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Is it adventageous to expedite my wedding before the new year for tax savings? | Yes on taxes. It depends on the other point. As you already see from Ben's comment, if you're both very Western in your culture, you may want to consider Ben's advice because while you will save money, it may not be considered a healthy way to start a relationship. Western culture tends to see marriage as more of a "do it for love" whereas other cultures may view marriage more pragmatically and take economics and finance as a major consideration. For instance, a friend of mine married his spouse and it was 100% pragmatic - considering taxes and laws, driving most of his family insane because "it doesn't sound very loving" (these were the exact words). Unfortunately, this created tension later on because family on both sides kept telling both of them that the other didn't love the partner and they used how their marriage started as proof. As surprising as it is to me (non-Western), many Americans are horrified at people marrying at the JOP or other pragmatic ways, even if it saves them thousands. Answering questions about relationships is very difficult because often the issue is less about money and more about culture. If you're both from pragmatic cultures where economics and finance weigh strongly and you don't see possible issues with family (and really be honest on this point), then consider the financial advantages. |
Index fund that tracks gold and other commodities | I don't know answers that would be specific to Canada but one of the main ETF funds that tracks gold prices is GLD (SPDR Gold Trust) another is IAU (iShares Gold Trust). Also, there are several ETF's that combine different precious metals together and can be traded. You can find a fairly decent list here on the Stock Encylopedia site. |
Can I sell a stock immediately? | In order to see whether you can buy or sell some given quantity of a stock at the current bid price, you need a counterparty (a buyer) who is willing to buy the number of stocks you are wishing to offload. To see whether such a counterparty exists, you can look at the stock's order book, or level two feed. The order book shows all the people who have placed buy or sell orders, the price they are willing to pay, and the quantity they demand at that price. Here is the order book from earlier this morning for the British pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline PLC. Let's start by looking at the left-hand blue part of the book, beneath the yellow strip. This is called the Buy side. The book is sorted with the highest price at the top, because this is the best price that a seller can presently obtain. If several buyers bid at the same price, then the oldest entry on the book takes precedence. You can see we have five buyers each willing to pay 1543.0 p (that's 1543 British pence, or £15.43) per share. Therefore the current bid price for this instrument is 1543.0. The first buyer wants 175 shares, the next, 300, and so on. The total volume that is demanded at 1543.0p is 2435 shares. This information is summarized on the yellow strip: 5 buyers, total volume of 2435, at 1543.0. These are all buyers who want to buy right now and the exchange will make the trade happen immediately if you put in a sell order for 1543.0 p or less. If you want to sell 2435 shares or fewer, you are good to go. The important thing to note is that once you sell these bidders a total of 2435 shares, then their orders are fulfilled and they will be removed from the order book. At this point, the next bidder is promoted up the book; but his price is 1542.5, 0.5 p lower than before. Absent any further changes to the order book, the bid price will decrease to 1542.5 p. This makes sense because you are selling a lot of shares so you'd expect the market price to be depressed. This information will be disseminated to the level one feed and the level one graph of the stock price will be updated. Thus if you have more than 2435 shares to sell, you cannot expect to execute your order at the bid price in one go. Of course, the more shares you are trying to get rid of, the further down the buy side you will have to go. In reality for a highly liquid stock as this, the order book receives many amendments per second and it is unlikely that your trade would make much difference. On the right hand side of the display you can see the recent trades: these are the times the trades were done (or notified to the exchange), the price of the trade, the volume and the trade type (AT means automatic trade). GlaxoSmithKline is a highly liquid stock with many willing buyers and sellers. But some stocks are less liquid. In order to enable traders to find a counterparty at short notice, exchanges often require less liquid stocks to have market makers. A market maker places buy and sell orders simultaneously, with a spread between the two prices so that they can profit from each transaction. For instance Diurnal Group PLC has had no trades today and no quotes. It has a more complicated order book, enabling both ordinary buyers and sellers to list if they wish, but market makers are separated out at the top. Here you can see that three market makers are providing liquidity on this stock, Peel Hunt (PEEL), Numis (NUMS) and Winterflood (WINS). They have a very unpalatable spread of over 5% between their bid and offer prices. Further in each case the sum total that they are willing to trade is 3000 shares. If you have more than three thousand Dirunal Group shares to sell, you would have to wait for the market makers to come back with a new quote after you'd sold the first 3000. |
Should I include retirement funds in calculating my asset allocation? | Personally, I do asset allocation separately for personal investing and for retirement investing, as I the two have vastly different purposes and I have vastly different goals for each. YMMV depending on how you view your non-retirement investments, and how close you are to retirement. |
Are binary options really part of trading? | 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. So, if you just wander in and say "oh, hey, look, a bunch of options, i'm going to play games and have excitement" then that is, in fact, some sort of gambling. Indeed, most trading activities will be like that to you. On the other hand, you might be engaged in other business where those things matter. You might be doing a lot of trading elsewhere in the market, for instance, and suddenly everyone freaks out and the stock market goes crazy and you lose a ton of money. To protect yourself from losing a ton of money, you might buy a binary option based on VIX (the volatility index) going over a certain level. If you're not in a business where you're buying it to protect yourself, then you should probably only buy the options if you have reason to think it'll be profitable and worth the risk. If you don't understand the risks, skip it. |
If the put is more expensive than the call, what does it mean | It is a fool's errand to attribute abnormal option volume or volatility to any meaningful move in the stock. One side of the chain is frequently more expensive than the other. The relationship between historical volatility and implied volatility is dubious at best, and also a big area of study. |
Is it a bad idea to buy a motorcycle with a lien on it? | A lien is a mechanism to impede legal title transfer of a vehicle, real property, or sometimes, expensive business equipment. That's why title companies exist - to make sure there are no liens against something before a buyer hands money to a seller. The lien can be attached to a loan, unpaid labor related to the item (a mechanic's lien) or unpaid taxes, and there are other scenarios where this could occur. The gist of all this is that the seller of the vehicle mentioned does not have clear title if there is a lien. This introduces a risk for the buyer. The buyer can pay the seller the money to cover the lien (in the case of a bank loan) but that doesn't mean the seller will actually pay off the loan (so the title is never clear!). This article recommends visiting the bank with the seller, and getting title on-the-spot. However, this isn't always an option, as a local bank branch isn't probably going to have the title document available, though the seller might be able to make some arrangement for a local branch to have the title available before a visit to pay off the loan. The low-risk approach is for the seller to have clear title before any money changes hands. |
If a company in China says it accepts Visa, does it accept all Visas? | Generally, credit card networks (as opposed to debit/ATM cards that may or may not have Visa/MC logos) have a rule that a merchant must accept any credit card with their logo. Visa rules for merchants in the US say it explicitly: Accept all types of valid Visa cards. Although Visa card acceptance rules may vary based on country specific requirements or local regulations, to offer the broadest possible range of payment options to cardholder customers, most merchants choose to accept all categories of Visa debit, credit, and prepaid cards.* Unfortunately the Visa site for China is in Chinese, so I can't find similar reference there. You can complain against a merchant who you think had violated Visa rules here. That said, its not a law, its a contract between the merchant processor and the Visa International organization, and merchants are known to break these rules here and there (most commonly - refusing to accept foreign cards, including in the US). Also, local laws may affect these contracts (for example, in the US it is legal to set minimum amount requirements when accepting credit cards). This only affects credit card processing, and merchants that don't accept credit cards may still accept debit cards since those work in different networks, under a different set of rules. Those who accept credit cards, are also required to accept debit cards (at least if used as credit). |
Options vs Stocks which is more profitable | First, to mention one thing - better analysis calls for analyzing a range of outcomes, not just one; assigning a probability on each, and comparing the expected values. Then moderating the choice based on risk tolerance. But now, just look at the outcome or scenario of 3% and time frame of 2 days. Let's assume your investable capital is exactly $1000 (multiply everything by 5 for $5,000, etc.). A. Buy stock: the value goes to 103; your investment goes to $1030; net return is $30, minus let's say $20 commission (you should compare these between brokers; I use one that charges 9.99 plus a trivial government fee). B. Buy an call option at 100 for $0.40 per share, with an expiration 30 days away (December 23). This is a more complicated. To evaluate this, you need to estimate the movement of the value of a 100 call, $0 in and out of the money, 30 days remaining, to the value of a 100 call, $3 in the money, 28 days remaining. That movement will vary based on the volatility of the underlying stock, an advanced topic; but there are techniques to estimate that, which become simple to use after you get the hang of it. At any rate, let's say that the expected movement of the option price in this scenario is from $0.40 to $3.20. Since you bought 2500 share options for $1000, the gain would be 2500 times 2.8 = 7000. C. Buy an call option at 102 for $0.125 per share, with an expiration 30 days away (December 23). To evaluate this, you need to estimate the movement of the value of a 102 call, $2 out of the money, 30 days remaining, to the value of a 102 call, $1 in the money, 28 days remaining. That movement will vary based on the volatility of the underlying stock, an advanced topic; but there are techniques to estimate that, which become simple to use after you get the hang of it. At any rate, let's say that the expected movement of the option price in this scenario is from $0.125 to $ 1.50. Since you bought 8000 share options for $1000, the gain would be 8000 times 1.375 = 11000. D. Same thing but starting with a 98 call. E. Same thing but starting with a 101 call expiring 60 days out. F., ... Etc. - other option choices. Again, getting the numbers right for the above is an advanced topic, one reason why brokerages warn you that options are risky (if you do your math wrong, you can lose. Even doing that math right, with a bad outcome, loses). Anyway you need to "score" as many options as needed to find the optimal point. But back to the first paragraph, you should then run the whole analysis on a 2% gain. Or 5%. Or 5% in 4 days instead of 2 days. Do as many as are fruitful. Assess likelihoods. Then pull the trigger and buy it. Try these techniques in simulation before diving in! Please! One last point, you don't HAVE to understand how to evaluate projected option price movements if you have software that does that for you. I'll punt on that process, except to mention it. Get the general idea? Edit P.S. I forgot to mention that brokers need love for handling Options too. Check those commission rates in your analysis as well. |
