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What does quantitative easing 2 mean for my bank account?
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Probably means next to zero chance of having decent rates on savings accounts for the near future - who needs your money if banks can have government money for free? Probably no short-term effects on you besides that.
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Are binary options really part of trading?
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If I really understood it, you bet that a quote/currency/stock market/anything will rise or fall within a period of time. So, what is the relationship with trading ? I see no trading at all since I don't buy or sell quotes. You are not betting as in "betting on the outcome of an horse race" where the money of the participants is redistributed to the winners of the bet. You are betting on the price movement of a security. To do that you have to buy/sell the option that will give you the profit or the loss. In your case, you would be buying or selling an option, which is a financial contract. That's trading. Then, since anyone should have the same technic (call when a currency rises and put when it falls)[...] How can you know what will be the future rate of exchange of currencies? It's not because the price went up for the last minutes/hours/days/months/years that it will continue like that. Because of that everyone won't have the same strategy. Also, not everyone is using currencies to speculate, there are firms with real needs that affect the market too, like importers and exporters, they will use financial products to protect themselves from Forex rates, not to make profits from them. [...] how the brokers (websites) can make money ? The broker (or bank) will either: I'm really afraid to bet because I think that they can bankrupt at any time! Are my fears correct ? There is always a probability that a company can go bankrupt. But that's can be very low probability. Brokers are usually not taking risks and are just being intermediaries in financial transactions (but sometime their computer systems have troubles.....), thanks to that, they are not likely to go bankrupt you after you buy your option. Also, they are regulated to insure that they are solid. Last thing, if you fear losing money, don't trade. If you do trade, only play with money you can afford to lose as you are likely to lose some (maybe all) money in the process.
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Moving Coin Collection to Stapled Coin Pockets
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This is primarily opinion based. It is like predicting what will happen in future, similar to predicting the value of stock. This is interesting topic on a coin discussion forum like WOC My question is whether moving the coins out of the Whitman folders (some of which are in serious disrepair) to the stapled pockets will adversely affect their value? Whitman folders are for basic collectors to know what to collect and easily show what is missing. These are not great way to preserve coins. Infact good quality coins should never be put into such folders. There are quite a few ways to store coins, Stapled flips ... now one also gets self adhesive flips. Coin Capsules or Archival grade envelops. It depends on the value of coin and how long you want to store these and where are the coins kept [moisture, humidity, pollutants are bad for coins]
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Do query services like Google Finance and Yahoo Finance go back to correct busted and adjusted trades?
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No. Busts are very infrequent, and if an equity were illiquid enough to be affected, the bust cost would be enormous. For a liquid equity, the amount of busted volume is insignificant except during a flash crash or flash spike. Then it would be reasonable to redownload.
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What is a mutual fund?
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The simple answer is: YES, the JP Morgan emerging markets equity fund is a mutual fund. A mutual fund is a pooling of money from investors to invest in stocks and bonds. Investors in mutual funds arrive there in different ways. Some get there via their company 401K, others by an IRA, still others as a taxable account. The fund can be sold by the company directly or through a broker. You can also have a fund of funds. So the investors are other funds. Some investors are only indirect investors. They are owed a pension by a past or current employer, and the pension fund has invested in a mutual fund.
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Ongoing things to do and read to improve knowledge of finance?
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The best learning technique for me is not to dredge through books in order to gain a better understanding of finance. This is tedious and causes me to lose interest. I'm not sure of your tolerance for this type of learning. I tend to learn in small pieces. Something piques my interest and I go off reading about that particular topic. May I suggest some alternate methods:
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What is the median retirement savings in the United States today?
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Statistics are often tough to grasp. Specifically, we need to understand the exact context and implication of the data and how it's presented. An example - I look at real estate sales data for a given town, and find that for the last 10 years, the average sale price has dropped, 3%/yr, every year for these 10. What can I conclude? Now, to your data. You don't mention age. When we look at this chart, combined with the next - The picture, while still bleak, is at least more clear. Nearly half of pre-retirees have no "retirement" savings. If that lower half is running close to zero, the average for the upper half is nearly twice the reported $164K. Even now, there are important bits going unaddressed. People who have had no access to retirement accounts, either through lack of company availability, or self-employeds who just ignored them, may very well have saved outside of retirement-labled accounts. You can see these graphs are tracking only 401(k), IRA, and Keogh accounts. Last, social security for the $30K earner will replace nearly half their working income at retirement, almost 65% if they work till 70. I don't advocate counting on SS for the entirety of one's retirement income, but the way SS benefits are structured, replacement benefits are far higher (as a percent) for lower wage workers, as the system intended. To conclude, median alone is too small a data point to be useful, in my opinion. This kind of information presented in these charts is far more preferable to get a fuller picture.
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Is business the only way to become a millionaire?
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Not at all. The Millionaire Next Door offers a book full of anecdotes on couples that earned money and saved their way to being millionaires. I believe about 1/3 or so had businesses, but the rest were employed and simply saved wisely. $3860/yr saved for 40 years at 8% will return $1M. Adjust the numbers to hit a million sooner or reach a higher goal. The Author might be accused of survey bias. This is the phenomenon of studying the final results without looking at the pool of people years prior. Little Adv' is correct that while 1/3 of millionaires may have gotten that way by starting a business, that says nothing about how many businesses need to start to find the one millionaire that resulted. I view the book more as a lesson of "spend beneath your means" and focus on his anecdotes of the dual income couples who saved their way to this status. If you are in no rush, get this book from your library and spend the few hours to read it. In response to my Friend Dilip's comment, MoneyChimp offers a good look at compound growth (for the S&P) over time. The 40 years ending 2012, which obviously include the 'lost decade,' returned a CAGR of 9.78%. Not to be confused with the average 11.43%. When I pull the numbers for each year's return and apply an annual $3860 deposit, the 40 years ends with $2.2M. A 1% fee, or 1% lower return resulted in $1.6M. If 8% isn't conservative, of course you can run the numbers you wish. The 40 years contained both a lost decade and two great ones. Will the 3 decades post-lost average to get the Quad-Decade period to 8%+? I don't know.
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Am I entitled to get a maintenance loan?
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I think you're eligible for the tuition fee loan but not the maintenance loan. I think that SFE were suggesting that you'd be eligible under point 4 here 4: People with the right of permanent residence in the UK If you satisfy all the conditions under this category, you will be eligible for full Student Support. To be eligible: (a) you have the right of permanent residence in the UK; and (b) you are ordinarily resident in England on the first day of the first academic year of your course; and (c) you were ordinarily resident in the UK and Islands for three years before the first day of the first academic year of the course; and (d) if your three-year residence in the UK and Islands was at any time mainly for the purpose of receiving full-time education, you must have been ordinarily resident in the UK or elsewhere in the EEA and/or Switzerland immediately prior to the three-year period of ordinary residence in the UK and Islands. It does not matter if you were in the EEA and/or Switzerland mainly in order to receive full-time education during this earlier period. Point (b) would be the reason for asking you to prove you were in England on 1 September, but since you were under three years old when you left the UK, you wouldn't satisfy point (c). You should be eligible for the tuition fee loan under point 2 2: EU nationals, and family If you satisfy all the conditions under this category only, you are eligible only for a loan to pay your tuition fees. To be eligible: (a) on the first day of the first academic year of the course, you must be: a UK national; or a non-UK EU national who is in the UK as a self-sufficient person or as a student; the relevant family member of such a person above; and (b) you must have been ordinarily resident in the EEA and/or Switzerland for three years before the first day of the first academic year of the course; and (c) the main purpose for your residence in the EEA and/or Switzerland must not have been to receive full-time education during any part of the three year period.
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What happens to my stocks when broker goes bankrupt?
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+1 to YosefWeiner. Let me add: Legally, technically, or at least theoretically, when you buy stock through a broker, you own the stock, not the broker. The broker is just holding it for you. If the broker goes bankrupt, that has nothing to do with the value of your stock. That said, if the broker fails to transfer your shares to another broker before ceasing operation, it could be difficult to get your assets. Suppose you take your shoes to a shoe repair shop. Before you can pick them up, the shop goes bankrupt. The shoes are still rightfully yours. If the shop owner was a nice guy he would have called you and told you to pick up your shoes before he closed the shop. But if he didn't, you may have to go through legal gyrations to get your shoes back. If as his business failed the shop owner quit caring and got sloppy about his records, you might have to prove that those shoes are yours and not someone else's, etc.
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As a minor in the UK do I need to pay taxes on self-employment income, and if so how?
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As a minor you certainly can pay tax, the government wants its cut from you just like everyone else :-) However you do get the personal allowance like everyone else, so you won't have to pay income tax until your net income reaches £10,800 (that's the figure for the tax year from April 2015 to April 2016, it'll probably change in future years). Once you're 16, you will also have to pay national insurance, which is basically another tax, at a lower threshold. The current rates are £2.80/week if you are making £5,965 a year or more, and also 9% on any income above £8,060 (up to £42,385). Your "net income" or "profits" are the income you receive minus the expenses you have to support that income. Note that the expenses must be entirely for the "business", they can't be for personal things. The most important thing to do immediately is to start keeping accurate records. Keep a list of the income you receive and also the expenses you pay for hardware etc. Make sure you keep receipts (perhaps just electronic ones) for the expenses so you can prove they existed later. Keep track of that net income as the year goes on and if it starts collecting at the rate you'd have to pay tax and national insurance, then make sure you also put aside enough money to pay for those when the bill comes. There's some good general advice on the Government's website here: https://www.gov.uk/working-for-yourself/what-you-need-to-do In short, as well as keeping records, you should register with the tax office, HMRC, as a "sole trader". This should be something that anyone can do whatever their age, but it's worth calling them up as soon as you can to check and find out if there are any other issues. They'll probably want you to send in tax returns containing the details of your income and expenses. If you're making enough money it may be worth paying an accountant to do this for you.
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Is it smarter to buy a small amount of an ETF every 2 or 3 months, instead of monthly?
