second' at a slightly higher interest rate for around 15-20% of the value, and the remaining in a conventional mortgage. Since this tactic has been around for a long time, it's not quite in the category of the shenanegans they were pulling a few years back, so has a lot more potential to still be an option. I did this in for my first house in '93 and again in '99 when I moved to a larger home after getting married. It allowed me to get into both houses with less than 20% down and not pay PMI. This way neither loan is above 80% so you don't have to pay PMI. The interest on the second loan will be higher, but usually only a few percent, and is thus usually a fraction of what you were paying for the PMI. (and it's deductible from your taxes) If you've been making your payments on time and have a good credit rating, then you might be able to find someone who would offer you such a deal. You might even be able to get a rate for your primary that is down in the low 4's depending on where rates are today and what your credit rating is like. If you can get the main loan low enough, even if the other is like say 7%, your blended rate may still be right around 5% If you can find a deal like this, it's also great material to use to negotiate with your current lender "either help me get the PMI off this loan or I'm going to refinance." Then you can compare what they will offer you with what you can get in a refinance and decide what makes the most sense for you. On word of warning, when refinancing, do NOT get sucked into an adjustable rate mortgage. If you are finding life 'tight' right now with house payments and all, the an ARM could be highly seductive since they often offer a very low initial rate.. however then invariably adjust upwards, and you could suddenly find yourself with a monster payment far larger than what you have now. With low rates where they are, getting a conventional fixed rate loan (or loans in the case of the tactic being discussed here) is the way to go. |
Why does the calculation for percentage profit vary based on whether a position is short vs. long? | There are different perspectives from which to calculate the gain, but the way I think it should be done is with respect to the risk you've assumed in the original position, which the simplistic calculation doesn't factor in. There's a good explanation about calculating the return from a short sale at Investopedia. Here's the part that I consider most relevant: [...] When calculating the return of a short sale, you need to compare the amount the trader gets to keep to the initial amount of the liability. Had the trade in our example turned against you, you (as the short seller) would owe not only the initial proceeds amount but also the excess amount, and this would come out of your pocket. [...] Refer to the source link for the full explanation. Update: As you can see from the other answers and comments, it is a more complex a Q&A than it may first appear. I subsequently found this interesting paper which discusses the difficulty of rate of return with respect to short sales and other atypical trades: Excerpt: [...] The problem causing this almost uniform omission of a percentage return on short sales, options (especially writing), and futures, it may be speculated, is that the nigh-well universal and conventional definition of rate of return involving an initial cash outflow followed by a later cash inflow does not appear to fit these investment situations. None of the investment finance texts nor general finance texts, undergraduate or graduate, have formally or explicitly shown how to resolve this predicament or how to justify the calculations they actually use. [...] |
How does delta of an option change with time if underlying price is constant? | The question is always one of whether people think they can reliably predict that the option will be a good bet. The closer you get to its expiration, the easier it is to make that guess and the less risk there is. That may either increase or decrease the value of the option. |
Is there any drawback in putting all my 401K into a money market fund? | (After seeing your most recent comment on the original question, it looks like others have answered the question you intended, and described the extreme difficulty of getting the timing right the way you're trying to. Since I've already typed it up, what follows answers what I originally thought your question was, which was asking if there were drawbacks to investing entirely in money market funds to avoid stock volatility altogether.) Money market funds have the significant drawback that they offer low returns. One of the fundamental principles in finance is that there is a trade-off between low risk and high returns. While money market funds are extremely stable, their returns are paltry; under current market conditions, you can consider them roughly equivalent to cash. On the other hand, though investing in stocks puts your money on a roller coaster, returns will be, on average, substantially higher. Since people often invest in order to achieve personal financial stability, many feel naturally attracted to very stable investments like money market funds. However, this tendency can be a big mistake. The higher returns of the stock market don't merely serve to stoke an investor's greed, they are necessary for achieving most people's financial goals. For example, consider two hypothetical investors, saving for retirement over the course of a 40-year career. The first investor, apprehensive Adam, invests $10k per year in a money market fund. The second investor, brave Barbara, invests $10k per year in an S&P 500 index fund (reinvesting dividends). Let's be generous and say that Adam's money market fund keeps pace with inflation (in reality, they typically don't even do that). At the end of 40 years, in today's money, Adam will have $10,000*40 = $400,000, not nearly enough to retire comfortably on. On the other hand, let's assume that Barbara gets returns of 7% per year after inflation, which is typical (though not guaranteed). Barbara will then have, using the formula for the future value of an annuity, $10,000 * [(1.07)^40 - 1] / 0.07, or about $2,000,000, which is much more comfortable. While Adam's strategy produces nearly guaranteed results, those results are actually guaranteed failure. Barbara's strategy is not a guarantee, but it has a good chance of producing a comfortable retirement. Even if her timing isn't great, over these time scales, the chances that she will have more money than Adam in the end are very high. (I won't produce a technical analysis of this claim, as it's a bit complicated. Do more research if you're interested.) |