What's the catch with biweekly mortgage payments? | So the principle is true. Assuming that you get paid bi-weekly, you end up getting three paychecks two months during the year. Typically that is in January and July/August. So if things were different, and your mortgage was setup so you paid half a monthly payment each paycheck, then you would wind up making one full extra payment per year. Making that extra payment, most often, reduces the mortgage by 7 years on a 30 year note. While true, many of these companies charge exorbitant fees for the right for you to do so, so the principal reduction is not commensurate with what you are paying. You can simply do this yourself without paying fees. On those extra pay days, pay half a payment to principal only, and no fee, no fuss. This is pretty easy to do with most mortgage companies as they have online payments and it is just a matter of filling out a web form. For me this does not even cost a stamp as they pull from my checking account at another bank. |
Working for recruiter on W-2 vs. working for client on 1099? | I don't think anyone can give you a definitive answer without knowing all about your situation, but some things to consider: If you are on a 1099, you have to pay self-employment tax, while on a W-2 you do not. That is, social security tax is 12.4% of your income. If you're a 1099, you pay the full 12.4%. If you're W-2, you pay 6.2% and the employer pays 6.2%. So if they offer you the same nominal rate of pay, you're 6.2% better off with the W-2. What sort of insurance could you get privately and what would it cost you? I have no idea what the going rates for insurance are in California. If you're all in generally good health, you might want to consider a high-deductible policy. Then if no one gets seriously sick you've saved a bunch of money on premiums. If someone does get sick you might still pay less paying the deductible than you would have paid on higher premiums. I won't go into further details as that's getting off into another question. Even if the benefits are poor, if there are any benefits at all it can be better than nothing. The only advantage I see to going with a 1099 is that if you are legally an independent contractor, then all your business expenses are deductible, while if you are an employee, there are sharp limits on deducting employee business expenses. Maybe others can think of other advantages. If there is some reason to go the 1099 route, I understand that setting up an LLC is not that hard. I've never done it, but I briefly looked into it once and it appeared to basically be a matter of filling out a form and paying a modest fee. |
Avoiding Double-Reporting Income (1099-MISC plus 1099-K) | Your clients should not send you 1099-MISC if they paid with a credit card. You can refer them to this text in the instructions for the form 1099-MISC: Payments made with a credit card or payment card and certain other types of payments, including third party network transactions, must be reported on Form 1099-K by the payment settlement entity under section 6050W and are not subject to reporting on Form 1099-MISC. See the separate Instructions for Form 1099-K. By sending out the 1099-MISC, your clients are essentially saying that they paid you directly (check or cash) in addition to the payment they made with a credit card (which will be reported on 1099-K). In case of an audit, you'll have trouble convincing the IRS that it didn't happen. I suggest asking the clients not to do this to you, since it may cost you significant amounts to fight the IRS later on. In any case, you report on your tax return what you really got, not what the 1099 says. If you have two 1099's covering the same income - there's no legal obligation to report the income twice. You do not have to pay twice the tax just because you have stupid clients. But you may have troubles explaining it to the IRS, especially if you're dealing with cash in your business. If you want to avoid matching issues, consider reporting all the 1099s, and then subtracting the duplicates and attaching a statement (the software will do it automatically when you add the description in the miscellaneous item) about what it is. |
Property Trust - who or what is the Owner? | I am not a lawyer, and I am assuming trusts in the UK work similar to the way they work in the US... A trust is a legally recognized entity that can act in business transactions much the same way as a person would (own real property, a business, insurance, investments, etc.). The short answer is the trust is the owner of the property. The trust is established by a Grantor who "funds" the trust by transferring ownership of items from him or herself (or itself, if another trust or business entity like a corporation) to the trust. A Trustee is appointed (usually by the Grantor) to manage the trust according to the conditions and terms specified in the trust. A Trustee would be failing in their responsibility (their fiduciary duty) if they do not act in accordance with the purposes of the trust. (Some trusts are written better than others, and there may or may not be room for broad interpretation of the purposes of the trust.) The trust is established to provide some benefit to the Beneficiary. The beneficiary can be anyone or anything, including another trust. In the US, a living trust is commonly used as an estate planning tool, where the Grantor, Trustee, and Beneficiary are the same person(s). At some point, due to health or other reasons, a new trustee can be appointed. Since the trust is a separate entity from the grantor and trustee, and it owns the assets, it can survive the death of the grantor, which makes it an attractive way to avoid having to probate the entire estate. A good living trust will have instructions for the Trustee on what to do with the assets upon the death of the Grantor(s). |
Does renting a room on AirBnB make all interest taxable? | It says that you are exempt "as long as such interest income is not effectively connected with a United States trade or business". So the interest is from money earned from doing business with/through AirBnb, a US company. So you will have to report it. Even if your bank doesn't send you a 1099-INT, you have to report it, unless it is under $0.49 because the IRS allows rounding. |
Are there any hedged international funds in India? | There aren't and for a good reason. The long term trend of INR against USD, GBP, EUR and other harder currencies is down. Given the inflation differential between these economies and India's, fund managers and investors should expect this to continue. Therefore, if you are invested for any reasonable length of time, you would expect the forex movements to add to your returns. Historically, this has been true of international funds run in India. |
Advantages of Shareholder over Director in new Company | I know the general principles of acting as a director in a company, and am familiar with the rights of shareholders. In the last ten years or so, I believe Australia has introduced legislation that strongly punishes those directors who do not act in a professional or prudent manner. While I will of course attempt to fulfill the duties required - I am new to conducting business at this level, and am concerned about mistakenly breaching some unknown rule/law and being subject to repercussions that I just don't know about. As you have already stated, the key to being director in a company is the additional responsibility. Legally you can be held in breach. At the same time you will be able to influence your decision much better if you a director and thus safeguard your interest. If you are only a shareholder, you cannot be held responsible for decision by company, individual malpractice may still be applicable, but this is less of a risk. However over a period of time, the board can take certain decision that may marginalize your holding in the company. |
If the U.S. defaults on its debt, what will happen to my bank money? | FDIC is backed by the "full faith and credit of the USA." Well, if the USA defaults, the full faith and credit of the USA would in my mind be worthless, thus, so would FDIC. |
What margin is required to initiate and maintain a short sale | Depends on the stock involved, but for the most part brokerages allow you gain entry at 50%, meaning you can short twice the cash on hand you have. Going forward, you need to maintain 30%, so on a $10,000 short, you'd have to maintain $3000 in your account. Example, an account with $5000 cash - You can short $10,000 securities. Let say 100 shares of xyz at $100 per share. After trade settles, you won't receive a margin call until your balance falls to $3000, probably right around the time xyz rises to $120 per share. Riskier stocks will have higher margin maintenance requirements - leveraged vehicles like FAS/FAZ (triple leveraged) require 90% margin (3x30%) if they are allowed to be 'shorted' at all. |
What can we conclude/learn from inst. own %? | There are a LOT of reasons why institutional investors would own a company's stock (especially a lot of it). Some can be: The company is in one of the indices, especially big ones. Many asset management companies have funds that are either passive (track index) or more-or-less closely adhere to a benchmark, with the benchmark frequently being (based on/exactly) an index. As such, a stock that's part of an index would be heavily owned by institutional investors. Conclusion: Nothing definitive. Being included in an equity index is usually dependent on the market cap; NOT on intrinsic quality of the company, its fundamentals or stock returns. The company is considered a good prospect (growth or value), in a sector that is popular with institutional investors. There's a certain amount of groupthink in investing. To completely butcher a known IT saying, you don't get fired for investing in AAPL :) While truly outstanding and successful investors seek NON-popular assets (which would be undervalued), the bulk is likely to go with "best practices"... and the general rules for valuation and analysis everyone uses are reasonably similar. As such, if one company invests in a stock, it's likely a competitor will follow similar reasoning to invest in it. Conclusion: Nothing definitive. You don't know if the price at which those institutional companies bought the stock is way lower than now. You don't know if the stock is held for its returns potential, or as part of an index, or some fancy strategy you as individual investor can't follow. The company's technicals lead the algorithms to prefer it. And they feed off of each other. Somewhat similar in spirit to #2, except this time, it's algorithmic trading making decisions based on technicals instead of portfolio managers based on funamentals. Obviously, same conclusion applies, even more so. The company sold a large part of the stock directly to institutional investor as part of an offering. Sometimes, as part of IPO (ala PNC and BLK), sometimes additional capital raising (ala Buffett and BAC) Conclusion: Nothing definitive. That investor holds on to the investment, sometimes for reason not only directly related to stock performance (e.g. control of the company, or synergies). Also, does the fact that Inst. Own % is high mean that the company is a good investment and/or less risky? Not necessarily. In 2008, Bear Stearns Inst Own. % was 77% |