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Note, the main trade off here is the costs of holding cash rather than being invested for a few months vs trading costs from trading every month. Let's start by understanding investing every month vs every three months. First compare holding cash for two months (at ~0% for most Canadians right now) and then investing on the third month vs being invested in a single stock etf (~5% annually?). At those rates she is forgoing equity returns of around These costs and the $10 for one big trade give total costs of $16+$8+$10=$34 dollars. If you were to trade every month instead there would be no cost for not being invested and the trading costs over three months would just be 3*$10=$30. So in this case it would be better to trade monthly instead of every three months. However, I'm guessing you don't trade all $2000 into a single etf. The more etfs you trade the more trading more infrequently would be an advantage. You can redo the above calculations spliting the amount across more etfs and including the added trading costs to get a feel for what is best. You can also rotate as @Jason suggests but that can leave you unbalanced temporarily if not done carefully. A second option would be to find a discount broker that allows you to trade the etfs you are interested in for free. This is not always possible but often will be for those investing in index funds. For instance I trade every month and have no brokerage costs. Dollar cost averaging and value averaging are for people investing a single large amount instead of regular monthly amounts. Unless the initial amount is much much larger than the monthly amounts this is probably not worth considering. Edit: Hopefully the above edits will clarify that I was comparing the costs (including the forgone returns) of trading every 3 months vs trading every month.
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How does leverage work?
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JoeTaxpayer's answer adequately explained leverage and some of your risks. Your risks also include: The firm's risk is that you will figure out a way to leave them with a negative account that contributes to another customer's profit and yet you disappear in a way that makes the negative account impossible to collect. Another risk is that you are not who you say you are, or that the money you invest is not yours. These are called "know your customer" risks.
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Is it a gift or not?
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There are a few things that this question prompts -
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Equity prices during currency devaluation — Mexico 1994
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Yes, this phenomenon is well documented. A collapse of an economy's exchange rate is coincidented with a collapse in its equities market. The recent calamities in Turkey, etc during 2014 had similar results. Inflation is highly correlated to valuations, and a collapse of an exchange rate is highly inflationary, so a collapse of an exchange rate is highly correlated to a collapse in valuations.
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Prices go up and salary doesn't: where goes delta?
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Where goes the Delta? To the sea, of course. Your question is very valid and for once, I think most of the answers are too involved into mechanical details and are badly missing the big picture. At the risk of over simplifying things, let me try to describe the situation in broad strokes: Inflation: the volume of money grows faster than production (including services). Deflation: production increase faster than the volume of money. Imagine an economy with 10 products and $10. 1 product = $1. In an inflationary scenario, money available increase: $20 for 10 products. 1 product = $2. In a deflationary scenario, money available decrease: $5 for 10 products. 1 product = $0.5. So far, it's pretty textbook. Now onto the stuff that you don't usually read in textbooks: Time. Say 10 people are attending an auction, each with $10 bucks. 10 items are for sale. $100 and 10 items. Item price is $10. Now, if just before opening the bidding, you go around and give each person $40, every one has $50. Each product sells for $50. That's the picture people have of inflation. Prices have increased, but everybody has more money, so it comes down to the same thing. Now, let's bring this example closer to reality: You have to distribute $400, so the total amount of money is $500, which means that the normal price of each item should be $50. Now, imagine that instead of giving money to everyone at the same time, you started by giving $40 to 1 guy who was hanging out in front. The auction starts. While you go around distributing the money, the first guy manages to buy 2 items at $10 each. Now, there is $480 in the market, and only 8 items, making each item $60 on average. The next guy to get money manages to snap 2 items at $15. 6 items left and $450 in play. Each item now costs $75....and keep increasing in price as things move along. People who get the money early buy items under their real value, and people who get paid at the end pick up the tab, because by then, there are only a few items left. Back to reality, while inflation means that wages eventually increase (and they do), actual purchasing decrease for most people due to this simple trick. Employees are pretty much at the end of the chain. Income tax Another major source of "signal loss" is income tax. It works by brackets, as you certainly know. Simplifying again because I am lazy: Take a guy who earns $100. Pays no taxes. Can buy 100 products at $1 each. Now, put in some inflation... He earns $500. He pays $50 in taxes and can buy 90 products at $5 each. By the time he earns $10,000, he can only buy 50 products on account of income tax. So this is another area where you are bleeding purchasing power, and why income tax, which was originally presented as a tax for the ultra-rich is now a fact of life for most people (except the ultra-rich, of course). Money as debt Next stop: Money itself. Money is created as debt in our society. At the risk of over-simplifying things again, let's say Bank A has $1000 in assets. In the fractional reserve system (our current system), Bank A can lend out many times over that amount. Let's say $9,000, for a total of $10,000 (much more in reality). And of course, it lends that money at interest. When bank A has made $10,000 available through 10% interest loans, the total amount of money has increased by $10,000, but when the loans are paid back, $11,000 must be paid to the bank, so the net result of the operation is that $1,000 get taken out of the market. This system explains why almost all companies and governments have huge debts, and why most of the world's large companies belong to financial institutions of some kind, and why most of the world's wealth rest in very very few hands. To fully answer your question and provide details and references and names, one would have to write a book or 5. There is a lot more than can be said on the subject, and of course, all the examples given here are extremely simplified, but I think they illustrate the key issues pretty well. Bottom-line is that our system is designed that way. Our economic system is rigged and the delta bleeds out on automatic.
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How should I handle student loans when leaving University and trying to buy a house?
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One way to reduce the monthly payment due each month is to do everything to eliminate one of the loans. Make the minimum payment to the others, but put everything into eliminating one of the loans. Of course this assumes that you have separate loans for each year of school. Make sure that in trying to get aggressive on the loan repayment that you don't neglect the saving for a down payment. Each dollar you can put down will save you money on the mortgage. It might also allow you to reduce the mortgage insurance payments. If you pay one student loan back aggressively but can't eliminate it you might be worse off because you spent your savings but it didn't help you qualify for the mortgage. One way to maximize the impact is to not make the extra payments until you are ready to apply for the mortgage. Ask the lender if you qualify with all the student loans, or if you need to eliminate one. If you don't need to eliminate a loan, then apply the extra funds to a larger down payment or pay points to reduce the interest rate.
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How do I determine how much rent I could charge for a property or location?
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Check out the property websites to get an idea of how much, the property in question, could yield as rent. Most give a range and you can get a good idea of it. Just one example from zoopla. Likewise you can refer mouseprice or rightmove and get yourself an idea. Property websites do a lot of data crunching to do an update, but their figure is only a guide.
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Account that is debited and account that is credited
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The terms debit and credit come from double-entry book-keeping. In this system, every transaction is applied against two accounts: it debits one and credits the other by equal amounts. (Or more technically, it affects two or more accounts, and the total of the credits equals the total of the debits.) Whether a debit or a credit adds or subtracts from the balance depends on the type of account. The types of accounts were defined so that it is always possible to have these matching debits and credits. Assets, like cash or property that you own, are "debit accounts", that is, a debit is an increase in the balance of the account. Liabilities, like money you owe, are "credit accounts", that is, a credit is an increase. To get into all the details would require giving a tutorial on double-entry book-keeping, which I think is beyond the scope of a forum post. By a quick Bing search I find this one: http://simplestudies.com/double-entry-accounting-system.html. I haven't gone through it so I can't say if it's a particularly good tutorial. There are plenty of others on the Web and in bookstores. Note that the terminology can be backwards when someone you're doing business with is describing the account, because their viewpoint may be the opposite of yours. For example, to me, my credit card is a liability: I owe the bank money. So when I post a charge, that's a credit, and when I pay it off, that's a debit. But to the bank, my account is an asset: the customer (me) owes them money. So to the bank, a charge is a debit and a payment is a credit.
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Should I sell a 2nd home, or rent it out?
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If you can generate a higher ROI by renting than by cashing out and investing, then you should rent it out. Please consider your risk tolerance as well. It's always a personal decision whether to assume higher risk for a higher return.
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Basic finance: what should everyone know?
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The statement "Finance is something all adults need to deal with but almost nobody learns in school." hurts me. However I have to disagree, as a finance student, I feel like everyone around me is sound in finance and competition in the finance market is so stiff that I have a hard time even finding a paid internship right now. I think its all about perspective from your circumstances, but back to the question. Personally, I feel that there is no one-size-fits-all financial planning rules. It is very subjective and is absolutely up to an individual regarding his financial goals. The number 1 rule I have of my own is - Do not ever spend what I do not have. Your reflected point is "Always pay off your credit card at the end of each month.", to which I ask, why not spend out of your savings? plan your grocery monies, necessary monthly expenditures, before spending on your "wants" should you have any leftovers. That way, you would not even have to pay credit every month because you don't owe any. Secondly, when you can get the above in check, then you start thinking about saving for the rainy days (i.e. Emergency fund). This is absolutely according to each individual's circumstance and could be regarded as say - 6 months * monthly income. Start saving a portion of your monthly income until you have set up a strong emergency fund you think you will require. After you have done than, and only after, should you start thinking about investments. Personally, health > wealth any time you ask. I always advise my friends/family to secure a minimum health insurance before venturing into investments for returns. You can choose not to and start investing straight away, but should any adverse health conditions hit you, all your returns would be wiped out into paying for treatments unless you are earning disgusting amounts in investment returns. This risk increases when you are handling the bills of your family. When you stick your money into an index ETF, the most powerful tool as a retail investor would be dollar-cost-averaging and I strongly recommend you read up on it. Also, because I am not from the western part of the world, I do not have the cultural mindset that I have to move out and get into a world of debt to live on my own when I reached 18. I have to say I could not be more glad that the culture does not exist in Asian countries. I find that there is absolutely nothing wrong with living with your parents and I still am at age 24. The pressure that culture puts on teenagers is uncalled for and there are no obvious benefits to it, only unmanageable mortgage/rent payments arise from it with the entry level pay that a normal 18 year old could get.
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What is a good size distribution for buying gold?
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You are really tangling up two questions here: Q1: Given I fear a dissolution of the Euro, is buying physical gold a good response and if so, how much should I buy? I see you separately asked about real estate, and cash, and perhaps other things. Perhaps it would be better to just say: what is the right asset allocation, rather than asking about every thing individually, which will get you partial and perhaps contradictory answers. The short answer, knowing very little about your case, is that some moderate amount of gold (maybe 5-10%, at most 25%) could be a counterbalance to other assets. If you're concerned about government and market stability, you might like Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio, which has equal parts stocks, bonds, cash, and gold. Q2: If I want to buy physical gold, what size should I get? One-ounce bullion (about 10 x 10 x 5mm, 30g) is a reasonably small physical size and a reasonable monetary granularity: about $1700 today. I think buying $50 pieces of gold is pointless: However much you want to have in physical gold, buy that many ounces.