Why don't brokerages charge commissions on forex trades? | Investopedia has a section in their article about currency trading that states: The FX market does not have commissions. Unlike exchange-based markets, FX is a principals-only market. FX firms are dealers, not brokers. This is a critical distinction that all investors must understand. Unlike brokers, dealers assume market risk by serving as a counterparty to the investor's trade. They do not charge commission; instead, they make their money through the bid-ask spread. Principals-only means that the only parties to a transaction are agents who actively bear risk by taking one side of the transaction. There are forex brokers who charge what's called a commission, based on the spread. Investopedia has another article about the commission structure in the forex market that states: There are three forms of commission used by brokers in forex. Some firms offer a fixed spread, others offer a variable spread and still others charge a commission based on a percentage of the spread. So yes, there are forex brokers who charge a commission, but this paragraph is saying mostly the same thing as the first paragraph. The brokers make their money through the bid-ask spread; how they do so varies, and sometimes they call this charge a commission, sometimes they don't. All of the information above differs from the stock markets, however, in which The broker takes the order to an exchange and attempts to execute it as per the customer's instructions. For providing this service, the broker is paid a commission when the customer buys and sells the tradable instrument. The broker isn't taking a side in the trade, so he's not making money on the spread. He's performing the service of taking the order to an exchange an attempting to execute it, and for that, he charges a commission. |
Investing in real estate when the stock market is high, investing in stocks when it's low? | The price of real estate reacts to both demand for property and the rate of inflation and rate of income growth. Mortgage rates generally move as treasury rates move. See this paragraph: As we mentioned, intermediate term bonds and long-term mortgages (more properly, Mortgage-Backed Securities, or MBS) compete for the same fixed-income investor dollar. Treasury issues are 100% guaranteed to be repaid, but mortgages are not; therefore mortgages carry more risk of default or early repayment, which could potentially disturb the return on the investment. Therefore, mortgage rates must be priced higher to compensate for that risk. But how much higher are mortgages priced? In a normal market, the average "spread" or markup above the 100% secured Treasury is about 170 basis points, or 1.7%. That markup -- the spread relationship -- widens and contracts with a range of market conditions, investor appetites and supply of available product -- as well as the presence of competing investment opportunities, like corporate bonds or domestic (or foreign) equity markets Source: What Moves Mortgage Rates? And when the stock market crashes, investors tend to run to bonds and treasuries, which causes prices to go up and treasury yields to drop. Theoretically, this would also cause mortgage rates to drop, although most mortgage rates have a base price below which they cannot fall. How easy is it to profit from recent stock market drops and at what frequency? Incredibly difficult. The issue with your strategy is that you cannot predict the bottom of the market (at least us mortals can't). Just take the month of August for example. Stocks fell something like 15%? After the first 5-10% drop, people felt that the bottom was there, so they rushed in, only to have the market fall even more. How will you know when to invest? Even if the market falls by 50%, and there's a huge buying opportunity, and you increase the mortgage on your house, odds are your rates will increase because of the equity you take out. What if the market stays low for a very long time? Will you be able to maintain mortgage payments? Japan's stock bubble popped in the early 90's, and they've had two lost decade's now. Furthermore, there are issues of liquidity. What if you need more capital? Can you just sell a property or can you buy now property to draw equity against? What if the market is moving too fast for you to take advantage of. Don't ignore transaction costs and taxes either. Overall, there are a lot of ways that your idea can go wrong, and not many ways it can go right. |
Is there any way to know how much new money the US is printing? | This chart summarizes the FED's balance sheet (things the FED has purchased - US treasuries, mortgage backed securities, etc.) nicely. It shows the massive level of "printing" the FED has done in the past two years. The FED "prints" new money to buy these assets. As lucius has pointed out the fractional reserve banking process also expands the money supply. When the FED buys something from Bank A, then Bank A can take the money and start lending it out. This process continues as the recipients of the money deposit the newly printed money in other fractional reserve banks. FYI....it took 95 years for the FED to print the first $900 billion. It took one year to print the next $900 billion. |
Where can I find the dividend history for a stock? | Google Finance gives you this information. |
How to invest in stocks without using an intermediary like a broker? Can shares be bought direct? | Agree with Michael here. The exchanges help you more than they will hurt. It begs the question why you want to avoid exchanges and the brokers since they do provide a valuable service. If you want to avoid big fees, most of the discount brokerages have tiny fees these days (optionshouse is down to $4), plus many have deals where you get 60 or more trades for free. |
When should I open a “Line of credit” at my bank? | A line of credit is a poor substitute for an emergency fund. Banks typically have a clause that allows them to stop further withdrawals from your line of credit if there is a change of vaguely defined type. For example, if you lose your job they can stop you from making withdrawals from your line-of-credit. |
Can we estimate the impact of a large buy order on the share price? | There are two distinct questions that may be of interest to you. Both questions are relevant for funds that need to buy or sell large orders that you are talking about. The answer depends on your order type and the current market state such as the level 2 order book. Suppose there are no iceberg or hidden orders and the order book (image courtesy of this question) currently is: An unlimited ("at market") buy order for 12,000 shares gets filled immediately: it gets 1,100 shares at 180.03 (1,100@180.03), 9,700 at 180.04 and 1,200 at 180.05. After this order, the lowest ask price becomes 180.05 and the highest bid is obviously still 180.02 (because the previous order was a 'market order'). A limited buy order for 12,000 shares with a price limit of 180.04 gets the first two fills just like the market order: 1,100 shares at 180.03 and 9,700 at 180.04. However, the remainder of the order will establish a new bid price level for 1,200 shares at 180.04. It is possible to enter an unlimited buy order that exhausts the book. However, such a trade would often be considered a mis-trade and either (i) be cancelled by the broker, (ii) be cancelled or undone by the exchange, or (iii) hit the maximum price move a stock is allowed per day ("limit up"). Funds and banks often have to buy or sell large quantities, just like you have described. However they usually do not punch through order book levels as I described before. Instead they would spread out the order over time and buy a smaller quantity several times throughout the day. Simple algorithms attempt to get a price close to the time-weighted average price (TWAP) or volume-weighted average price (VWAP) and would buy a smaller amount every N minutes. Despite splitting the order into smaller pieces the price usually moves against the trader for many reasons. There are many models to estimate the market impact of an order before executing it and many brokers have their own model, for example Deutsche Bank. There is