Was this a good deal on a mortgage? | I'm calculating that to about a 7% apr, which given loan rates available today seems a bit high. I wouldn't get too caught up on what that equates to over the life of the loan. There are a lot of forces in play over a 30 year period, namely the time value of money. 30 years from now a dollar will be less valuable in real terms due to the forces of inflation. At 2% per year in inflation today's $1 will be worth about $0.55 in 30 years. |
Does Edmunds get a kick-back from the use of Edmunds Price Promise? | Yes, Edmunds gets money from the dealerships in this program. According to this USA Today article from 2013, dealers pay Edmunds a monthly fee to participate in the program. This contrasts with TrueCar.com, a similar service, where dealers pay a fee for each sale. And yes, it is certainly possible to negotiate a lower price than the Edmunds Price Promise quote, if you enjoy haggling. The purpose of the program is not to get you the best price, just the easiest buying experience. From the USA Today article: Edmunds.com's price promise business model is designed to take the uncertainty out of pricing, speed up the buying process and also comes with the expectation that the customer will be given top-notch customer service. Dealers who have participated find that they are able to sell their cars for $300 to $500 more than consumers who go through the more traditional price quote request process. Customers, [Edmunds.com president and chief operating officer Seth] Berkowitz said, are willing to pay a little more than the best possible deal if they can save time, get great customer service and know they are getting a fair price. |
Calculating Future Value: Initial deposit and recurring deposits of a fixed but different Value | Illustrating with a shorter example: Suppose I deposit 1,000 USD. Every year I deposit another 100 USD. I want to know how much money will be on that savings account in 4 years. The long-hand calculation is Expressed with a summation And using the formula derived from the summation (as shown by DJohnM) So for 20 years Note in year 20 (or year 4 in the shorter example) the final $100 deposit does not have any time to accrue interest before the valuation of the account. |
Tax deductions on empty property | A real estate business could offset income from occupied property with costs from vacant property held for speculation. For speculation, you can let a building rot, then get it reassessed. If the jurisdiction assesses part or all of the tax bill on the value of improvements, this can drop the annual tax bill significantly while you hold. If you plan to hold for a decade or more, this can be very important. Strategically, this also ruins the neighborhood property values, so you can assemble neighboring parcels to support future major developments. This is a long speculation game. Exemplars of the strategy include Richard Basciano who bought up several buildings in NYC's Times Square and installed adult theater tenants in the 70s, for payoff today; and the late Sam Rappaport who pursued a strategy of squeezing rent and simply ignoring building inspection violations in Philadelphia, assembling major urban core parcels on the cheap, and whose children are now selling into strong markets. Legality: Adult businesses are kind of a grey market covered by specific local ordinances, neither exactly illegal or perfectly legal. Ignoring building violations is not legal, but the penalties are fines, not jail. It's certainly not a "nice" strategy. Richard Basciano: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/porn-king-richard-basciano-survived-rudy-giuliani-plans-risk-article-1.319185 Sam Rappaport: http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2002/08/05/focus13.html?page=all |
Electric car lease or buy? | I have coworker who reported that he leased a Nissan Leaf from 2013-2016 and was offered $4000 off the contracted purchase price at the end of the lease due to a glut of other lessees turning in for a lease on the newest model with greater range. It's not clear that this experience will be repeated by others three years from now, but there is enough uncertainty in the future electric car market that it's quite possible to have faster depreciation on a new vehicle than you might otherwise expect based on experience with conventional internal combustion powered vehicles. Leasing will remove that uncertainty. Purchasing a lease-return can also offer great value. I looked at the price for a lease return + a new battery with the extended range, and it was still significantly cheaper than buying a completely new vehicle. |
Advice on low-risk long-term strategy for extra cash? | You can buy dividend stocks, just buy and hold. you will get cash or extra stock every quarter. You can also sell covered calls on your dividend stocks, this will give you even more cash. you can also... actually this rabbit hole goes very deep. just stick with my first sentence. |
Are there extra fees for a PayPal Premier account? | If you are using paypal to sell items online, you need a Premier (or better) account rather than personal. Paypal states: Our fees are the same for Personal, Premier, and Business accounts. [...] If you use your PayPal account to request money from someone, you'll be charged a fee when you receive the payment. |
What is a mutual fund? | Let's say that you want to invest in the stock market. Choosing and investing in only one stock is risky. You can lower your risk by diversifying, or investing in lots of different stocks. However, you have some problems with this: When you buy stocks directly, you have to buy whole shares, and you don't have enough money to buy even one whole share of all the stocks you want to invest in. You aren't even sure which stocks you should buy. A mutual fund solves both of these problems. You get together with other investors and pool your money together to buy a group of stocks. That way, your investment is diversified in lots of different stocks without having to have enough money to buy whole shares of each one. And the mutual fund has a manager that chooses which stocks the fund will invest in, so you don't have to pick. There are lots of mutual funds to choose from, with as many different objectives as you can imagine. Some invest in large companies, others small; some invest in a certain sector of companies (utilities or health care, for example), some invest in stocks that pay a dividend, others are focused on growth. Some funds don't invest in stocks at all; they might invest in bonds, real estate, or precious metals. Some funds are actively managed, where the manager actively buys and sells different stocks in the fund continuously (and takes a fee for his services), and others simply invest in a list of stocks and rarely buy or sell (these are called index funds). To answer your question, yes, the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Equity Fund is a mutual fund. It is an actively-managed stock mutual fund that attempts to invest in growing companies that do business in countries with rapidly developing economies. |
Is there any way to buy a new car directly from Toyota without going through a dealership? | You already got good answers on why you can't buy a Toyota from the factory, but my answer is regarding to the implied second part of your question: how to avoid haggling. I found a good way to avoid the haggling at a car dealership can be simply to not haggle. Go in with a different attitude. The main reason car dealers list inflated prices and then haggle is that they expect the customers to haggle. It is fundamentally based on distrust on both sides. Treat the sales person as your advisor, your business partner, as somebody you trust as an expert in his field, and you'll be surprised how the experience changes. Of course, make sure that the trust is justified. Sales reps have a fine line to walk. Of course they like to sell a car for more money, but they also do not want a reputation of overcharging customers. They'd rather you recommend them to your friends and post good reviews on Yelp. In the end, all reputable dealers effectively have a fixed-price policy, or close to it, even those who don't advertise it, and even for used cars. Haggling just prolongs the process to get there. And sales reps are people. Often people who hate the haggling part of their job as much as you do. I was in the market for a new (used) car a few months ago. In the end, it was between two cars (one of them a Toyota), both from the brand-name dealer's respective used car lots. In both cases, I went in knowing in advance what the car's fair market value was and what I was willing to pay (as well as details about the car, mileage, condition etc. - thanks to the Internet). Both cars were marked significantly higher. As soon as the sales rep realized that I wasn't even trying to haggle - the price dropped to the fair value. I didn't even have to ask for it. The rep even offered some extras thrown into the deal, things I hadn't even asked for (things like towing my old car to the junk yard). |
Calculate time to reach investment goals given starting balance? | Fairly straightforward to match the result from the calculator soup link. There is a formula to calculate n from the future value s (using natural logs) In Excel This was derived as shown To calculate n from the inflation-adjusted future value si requires using a solver since an algebraic formula cannot be formulated. As demonstrated Calculations done using Mathematica 7. |
Are there capital gains taxes or dividend taxes if I invest in the U.S. stock market from outside of the country? | The country from which you purchase stock cannot charge you tax on either income or capital gains. Taxation is based on residency, so even when you purchase foreign stock its the tax laws of Malaysia (as your country of residence) that matter. At the time of writing, Malaysia does not levy any capital gains tax and there is no income tax charged on dividends so you won't have to declare or pay any tax on your stocks regardless of where you buy them from. The only exception to this is Dividend Withholding Tax, which is a special tax taken by the government of the country you bought the stock from before it is paid to your account. You do not need to declare this tax as it his already been taken by the time you receive your dividend. The US withholding tax rate on dividends is 30%, although this can be reduced to 15% if there as a tax treaty in place between the US and your country of residence. Malaysia does have a double taxation agreement with the US (see here: http://www.mida.gov.my/env3/index.php?page=double-taxation-agreement) but it is flagged as a "limited" agreement. You'd need to find the full text of the agreement to see whether a reduced rate of dividend withholding tax would be available in the Malaysia/US treaty. See my other answer for more details on withholding taxes and how to partially reclaim under a double tax treaty: What is the dividend tax rate for UK stock Note: Although the taxation rules of both countries are similar, I am a resident of Singapore not Malaysia so I can't speak from first hand experience, but current Malaysia tax rates are easy to find online. The rest of this information is common to any non-US/UK resident investor (as long as you're not a US person). |
Layman's guide to getting started with Forex (foreign exchange trading)? | Currency Trading For Dummies, no offense. The "For Dummies" series is well known for its expertise in every field one can imagine. That said, what prompts you to want to get into this? The average person is very likely to lose money as the long time experts walk away winners. Do you have an urge to trade commodity futures? I sure don't. While I offer the book as a guide, the real answer is "you shouldn't." |
What options do I have at 26 years old, with 1.2 million USD? | Wow, everyone tells you different investment strategies. You have all your life ahead of you. Your main focus should not be getting the best return rate, but ensuring your existence. Who cares if you get 7% if you'll lose all in the next market crash and stand on the street with no education, no job and nothing to fall back on? I would go a completely different route in your place: The best advise given above was to not consider this as an option to never work again. It's not enough money for that, unless you want to live poorly and always be afraid that the next financial crises wipes you out completely. |