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give free budgeting advice
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Legally ok? Sure. Friends frequently discuss financial matters, and share advice. This is quite far from taking money from them and managing it, where at some point you need to be licensed for such things. If you're concerned about giving bad advice, just stay generic. The best advice has no risk. If I offer a friend a stock tip, of course there's the chance the stock goes south, but when I tell a friend who asks about the difference between Mutual Funds and ETFs, and we discuss the expenses each might have, I'm still leaving the decision as to which ETF to him. When I offer the 'fortune cookie' soundbites like "If you are going to make a large purchase, delay it a week for each $100 of value. e.g. if you really want a $1000 TV, sleep on it for a few months" no one can mis-apply this. I like those two sites you mentioned, but the one-on-one is good for the friend and for you. You can always learn more, and teaching helps you hone your skills.
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Strategies for putting away money for a child's future (college, etc.)?
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Being in the same situation, and considering that money doesn't need to be available until 2025, I just buy stocks. I plan to progressively switch to safer options as time passes.
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Making $100,000 USD per month, no idea what to do with it
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What I would do, in this order: Get your taxes in order. Don't worry about fancy tricks to screw the tax man over; you've already admitted that you're literally making more money than you know what to do with, and a lot of that is supported, one way or another, by infrastructure that's supported by tax money. Besides, your first priority is to establish basic security for yourself and your family. Making sure you won't be subjected to stressful audits is an important part of that! Pay off any and all outstanding debts you may have. This establishes a certain baseline standard of living for you: no matter what unexpected tragedies may come up, at least you won't have to deal with them while also keeping the wolves at bay at the same time! Max out a checking account. I believe the FDIC maximum insured value is $250,000. Fill 'er up, get a debit card, and just sit on it. This is a rainy day fund, highly liquid and immediately usable in case you lose your income. Put at least half of it into an IRA or other safe investments. Bonds and reliable dividend-paying stocks are strongly preferred: having money is good but having income is much better, especially in retirement! Quality of life. Splurge a little. (Emphasis on a little!) Look around your life. There are a few things that it would be nice if you just had, but you've never gotten around to getting. Pick up a few of them, but don't go overboard. Spending too much too quickly is a good way to end up with no money and no idea what happened to it. Also, note that this isn't just for you; family members deserve some love too! Charitable giving. If you have more money than you know what to do with, there are plenty of people out there who know exactly what to do--try to go on living and build a basic life for themselves--but have no money with which to do so. Do your research. Scam charities abound, as do more-or-less legitimate ones who actually do help those in need, but also end up sucking up a surprisingly high percentage of donations for "administrative costs". Try and avoid these and send your money where it will actually do some good in the world. Reinvest in yourself. You're running a business. Make sure you have the best tools and training you can afford, now that you can afford more!
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Tax implications of diversification
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Yes, to change which stocks you owe you need to sell one and buy the other, which for tax purposes means taking the profit or loss accrued up to then. On the other hand this establishes a new baseline, so you will not be double-faced on those gains. It just makes a mess of this year's tax return, and forced you to set aside some if the money to cover that.
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Should I make extra payments to my under water mortgage or increase my savings?
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I'd pile up as much cash as you can in a savings account - you will need money for the move (even if it's just gas money) and it's going to be hard to predict where house prices are going so you might or might not be underwater when it comes time to sell the house. Or you might be so deep underwater by then that the extra money doesn't make much of a difference anymore anyway. Once you're actually in the process of selling the house, you can figure out if you can (or need to) use the savings to cover the shortfall, closing costs or if you just built up a little wealth during the time you put the money aside.
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Are Certificates of Deposit worth it compared to investing in the stock market?
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A CD is guaranteed to pay its return on maturation. So if you need a certain amount of money at a specific time in the future, the CD is a more reliable way of getting it. The stock market might give you more money or less. More is obviously OK. Less is not if you're planning to pay basic expenses with it, e.g. food, rent, etc. Most retirement portfolios will have a mix of investments. Some securities (stocks and bonds), some guaranteed returns (CDs, treasuries), and some cash equivalents (money market, savings, and checking accounts). Cash equivalents are good for short term expenses and an emergency fund. Guaranteed returns are good for medium term expenses. Securities are good for the long term. Once retired, the general system is to maintain enough cash equivalents for the next few months of expenses and emergencies. Then schedule CDs for the next few years so that you have a predictable amount. Finally, keep the bulk of your wealth in securities. As you get older, your potential emergencies increase and your need for savings decreases, so the mix shifts more and more to the cash equivalents and guaranteed returns and away from securities. CDs have limited use prior to retirement (and the couple years right before retirement), mainly saving up for a large purchase like a house, car, or major appliance. Even there if you have the option of delaying the purchase, that might allow you to use securities instead. Perhaps some of your emergency fund in a short term CD that you keep rolling over. Note that the problem isn't so much that securities will fall. It's that they'll fall right when you need the money. So rather than sell 1% of your securities to meet your needs, you have to sell 2%. That's a dead weight loss of 1% that you have to deduct from your returns. That roughly matches the drop from the height of 2007 to the trough of 2009 of the S&P 500. And it was 2012 before it recovered. If in 2007, you had put the 1% of your portfolio in a two-year CD, you'd be ahead even at zero interest in 2009.
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Stock market order execution
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When you are placing an order with an online broker you should already know what exchange or exchanges that stock trades on. For example if you look up under Yahoo Finance: Notice how News Corp is traded both on the ASX and the Nasdaq. The difference is the shares traded on the ASX have the extension .AX, that is how you know the difference between them. When you are putting orders in with your online broker you will need to select the exchange you wish your order to go to (if your broker allows trading on multiple exchanges). So you should always know which exchange your order goes to.
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Mortgage company withholding insurance proceeds
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Have you found a general contractor to rebuild your home? I would imagine that someone with a bit of expertise in the area is used to dealing with insurance companies, floating the money for a rebuild, and hitting the gates to receive payment for work accomplished. Business are used to not receiving payment when work is accomplished and it is part of the risk of being in business. They have to buy materials and pay employees with the expectation of payment in the future. Much like workers go to work on a Monday for the work that day, three Friday's later, business often have to float costs but for longer periods of time. If you are looking to be your own general contractor then you will have to float the money on your own. The money should not be used for living expenses or mortgage payments, it should be used for down payments in order to get the work of rebuilding started.
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Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do?
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Chances are high your friend isn't in it for the money, but the community or some vague dream of having a future income-generating side business because he can't get a loan for a 7-11 franchise. I run a few successful online businesses and had an import/export so naturally I run into these guys looking for advice on selling their MLM wares easier. I always point out they can make a lot of money cutting out the middle man MLM distributor and buy the same products from eBay or the same local supplier the MLM uses for a fraction of costs...then collect all the profit sans kickbacks to their host MLM goon/sponsor/father. I've never had anyone that bailed on the MLM, but I could see their eyes gloss over after they realized their own middle man is holding them back from making a lot of money (assuming they could offload that stuff). People actually in it for the money tend to bail (better sales job exist, MLM dreams don't pay rent, etc.) so you'll probably just need to isolate your friend from these losers somehow. You could investigate his sponsor and find out how much money he's actually making....if he tells your friend he's rich, but you find out he lives in the slums with his mom, your friend might bail on friendship/association with the group out of sheer disgust. It's the friends, not the logic you need to attack. His MLM friends would consider it a betrayal if he left them so you need to show him it's the MLM group that's betrayed his friendship. Point out all the long-term members driving junky cars to events who brag about their $$$. Laugh at the piss poor finance credentials of the local group leaders....ask where the investor perks are and suggest the sponsor/leaders are just hording them. Point out that he's a success and the fellow team members are just milking him to prop up their failing investments/sales/recruitment numbers. Nobody wants to let a team down....but the team isn't good enough for him. Deep down he knows the logic is questionable or at least risky/improbable, but his faith in the good intentions of his MLM cohorts is high.....crush that faith and all he's left with is bad finance tips or cheap protein shakes.
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How can I help others plan their finances, without being a “conventional” financial planner?
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You know there is a small group of individuals who focus on strictly planning without implementation. They are not securities licensed (no 7,6,66,63 license) so they cannot sell or discuss securities, but they do put together financial plans to help individuals recover from debt and rework spending/saving strategies. They also usually work hand in hand with a CFP or ChFc to do the implementation process. The hard part is making money at it. Financial Planners make most of their income on high net worth clients. You would be targeting low income or troubles income clients that would have a hard time paying money for the service. I am not saying it cannot be done, you just have your work cut out for you. But it is a noble career and you would be helping idividuals have a better life. That speaks volumes!
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Are lottery tickets ever a wise investment provided the jackpot is large enough?
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Here's an interesting link to a discussion about an Australian investor group back in the 1990s that bought almost every combination in the West Virginia lottery. It's pretty fascinating stuff. How An Australian Group Cornered A Lottery I don't need to add to what's already been said here, but it's a fun story!
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If I make over 120k a year, what are my options for retirement plans?
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Put in the maximum you can into the 401(k), the limit should be $16,500 so long as the highly compensated rules don't kick in. Since you cannot deduct the traditional IRA, it's a great option to deposit to a traditional IRA and immediately convert that balance to a Roth account. That puts you at $21,500/yr saved, nearly 18%. There's nothing stopping you from investing outside these accounts. A nice ETF with low expenses, investing in a stock index (I am thinking SPY for the S&P 500) is great to accumulate long term.
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What is the equivalent of the QQQ in the UK for the FTSE 100?
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I searched for FTSE 100 fund on Yahoo Finance and found POW FTSE RAF UK 100 (PSRU.L), among many others. Google Finance is another possible source that immediately comes to mind.
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Some stock's prices don't fluctuate widely - Is it an advantages?