considerable research on "market impact" if you are interested. I understand the general principal that when significant buy orders comes in relative to the sell orders price goes up and when a significant sell order comes in relative to buy orders it goes down. I consider this statement wrong or at least misleading. First, stocks can jump in price without or with very little volume. Consider a company that releases a negative earnings surprise over night. On the next day the stock may open 20% lower without any orders having matched for any price in between. The price moved because the perception of the stocks value changed, not because of buy or sell pressure. Second, buy and sell pressure have an effect on the price because of the underlying reason, and not necessarily/only because of the mechanics of the market. Assume you were prepared to sell HyperNanoTech stock, but suddenly there's a lot of buzz and your colleagues are talking about buying it. Would you still sell it for the same price? I wouldn't. I would try to find out how much they are prepared to buy it for. In other words, buy pressure can be the consequence of successful marketing of the stock and the marketing buzz is what changes the price. |
What is the difference between trading and non-trading stock? | Every company has Stocks. For the stocks to be traded via some stock exchange, the companies must follow the eligibility criteria and guidelines. Once done, these are then listed on the stock exchange and can be traded. The advantage [amongst others] of listing is liquidity and stocks can easily be bought and sold. Some small companies or closely held companies may not want to list on stock exchange and hence are not traded. This does not mean they can't be bought and sold, they can be outside of the market, however the deals are complex and every deal has to be worked out. During the course of time a stock that is traded on a stock exchange, would either fail to meet the criteria or voluntarily choose not to be traded and follow the delisting process [either by stock exchange or by company]. After this the stocks are no longer traded on the exchange. |
Finding Uncorrelated Assets | Have a look at: Diversify Portfolio. The site provides various tools all focused on correlation, diversification and portfolio construction. You can scan through every stock and ETF listed on the NASDAQ and NYSE to find any kind of correlation you're looking for. You can also create a portfolio and then analyze all the correlations within it, or search for specific stocks that can be added to the portfolio based on correlation and various other factors. |
How to record “short premium” in double-entry accounting? | You don't. No one uses vanilla double entry accounting software for "Held-For-Trading Security". Your broker or trading software is responsible for providing month-end statement of changes. You use "Mark To Market" valuation at the end of each month. For example, if your cash position is -$5000 and stock position is +$10000, all you do is write-up/down the account value to $5000. There should be no sub-accounts for your "Investment" account in GNUCash. So at the end of the month, there would be the following entries: |
Buy securities at another stock exchange | Different exchanges sometimes offer different order types, and of course have different trading fees. But once a trade is finished, it should not matter where it was executed. |
If I put in a limit order for the same price and size as someone else, which order goes through? | While littleadv's answer is true for many exchanges (in particular the stock market, it's called FIFO matching) you should also know that some markets trade pro rata. That is, for a match at some price level everyone at that level gets a chunk of the deal proportional to their input (i.e. order size). E.g. match for quantity X at a price level and passive side orders y1, y2; the order y1 would get y1 / (y1 + y2) of X and y2 would get y2 / (y1 + y2) (for X = min(X, y1 + y2)). |
Personal finance app where I can mark transactions as “reviewed”? | On mint, you can create your own tags for transactions. So, you could create a tag called "reviewed" and tag each transaction as reviewed once you review it. I've done something similar to this called "reimbursable expense" to tag which purchases I made on behalf of someone else who is going to pay me back. |
For very high-net worth individuals, does it make sense to not have insurance? | I think the key to this question is your last sentence, because it's applicable to everyone, high net-worth or not: How would one determine whether they are better off without insurance? In general, insurance is a net good when the coverage would prevent a 'catastrophic' event. If a catastrophic event doesn't happen, oh well, you wasted money on insurance. If it does happen, you just saved yourself from bankruptcy. These are two separate outcomes, so taking the 'average' cost of a catastrophic event (and weighing that against the more expensive insurance premiums) is not practical. This is a way of reducing risk, not of maximizing returns. Let the insurance company take the risk - they benefit from having a pool of people paying premiums, and you benefit because your own life has less financial risk. Now for something like cheap home electronics, insurance is a bad idea. This is because you now have a 'pool' of potential risks, and your own life experience could be close to the 'average' expected result. Meaning you'll pay more for insurance than you would just replacing broken things. This answer is another good resource on the topic. So to your question, at what point in terms of net-worth does someone's house become equivalent to you and your toaster? Remember that if you have home fire insurance, you are protecting the value of your house, because that loss would be catastrophic to you. But a high net-worth individual would also likely find the loss of their house catastrophic. Unless they are billionaires with multiple 10M+ mansions, then it is quite likely that regardless of wealth, a significant portion of their worth is tied up in their home. Even 10% of your net worth would be a substantial amount. As an example, would someone worth $1M have only a 100k home? Would someone worth $10M have only a $1M Home? Depends on where they live, and how extravagantly. Similarly, if you were worth $10M, you might not need extra insurance on your Toyota Camry, but you might want it if you drive a $1M Ferrari! Not to mention that things like auto insurance may cover you for liability, which could extend beyond the value of your car, into medical and disability costs for anyone in an accident. In fact, being high net-worth may make you more vulnerable to lawsuits, making this insurance even more important. In addition, high net-worth individuals have insurance that you or I have no need of. Things like kidnapping insurance; business operation insurance, life insurance used to secure bank loans. So yes, even high net-worth individuals may fear catastrophic events, and if they have so much money - why wouldn't they pay to reduce that risk? Insurance provides a service to them the same as to everyone else, it's just that the items they consider too 'cheap' too insure are more expensive than a toaster. Edit to counter concerns in some other answers, which say that insurance is "always a bad idea": Imagine you are in a kafka-esque episode of "Let's Make a Deal". Monty Hall shows you two parallel universes, each with 100 doors. You must choose your universe, then choose a door. The first universe is where you bought insurance, and behind every door is a penalty of $200. The second universe is where you didn't buy insurance, and behind 99 doors is nothing, with one random door containing a penalty of $10,000. On average, playing the game 99,999 times, you will come out ahead 2:1 by not buying insurance. But you play the game only maybe 3 times in your life. So which universe do you choose? Now, you might say "pfft - I can cover the cost of a 10k penalty if it happens". But this is exactly the point - insurance (unless already required by law) is a net good when it covers catastrophic losses. If you are wealthy enough to cover a particular loss, you typically shouldn't buy that insurance. That's why no one should insure their toaster. This is not a question of "average returns", it is a question of "risk reduction". |