Uncashed paycheck 13 years old | If this is in the United States, there are laws governing business behavior when they have recorded expenses (checks, bills, etc) which are never withdrawn or deposited. A business is required to turn over these funds after a certain time frame to the state government as a part of their business tax cycle. (One caveat- these laws vary in age by state, and 13 years is a long time. You might still be out of luck for an amount so old..) There are even businesses which have cropped up to search for "lost money" (for a fee, of course) that your great uncle might have left behind and which now sits in a government holding account somewhere. It's not necessary to go through the third parties though, because the United States posts this information for the world to see. A good starting place is: USA.gov Unclaimed Money Tool Do as much legwork there as you can. You could even attempt to contact the former employer (you said the business accounts still exist) and in a very friendly, non-confrontational manner ask them what their procedures are and would have happened to your paycheck funds. As others have stated, they are under no legal obligation whatsoever to fix your problem for you, but who knows, you could get lucky and they might voluntarily help you out! You're looking for information not cash, so politeness, patience and understanding are your tools. If all else fails, you could try one of these 3rd party services. Here you run into diminishing returns as paying fees to search for money which might not exist just puts you further in the red. |
Is it unreasonable to double your investment year over year? | Yes, because you cannot have an exponential growth rate that is faster than the rate at which the economy grows on the long term. 100% growth is much more than the few percent at which the economy grows, so your share in the World economy would approximately double every year. Today the value of all the assets in the World economy is about $200 trillion. If you start with an investment of just $1000 and this doubles every year, then you'll own all the World's assets in 37.5 years, assuming this doesn't grow. You can, of course, take into account that it does grow, this will yield a slightly larger time before you own the entire World. |
How to share income after marriage and kids? | I think the problem is that you've made a math error. This child would not be costing you 300 per month, it will be costing you 1400 per month. 1100 of this is in a donation of salable hours rather than cash, but helpfully you have a number right there as to how much someone is willing to pay for these hours so the math is still doable. So, if you are indeed splitting your expenses fifty-fifty, you should chip 1100 into the pot to match your wife's contribution. It would make the most sense, I think, to have your part of this contribution cover some of your mutual expenses, and if any is left over, save it up for the day that your child would cost more than that 300 in a month - when you need extra clothes, or have to replace something they destroyed, or want to pay for extra opportunities (camps, educational games, lessons), or a a savings that can be used for major future expenses (higher education, first car, milestone celebrations, safety net when starting out). Of course, if your family is indeed a priority, you might consider making an equal investment in your family - say, half your income (1800) to match half her time going into the building of the family. After all, the decision to start a family should be an investment of time and value, not just a minimum bid for expenses. And again, any extra can be spent on mutual expenses, saved up for future costs, or left as your child's "savings" for major expenses or safety net. I suppose I should mention that you perhaps could get away with covering half her contribution (550 per month, on the face of it), as that should also "balance" out the monthly expenses. Even this much would be enough to put her back into the green on her covering her own costs. Of course, in this case you might want to take into account that while she's working 38,5 hours per week now, running a household is, I've heard, more closely equivalent to a 60-hour week, plus or minus being "on call" for a further 100 hours a week. Trying to calculate the absolute minimum payment on your part to match the investment of hours on hers is likely to be a bit more tricky than just matching the salable hours not worked, if you're set on income ratios and splitting costs "as they are". Also, you might want to rethink your criteria for sharing income completely or what makes certain divisions of costs "unfair". You mention one reason it would be unfair is that you have a "more stressful job" - well, your job may well be more stressful than her job now, but it is likely to be less so than raising a child (her new job). As for investment of time and energy for your education entitling you to a larger amount of pay, again, raising a child is likely to be a larger investment of time, money, and anxiety than your education, but her pay (or even share of the costs) doesn't seem to be balanced in response. I'm not gonna tell you what is fair, that's for you to work out, just suggesting you really think it through before deciding what would be fair or not. |
Are credit cards not viewed as credit until you miss one payment? | K, welcome to Money.SE. You knew enough to add good tags to the question. Now, you should search on the dozens of questions with those tags to understand (in less than an hour) far more than that banker knows about credit and credit scores. My advice is first, never miss a payment. Ever. The advice your father passed on to you is nonsense, plain and simple. I'm just a few chapters shy of being able to write a book about the incorrect advice I'd heard bank people give their customers. The second bit of advice is that you don't need to pay interest to have credit cards show good payment history. i.e. if you choose to use credit cards, use them for the convenience, cash/rebates, tracking, and guarantees they can offer. Pay in full each bill. Last - use a free service, first, AnnualCreditReport.com to get a copy of your credit report, and then a service like Credit Karma for a simulated FICO score and advice on how to improve it. As member @Agop has commented, Discover (not just for cardholders) offers a look at your actual score, as do a number of other credit cards for members. (By the way, I wouldn't be inclined to discuss this with dad. Most people take offense that you'd believe strangers more than them. Most of the answers here are well documented with links to IRS, etc, and if not, quickly peer-reviewed. When I make a mistake, a top-rated member will correct me within a day, if not just minutes) |
New company doesn't allow 401k deposits for 6 months, what to do with money I used to deposit? | Bit hesitant to put this in an answer as I don't know if specific investment advice is appropriate, but this has grown way too long for a comment. The typical answer given for people who don't have the time, experience, knowledge or inclination to pick specific stocks to hold should instead invest in ETFs (exchange-traded index funds.) What these basically do is attempt to simulate a particular market or stock exchange. An S&P 500 index fund will (generally) attempt to hold shares in the stocks that make up that index. They only have to follow an index, not try to beat it so are called "passively" managed. They have very low expense ratios (far below 1%) and are considered a good choice for investors who want to hold stock without significant effort or expense and who's main goal is time in the market. It's a contentious topic but on average an index (and therefore an index fund) will go even with or outperform most actively managed funds. With a sufficiently long investment horizon, which you have, these may be ideal for you. Trading in ETFs is also typically cheap because they are traded like stock. There are plenty of low-fee online brokers and virtually all will allow trading in ETFs. My broker even has a list of several hundred popular ETFs that can be traded for free. The golden rule in investing is that you should never buy into something you don't understand. Don't buy individual stock with little information: it's often little more than gambling. The same goes for trading platforms like Loyal3. Don't use them unless you know their business model and what they stand to gain from your custom. As mentioned I can trade certain funds for free with my broker, but I know why they can offer that and how they're still making money. |
Why would anyone want to pay off their debts in a way other than “highest interest” first? | There are a number of bona fide reasons to consider here. If there is a cost to discharging a security packet, or a mortgage, it may not be convenient if we are advanced in the repayment schedule. Early exit fees may apply, or the interest may be "pre-determined". As a rule of thumb, when we are talking about rates above 10% p.a. then arrangements should be short (bridging finance - keep it short and charge 'em heaps), and for personal arrangements, small. |
What's a good free checking account? | Check with a small local bank or credit union, they might offer better terms. That said, my local credit union still charges $6/month for a checking account if you don't have a direct deposit into it. |
What should I look at before investing in a start-up? | Previous answers have done a great job with the "Should I invest?" question. One thing you may be overlooking is the question "Am I allowed to invest?" For most offerings of stock in a startup, investors are required to be accredited by the SEC's definition. See this helpful quora post for more information on requirements to invest in startups. To be honest, if a startup is looking for investors to put in "a few thousand dollars" each, this would raise my alarm bells. The cost and hassle of the paperwork to (legitimately) issue shares in that small of number would lead me just to use a credit card to keep me going until I was able to raise a larger amount of capital. |
Market makers role | The role of the market maker is to make sure there is a bid and ask on a particular stock. That's it. The market maker ensures that there is a price at which you can buy and a price at which you can sell immediately, but these are not necessarily the best prices. The majority of trades do not involve market makers and occur between two third parties. Whoever said a market order trades with the market maker is thinking of the way stock markets were years ago, not the way they are now. Market orders are supposed to execute immediately and at one time trading with the market makers was the method for executing immediately. If you issue a market order today, it executes with the best available limit order(s) on the other wide of the trade. This may or may not involve a party that identifies as a market maker. |
Canceling credit cards - insurance rate increase? | You can't ask insurers to use a particular score -- they have a state-approved underwriting model that they must follow consistently. Insurance companies make money by not paying claims, and poor credit score (including limit access to credit) increases the probability that you will file a small claim. Why? If you get into a minor accident (say $750 of damage) and have a $500 deductible, you are much less likely to file a claim to get $250 if you have access to a cash or credit lines to make the repairs yourself. If you feel that you are going to be penalized for closing credit card accounts, the solution is simple -- don't close them. Other than an event where you need to sever a relationship with a co-owner of an account (ie, you break up with your significant other, dissolve a business, etc) or avoid paying an annual fee, there is no advantage to you closing a revolving credit account, ever. If you cannot control your spending, throw the card in the shredder. Eventually, the credit card company will close your account for inactivity, which affects your credit to a lesser degree. (The big exception is if you carry sufficient balances on other cards, your credit utilization ratio goes up materially.) |