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I don't think you are reading the stock chart right. ORCL has a beta of 1.12 which means it has more volatility than the market as a whole. See image below for a fairly wild stock chart for a year. I would not truly consider ESPP participation investing, unless you intend to buy and hold the stock. If you intend to sell the stock soon after you are able, it is more speculation. ESPP's are okay based upon the terms. If the stock was a constant price, and you could sell right away, then an ESPP plan would be easy money. Often, employees are often given a 15% discount to purchase the stock. If you can sell it before any price drop, then you are guaranteed to make 15% on the money invested minus any commissions. Some employers make ESPP participants hold the stock for a year. This makes such a plan less of a value. The reasons are the stock can drop in price during that time, you could need the money, or (in the best case) your money is tied up longer making the ROI less. The reasons people invest in stock are varied and is far to much to discuss in a single post. Some of your colleagues are using the ESPP solely to earn the discount in their money.
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dividend cover ratio for stocks
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Sources such as Value Line, or S&P stock reports will show you dividend payout ratios (the American usage. These are the inverse of dividend cover ratios, with dividends being in the numerator, and earnings in the denominator. For instance, if the dividend cover ratio is 2, the dividend payout ratio is 1/2= 50%.
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Choosing the limit when making a limit order?
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There are a couple of things you could do, but it may depend partly on the type of orders your broker has available to you. Firstly, if you are putting your limit order the night before after close of market at the top of the bids, you may be risking missing out if bid & offer prices increase by the time the market opens the next day. On the other hand, if bid & offer prices fall at the open of the next day you should get your order filled at or below your limit price. Secondly, you could be available at the market open to see if prices are going up or down and then work out the price you want to buy at then and work out the quantity you can buy at that price. I personally don't like this method because you usually get too emotional, start chasing the market if prices start rising, or start regretting buying at a price and prices fall straight afterwards. My preferred method is this third option. If your broker provides stop orders you can use these to both get into and out of the market. How they work when trying to get into the market is that once you have done your analysis and picked a price that you would want to purchase at, you put a stop buy order in. For example, the price closed at $9.90 the previous day and there has been resistance at $10.00, so you would put a stop buy trigger if the price goes over $10, say $10.01. If your stop buy order gets triggered you can have either a buy market order or a limit order above $10.01 (say $10.02). The market order would go through immediately whilst the limit order would only go through if the price continues going to $10.02 or above. The advantage of this is that you don't get emotional trying to buy your securities whilst sitting in front of the screen, you do your analysis and set your prices whilst the market is closed, you only buy when the security is rising (not falling). As your aim is to be in long term you shouldn't be concerned about buying a little bit higher than the previous days close. On the other hand if you try and buy when the price is falling you don't know when it will stop falling. It is better to buy when the price shows signs of rising rather than falling (always follow the trend).
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Why don't market indexes use aggregate market capitalization?
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would constantly fluctuate and provide an indication of how well the market is doing. The index is there to tell if you made profit or loss by investing in the market. Using a pure total market cap will only tell you "Did IPO activity exceed bankruptcy and privatization activity".
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Why don't companies underestimate their earnings to make quarterly reports look better?
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You need to distinguish a company's guidance from analysts' estimates. A company will give a revenue/earnings guidance which is generally based on internal budgets. The guidance may be aggressive or conservative - some managements are known to be conservative and the market will take that into account to form actual estimates. When you see a headline saying that a company missed, it is generally by reference to the analysts' estimates. Analysts use a company's guidance as one data point among many others to form a forecast of revenue/earnings. The idea behind those headlines is that the average sales/earnings estimates of analysts is a good approximation of what the market expects (which is debatable).
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Paying for things on credit and immediately paying them off: any help for credit rating?
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The biggest risk is Credit Utilization rate. If you have a total of $10,000 in revolving credit (ie: credit card line) and you ever have more than 50% (or 33% to be conservative) on the card at any time then your credit score will be negatively impacted. This will be a negative impact even if you charge it on day one and pay it off in full on day 2. Doesn't make much sense but credit companies are playing the averages: on average they find that people who get close to maxing their credit limit are in some sort of financial trouble. You're better off to make small purchases each month, under $100, and pay them off right away. That will build a better credit history - and score.
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How can I set up a recurring payment to an individual (avoiding fees)?
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Many U.S. banks now support POPMoney, which allows recurring electronic transfers between consumer accounts. Even if your bank doesn't support it, you can still use the service. See popmoney.com.
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Why did Apple instantly become the most volatile stock in the US?
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I looked at data from Sept 2010 to present: Standard deviation is what shows the spread shape of returns over time, and it meanS that about 2/3 of the time, AAPL return was within +/- 1.65 higher/lower than the daily average return which was .21 %. Not sure where to go with this except to suggest that in fact, AAPL is more volatile than the S&P and even another random tech company. With time, I'd probably come up with a list of stock more volatile. I know that when I look at a list of stocks I track on Yahoo, there are always a few that are just as volatile on a given day. Excel makes the above analysis easy to do for a given stock, and it's actually an interesting exercise, at least for me. Disclaimer - the shape of stock returns is not a bell curve, and STdev is just a best fit. Edit - given more time to tinker on excel, it would be interesting to see how the stock's volatility tracked over the years, did it increase or does it feel that way due to the high price? A $20 swing on a $600 stock is the same as a $2 swing on a $60 stock, yet "up $20" sounds huge.
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
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A real life experience. A friend of mine did that with his housemates. They bought a house together as students and it worked for them. The tricky bit is to have a very good contract with your housemates as to how the venture should work. What if? Somebody can't pay, somebody can't enjoy the house (on an extended trip), somebody wants out (marriage, etc.) It worked for my friend...
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Shouldn't a Roth IRA accumulate more than 1 cent of interest per month?
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There are a couple of misconceptions I think are present here: Firstly, when people say "interest", usually that implies a lower-risk investment, like a government bond or a money market fund. Some interest-earning investments can be higher risk (like junk bonds offered by near-bankrupt companies), but for the most part, stocks are higher risk. With higher risk comes higher reward, but obviously also the chance for a bad year. A "bad year" can mean your fund actually goes down in value, because the companies you are invested in do poorly. So calling all value increases "interest" is not the correct way to think about things. Secondly, remember that "Roth IRA fund" doesn't really tell you what's "inside" it. You could set up your fund to include only low-risk interest earning investments, or higher risk foreign stocks. From what you've said, your fund is a "target retirement date"-type fund. This typically means that it is a mix of stocks and bonds, weighted higher to bonds if you are older (on the theory of minimizing risk near retirement), and higher to stocks if you are younger (on the theory of accepting risk for higher average returns when you have time to overcome losses). What this means is that assuming you're young and the fund you have is typical, you probably have ~50%+ of your money invested in stocks. Stocks don't pay interest, they give you value in two ways: they pay you dividends, and the companies that they are a share of increase in value (remember that a stock is literally a small % ownership of the company). So the value increase you see as the increase due to the increase in the mutual fund's share price, is part of the total "interest" amount you were expecting. Finally, if you are reading about "standard growth" of an account using a given amount of contributions, someone somewhere is making an assumption about how much "growth" actually happens. Either you entered a number in the calculator ("How much do you expect growth to be per year?") or it made an assumption by default (probably something like 7% growth per year - I haven't checked the math on your number to see what the growth rate they used was). These types of assumptions can be helpful for general retirement planning, but they are not "rules" that your investments are required by law to follow. If you invest in something with risk, your return may be less than expected.
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How do I estimate my taxes when I have only 1099 income?
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As long as you paid 100% of your last year's tax liability (overall tax liability, the total tax to pay on your 1040) or 90% of the total tax liability this year, or your underpayment is no more than $1000, you won't be penalized as long as you pay the difference by April 15th. That's per the IRS. I don't know where the "10% of my income" came from, I'm not aware of any such rule.
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What are my options to deal with Student Loan debt collectors?
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You have not specified what country you are in. That radically changes everything. In case you are in Canada, there's a great blog that covers bankruptcy and student loans, at http://student-loan-bankruptcy.ca/. Fundamentally, in order to discharge government-backed student loans, you must have ceased to be a student for at least seven years prior to filing. Even then, though, the government can object, in which case you will still have to repay some or all of the loan. More generally, given that the collection agency appears to be operating in bad faith, you'll want to ensure that they send you written documentation of any offer they are extending you. If they refuse to do this, you should assume that they aren't actually offering you anything at all and you will have to pay back the full amount plus interest and penalties. Note that, in many countries, if you settle the debt (that is, pay anything less than the full amount plus interest and penalties), this will be a black mark on your credit report. In this case, if you repaid the full $16,000 and they forgave the extra $4,000, they would most likely still add a note to your credit report indicating that you did not pay the full amount that you owed, and this will negatively impact your credit rating even beyond your late payments.
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Looking for suggestions for relatively safe instruments if another crash were to happen
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Nobody has a "crash proof" portfolio -- you can make it "crash resistant". You protect against a crash by diversifying and not reacting out of fear when the markets are down. Be careful about focusing on the worst possible scenario (US default) vs. the more likely scenarios. Right now, many people think that inflation and interest rates are heading up -- so you should be making sure that your bond portfolio is mostly in short-duration bonds that are less sensitive to rate risk. Another risk is opportunity cost. Many people sold all of their equities in 2008/2009, and are sitting on lots of money in cash accounts. That money is "safe", but those investors lost the opportunity to recoup investments or grow -- to the tune of 25-40%.
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Making your first million… is easy! (??)
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I realize that "a million dollars" is a completely arbitrary figure, but it's one people fixate on. Perhaps folks just meant it's getting easier because inflation has made it a far less lofty sum than when the word "millionaire" was coined. Your point is correct - it' relatively easier as the 1 million dollar nowadays is no where as valuable as compared in the old days after the inflation adjustment. However the way to achieve that is easier said than done: The most possible way is to run your own business (assuming you will make profit). For most of the people running a job to earn a living - the job income is the biggest factor. Being extremely frugal wouldn't help much if you don't maximize your income potential. Earning a million dollar through investment? How much capitals are you able to invest in? 5k? 50k? 500k? I see no way to earn 1 million with 5k from investment, I wouldn't call it easy. This again depends on your income. With better income of course you could dedicate a larger portion to investment, without exposing too much risk and having to affect your way of life. (3) Invest some part of your income over a long period of time and let the stock market do the work I'd say this is more geared towards beating the inflation and earn a few extra bucks instead of getting very rich (this is being very relative). Just a word of cautions, the mindset of investment being the shortcut to wealth is very dangerous and often leads to speculative behavior.