Will I have to pay taxes for Australia if I have an Australian bank account? | Because you actually reside in New Zealand, your income taxes will be paid in New Zealand. However, as a non-resident of Australia you will have tax withholding on all of the interest you earn in an Australian bank account. Obviously, because that tax is paid to Australia, that will not be counted against your New Zealand income taxes due to the taxation agreement between those countries. You should still discuss this with an accountant in New Zealand and consider acting as a sole trader. Since you are doing freelance work, that seems like the most logical setup anyway. |
Why does money value normally decrease? | The reason is governments print extra money to cause inflation (hopefully reasonable) so that people don't just sit comfortably but do something to make money work. Thus inflation is an artificial measure which leads to money value gradually decreasing and causing people invest money in one way or another to beat inflation or maybe even gain some more money. Printing money is super cheap unlike producing any kind of commodity and that makes money different from commodities - commodities have their inherent value, but money has only nominal value, it's an artificial government-controlled product. |
Can PayPal transfer money automatically from my bank account if I link it in PayPal? | As the other answers stated: Yes PayPal will transfer money from your bankaccount automatically if your PayPal balance isn't sufficient. Let's add some proof to the story: (Note, I am in the EU, specifically the Netherlands, situation might be different in other parts of the world) If I login to PayPal and go to my wallet, I have a section that looks like this: If I click on it, I am presented with a screen with details about the connection. Note the "Direct debit instruction". If I click on the "view" link I am presented with the following text (emphasis mine): [snip some arbitrary personal details] This authorisation allows (A) PayPal to send instructions to your bank account and (B) your bank to debit your account in accordance with the instructions from PayPal. As part of your rights, you are entitled to a refund from your bank under the Terms and Conditions of your agreement with your bank. A refund must be claimed within 8 weeks starting from the date on which your account was debited. Your rights are explained in a statement that you can obtain from your bank. Below this text is a button to delete the authorization. |
How quickly will the funds be available when depositing credit card checks? | For those who don't know, credit card checks are blank checks that your credit card company sends you. When you fill them out and spend them, you are taking a cash advance on your credit card account. You should be aware that taking a cash advance on your credit card normally has extra fees and finance charges above what you have with regular credit card transactions. That having been said, when you take one of these to your bank and try to deposit them, it is entirely up to bank policy how long they will make you wait to use these funds. They want to be sure that it is a legitimate check and that it will be honored. If your teller doesn't know the answer to that question, you'll need to find someone at the bank who does. If you don't like the answer they give you, you'll need to find another bank. I would think that if the credit card is from Chase, and you are trying to deposit a credit card check into a Chase checking account, they should be able to do that instantly. However, bank policy doesn't always make sense. |
What is the lifespan of a series of currency? | In general, currency has no expiration date. Specifically, in Canada, the Bank of Canada has been issuing banknotes since 1935, and these are still considered legal tender, even though they don't look much like the modern banknotes. Before that, Canadian chartered banks issued currency, and these also still have value. However, there are a few things to note. First of all, with currency of that age, it often has more value as a collector's item than the face value. So spending it at a store would be foolish. Second, store clerks are not experts in old currency, and will not accept a bill that they do not recognize. If you want the face value of your old currency, you may need to exchange it for modern currency at a bank. Having said all that, there are certainly cases where currency does expire. Generally this happens when a country changes currency. For example, when the Euro was introduced, the old currencies were discontinued. After a window of exchange, the old currency in many cases lost its value. So if you have some old French Franc notes, for example, they can no longer be exchanged for Euros. These types of events cannot be predicted in the future, of course, so it is impossible to say when, if ever, the Canadian currency you have today will lose its spending value in Canada. |
Bank statements - should I retain hardcopies for tax or other official purposes (or keep digital scanned copies)? | In the UK Directgov don't specify anything more than "records", which leads me to think that a digital copy might be acceptable. With regards to bank statements, individuals (i.e. not self-employed, or owning a business) need to keep them for between 12 and 15 months after your tax return, depending on when you filed it. Source: Record keeping (individuals and directors) - Directgov |
Is there a reliable way to find, if a stock or company is heading bankruptcy? | You can avoid companies that might go bankrupt by not buying the stock of companies with debt. Every quarter, a public company must file financials with the EDGAR system called a 10-Q. This filing includes unaudited financial statements and provides a continuing view of the company's financial position during the year. Any debt the company has acquired will appear on this filing and their annual report. If servicing the debt is costing the company a substantial fraction of their income, then the company is a bankruptcy risk. |