Covered Call Writing - What affects the price of the options? | Matthew - what was the stock price and strike price of the option when you did this? I've never seen an at-the-money strike with only a month to run have a price 25% of the underlying stock. Jaydles covers the variables really well in his answer. |
Buying real estate with cash | i think and what i understand when a house seller is asking for cash, thats means he is looking for a ready and quick buyer doesn't rely on mortgage and its long process. cash means a certified check for sure, but not physical money in suitcase! |
Why public companies care how their stock price fluctuates? [duplicate] | The folks who hold stock are the legal owners of the company. If a majority of stock holders become unhappy with the management of a company they can fire the executives and put in new management, or they can direct the company to close its doors and sell off its assets. As a crude approximation, the stock holders are happier when the stock price goes up and unhappier when it goes down. Therefore, executives are highly motivated to drive the stock price up. A frequent criticism of corporate governence is that management can be so motivated to drive the stock price up, that they will take actions that drive the stock price up in the current year, even if undercuts the company in the long term. |
Cons of withdrawing money from an Roth IRA account? | In a year with no income, the best advice is to convert existing IRA money to Roth. This lets you take advantage of the 'zero' bracket, the combination of your exemption and standard deduction. This adds to $10,300 for a single person. Other than that, if you are determined to take the money out, just do it. There would be a 10% penalty of the growth, but the original deposit comes out tax free anyway. Edit - There's a rule that if you sell your entire Roth account (i.e. all Roth accounts, you can't pick one of a few) and have a loss, you can take that loss. (Per Dilip's comment, this strategy is pretty moot, it's not a loss taken against other income as a stock loss would potentially be)) |
Is the contribution towards Employment Insurance (EI) wasted if I never get fired, or are my premiums refunded? | Sorry, even if you never file a claim for Employment Insurance (EI), you don't get your premiums back. So, yes, if you paid into EI and never filed a claim, your contributions are, as you put it, "wasted" – insofar that your premiums provided no direct benefit to you. However, your premiums may have provided a benefit to society, perhaps even your previous colleagues. Yet, some would point out that a good chunk of EI premiums are likely wasted on excessive administration of the program itself. That's government. A couple of cases I'm aware of where you may be refunded some of the EI premiums paid are: Meaning, a legal way to avoid paying into the EI system altogether is to run your own business. Of course, you won't be able to file an EI claim if your business evaporates overnight. Other kinds of claims unavailable to those who don't pay into EI include maternity, parental*, and sickness benefits .. although they recently made some changes to permit the self-employed to opt-in for some special benefits. * except in the province of Quebec, where there is a separate Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP) that also covers the self-employed. |
Why trade futures if you have options | Yes, from the point-of-view to the end speculator/investor in stocks, it is ludicrous to take on liabilities when you don't have to. That's why single-stock options are far more liquid than single-stock futures. However, if you are a farmer with a huge mortgage depending upon the chaos of agricultural markets which are extremely volatile, a different structure might appeal to you. You could long your inputs while shorting your outputs, locking in a profit. That profit is probably lower than what one could expect over the long run without hedging, but it will surely be less volatile. Here's where the advantage of futures come in for that kind of structure: the margin on the longs and shorts can offset each other, forcing the farmer to have to put up much less of one's own money to hedge. With options, this is not the case. Also, the gross margin between the inputs rarely fluctuate to an unmanageable degree, so if your shorts rise faster than your longs, you'll only have to post margin in the amount of the change in the net of the longs and shorts. This is why while options on commodities exist to satisfy speculators, futures are the most liquid. |
Lost credit card replaced with new card and new numbers. Credit score affected? | This will have no effect on your credit score. Even though your credit card account number is changing, it is still the same account, so your history of payments and age of accounts will remain unchanged. |
Theoretically, if I bought more than 50% of a company's stocks, will I own the company? | The person holding the majority of shares can influence the decisions of the company. Even though the shareholder holds majority of the shares,the Board of Directors appointed by the shareholders in the Annual General Meeting will run the company. As said in the characteristics of the company,the owners and the administrators of the company are different. The shareholder holding majority of the shares can influence the business decisions like appointing the auditor,director etc. and any other business decisions(not taken in the ordinary business) that are taken in the Annual General Meeting. |
What is a good way to save money on car expenses? | Keep up on routine maintenance. That's the best way to prolong the life of your car, and it'll save you money in the long run because you won't have to replace your car as often. Accelerate gently. The harder you push the gas pedal, the more gas you use. Coast to a stop rather than using your brakes. If you can avoid stopping by slowing down well before a red light so that by the time you actually get to the light it is green again, do so. Avoid high-speed driving. At highway speeds, wind resistance plays a big part in how much gas your car uses. If you can plan your trips to take slower routes, do so. Don't be the guy driving 55 in the left lane on the highway, though. Avoid stop-and-go traffic. Keeping to a constant speed is the most efficient. Plan your trips to avoid areas with lots of traffic, lots of curb-cuts and intersections, etc. Leave lots of space in front of you so you have time to anticipate other drivers intentions and slow down rather than having to slam on your brakes at the last second. Avoid short trips. Cars work best when they can get all the way up to operating temperature, and stay there for a while. If you're just going two miles, ride your bike. Live close to work and a grocery store, so you can walk or ride your bike rather than driving. Use your car for road trips and your quarterly trips to CostCo to restock the larder. If you can get away with not owning a car, sell it. Ride your bike, use public transit, or walk. If you can share a car with a significant other and only one of you has a long car commute, there's no sense in you both owning a car. |
Do credit ratings (by Moody's, S&P, and Fitch) have any relevance? | The problems with ratings and the interpretation of ratings is that they are retrospective, and most people read them as prospective. They basically tell you that debtor is solvent right now. What does that mean? It means that the ratings are based on the audited financial statements of a company, government or other organization issuing debt. So, in the best case scenario where the rating agency is acting properly, they are still dependent on folks with fiduciary responsibility telling the truth. And even if they are telling the "truth", accounting rules make it possible to obscure problems for years in some cases. Municipal goverments are a great example of this... the general obligation bonds cities and even states with deep structural budget problems still get good ratings, because they are solvent and have sufficient operating cash to meet obligations today. But towards the end of a 30-year bond's life, that may not be the case anymore unless they dramatically alter their budgets. At the end of the day, ratings are one aspect of due diligence. They are useful screening devices, but you need to understand who you are lending money to by purchasing bonds and diversify your holdings to protect your wealth. The problem, of course, is when the trustees of your pension fund invests in garbage assets after getting a sales pitch on the beach in Hawaii, then conveniently place all of the blame for that bad investment on the rating agency. You unfortunately have zero control over that. |
Simple and safe way to manage a lot of cash | If this money is intended to be used for retirement and depending on how old "older" is, it sounds a little risky to be putting too much money in a stock based mutual fund. While the CDs may seem like crappy investments right now, it is important to down-shift risk as you get closer to retirement because this person won't have as much time to recover if the markets take another big dip. |
Canadian in California - filing taxes as a non-resident | What do you mean by "Canadian income"? Was it income paid to you as wages for the job you did in the US? Or rental/interest income in Canada? If the former - then it doesn't go to NEC, it goes to the main part of the return. If the latter - it doesn't appear on your NR return at all. Yes, it is to validate your residency status. It has no other effect on your taxes. |
How does giving to charity work? | Charitable donations can be deducted from your income, and in that way make your taxable income lower, hence lower taxes. That's the meaning of "tax deductible". As to "if I donate it then the money will be given right to the charity instead of spread out to many other places" - taxes are being used by the government based on its own decisions (presumably made by elected officials thus representing the will of the voters). Charities use the money based on their defined goals. Giving money to a charity will ensure it is used for the specific goal the charity declared, and that's the way for you to funnel money to the goals of your preference/choice. For example, you can donate money to your temple, orphanage around the corner, or the gay rights organization. Or anti gay, for that matters. Your money will be spent on the goals of your choosing. Re advantages - charitable donations are used by the rich folks to avoid paying taxes on their income (because they're deductible), so someone might donate money to places they use themselves (like the temple/church for example, or the school where the kids go, or politician which will "objectively" choose someone's business for a big government contract, etc etc). For "ordinary" people it's a way to reduce the taxable income and divert the money to the specific goals of their choice. For example, donating $100 to Red Cross Japan Tsunami relief fund, will reduce your taxable income by $100, and total taxes by $28 (assuming you're in the 28% bracket), thus the $28 will go to the specific goal your choose instead of the general taxes. |
Invest in ESPP Single Stock or General Market | Other than the guaranteed 5% bonus (assuming you sell it right away), no benefits. Keep in mind that the price from which the discount is calculated is not necessarily the market price at the date of the ESPP purchase, so the actual discount may be more than 5% (depending on the volatility of the stock - much more). |
New to investing — I have $20,000 cash saved, what should I do with it? | @mbhunter and @JoeTaxpayer have given good advice. Were I in your situation, the only thing I might do differently is put whatever amount of cash not needed for emergencies in a money market fund with check-writing privileges and/or a debit card. The rate on the account has at least some chance of preserving the value of your principal, and it will be easier to put your money into investments as soon as you're ready. This sort of account is offered by any number of brokerages and financial companies, so pick one you trust and start there. |