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Is it possible to make money by getting a mortgage?
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yes. you can take out 500,000 form your paid of house. you pay back 500,000 at 3.5. percent. you do get a tax break for not owning your house. it is less then 3.5 you are paying back the back. about one forth of that, BUT you take the 500,000 in invest. Now cd low 1 percent, stock is risky. You can do REIT, with are about 8 to 12 every year. so even at 8 - tax 1.5 is 6.5 - 3.5 bank loan. that 3 percent on your 500,000 thousand, plus tax break, but that only at 8 percent. or 500,000 and buy a apartment building, again about 7 to 10 percent, so that 2 to 3 percent profit, but the building goes up over years.
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Why is auto insurance ridiculously overpriced for those who drive few miles?
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One reason is because car insurance is mandated. Mandated insurance means the government is forcing people to purchase it, which also means that everyone must have the opportunity to purchase it at a reasonable cost, even if the insurer would normally not choose to insure them. In mandated industries, risk pools are formed which means that as a whole, lower risk members partially subsidize higher risk members. In mandated industries that have a large risk variance, the insurance system would break down if everyone was charged their "fair share" because high risk members would be unable to afford a policy. (This is even more prominent with health insurance than car insurance because the difference in risk is vastly greater.) On a positive note, perhaps you may get a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing that you are helping out others "in need".
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Is there a general guideline for what percentage of a portfolio should be in gold?
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10% is way high unless you really dedicate time to managing your investments. Commodities should be a part of the speculative/aggressive portion of your portfolio, and you should be prepared to lose most or all of that portion of your portfolio. Metals aren't unique enough to justify a specific allocation -- they tend to perform well in a bad economic climate, and should be evaluated periodically. The fallacy in the arguments of gold/silver advocates is that metals have some sort of intrinsic value that protects you. I'm 32, and remember when silver was $3/oz, so I don't know how valid that assertion is. (Also recall the 25% price drop when the CBOE changed silver's margin requirements.)
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What to do if my aging father is sustaining a hobby that is losing several thousand dollars every month?
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How about opening a Coffee shop section in the bookshop to generate some cash flow per month to offset some of the expenses ? Off course success of this venture will depend on where the location of shop is, how big it is and whether people are coffee enthusiast in that region. Since the rent/mortgage ( the major expense) is already taken care of all you have to do is invest in one time expenses for : Interior (hip these days - rustic expose brick walls, nostalgic filament light, chalk board menu, etc ) Seating (big communal table, lounge couch, some regular table chairs,some out door seats if weather is good) ...and the ugly licencing and approval. Throw in some social media marketing, SEO, yelp,urbanspoon, tripadvisor, etc If the bookstore is old, I am assuming it might have the old world charm & character which could attract lot of coffee enthusiast. The unique and competitive edge of this coffee shop could be its historic charm , which no other competitor can achieve. Would definitely beat the staryuks. Even if no one shows up , only recurring additional expense will be barrista wages. The interior , seating and coffee m/c costs can be minimized by savvily shopping stuff on community sites like craigslist, gumtree etc. I beleive if you are in US , everything could be set up under 6K. Later on premade food items like bananacake, raw cacao balls, toasted panini sandwich etc. can be added. If one has 3 key ingredients in food industry - Location, Vibe and taste, then there is high probability that they will succeed. At the same time one should be cognizant that 95 % of business fail in first 3 years and therefore they should have an exit plan. Unfortunately if your business does not work, then you exit cost would be just getting rid of the equipment & furniture. Just to put in perspective, some Dunkin Donut shops that I was researching in North East were clearing between 1/2 to 1 mil per year. As it is the current damage per month is 10k, if this business offsets even some of the damage it would be worth while. So the cost of keeping the pride of 91 yo dad can potentially reduce from 10k to 2-3 k. Who knows if it takes off , one day it could be a good sustainable business and might turn into a win-win situation for you and your father. I have made lot of assumption without knowing the facts like- you are located in US, you have risk appetite, bookshop is not in industrial area but some prime retail area like this : ... etc. While I am at it { giving unsolicited advise that is}.. Currently the books in the bookshop are very old books that it published by itself. Nobody is interested in reading these books. Due to his previous excitement of getting editors and publishing books, there are thousands of books that need to be kept in storerooms. They don’t move because people hardly buy any books from this bookshop. To help the old published book sales why not convert the old books to ebooks using providers like 'Blueleaf-book-scanning' and publish the books on amazon kindle,itunes & play store. The books will be available online forever and they might get exposure to tons of book enthusiast around the world. I heard at one of our client's MDS ( mass digitization system ) project , they had in-house robot scanning machine like Treventus Pardon me if none of the above gibberish applies to your situation , but hpefully SE community might have some fun reading this for kicks and giggles . Cheers and good luck. Source: I am US person in Australia, operated restaurant / bar in US , visited 100's of coffee shops, consulting for living, ...and a dreamer { :-) hard not to imagine from the short post}.
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Are COBRA premiums deductible when self-employed?
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The basic idea is that the average person can't deduct health care costs unless they're really onerous. But a business can, and as a self-employed person, you can deduct those costs from the businesses earnings... as long as the business is really generating enough profit to cover the health insurance costs. That's why most people get their health insurance from their employer, actually. The relevant IRS rules say: "You may be able to deduct premiums paid for medical and dental insurance and qualified long-term care insurance for you, your spouse, and your dependents if you are... A self-employed individual with a net profit reported on Schedule C (Form 1040)." For 2010, thanks to the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, you can even deduct the premium from your income before deducting the self-employment tax (Source). I'm sure that when you get your tax returns and instructions for 2010 this will all be spelled out.
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Why liquidity implies tight spread and low slippage
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Consider the case where a stock has low volume. If the stock normally has a few hundred shares trade each minute and you want to buy 10,000 shares then chances are you'll move the market by driving up the price to find enough sellers so that you can get all those shares. Similarly, if you sell way more than the typical volume, this can be an issue.
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Is this investment opportunity problematic?
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It would have to be made as a "gift", and then the return would be a "gift" back to you, because you're not allowed to use a loan for a down payment. I see some problems, but different ones than you do: One more question: is the market really hot right now? It was quite cold for the last few years.
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Sale of jointly owned stock
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The question seems to be from the point of view actual sales and not its impact on one's taxation. In case you just want to sell, why brokers will respond differently each times. Either there may be issues with ownership and/or the company whose shares it is? In case you feel that the issues lies with brok
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Shares; are they really only for the rich/investors?
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I think I have a better answer for this since I have been an investor in the stock markets since a decade and most of my money is either made through investing or trading the financial markets. Yes you can start investing with as low as 50 GBP or even less. If you are talking about stocks there is no restriction on the amount of shares you can purchase the price of which can be as low as a penny. I stared investing in stocks when I was 18. With the money saved from my pocket money which was not much. But I made investments on a regular period no matter how less I could but I would make regular investments on a long term. Remember one thing, never trade stock markets always invest in it on a long term. The stock markets will give you the best return on a long term as shown on the graph below and will also save you money on commission the broker charge on every transaction. The brokers to make money for themselves will ask you to trade stocks on short term but stock market were always made to invest on a long term as Warren Buffet rightly says. And if you want to trade try commodities or forex. Forex brokers will offer you accounts with as low as 25 USD with no commissions. The commission here are all inclusive in spreads. Is this true? Can the average Joe become involved? Yes anyone who wants has an interest in the financial markets can get involved. Knowledge is the key not money. Is it worth investing £50 here and there? Or is that a laughable idea? 50 GBP is a lot. I started with a few Indian Rupees. If people laugh let them laugh. Only morons who don't understand the true concept of financial markets laugh. There are fees/rules involved, is it worth the effort if you just want to see? The problem with today's generation of people is that they fear a lot. Unless you crawl you dont walk. Unless you try something you dont learn. The only difference between a successful person and a not successful person is his ability to try, fail/fall, get back on feet, again try untill he succeeds. I know its not instant money, but I'd like to get a few shares here and there, to follow the news and see how companies do. I hear that BRIC (brasil, russia, india and china) is a good share to invest in Brazil India the good thing is share prices are relatively low even the commissions. Mostly ROI (return on investment) on a long term would almost be the same. Can anyone share their experiences? (maybe best for community wiki?) Always up for sharing. Please ask questions no matter how stupid they are. I love people who ask for when I started I asked and people were generous enough to answer and so would I be.
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Why don't banks give access to all your transaction activity?
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All the other answers here are correct, but I'll add one more perspective. I am a business architect at one of the world's largest retail banks. Every day I experience the frustration of trying to get large-scale corporate IT to do anything, so I feel that your question is just one facet of the wider question: "why are banks so old and busted?" While it's true that the cost of online, redundant, performant, secure data storage is significantly higher than you anticipate in the question, it should still be well within the capacity of a large enterprise. The true cost is the cost of change. Nothing at a bank is a green field development. Everything is a bolt-on to existing systems. Any change brings the risk that existing functionality will be affected, therefore vast schemes of regression testing (largely manually executed) spring up around even the most trivial developments. Costs scale exponentially with the number of platforms affected (often utterly distinct, decades-old, incompatible platforms that have arisen out of historical mergers and acquisitions). Only statutory, revenue-generating and critical maintenance change is approved. Any form of cost-cutting that increases risk is quickly extinguished. This is because when things go wrong, IT get blamed by their business colleagues. This is because the business colleagues in turn get blamed by the regulators, the media, the customers, and the public at large. Who doesn't cuss their bank when the ATM is unavailable? The bank's IT organization develops a kind of management sclerosis, risk averse in the extreme. Banks can't ship a beta version and patch it later. This ultra-low-innovation approach is a direct result of market and regulatory forces. If you were happy with a bank account that played fast and loose with your money the way Facebook plays with your data, then banking would be much cheaper, much more innovative, and much riskier. To get back to your specific question, some banks actually do offer a much longer back catalog of transactions for download (usually only a few key fields of each transaction though), and the ones that don't most likely don't see it as a revenue generating selling point, and it therefore falls above their innovation appetite.