Where can I find a Third Party Administrator for a self-directed solo 401K? | You setup a self-directed solo 401k by paying a one time fee for a company to setup a trust, name you the sole trustee, and file it with the IRS. None of these companies offer TPA because it opens them up to profit leaching liability. After you have your trust setup, you can open a brokerage account or several with any of the big names you want (Vanguard, Fidelity, Ameritrade, etc), or just use the money to flip houses, do P2P lending, whatever, the world is your investment oyster. If the company has recurring fees you need to ask what is going on because if they aren't offering TPA services, then what the heck could they be charging you for? I did see one company, I think it was IRA Financial Group, that had the option of having a CPA do TPA for you for a recurring fee, but I would pass on that. The IRS administration requirements are typically just the 5500-EZ that you have to file as a hard copy by July 31 if your investments are worth more than $250k, on December 31. Yes, you have to get the actual form from the IRS, write on it with a pen and mail it to them every year, barbaric. You can either have your accountant do it or do it yourself. If you're below $250k just google solo 401k rule change two or three times a year and don't try to launder money. If anything, the rules will loosen with time, I don't imagine the Republican Congress cracking down on small business owners any time soon. |
How do I get bill collectors who call about people I know to stop calling me? | I had a similar situation, except the debtor had no connection to us whatsoever, other than holding our phone number previously. We tried going through channels to deal with it, and had no success. At the end of the day, I was very abusive to the people calling, and forwarded the number to a very irritating destination. |
Prepaying a loan: Shouldn't the interest be recalculated like a shorter loan? | Forget about terms. Think about loans in terms of months. To simplify things, let's consider a $1000 loan with .3% interest per month. This looks like a ten month term, but it's equally reasonable to think about it on a month-to-month basis. In the first month, you borrowed $1000 and accrued $3 interest. With the $102 payment, that leaves $901 which you borrow for another month. So on and so forth. The payoff after five payments would by $503.54 ($502.03 principal plus $1.51 interest). You'd save $2.99 in interest after paying $13.54. The reason why most of the interest was already paid is that you already did most of the borrowing. You borrowed $502.03 for six months and about $100 each for five, four, three, two, and one month. So you borrowed about $4500 months (you borrowed $1000 for the first month, $901 for the second month, etc.). The total for a ten month $1000 loan is about $5500 months of borrowing. So you've done 9/11 of the borrowing. It's unsurprising that you've paid about 9/11 of the interest. If you did this as a six month loan instead, then the payments look different. Say You borrow $1000 for one month. Then 834 for one month. So on and so forth. Adding that together, you get about $168.50 * 21 or $3538.50 months borrowed. Since you only borrow about 7/9 as much, you should pay 7/9 the interest. And if we adding things up, we get $10.54 in interest, about 7/9 of $13.54. That's how I would expect your mortgage to work in the United States (and I'd expect it to be similar elsewhere). Mortgages are pretty straight-jacketed by federal and state regulations. I too once had a car loan that claimed that early payment didn't matter. But to get rid of the loan, I made extra payments. And they ended up crediting me with an early release. In fact, they rebated part of my last payment. I saved several hundred dollars through the early release. Perhaps your loan did not work the same way. Perhaps it did. But in any case, mortgages don't generally work like you describe. |
Why is early exercise generally not recommended for an in-the-money option? | Investopedia states: While early exercise is generally not advisable, because the time value inherent in the option premium is lost upon doing so, there are certain circumstances under which early exercise may be advantageous. For example, an investor may choose to exercise a call option that is deeply in-the-money (such an option will have negligible time value) just before the ex-dividend date of the underlying stock. This will enable the investor to capture the dividend paid by the underlying stock, which should more than offset the marginal time value lost due to early exercise. So the question is how well do you see the time value factor here? |
What resources can I use to try and find out the name of the manager for a given fund? | Yahoo Finance: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=VFINX+Profile Under "Management Information" |
As an employer, how do I start a 401k or traditional IRA plan? | OK, so first of all, employers don't set up IRAs. IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. You can set up a personal IRA for yourself, but not for employees. If that is what you're after, then just set one up for yourself - no special rules there for self employment. As far as setting up a 401(k), I'd suggest checking with benefits management companies. If you're small, you probably don't have an HR department, so managing a 401(k) yourself would likely be overly burdensome. Outsourcing this to a company which handles HR for you (maybe running payroll, etc. also), would be the best option. Barring that, I'd try calling a large financial institution (Schwab, Fidelity, etc.) for clear guidance. |
After Hours S&P 500 | The futures market trades 24 hours a day, 5.5 days a week. S&P 500 futures market continues trading, and this gives pricing exposure and influences the individual stocks when they resume trading in US session. |
What's a reliable way for a non-permanent resident alien in the USA to get an auto loan? | I don't think that they ask you for your citizenship status when you apply in a dealership. At least I don't remember being asked. I know of at least 3 people from my closest circle of friends who are in various immigration statuses (including one on F1) and got an auto loan from a dealership without a problem and with good rates. They have to ask for your immigration status on online applications because of the post-9/11 law changes. Edit to allow Dilip to retract his unjustified downvote: Chase and Wells Fargo have a reliable track of extending auto loans to non-permanent residents. |
Where can end-of-day data be downloaded for corporate bonds? | Here is one from a Bloomberg partnership, it is free. To get the end of day prices, you may need some programming done. PM me if you need help with that. Getting bond quotes and general information about a bond issue is considerably more difficult than researching a stock or a mutual fund. A major reason for this is that there is not a lot of individual investor demand for the information; therefore, most bond information is available only through higher level tools that are not accessible to the average investor. Read more: Where can I get bond market quotes? | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/bondquote.asp#ixzz3wXVwv3s5 |
Where can I trade FX spot options, other than saxobank.com? | You can trade currency ETF options on IB. It is SIPC insured; the options are just like vanilla options in Saxo. |