The Benefits/Disadvantages of using a credit card | If you can use and pay off your credit card in full every month, there are plenty of benefits including improved credit, reward points and more. Many fall into the trap of just making the minimum payments and facing high interest charges or missing payments and getting a hit on their credit reports. To start off, put something small that you know you can pay off every month. It could be your Netflix or your gas. Make sure you pay it off before any interest is accrued. Over time, you can ask for higher limits to boost your utilization rate. |
Is it possible to know the probability that a trade is successful? | If you had a trading system, and by trading system I mean the criteria setup that you will take a trade on, then once a setup comes up at what price will you open the trade and at what price you will close the trade. As an example, if you want to buy once price breaks through resistance at $10.00 you might place your buy order at $10.05. So once you have a written trading system you could do backtesting on this system to get a percentage of win trades to loosing trades, your average win size to average lose size, then from this you could work out your expectancy for each trade that you follow your trading system on. |
My friend wants to put my name down for a house he's buying. What risks would I be taking? | If you really want to help your friend buy a house, make a counter-offer to buy the house yourself and lease it to your friend, with the option to buy for original purchase cost, plus all interest paid so far to the bank, plus closing costs and other expenses incurred by you, minus payments made so far by the friend. Otherwise, just no. The other answers already detail why. |
Will progressively investing with moderate-to-high risk help secure a future? | There are a few flaws in your reasoning: I know my portfolio will always keep going up, No, it won't. You'll have periods of losses. You are starting your investing in a bull market. Do NOT be fooled into believing that your successes now will continue indefinitely. The more risky your portfolio, the bigger the losses. The upside of a risky portfolio is that the gains generally outweigh the losses, but there will be periods of losses. I honestly don't believe that it's possible for me to end up losing in the long term, regardless of risk. I think you vastly underestimate the risk of your strategy and/or the consequences of that risk. There's nothing wrong with investing in risky assets, since over time you'll get higher-than-average returns, but unless you diversify you are exposing yourself to catastrophic losses as well. |
Asset allocation when retirement is already secure | he general advice I get is that the younger you are the more higher risk investments you should include in your portfolio. I will be frank. This is a rule of thumb given out by many lay people and low-level financial advisors, but not by true experts in finance. It is little more than an old wive's tale and does not come from solid theory nor empirical work. Finance theory says the following: the riskiness of your portfolio should (inversely) correspond to your risk aversion. Period. It says nothing about your age. Some people become more risk-averse as they get older, but not everyone. In fact, for many people it probably makes sense to increase the riskiness of their portfolio as they age because the uncertainty about both wealth (social security, the value of your house, the value of your human capital) and costs (how many kids you will have, the rate of inflation, where you will live) go down as you age so your overall level of risk falls over time without a corresponding mechanical increase in risk aversion. In fact, if you start from the assumption that people's aversion is to not having enough money at retirement, you get the result that people should invest in relatively safe securities until the probability of not having enough to cover their minimum needs gets small, then they invest in highly risky securities with any money above this threshold. This latter result sounds reasonable in your case. At this point it appears unlikely that you will be unable to meet your minimum needs--I'm assuming here that you are able to appreciate the warnings about underfunded pensions in other answers and still feel comfortable. With any money above and beyond what you consider to be prudent preparation for retirement, you should hold a risky (but still fully diversified) portfolio. Don't reduce the risk of that portion of your portfolio as you age unless you find your personal risk aversion increasing. |
File bankruptcy, consolidate, or other options? | If your parents can afford to shell out $1,250 a month for 5 years, they would pretty much have the debt paid off, provided the credit card companies don't start playing games with rates. If that payment is too high, maybe you could kick in $5k every few months to knock the principal down. If they think the business can keep puttering along without losing more money, that may be the way to go. Five years is long enough that the business or property may have recovered some value. Another option, depending on the value of the home, could be a reverse mortgage. I don't know how the economy has affected those programs, but that might be a good option to get the debt cleared away. My grandfather was in a similar position back in the 70's. He owned taverns in NYC that catered to an industrial clientele... the place was booming in the 60s and my grandfather and his brother owned 4 locations at one point. But the death of his brother, post-Vietnam malaise, suburban exodus and shutting of industry really hurt the business, and he ended up selling out his last tavern in 1979 -- which was a dark hour in NYC history and real estate values. A few years later, that building sold for a tremendous amount of money... I believe 10x more. I don't know whether there was a way for his business to survive for another 5-7 years, as I was too young to remember. But I do remember my grandfather (and my father to this day) being melancholy about the whole affair. It's hard to have to work part-time in your 60's and be constantly reminded that your family business -- and to some degree a part of your life -- ended in failure. The stress of keeping things afloat when you're broke is tough. But there's also a mental reward from getting through a tough situation on your own. Good luck! |
Are there brokers or companies who trade Forex and make money for us on our investment? And do you think fxtradeinvestment is legit? | So you think there is a business that can take $X and in two weeks turn it into $10X plus their profit. That means that in two weeks you can turn $1,000 into $10,000. So every two weeks you add a zero, in six weeks you add 3 zeros. In 12 weeks total your $1,000 is now $1,000,000,000; and in a few weeks after that you are richer than Bill Gates. All Guaranteed! Run away. |
Do market shares exhaust? | Everyone has a price. If nobody is selling shares, then increase the price you will buy them for. And then wait. Somebody will have some hospital bills to pay for eventually. I buy illiquid investments all the time, and thats typically what happens. Great companies do not have liquidity problems. |
Can mutual fund prices have opening gaps? Might my order to be filled at a higher price? | Mutual funds don't work like stocks in that way. The price of a mutual fund is set at the end of each day and doesn't fluctuate during the day. So no matter when you put in your order, it will be filled at the end of the day at whatever the closing price is for that day. Here is some good information on that There is no continuous pricing of fund shares throughout the trading day. When an investor places an order to buy or sell a fund's shares, the order is executed based on the NAV calculated at the end of that trading day, regardless of what time during the day the order was placed. On the other hand, if the investor were to check the price of his or her fund shares halfway through the business day, the price quoted would be the previous day's NAV because that was the last time the fund calculated and reported the value. -http://www.finweb.com/investing/how-mutual-funds-are-priced.html |
how derivatives transfer risk from one entity to another | When you buy a call option, you transfer the risk to the owner of the asset. They are risking losing out on gains that may accumulate in addition to the strike price and paid premium. For example, if you buy a $25 call option on stock XYZ for $1 per contract, then any additional gain above $26 per share of XYZ is missed out on by the owner of the stock and solely benefits the option holder. |
Is there a government-mandated resource that lists the shareholders of a public company? | There are several such "lists." The one that is maintained by the company is called the shareholder registry. That is a list that the company has given to it by the brokerage firms. It is a start, but not a full list, because many individual shareholders hold their stock with say Merrill Lynch, in "street name" or anonymously. A more useful list is the one of institutional ownership maintained by the SEC. Basically, "large" holders (of more than 5 percent of the stock) have to register their holdings with the SEC. More to the point, large holders of stocks, the Vanguards, Fidelitys, etc. over a certain size, have to file ALL their holdings of stock with the SEC. These are the people you want to contact if you want to start a proxy fight. The most comprehensive list is held by the Depositary Trust Company. People try to get that list only in rare instances. |
What are the important differences between mutual funds and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)? | Behind the scenes, mutual funds and ETFs are very similar. Both can vary widely in purpose and policies, which is why understanding the prospectus before investing is so important. Since both mutual funds and ETFs cover a wide range of choices, any discussion of management, assets, or expenses when discussing the differences between the two is inaccurate. Mutual funds and ETFs can both be either managed or index-based, high expense or low expense, stock or commodity backed. Method of investing When you invest in a mutual fund, you typically set up an account with the mutual fund company and send your money directly to them. There is often a minimum initial investment required to open your mutual fund account. Mutual funds sometimes, but not always, have a load, which is a fee that you pay either when you put money in or take money out. An ETF is a mutual fund that is traded like a stock. To invest, you need a brokerage account that can buy and sell stocks. When you invest, you pay a transaction fee, just as you would if you purchase a stock. There isn't really a minimum investment required as there is with a traditional mutual fund, but you usually need to purchase whole shares of the ETF. There is inherently no load with ETFs. Tax treatment Mutual funds and ETFs are usually taxed the same. However, capital gain distributions, which are taxable events that occur while you are holding the investment, are more common with mutual funds than they are with ETFs, due to the way that ETFs are structured. (See Fidelity: ETF versus mutual funds: Tax efficiency for more details.) That having been said, in an index fund, capital gain distributions are rare anyway, due to the low turnover of the fund. Conclusion When comparing a mutual fund and ETF with similar objectives and expenses and deciding which to choose, it more often comes down to convenience. If you already have a brokerage account and you are planning on making a one-time investment, an ETF could be more convenient. If, on the other hand, you have more than the minimum initial investment required and you also plan on making additional regular monthly investments, a traditional no-load mutual fund account could be more convenient and less expensive. |