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Why are U.S. credit unions not open to everyone?
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It's required by law. 12 USC 1759 (b) requires that membership in a credit union be limited to one or more groups with a "common bond", or to people within a particular geographic area. For lots more gory details on how this is interpreted and enforced, you can read the manual given to credit unions by the National Credit Union Administration, which is their regulatory agency.
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If you want to trade an equity that reflects changes in VIX, what is a good proxy for it?
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There is no good proxy for VIX, because it is a completely made-up value. Most listed options trade on an underlying security. I can therefore choose to buy either the stock, or a future or option on that stock. In this way, the future and option are derivatives in that they derive their value (in part) based on something else, in this case the stock price as of now. VIX is a different entity altogether. It is based on the volatility of the market, using "market expectation of near term volatility conveyed by stock index option prices". But the FAQ goes on to state that they are adding factors into the formula. So right away there is no one equity/stock that you can hold that will necessarily match the VIX in any significant way, because it is not directly based on stocks, but indirectly through other options and computations. In effect, therefore, the VIX in indeed only available through its options, and is not observable (tradable) in and of itself.
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How much of a down payment for a car should I save before purchasing it?
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I've run into two lines of thinking on cars when the 0% option is offered. One is that you should buy the car with cash - always. Car debt is not usually considered "good debt," as there is no doubt but that your car will depreciate. Unless something very odd happens or you keep the car to antique status (and it's a good one), you won't make money off of it. On the other hand, with 0% interest - if you qualify, and remember that dealer promotions aren't for everyone, just those who qualify - you can invest that money in a savings account, bonds, a mutual fund, or the stock market and theoretically make a lot more over the 5 years while paying down the car. In that case, you really only need to make sure you save enough to make the payment low enough for your comfort zone. Personally I prefer to not be making a car payment. Your personal comfort level may vary. Also, in terms of getting your money's worth a gently used car in good condition is miles better than a new car. Someone else took the hit on the "drive it off the lot" decline in price for you.
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Is it OK to use a credit card on zero-interest to pay some other credit cards with higher-interest?
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Many people who do transfer a balance from one credit card to another have no clue as to what is going on and how credit cards work. If you transfer a balance from one credit card to another, you are charged a fee of anywhere from 3% upwards (subject to a minimum of $10 or so) up front. If Credit Card A has balance $1000 and you transfer it to Credit Card B which is offering no interest for a year on the transferred balance, you owe Credit Card B $1050 (say). In most cases, that $50 has to be paid off as part of the following month's bill. If you are carrying a revolving balance on Credit Card B, that $50 will typically be charged interest from the day of the transfer. Your monthly bill will not (necessarily) include that $1000 you owe for one year or six months or whatever the transfer agreement you accepted says. If you tend to pay anything less (even a penny) than full payment of each month's bill on Credit Card B, your partial payment will be applied to that $1000 first, and anything left over will be applied to the monthly balance. In short, if you don't pay in full each month, that $1000 will not be "yours" for a year; you may end up paying $50 interest for borrowing $1000 for just one or two months, and the rest of your balance is the gift that keeps on giving as the credit card company likes to say. UPDATE: This has changed slightly in the United States. Any amount paid over the minimum amount due is charged to the higher-interest balances. So in this case, if you had $1000 at a 0% promotional rate and a regular balance of $500, and the minimum payment was $100, and you paid $150, $100 would pay down the promotional balance, and the extra $50 would pay down the regular balance. About the only way to make the deal work in your favor is to Transfer money only if you have paid the full amount due on the last two statements before the date of the transfer and are not carrying a revolving balance. Check your monthly statements to make sure they show Finance Charge of 0.00. Many people have never seen such a sight and are unaware that this can be observed in nature. Make sure that you pay each month's bill in full (not the minimum monthly payment due) each month for a whole year after that. Make sure that the bill containing that $1000 (coming out a year after the transfer date) is also paid in full. Very many credit-card users do not have the financial discipline to go through with this program. That is why credit card companies love to push transfer balances on consumers: the whole thing is a cash cow for them where they in effect get to charge usurious rates of interest without running afoul of the law. $50 interest for a one-year loan of $1000 is pretty high at current rates; $50 interest for a two or three month loan where the customer does not even notice the screwing he is getting is called laughing all the way to the bank. See also the answers to this question
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Why do Americans have to file taxes, even if their only source of income is from a regular job?
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For two reasons: 1- People are entitled to deductions and credits that your employer cannot possibly know. Only you as an individual know about your personal situation and can therefore claim these deductions and credits by filing income tax returns. 2- Me telling you that you made $100,000 last year is not the same as telling you that you made $125,000 last year, but someone took $25,000 out of your pocket. Tax season is the one time of the year when citizens know exactly what chunk of their hard earned money was taken by the government, creating more collective awareness about taxation and giving politicians a harder time when they propose raising taxes.
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Selling on eBay without PayPal?
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One option might be to set up a separate bank account and a separate credit card account, which you would use only for your ebay transactions. I have a friend who does a lot of selling on ebay, and this is exactly what she did. It's reasonable to want to protect your personal finances from any complications that might arise with PayPal and/or ebay. But since you definitely have to provide a bank account and c.c. number (there's no way around this), the best solution might be to set up separate "ebay-only" accounts. And be sure not to link them to any of your personal accounts, for added protection. If you're planning to do a lot of selling, this is probably a good idea anyway just for record-keeping purposes. If you do a lot of selling on ebay, you might consider setting up a "merchant account". There are some limitations on international transactions (currently you can't sell to residents of UK, Australia, or France), and payment processing is a few days slower. But there seem to be fewer fees/risks/etc associated with a merchant account. I don't know much more about it, but here's an article from an ebay seller, including pros and cons of PayPal vs. merchant accounts. http://www.ebay.com/gds/Selling-on-eBay-without-PayPal/10000000021351301/g.html
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Scam or Real: A woman from Facebook apparently needs my bank account to send money
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The other answers describe why this is highly likely to be a scam. This answer describes why you don't want to get involved, even in the unlikely case that it isn't a scam. I'm describing this using US law (which I'm not particularly familiar with, so if I go astray I'd suggest others fix any flaws in this answer), but most other countries have similar laws as these laws are all implementations of a small number of international treaties have very large memberships. The service you describe (accepting money transfers from one party and transferring them to another) is one which, if you engage in it for profit, would classify you as a "financial institution" under 31 USC 5312, specifically paragraph (a)(2)(R): any other person who engages as a business in the transmission of funds, including any person who engages as a business in an informal money transfer system Because you would be acting as a financial institution: Failure to follow such requirements can lead to a fine of up to $250,000 or a 5 year prison sentence (31 USC 5322). See also: Customer Identification Program and Know Your Customer.
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Online transaction - Money taken out late
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When processing credit/debit cards there is a choice made by the company on how they want to go about doing it. The options are Authorization/Capture and Sale. For online transactions that require the delivery of goods, companies are supposed to start by initially Authorizing the transaction. This signals your bank to mark the funds but it does not actually transfer them. Once the company is actually shipping the goods, they will send a Capture command that tells the bank to go ahead and transfer the funds. There can be a time delay between the two actions. 3 days is fairly common, but longer can certainly be seen. It normally takes a week for a gas station local to me to clear their transactions. The second one, a Sale is normally used for online transactions in which a service is immediately delivered or a Point of Sale transaction (buying something in person at a store). This action wraps up both an Authorization and Capture into a single step. Now, not all systems have the same requirements. It is actually fairly common for people who play online games to "accidentally" authorize funds to be transferred from their bank. Processing those refunds can be fairly expensive. However, if the company simply performs an Authorization and never issues a capture then it's as if the transaction never occurred and the costs involved to the company are much smaller (close to zero) I'd suspect they have a high degree of parents claiming their kids were never authorized to perform transactions or that fraud was involved. If this is the case then it would be in the company's interest to authorize the transaction, apply the credits to your account then wait a few days before actually capturing the funds from the bank. Depending upon the amount of time for the wait your bank might have silently rolled back the authorization. When it came time for the company to capture, then they'd just reissue it as a sale. I hope that makes sense. The point is, this is actually fairly common. Not just for games but for a whole host of areas in which fraud might exist (like getting gas).
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Opening a bank account with cash: How should bills be presented?
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In the US, banks, businesses and the government stack cash. That's how you should present it to them.
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How do I report this cash bonus/tip on income tax return?
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How do I report this on our income tax return? You should include it on Line 7 of your Form 1040. Additionally, you should report the extra payment to your employer if it was greater that $20. You can use From 4070 to do this if your employer does not provide you with a form. And finally, you are right, you should Form 4137 to report any tips that you include on your Form 1040 in order to pay the required social security and medicare taxes. Credit is due to glibdud and Nathan L for constructive feedback! Thanks!
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What is the difference between equity and assets?
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Accounts track value: at any given time, a given account will have a given value. The type of account indicates what the value represents. Roughly: On a balance sheet (a listing of accounts and their values at a given point in time), there is typically only one equity account, representing net worth, I don't know much about GNUCash, though. Income and expenses accounts do not go on the balance sheet, but to find out more, either someone else or the GNUCash manual will have to describe how they work in detail. Equity is more similar to a liability than to assets. The equation Assets = Equity + Liabilities should always hold; you can think of assets as being "what my stuff is worth" and equity and liabilities together as being "who owns it." The part other people own is liability, and the part you own is equity. See balance sheet, accounting equation, and double-entry bookkeeping for more information. (A corporate balance sheet might actually have more than one equity entry. The purpose of the breakdown is to show how much of their net worth came from investors and how much was earned. That's only relevant if you're trying to assess how a company has performed to date; it's not important for a family's finances.)
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Is a fixed-price natural gas or electricity contract likely to save money?
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In my area, the fixed prices are based on an average. My gas company will look at my previous months (six months if I remember correctly) payments and give me an average based on that amount. Then I am contracted for a year based on that average. If I lower my costs, I'm under contract and will not see the savings but if I go over for some reason, I will save money there. It really depends on how your utility companies work so I would check with them, look at your previous billing cycles and determine if the plan will possibly save you money. Of course some things can't be planned for such as the economic downturn like someone else mentioned.