Are lottery tickets ever a wise investment provided the jackpot is large enough? | The other answers here do an excellent job of laying out the mathematics of the expected value. Here is a different take on the question of whether lottery tickets are a sensible investment. I used to have the snobbish attitude that many mathematically literate people have towards lotteries: that they are "a tax on the mathematically illiterate", and so on. As I've gotten older I've realized that though, yes, it is certainly true that humans are staggeringly bad at estimating risks, that people actually are surprisingly rational when they spend their money. What then is the rational basis for buying lottery tickets, beyond the standard explanation of "it's cheap entertainment"? Suppose you are a deeply poor person in America. Your substandard education prepared you for a job in manufacturing which no longer exists, you're working several minimum wage jobs just to keep food on the table, and you're one fall off a ladder from medical-expense-induced total financial disaster. Now suppose you have things that you would like to spend truly enormous amounts of money on, like, say, sending your children to schools with ever-increasing tuitions, or a home in a safe neighbourhood. Buying lottery tickets is a bad investment, sure. Name another legal investment strategy that has a million-dollar payout that is accessible to the poor in America. Even if you could invest 10% of your minimum-wage salary without missing the electricity bill, that's still not going to add up to a million bucks in your lifetime. Probably not even $100K. When given a choice between no chance whatsoever at achieving your goals and a cheap chance that is literally a one-in-a-million chance at achieving your goals the rational choice is to take the bad investment option over no investment at all. |
Formula that predicts whether one is better off investing or paying down debt | you should always invest if your investment rate of return is higher than your interest rate Your next line, about standard deviation is dead on. There are too many variables to give an exact answer here, in my opinion. The main reason is that one variable isn't easy to quantify - One's risk tolerance. Clearly, there's one extreme, the 18% credit card. Unless you are funding loanshark type rates of 2%/week, it's safe to say that 18% debt should take priority over any investments, except for the matched 401(k) deposits. What I think you're talking about is something we've addressed here in multiple threads. Do I prepay my sub 4% mortgage or invest? In this case, (and to Noah's comment) the question is whether you can expect a post-tax return of over 3% during your time horizon. I look at the return for 15 years from 1998-2013 and see a 6% CAGR for the S&P. I chose 15 years, as the choice is often one of paying a 30 year mortgage faster, as fast as 15. The last 15 years offer a pretty bad scenario, 2 crashes and a mortgage crisis. 6% after long term gains would get you 5.1% net. You can pull the data back to 1871 and run CAGR numbers for the timeframe of your choosing. I haven't done it yet, but I imagine there's no 15 year span that lags the 3% target I cite. What makes it more complex is that the investment isn't lump sum. It may not be obvious, but CAGR is a dollar invested at T=0, and returns calculated to T=final year. It would take a bit of spreadsheeting to invest the extra funds every month/year over your period of analysis. In the end, there are still those who will choose to pay off their 4% mortgage regardless of what the numbers show. Even if the 15 year result showed worst case 3.5% (almost no profit) and an average 10%, the feeling of risk is more than many will want. |
Free “Rich Dad” education, with “free gift”: Is it legitimate, or is it a sales ploy? | I have taken the free Kiyosaki evening course, and it does give some good information. It is an upsell to the $500 weekend course, which I also took. That course taught me enough about real-estate investing to get started. I have not yet had the need to pursue his other, more expensive courses. Read his books, take the $500 course, read other people's books on real estate investing, talk to other like-minded individuals, and gain some experience. I understand real estate better than I understand paper assets because I spent more time studying real estate. If you want to invest in real estate, study it first. If you want to invest in paper assets, study those first. |
Can a company block a specific person from buying its stock? | A more serious problem: how do you know who's really buying your stock? "Shell companies" are an increasingly obvious problem in corporate and tax accountability. There are jurisdictions where companies can be created with secret lists of directors and shareholders. If stock is bought by one of these companies, it is very hard to trace it to a particular individual. |
How can a freelancer get a credit card? (India) | Typically Banks look for a steady source of income or savings based on which they issue a credit card. If you can't show that build a cash balance and show it. For Example if you have an PPF account with say SBI, they issue you a card with a limit of around 50% of the balance in PPF. No other documentation is required. Similarly if you have Fixed Deposits for a large amount quite a few Banks would give you a Credit Card. My wife has a credit card because she had a good balance [around 100,000 INR] for around a year, the Bank kept calling her and offered her a card. |
Buying from an aggressive salesperson | In my experience when a salesperson says a particular deal is only good if you purchase right now, 100% of the time it is not true. Of course I can't guarantee that is universally the case, but if you leave and come back 5 minutes later, or tomorrow, or next week, it's extremely likely that they'll still take your money for the original price. (In fact, sometimes after you leave you get a call with even a lower price than the "excellent offer"...) Most of the time when you are presented with high pressure sales accompanied by a "this price is only good right now" pitch, it ends up being because they don't want you to go search the competition and read reviews. In this case you have already done that and deemed the item to be worthwhile. Perhaps a better tactic for the salesperson would have been to try to convince you that others are interested in the item and if you wait it might be sold to someone else at that excellent price. Sales is an art, and it requires the salesperson to size you up and try to figure out your vulnerability and exploit it. This particular salesperson obviously misjudged you and/or you don't have an easily exploitable vulnerability. I wouldn't let the shortcomings of the salesperson get in the way of your purchase. If you are worried about the scenario of someone else snatching up the item, consider offering a deposit to hold the item for a certain amount of time while you "reflect" and/or "arrange for the funds". |
Rollover into bond fund to do dollar cost averaging [duplicate] | Many would recommend lump sum investing because of the interest gains, and general upward historical trend of the market. After introducing DCA in A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Malkiel says the following: But remember, because there is a long-term uptrend in common-stock prices, this technique is not necessarily appropriate if you need to invest a lump sum such as a bequest. If possible, keep a small reserve (in a money fund) to take advantage of market declines and buy a few extra shares if the market is down sharply. I’m not suggesting for a minute that you try to forecast the market. However, it’s usually a good time to buy after the market has fallen out of bed. Just as hope and greed can sometimes feed on themselves to produce speculative bubbles, so do pessimism and despair react to produce market panics. - A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Burton G. Malkiel He goes on from there to recommend a rebalancing strategy. |