Rent or buy with 0 down | Whether or not you choose to buy is a complicated question. I will answer as "what you should consider/think about" as I don't think "What should I do" is on topic. First off, renting tends to look expensive compared to mortgages until you factor in the other costs that are included in your rent. Property taxes. These are a few grand a year even in the worst areas, and tend to be more. Find out what the taxes are ahead of time. Even though you can often deduct them (and your interest), you're giving up your standard deduction to do so - and with the low interest regime currently, unless your taxes are high you may not end up being better off deducting them. Home insurance. This depends on home and area, but is at least hundreds of dollars per year, and could easily run a thousand. So another hundred a month on your bill (and it's more than renter's insurance by quite a lot). Upkeep costs for the property. You've got a lot of up-front costs (buy a lawnmower, etc. types of things) plus a lot of ongoing costs (general repair, plumbing breaks, electrical breaks, whatnot). Sales commission, as Scott notes in comments. When you sell, you're paying about 6% commission; so you won't be above water, if housing prices stay flat, until you've paid off 6% of your loan value (plus closing costs, another couple of percent). You hit the 90% point on a 15 year about year 2, but on a 30 year you don't hit it until about year 5, so you might not be above water when you want to sell. Risk of decrease in value. Whenever you buy property, you take on the risk of losing value as well as the potential of gaining value. Don't assume that because prices are going up they will continue to; remember that a lot of investors are well aware of possible profits from rising prices and will be buying (and driving prices up) themselves. 2008 was a shock to a lot of people, even in areas where it seemed like prices should've still gone up; you never know what's going to happen. If you buy a house for 20% or so down, you have a bit of a safety net (if it drops 10-20% in value, you're still above water, though you do of course lose money), while if you buy it for 0% down and it drops 20% in value, you won't be able to sell (at all) for years. All that together means you should really take a hard look at the costs and benefits, make a realistic calculation including all actual costs, and then make a decision. I would not buy simply because it seems like a good idea to not pay rent. If you're unable to make any down payment, then you're also unable to deal with the risks in home ownership - not just decrease in value, but when your pipe bursts and ruins your basement, or when the roof needs a replacement because a tree falls on it. Yes, home insurance helps, but not always, and the deductible will still get you. Just to have some numbers: For my area, we pay about $8000 a year in property taxes on a $280k house ($200k mortgage), $1k a year in home insurance, so our escrow payment is about $750 a month. A 15 year for $200k is about $1400 a month, so $2200 or so total cost. We do live in a high property tax area, so someone in lower tax regimes would pay less - say 1800-1900 - but not that cheap. A 30 year would save you 500 or so a month, but you're still not all that much lower than rent. |
Paying Off Principal of Home vs. Investing In Mutual Fund | Other answers are already very good, but I'd like to add one step before taking the advice of the other answers... If you still can, switch to a 15 year mortgage, and figure out what percentage of your take-home pay the new payment is. This is the position taken by Dave Ramsey*, and I believe this will give you a better base from which to launch your other goals for two reasons: Since you are then paying it off faster at a base payment, you may then want to take MrChrister's advice but put all extra income toward investments, feeling secure that your house will be paid off much sooner anyway (and at a lower interest rate). * Dave's advice isn't for everyone, because he takes a very long-term view. However, in the long-term, it is great advice. See here for more. JoeTaxpayer is right, you will not see anything near guaranteed yearly rates in mutual funds, so make sure they are part of a long-term investing plan. You are not investing your time in learning the short-term stock game, so stay away from it. As long as you are continuing to learn in your own career, you should see very good short-term gains there anyway. |
In the stock market, why is the “open” price value never the same as previous day's “close”? | Quoted from money.howstuffworks.com: NASDAQ has come up with an auction approach called the opening cross. Here's how it works. In the morning, a computer program looks at all the orders that have come in overnight in each different stock. Based on those orders, the program picks a price level that would be the best opening price. However, it also looks to see if there's a trade imbalance. For example, if a company announced bad news after the market closed, there might be 10 times more sell orders than buy orders. NASDAQ then broadcasts the price and imbalance information to its network of dealers with the goal of offsetting the imbalance. It then lets dealers place orders. This all happens very quickly, in a time window of two minutes or so, right before the market opens. Dealers can place orders, and those orders are factored into the opening price. Further reading here: Opening Price calculation |
Can a stock exchange company actually go bust? | Technically, of course. Almost any company can go bankrupt. One small note: a company goes bankrupt, not its stock. Its stock may become worthless in bankruptcy, but a stock disappearing or being delisted doesn't necessarily mean the company went bankrupt. Bankruptcy has implications for a company's debt as well, so it applies to more than just its stock. I don't know of any historical instances where this has happened, but presumably, the warning signs of bankruptcy would be evident enough that a few things could happen. Another company, e.g. another exchange, holding firm, etc. could buy out the exchange that's facing financial difficulty, and the companies traded on it would transfer to the new company that's formed. If another exchange bought out the struggling exchange, the shares of the latter could transfer to the former. This is an attractive option because exchanges possess a great deal of infrastructure already in place. Depending on the country, this could face regulatory scrutiny however. Other firms or governments could bail out the exchange if no one presented a buyout offer. The likelihood of this occurring depends on several factors, e.g. political will, the government(s) in question, etc. For a smaller exchange, the exchange could close all open positions at a set price. This is exactly what happened with the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange (HKMex) that MSalters mentioned. When the exchange collapsed in May 2013, it closed all open positions for their price on the Thursday before the shutdown date. I don't know if a stock exchange would simply close all open positions at a set price, since equity technically exists in perpetuity regardless of the shutdown of an exchange, while many derivatives have an expiration date. Furthermore, this might not be a feasible option for a large exchange. For example, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange lists thousands of products and manages hundreds of millions of transactions, so closing all open positions could be a significant undertaking. If none of the above options were available, I presume companies listed on the exchange would actively move to other, more financially stable exchanges. These companies wouldn't simply go bankrupt. Contracts can always be listed on other exchanges as well. Considering the high level of mergers and acquisitions, both unsuccessful and successful, in the market for exchanges in recent years, I would assume that option 1 would be the most likely (see the NYSE Euronext/Deutsche Börse merger talks and the NYSE Euronext/ICE merger that's currently in progress), but for smaller exchanges, there is the recent historical precedent of the HKMex that speaks to #3. Also, the above answer really only applies to publicly traded stock exchanges, and not all stock exchanges are publicly-held entities. For example, the Shanghai Stock Exchange is a quasi-governmental organization, so I presume option 2 would apply because it already receives government backing. Its bankruptcy would mean something occurred for the government to withdraw its backing or that it became public, and a discussion of those events occurring in the future is pure speculation. |
Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT | The biggest disadvantage to you is that your tenant now knows your bank information, which means he can easily identify your source of money in the event he wins a lawsuit and wins a judgement. He will be able to have a court marshall freeze your account. However, if you deposit your tenant's check into your account as opposed to an EFT, then your tenant can basically still obtain your bank account information and freeze your account, it would just take him a bit longer to get that information. I am definitely anti-landlord in these situations because I've had to deal with so many bad ones here in NYC, but as a landlord, the best thing you can do is to create a "buffer" account for you to deposit tenant rent money into, then transfer the money from the buffer account to your regular account. This would prevent the tenant from knowing your personal bank information and greatly delay the tenant receiving his judgement from an assumed court win against you. My source: I had to take my landlord to court, and after obtaining a judgement, I got a court marshall to begin the process of closing access to her account (she couldn't access the money in that account). The process resulted in her sending me a check (assuming from her other account) for the judgement since her account was frozen and she couldn't access any of her money. |
Pay off car loan entirely or leave $1 until the end of the loan period? | There's two scenarios: the loan accrues interest on the remaining balance, or the total interest was computed ahead of time and your payments were averaged over x years so your payments are always the same. The second scenarios is better for the bank, so guess what you probably have... In the first scenario, I would pay it off to avoid paying interest. (Unless there is a compelling reason to keep the cash available for something else, and you don't mind paying interest) In the second case, you're going to pay "interest over x years" as computed when you bought the car no matter how quickly you pay it off, so take your time. (If you pay it earlier, it's like paying interest that would not have actually accrued, since you're paying it off faster than necessary) If you pay it off, I'm not sure if it would "close" the account, your credit history might show the account as being paid, which is a good thing. |
If I get a bill (e.g. for internet service), is that a debt I owe? If no, what are the practical difference between a bill and a debt? | A debt is created when the service is rendered or the goods are sold to you. The bill is simply a way of recording the debt and alerting you to it. |
Pay index fund expense ratios with cash instead of fund balance | It seems at most a cosmetic difference - nothing keeps you from adding the 9$ cash to the fund the same day the fees are deducted from the shares. |
Why are residential investment properties owned by non-professional investors and not large corporations? | None of the previous answers calls out an important factor to residential property ownership bias towards individual investors. The amount of time spent managing (leasing, maintenance and rent collection) on single properties is much higher, per property, than larger investments. But what is mentioned in passing is the bias towards smaller investments. Fewer individuals have the capital to purchase and engage in the leasing of multi-tenant properties, but they are more likely to have the funds for smaller investments. So the smaller investor can both afford the entry costs, and the time investment, while the larger corporate entities benefit from the opposite proposition. |