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If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
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I would not do a bill of sale for less, but a legal and safe way to reduce the taxes is to write separate bills for the boat, motor and trailer. The taxes are paid at different rates and will represent to full sale price.
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Why won't my retirement account let me write a “covered put”?
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A "covered put" of the form of being short, and buying at the strike price if the "put ... is put" (excercise), is off the table simply because you can't do shorts in the retirement account. Even if you feel you "win" the argument that you're hedged by being short, any broker can say, "we simply forbid shorts" and that's that. A "covered put" of the form of posting the cash, and spending it to buy at the strike price if the "put ... is put" (excercise), might be forbidden by brokerages because, frankly, how do you account for the "dedicated" cash? Is it locked down like margin is, or escrow, or what? I don't know offhand how I would address that in my very own firm. Thus, any broker could say, "we forbid it" and that's that. The other answers are very interesting in conjunction with this. JoeTaxpayer says, very paraphrased, 'just cuz it's legal doesn't mean we have to offer it.' Jaydles says (again, completely paraphrasing), 'complex stuff for a safe little retirement savings account;' 'difficult to administer' (as I said, how do you account for it); and 'tradition' So maybe look at Scott, per Thorn's answer, LOL. It appears that you can shop around on this issue.
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What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000?
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Put them in Cds. Better than a savings account, you won't lose capital unlike the stock market.
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Suitable Vanguard funds for a short-term goal (1-2 years)
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If you are younger, and you not under undue pressure to buy a home at any particular time, investing in the market is a reasonable way to prepare. Your risk tolerance should be high. Understand that this means you may buy in 3-4 years instead of 1-2 if the market takes a down turn. It took ~3-4 years for the S&P 500 to recover from the 2008 crash. I doubt anything that severe is in the making, but there is always an element of risk involved in investing. If you and your family will be busting at the seams of your current rental in a year, then maybe the bond fund advice others have provided is a better option. If you are willing to be flexible, a more aggressive strategy might be appropriate. Likely, you want something along the lines of the Vanguard S&P 500 mutual fund - something that is diversified (a large number of stocks), in relatively safe companies (in this case the 500 companies that Standard and Poor's think are most likely to repay corporate bonds), and 'indexed' vice 'actively managed' (indexed funds have lower fees because they are using 'rules' to pick the stocks rather than paying a person to evaluate them.) It's going to depend on you and your situation - and regardless of what you choose consistency will be key: put your investment on automatic so it happens every month without your input.
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Do algorithmic trading platforms typically have live-data access to stock data?
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Algorithmic trading doesn't necessarily require live feeds. It is a very generic term describing trading based on the decisions made by a machine and not a person. One very prominent type of algo-trading is "high frequency trading". For HFT to be effective, not only do you need live feeds (which are provided by the exchanges electronically), you need them before others get them. That's why HFT traders put their machines as close as possible (physically) to the exchange data centers, sometimes even renting racks at the same datacenters from the exchanges themselves.
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Can I get a dividend “free lunch” by buying a stock just before the ex-dividend date and selling it immediately after? [duplicate]
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There are indeed various strategies to make money from this. As Ben correctly said, the stock price drops correspondingly on the dividend date, so the straightforward way doesn't work. What does work are schemes that involve dividend taxation based on nationality, and schemes based on American Options where people can use market rules to their advantage if some options are not exercised.
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Freelancing Tax implication
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If you have income in the US, you will owe US income tax on it, unless there is a treaty with your country that says otherwise.
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Can we compare peer-to-peer loans to savings accounts?
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That argument is an argument for investing generally, not peer-to-peer lending per se, and the argument as phrased ("thus you should invest your money at a Peer-to-peer loan platform") is a false dichotomy. That said, as soon as one is investing as opposed to just getting a small but guaranteed return, then risk comes into play. In that sense, any savings account is fundamentally different from any investment, and, in that reading, the two shouldn't be compared as different approaches to "investing". Peer-to-peer lending as an investment could be aptly compared with stock market investing, for one.
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Should a high-school student invest their (relative meager) savings?
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At your age (heck, at MY age :-)) I would not think about doing any of those types of investments (not savings) on your own, unless you are really interested in the investment process for its own sake, and are willing to devote a lot of time to investigating companies in order to try to pick good investments. Instead, find a good mutual fund from say Vanguard or TRP, put your money in there, and relax. Depending on your short-term goals (e.g. will you expect to need the money for college?) you could pick either an index fund, or a low-risk, mostly bond fund.
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How to calculate car insurance quote
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Question 1: Yes Question 2: There is no simple formula. Car insurance is mostly Statistics, because you have so many millions of cases that the variance is really low. This also means that, because the cost can be estimated so precisely, it is difficult to make an offer better than the competitors. For that reason every insurance company makes there own, arbitrary, segmentation of the data which leads them identify low risk groups they can offer a bonus to. Common ones are type of car or and driving experience, but it could be anything that is not forbidden by anti-discrimination-laws. Also additional perks like towing insurance etc. may give them an opportunity do differentiate themselves or to make easy profit. In fact it is a common tactic to offer prices that make close to no profit to fill up your book, then raise tariffs in then following years an make you profit with those who are to lazy to switch.
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Could the loan officer deny me even if I have the money as a first time home buyer?
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There are loan options for those in your situation. It is very common. I am a licensed loan officer nmls 1301324 and have done many loans just like this. Your schooling is counted as your work history Contrary to popular belief. We want to write loans and guidelines are easing. Banks are a different story and their loan officers aren't licensed. If you talk to a bank you aren't getting an educated loan officer. They also have what are called overlays that make guidelines stricter.
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Choosing which ESPP stocks to sell?
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the difference would be taxes... Lets say you have two lots, one with a 10 dollar gain, and one with a 20 dollar gain. And lets say you decide to sell one lot this year, and the other lot in 10 years. AND, lets say that it turns out the stock price is exactly the same in ten years as it is when you sell the first lot. In all likelyhood, you'll have more income, and therefore you are likely to be in a different marginal tax rate. If you believe that you're more likely to pay more taxes in 10 years, then sell the lot with the higher gain now. If you believe you're more likely to pay more taxes now, then sell the lot with the lower gain now.
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For a car, would you pay cash, finance for 0.9% or lease for 0.9%?
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While this question is old and I generally agree with the answers given I think there's another angle that needs a little illuminating: insurance. If you go with an 84 month loan your car will likely be worth less than the amount owed for substantially all of the entire 84 month loan period; this will be exacerbated if you put zero down and include the taxes and fees in the amount borrowed. Your lender will require you to carry full comprehensive/collision/liability coverage likely with a low maximum deductible. While the car is underwater it will probably also be a good idea to carry gap insurance because the last thing you want to do is write a check to your lender to shore up the loan to value deficit if the thing is totaled. These long term car loans (I've seen as high as 96 months) are a bear when it comes to depreciation and related insurance costs. There is more to this decision than the interest calculation. Obviously, if you had the cash at the front of this decision presumably you'll have the cash later to pay off the loan at your convenience. But while the loan is outstanding there are costs beyond interest to consider.
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Best way to invest money as a 22 year old?
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Most important: Any gains you make from risking this sum of money over the next few years will not be life changing, but if you can't afford to lose it, then losses can be. Rhetorical question: How can you trust what I say you should do with your money? Answer: You can't. I'm happy to hear you're reading about the stock market, so please allow me to encourage you to keep learning. And broaden your target to investing, or even further, to financial planning. You may decide to pay down debt first. You may decide to hold cash since you need it within a couple years. Least important: I suggest a Roth IRA at any online discount brokerage whose fees to open an account plus 1 transaction fee are the lowest to get you into a broad-market index ETF or mutual fund.
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Will depositing $10k+ checks each month raise red flags with the IRS?
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I do not think banks have an obligation to report any deposits to the IRS, however, they probably have an obligation to report deposits exceeding certain threshold amounts to FinCEN. At least that's how it works in Canada, and we're known to model our Big Brother-style activities after our neighbour to the South.
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Should the poor consider investing as a means to becoming rich?
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Given that a poor person probably has much less to invest, how can odds be in their favor? To add to Lan's great answer, if one is "poor" because they don't have enough income to build wealth (invest), then there are only two ways to change the situation - earn more or spend less. Neither are easy but both are usually possible. One can take on side jobs, look for a better-paying career, etc. Cutting spending can also be hard but is generally easier than adding income. In general, wealth building is more about what you do with your income than about how much you make. Obviously the more you make, the easier it is, but just about anyone can build wealth if they spend less than they make. Once your NET income is high enough that you have investible income, THEN you can start building wealth. Unfortunately many people have piles of debts to clean up before they are able to get to that point. What could a small guy with $100 do to make himself not poor anymore, right? Just having $100 is not going to make you "rich". There is a practical limit to how much return you can make short of high-risk activities like gambling, lottery tickets, etc. (I have actually seen this as a justification for playing the lottery, which I disagree with but is an interesting point). If you just invest $100 at 25% per year (for illustration - traditional investments typically only make 10-12% on average), in 10 years you'll have about $931. If instead you invest $100 per month at 12% annualized, in 10 years you'll have over $23,000. Not that $23,000 makes you rich - the point is that regularly saving money is much more powerful than having money to start with.
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Dad paying for my new home in cash. How can I buy the house from him?
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There are quite some options, but without additional information, I can only provide examples. Last year I had the option to buy a house, but I decided against it because in my area it is getting harder and harder every year to sell it at a reasonable price. But if I had bought a house, my mother would have lent me the money, with me paying it back to her over the years on 3% interest. So it would have been some kind of a private loan. But my mom would never have taken ownership of the house, since it was not her intention to own it in any way. (Does your dad intend to own the house and rent it to you? If yes, and if you are comfortable with renting instead of buying, then this is an option.) The second option, the one we discarded because of the additional cost, is that I could have taken a loan, paying 4.5% interest to the bank, which would then pay under 1% to my mom, and keep the rest. Banks always want to make profit, and this profit has to come from somewhere - from the difference between the interest rates. If your dad has 230k on the bank, and you owe 230k to the bank, you are better off if you keep the bank out - at least as long as your dad is comfortable with lending you money, and you are comfortable with owing him money. (my gf would never borough money from her mother, because her mother would always play the "you are in my debt" card - on each and every visit, and whenever she needed help in any way...) So the key is: What does your dad feel comfy with - and what do you feel comfy with. If possible, keep the banks out, but set up a written contract between you and your dad.