How can rebuilding a city/large area be considered an economic boost? | It will have some positives, and some negatives. The hardest hit will be the insurance agencies, as well as banks. Manufacturing will also take a short term hit. When insurance payments come out, then there will be a boom in construction, consumer goods, industrial goods, etc. Companies will upgrade their equipment whereas before they might have let it run for another 10-20 years or longer. After all, if you are going to buy something, you aren't going to get it used, you'll get something more modern. Of course, Japan already was one of the most modern countries in the world, so they likely won't see as many gains as other countries, but this would hold more true in a less technologically advanced society. Long term, 10-20 years down the line, when everything is rebuilt, it might have a slight positive increase in productivity, but this will be somewhat offset because Japan already is such a technological powerhouse, and on the cutting edge in many technologies. But I agree, it's quite foolish to say that it'll improve the economy of Japan, some clarification should be done to clear that one up... |
How can risk-reward relationship exist, since the losses due to the risk should offset the reward? | Risk in finance is defined as standard deviation of returns. This is a measure of size of your returns, both negative and positive. Since the mean return is positive (at least for the stock market and fixed income), if you double the standard deviation your mean return also doubles along with it. In this way you are compensated by the market for taking on more risk. |
Should a retail trader bother about reading SEC filings | I use 10-K and 10-Qs to understand to read the disclosed risk factors related to a business. Sometimes they are very comical. But when you see that risk factor materializing you can understand how it will effect the company. For example, one microlending company's risk factor stated that if Elizabeth Warren becomes head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau we will have a hard time... so we are expanding in Mexico and taking our politically unfavorable lending practices there. I like seeing how many authorized shares there are or if there are plans to issue more. An example was where I heard from former employees of a company how gullible the other employees at that company were and how they all thought they were going to get rich or were being told so by upper management. Poor/Quirky/Questionable/Misleading management is one of my favorite things to look for in a company so I started digging into their SEC filings and saw that they were going to do a reverse split which would make the share prices trade higher (while experiencing no change in market cap), but then digging further I saw that they were only changing the already issued shares, but keeping the authorized shares at the much larger amount of shares, and that they planned to do financing by issuing more of the authorized shares. I exclaimed that this would mean the share prices would drop by 90%-99% after the reverse split and you mean to tell me that nobody realizes this (employees or the broad market). I was almost tempted to stand outside their office and ask employees if I could borrow their shares to short, because there wasn't enough liquidity on the stock market! This was almost the perfect short but it wasn't liquid or have any options so not perfect after all. It traded from $20 after the reverse split to $1.27 I like understanding how much debt a company is in and the structure of that debt, like if a loan shark has large payments coming up soon. This is generally what I use those particular forms for. But they contain a lot of information A lot of companies are able to act they way they do because people do not read. |
1031 Exchange and Taxes? | You bought a rental property in 2001. Hopefully you paid fair value else other issues come into play. Say you paid $120K. You said you have been taking depreciation, which for residential real estate is taken over 27.5 years, so you are about halfway through. Since you don't depreciate land, you may have taken a total $50K so far. With no improvements, and no transaction costs, you have $50K in depreciation recapture, taxed at a maximum 25% (or your lower, marginal rate) and a cap gain of the 5-10K you mentioned. Either can be offset by losses you've been carrying forward if you suffered large stock losses at some point. |
Is an interest-only mortgage a bad idea? | Generally, interest-only mortgages are a bad idea, because a lot of people get them so that they can buy more house than they could otherwise afford (lower payment = affordable, in their minds). If the house continues to go up in value, they probably get away with it, because when the balance becomes due, they can refinance. However, the last few years has shown how risky that strategy can be, and this kind of things is what cost a lot of people their houses. In your case, if the house is something you could afford on a regular 15 or 30-year mortgage, and you really are as disciplined as you say you are, you might get away with it. But you have to take into account the risk, and consider what happens if there is a job loss or similar difficulty in the future. Another thing to consider is the term of the mortgage. How many years will you get this lower interest rate? Interest rates are at historic lows right now, and pretty much everyone thinks they're going up soon. You might be better off locking in a higher rate for 15 years. |
Is it wise to sell company stock to pay down a mortgage? | Simply if your stock is still rising in price keep it. If it is falling in price sell it and pay off your mortgage. To know when to do this is very easy. If it is currently rising you can put a trailing stop loss on it and sell it when it drops and hits your stop loss. A second easy method is to draw an uptrend line under the increasing price and then sell when the price drops down below the uptrend line, as per the chart below. This will enable you to capture the bulk of the price movement upward and sell before the price drops too far down. You can then use the profits (after tax) to pay down your mortgage. Of course if the price is currently in a downtrend sell it ASAP. |
60% Downpayment on house? | I would lean towards making a smaller down payment and hanging onto savings for flexibility. Questions to think about: If you have enough cash that you can make a huge down payment and still have all the other bases covered, then it comes down to your risk tolerance and personal style. You can almost definitely build a portfolio that will beat your mortgage rate on average over the long term, but with more risk and volatility. Heck, you could make a 20% down payment on another house and rent it out. |
Why ever use a market order? | I don't think you're missing anything. Many modern trading systems actually warn you when trying to enter a market order, asking if you are sure that you wouldn't prefer to set a limit. I fully agree with you that it is usually just better to define a limit even 20% higher than just doing a market trade. Let me give you some examples when you still might prefer to use a market order instead of a limit: But even in those two examples a (wide) limit order might just be the safer thing to do. So, what it really comes down to is speed: A market order has no other criterias to be defined, is thus entered faster and saves you a few seconds that might be crucial. |
Roth IRA - Vanguard or Fidelity? If a college student had to pick one? | The minimum at Schwab to open an IRA is $1000. Why don't you check the two you listed to see what their minimum opening balance is? If you plan to go with ETFs, you want to ask them what their commission is for a minimum trade. In Is investing in an ETF generally your best option after establishing a Roth IRA? sheegaon points out that for the smaller investor, index mutual funds are cheaper than the ETFs, part due to commission, part the bid/ask spread. |
Why do some online stores not ask for the 3-digit code on the back of my credit card? | Given that the laws on consumer liability for unauthorized transactions mean no cost in most cases, the CVV is there to protect the merchant. Typically a merchant will receive a lower cost from their bank to process the transaction with the CVV code versus without. As far as the Netflix case goes, (or any other recurring billing for that matter) they wouldn't care as much about it because Visa/MC/Amex regulations prohibit storage of the CVV. So if they collect it then it's only used for the first transaction and renewals just use the rest of the card info (name, expiration date, address). Does the presence of CVV indicate the merchant has better security? Maybe, maybe not. It probably means they care about their costs and want to pay the bank as little as possible to process the transaction. |
Why would a stock opening price differ from the offering price? | The offering price is the price at which that IPO is, well, offered. Think of it as a suggested retail price. The opening price is the actual price at which trading begins, on a particular day, for a stock. That price depends on demand/overnight-orders/what-have-you. Think of this as the actual price in the store. |
Working for recruiter on W-2 vs. working for client on 1099? | I don't think anyone can give you a definitive answer without knowing all about your situation, but some things to consider: If you are on a 1099, you have to pay self-employment tax, while on a W-2 you do not. That is, social security tax is 12.4% of your income. If you're a 1099, you pay the full 12.4%. If you're W-2, you pay 6.2% and the employer pays 6.2%. So if they offer you the same nominal rate of pay, you're 6.2% better off with the W-2. What sort of insurance could you get privately and what would it cost you? I have no idea what the going rates for insurance are in California. If you're all in generally good health, you might want to consider a high-deductible policy. Then if no one gets seriously sick you've saved a bunch of money on premiums. If someone does get sick you might still pay less paying the deductible than you would have paid on higher premiums. I won't go into further details as that's getting off into another question. Even if the benefits are poor, if there are any benefits at all it can be better than nothing. The only advantage I see to going with a 1099 is that if you are legally an independent contractor, then all your business expenses are deductible, while if you are an employee, there are sharp limits on deducting employee business expenses. Maybe others can think of other advantages. If there is some reason to go the 1099 route, I understand that setting up an LLC is not that hard. I've never done it, but I briefly looked into it once and it appeared to basically be a matter of filling out a form and paying a modest fee. |
Should I pay my Education Loan or Put it in the Stock Market? | I'd recommend hitting the loan the hardest, but getting something invested as well. It's tempting to see these decisions as binary, so it's good to see you wondering if a "mix" is best. I admit to being a spreadsheet junky, but I think this is a good candidate for working up various scenarios to see where the pain/pleasure point is and once you've identified it, move forward with it (e.g., let's say it's a 10K lump sum you're dealing with, what does 5k on the loan and 5k invested look like over the next 6 months, 12 months, 24 months (requires assumptions on investment performance)? What about 6K loan, 4K invested? 7K loan, 3K invested? etc) |
Can I pay off my credit card balance to free up available credit? | Banks only send your balance to credit bureaus once a month; usually a few days after your statement date. Thus, as long as your usage is below 10% in that date range, you're ok. Regarding paying it off early: sure. Every Sunday night, I pay our cards' charges from the previous week. (The internet makes this too easy.) |
What are some factors I should consider when choosing between a CPA and tax software | Hiring a CPA comes into play if you're doing something that requires judgement or planning, such as valuation of internal shares in a partnership, valuation of assets in an asset swap, or distribution of the proceeds of a liquidation. That said, I would strongly suggest hiring someone who is also a Tax Attorney over a plain old CPA. In the event you do need representation to clarify positions or assertions, you're probably going to need to hire one anyway. Qualified representation is much cheaper to hire up front than after the fact. If all you need is help filing compliance paperwork (returns), software should be more than adequate. |
When should I start an LLC for my side work? | Not all of the reason to start an LLC is liability (although that is implicit). There are two main reasons as far as I have experienced it: I always recommend that people set things up properly from the beginning. If you do start to grow, or if you need to cut your losses, it can be very difficult to separate yourself from the company if it isn't set up entirely apart from you. I was once told, "Run your small company as you would wish it to be." Don't get into bad habits at the beginning. They become bad habits in big companies later on. |
Do I owe taxes if my deductions are higher than my income? | No, it's not possible. Even if you had no deduction or credits, your federal tax on $16,604 would be: $9075 @ 10% = $907.50 + $7529 @ 15% = $1129.35 = $2036.85 That assumes you are filing as single. There must be more to the story. Typo in your income numbers? Also, what do you mean by a self-employment tax deduction? Maybe update your question to include a breakdown of everything you entered? Edit: As noted in Loren's answer, it seems that it is indeed possible in at least one case (self-employment taxes). |
How does the world - in aggregate - generate a non-zero return? | I think you'll find some sound answers here: Money Creation in the Modern Economy by the Bank of England Where does money come from? In the modern economy, most money takes the form of bank deposits. But how those bank deposits are created is often misunderstood. The principal way in which they are created is through commercial banks making loans: whenever a bank makes a loan, it creates a deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money. This description of how money is created differs from the story found in some economics textbooks. |
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