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How does a delta signify the probability of expiring in the money
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Just for clarification, delta and probability of expiring in the money are not the same thing. What the guy meant was that delta is usually a close enough approximation to the probability. One way to think about it is to look at the probabilities and deltas of In the Money, Out of the Money, and At the Money options. In these cases, the delta and probabilities are about the same. In fact if you look at an options chain with delta and probabilities, you can see that they are all about the same. In other words, there is a linear relationship between delta and probability. Here are a couple links to other answers around the web: Hope this answer helps!
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Wash sales + restricted stock in USA: grant date or vesting date?
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For restricted stock, I think the vesting date meets the requirements of the second wash sale trigger from IRS Pub 550: Wash Sales: Acquire substantially identical stock or securities in a fully taxable trade I base this on these two quotes from IRS Pub 525: Restricted Property: any income from the property, or the right to use the property, is included in your income as additional compensation in the year you receive the income or have the right to use the property. - Until the property becomes substantially vested, it is owned by the person who makes the transfer to you, usually your employer. So on the vest date: The transfer is taxable Ownership is transferred to you That seems close enough to "a fully taxable trade" for me. Maybe this changes if you pay the tax on the stock on the grant date. See Pub 525: Restricted Property: Choosing to include in income for year of transfer. Obviously, if this is important you should consult your tax advisor. Technicalities aside, I don't think it passes the sniff test. You're getting salable shares when the restricted stock vests. If you're selling other shares at a loss within 30 days of the vesting date, that smells like a wash sale to me.
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Effect on Bond asset allocation if Equity markets crash?
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I agree that the cause of the crash can make a huge difference in the effect on the bond market. Here's a few other possibilities: All that to say that there's no definitive answer as to how the bond market will respond to an equity crash. Bonds are much more highly correlated to equities lately, but that could be due to much lower interest rates pushing more of the risk of bonds to the credit worthiness of the issuer, increasing correlation.
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Why do some companies (like this company) have such a huge per share price?
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Simple answer is because the stocks don't split. Most stocks would have a similar high price per share if they didn't split occasionally. Why don't they split? A better way to ask this is probably, why DO most stocks split? The standard answer is that it gives the appearance that stocks are "cheap" again and encourages investors to buy them. Some people, Warren Buffett (of Berkshire Hathaway) don't want any part of these shenanigans and refuse to split their stocks. Buffett also has commented that he thinks splitting a stock also adds unnecessary volatility.
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As an investor or speculator, how might one respond to QE3 taper?
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Any answer for what to do in a taper will assume ceteris paribus because how markets initially react when they suspect a taper may immediately change depending on what data are released after the taper. For instance, I've seen Soros and a few other hedge fund managers hold shorts when expecting a taper because the theory is that the market may fall. However, suppose the market falls 5%, but then positive employment numbers are released. What then? The same holds true for betting against Emerging Markets (EM), something I've seen Jesse Colombo and others suggest; the claim that Emerging Markets are in a bubble thanks to the U.S. Federal Reserve (the more money they release, the more the money goes overseas ...). Again, this is possibly true, but if good data are released after the taper for these emerging markets, they could see growth and those with the shorts could get killed. TL;DR - when we ask about what happens after the taper, we have to remember we're assuming some things about everything else. I do think that the "safest play" post taper is what Bill Gross mentioned about bonds (basically a bubble), as we should see interest rates rise and the Chinese seem to be reluctant to buy as much of U.S. bonds as they have in the past (though some, like Mish, assert the U.S. would welcome this). The other play I like is the VIX (if you think the market will fall) or against (if you think the market will rise). SVXY has been one of the best plays since 2011 (compare it to the SPY for the same time period).
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Is it possible to make money by getting a mortgage?
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the mortgage interest deduction alone couldn't make this work, but if you realize less income by living off the mortgage funds, then it could definitely reduce your taxes by much more than the cost of the mortgage interest. particularly, if you are waiting for some future cut-off date (e.g. turning 59.5 and getting access to roth funds, turning 70 and getting social security, simply doing a roth conversion with strategic recharacterization at age 40 and waiting 5 years to get the money out penalty-free, etc.). and that future date could be quite far off if you only use a small fraction of the total mortgage each year. plus, it is fairly reasonable to assume that equity market returns will outpace mortgage rates, especially if you are "rich" and don't need to worry about living on the street even if the market hits unprecedented lows. while i find most financial advisers to be incompetent (most people really...), i wouldn't write this guy off, just because he left out the specific details that made the strategy work for one particular client.
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How will I pay for college?
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There are some useful comments about the tradeoffs of the decisions in front of you. Intertwined with the financial choices, hopefully you can see a map opening up. Make a little chart if it helps. Benefit and Cost. If you're looking for financial options, you will have to also add more columns to that chart: Option and Cost. An example is the comment on making connections with rich kids. Trust fund babies are everywhere in this country. Did you know any rich kids while growing up? How were those rich kids you knew of back then... in your school... in your town? How did they treat you? Were you ever invited to their parties or gatherings? Now there's an opportunity for the privilege to pay a lot of money to sit in a classroom next to them? Even in the early days of American history with merit based millionaires... tycoons who made it rich by the seat of their pants. At fancy dinner parties and soirees, a new term emerged to put each other again out of reach: old money (the deserving) and new money (uncultured climbers). That's my bias. You'll have some of your own. What is important to YOU has to come through because these days, the price tag of any higher education implies a considerable piece of your life's timeline will be committed to... something. Make sure you get what you feel is worth that commitment. Take stock of what has been said here by the others, but put a value on those choices and seriously consider what you're willing to pay for... and what you're not. There is no formula for your success as there's been thousands of exceptions... ESID (Every Situation is Different).
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What does inflation mean to me?
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Everyone buys different kinds of goods. For example I don't smoke tobacco so I'm not affected by increased tobacco prices. I also don't have a car so I'm not affected by the reduced oil prices either. But my landlord increased the monthly fee of the apartment so my cost of living per month suddenly increased more than 10% relative to the same month a year before. This is well known, also by the statistical offices. As you say, the niveau of the rent is not only time- but also location specific, so there are separate rent indices (German: Mietspiegel). But also for the general consumer price indices at least in my country (Germany) statistics are kept for different categories of things as well. So, the German Federal Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt) not only publishes "the" consumer price index for the standard consumer basket, but also consumer price indices for oil, gas, rents, food, public transport, ... Nowadays, they even have a web site where you can put in your personal weighting for these topics and look at "your" inflation: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Service/InteraktiveAnwendungen/InflationsrechnerSVG.svg Maybe something similar is available for your country?
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Do real nappies (reusable / cloth diapers) really save money?
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I just remembered a blog post at CashMoneyLife - Cloth Diapers vs. Disposable Diapers. I had come across it a little while after posting my answer to a question at moms4mom.com - What can I expect to spend monthly on disposable diapers? And what do/did you spend? and I had linked to it from there, too, since it contained some information about disposable diapers. However, since you're asking about real nappies, i.e. cloth diapers, it is also relevant to your question, since it was discussing both kinds of diapers. Here are some choice excerpts from the CashMoneyLife post: ... The beauty of cloth diapers is that while the upfront cost is much higher, the ongoing cost is much lower. Once you purchase them you are only paying for laundry detergent and the energy to wash/dry them. (Note: I've also known people who have passed along cloth diapers to other family members or bought/sold them on Craigslist, both of which could be a cheaper option if you are willing to do either). ... Which is better? I think they are both great and I encourage you to try cloth if you have young children. The cost and environmental benefits will make it worth your while. Then use disposable diapers for what they were intended for: a convenience. There are also some excellent comments following the post by readers who have also used cloth.
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Website for managing personal cash inflow and outflow, applicable to India?
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I like Pocketsmith for simple cashflow forecasting. I use Moneycenter for more complex tracking.
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My bank often blocks my card during purchases - what is the most reliable bank card? (UK)
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This question is likely to be closed as a product recommendation request. But if you are willing to change the question a bit, perhaps to "How do I avoid having my debit card declined when I know I have good funds" it becomes a reasonable general question. And my answer follows. I can tell you the same thing happens to those of us with credit cards. It can happen when your buying pattern changes. Suddenly buying a lot of merchandise, especially away from home. Nothing like having your card declined while with relatives you visit or while on vacation. I'd talk to the bank and ask for advice how to avoid this. I've called my card issuer to tell them I'll in X city for these dates, to expect charges from there. That seems to work well.
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Does this sound like a great idea regarding being a landlord and starting a real estate empire?
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The idea you present is not uncommon, many have tried it before. It would be a great step to find landlords in your area and talk to them about lessons learned. It might cost you a lunch or cup of coffee but it could be the best investment you make. rent it out for a small profit (hopefully make around 3 - 5k a year in profit) Given the median price of a home is ~220K, and you are investing 44K, you are looking to make between a 6 and 11% profit. I would not classify this as small in the current interest rate environment. One aspect you are overlooking is risk. What happens if a furnace breaks, or someone does not pay their rent? While some may advocate borrowing money to buy rental real estate all reasonable advisers advocate having sufficient reserves to cover emergencies. Keep in mind that 33% of homes in the US do not have a mortgage and some investment experts advocate only buying rentals with cash. Currently owning rental property is a really good deal for the owners for a variety of reasons. Markets are cyclical and I bet things will not be as attractive in 10 years or so. Keep in mind you are borrowing ~220K or whatever you intend to pay. You are on the hook for that. A bank may not lend you the money, and even if they do a couple of false steps could leave you in a deep hole. That should at least give you pause. All that being said, I really like your gumption. I like your desire and perhaps you should set a goal of owning your first rental property for 5 years from now. In the mean time study and become educated in the business. Perhaps get your real estate license. Perhaps go to work for a property management company to learn the ins and outs of their business. I would do this even if I had a better paying full time job.
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