How to get started with savings, paying off debt, and retirement? | The word you are looking for is "budget" You can't pay off debt if you are spending more than you earn. Therefore, start a budget that you both work on at the same time, and both agree 100% with. Evaluate your progress on that budget on a regular basis. From your question, you understand what your obligations are and you seem to manage money pretty well. Therefore your key to retirement is just the ticket you need. As newlyweds, you both have to be VERY aware that the main reason a marriage fails in the US is money issues. Starting out with a groundwork where you both agree to your budget and can keep it will help you a lot in your upcoming life. Then, for some details Sprinkle your charitable donations anywhere in the list where you feel it is important. |
How separate individual expenses from family expenses in Gnucash? | In your words, you want to "easily determine whether an item was purchased as part of our individual accounts, or our combined family account." It's not clear exactly to me what kind of reporting you're trying to get. (I find a useful approach here to be to start with the output you're trying to get from a system, and then see how that maps to the input you want to give the system.) Here's some possibilities: |
What happens to your ability to borrow money based on our joint finances? | It might be worth talking to a mortgage broker, even if you don't actually end up doing business with them. Upfront Mortgage Brokers explained Finding an upfront broker near you In a nutshell, upfront brokers disclose what they are paid for their services openly and transparently. Many brokers don't, and you can't be too careful. But a consultation should be free. An experienced broker can help you to navigate the pros and cons mentioned by the other responders. Personally, I would never do business with a broker who can't/won't show me a rate sheet on the day of the lock. That's my personal acid test. You might be surprised by what the broker has to say regarding your situation. That was my experience, anyway. |
How does a high share price benefit a company when it is raising funds? | Share price is based on demand. Assuming the same amount of shares are made available for trade then stocks with a higher demand will have a higher price. So say a company has 1000 shares in total and that company needs to raise $100. They decide to sell 100 shares for $1 to raise their $100. If there is demand for 100 shares for at least $1 then they achieve their goal. But if the market decides the shares in this company are only worth 50 cents then the company only raises $50. So where do they get the other $50 they needed? Well one option is to sell another 100 shares. The dilution comes about because in the first scenario the company retains ownership of 900 or 90% of the equity. In the second scenario it retains ownership of only 800 shares or 80% of the equity. The benefit to the company and shareholders of a higher price is basically just math. Any multiple of shares times a higher price means there is more value to owning those shares. Therefore they can sell fewer shares to raise the same amount. A lot of starts up offer employees shares as part of their remuneration package because cash flow is typically tight when starting a new business. So if you're trying to attract the best and brightest it's easier to offer them shares if they are worth more than those of company with a similar opportunity down the road. Share price can also act as something of a credit score. In that a higher share price "may" reflect a more credit worthy company and therefore "may" make it easier for that company to obtain credit. All else being equal, it also makes it more expensive for a competitor to take over a company the higher the share price. So it can offer some defensive and offensive advantages. All ceteris paribus of course. |
IS it the wrong time to get into the equity market immediately after large gains? | If your gut told you to buy during the depths of '09, your gut might be well-calibrated. The problem is stock market declines during recessions are frequently not that large relative to the average long run return of 9%: A better strategy might be hold a percentage in equities based upon a probability distribution of historical returns. This becomes problematic because of changes in the definition of earnings and the recent inflation stability which has encouraged high valuations: Cash flow has not been as corrupted as earnings now, and might be a better indicator: This obviously isn't perfect either, but returns can be improved. Since there is no formulaic way yet conventionally available, the optimal primary strategy is still buy & hold which has made the most successful investor frequently one of the richest people on the planet for decades, but this could still be used as an auxiliary for cash management reserves during recessions once retired. |
Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do? | If this 'scam' has a name, address and/or phone number, I forward it to the FBI anonymously. That is my advice. You may also wish to consult a lawyer. |
Why is there such disparity of max contribution limits between 401K accounts and regular IRA accounts? | The 401k was not written with the specific intent of enabling retirement savings. Why do tax advantages favor employees of large employers... It seems that large businesses have been more effective at influencing legislators despite that there are more people are employed by small than large businesses. |
How do dividend reinvestment purchases work? | The Brokerage firm will purchase shares for the dividend paid in a omnibus account for the security of the issuer and then they will distribute fractional shares among all their clients that chose Div Reinvest. They will only have to buy 1 extra share to account for the fractional portion of what they allocate. The structure of the market does not permit trading of fractional shares. There is generally not any impact to the market place for Div Reinvest with the exception of certain securities that pay large dividends that are not liquid. sometimes this occurs in preferred securities where a large amount of Div reinvestment could create a large market order that has market impact. Most brokers place market orders for the opening on the day following the payment of the dividend. When you sell the fractional portion same process as full shares are sold into the market and the fractional if traded between you and the brokers omnibus account. if it creates a full share for the broker (omnibus has .6 shares and you sell him .5 they would likely flip that out to the street with the full share portion of your order. This would not have impact to outstanding shares and all cost are operational and with the broker handling the Div reinvestment service. |
Best personal finance software for Mac for German resident | I haven't used it in years, but look at GnuCash. From the site, one bullet point under Feature Highlights: |
How does a stake sale affect a company's stock price? | Is it normal for such transactions to create new outstanding shares? Yes a company can create new shares or a Majority share holder can sell some of his stake or it can be a mix of both. how will this news affect the short-term and long-term price of the company's stock? This is opinion based and not apt for this site. It can be positive or negative depending on how the market reacts to the news. |
Investment Options for 14-year old? | A fourteen-year-old can invest a few thousand into commuting to a part-time job or an education. If you can wait five years for a couple hundred you can wait two to four years for a car (or gas money) or a class (or some textbooks.) |
Why do financial institutions charge so much to convert currency? | Echoing that bank fees are mostly "because they can", although partly this is because simply holding onto the money doesn't really pay enough for the physical infrastructure of branches, ATMs and staff. So like a budget airline they make it up on additional fees. But that document doesn't actually say they charge 3% for currency conversion! It's "0.20% of transaction amount" for currency conversion, which is not bad (although watch out for the "spread" between buying and selling rates). I see "International POS/ATM Transaction Fee 3% of transaction amount", which is very different. That's a card fee. The big issue with these is fraud - your card number suddenly being used in a different country will nearly always trigger extra fraud checks. It also involves a much more complicated settlement process. I'm more unimpressed with the monthly service charges and the huge $85 fee for international wire transfers. |
As a Sole Proprietor, will “employer” Solo 401k contributions count towards gross income? | This seems to depend on what kind of corporation you have set up. If you're set up as a sole proprietor, then the Solo 401k contributions, whether employee or employer, will be deducted from your gross income. Thus they don't reduce it. If you're set up as an S-Corp, then the employer contributions, similar to large employer contributions, will be deducted from wages, and won't show up in Box 1 on your W-2, so they would reduce your gross income. (Note, employee contributions also would go away from Box 1, but would still be in Box 3 and 5 for FICA/payroll tax purposes). This is nicely discussed in detail here. The IRS page that discusses this in more (harder to understand) detail is here. Separately, I think a discussion of "Gross Income" is merited, as it has a special definition for sole proprietorships. The IRS defines it in publication 501 as: Gross income. Gross income is all income you receive in the form of money, goods, property, and services that is not exempt from tax. If you are married and live with your spouse in a community property state, half of any income defined by state law as community income may be considered yours. For a list of community property states, see Community property states under Married Filing Separately, later. Self-employed persons. If you are self-employed in a business that provides services (where products are not a factor), your gross income from that business is the gross receipts. If you are self-employed in a business involving manufacturing, merchandising, or mining, your gross income from that business is the total sales minus the cost of goods sold. In either case, you must add any income from investments and from incidental or outside operations or sources. So I think that regardless of 401(k) contributions, your gross income is your gross receipts (if you're a contractor, it's probably the total listed on your 1099(s)). |
Price Earnings Ratio | Your question asks us to explain why a false statement is true. From the point of view of an investor, a high price to earnings ratio is not necessarily desirable. From the point of view of an investor, a desirable stock is one that is likely to provide future dividends or price increases that more than compensates for the risk of the stock. This information cannot be inferred from the P/E ratio. So what does the P/E ratio tell us? The P/E ratio measures a stock's current price (i.e., the market's belief about its future earnings) divided by its recent past earnings. A high ratio means the market thinks earnings in the future will be higher than they are now and have therefore bid the price up. These can thought of as expensive stocks, and are often called "growth" stocks because their price is driven by the market's belief in future growth. Some individual high P/E stocks do live up to or exceed the market's expectation, but there's no evidence that this happens enough that they are more desirable as a group than low P/E stocks. If anything, the empirical evidence goes the other way. |
What is a financial security? | First, realize that Wikipedia is written by individuals, just like this board has thousands of members. The two definition were written and edited by different people, most likely. Think Venn diagram. The definition for financial instruments claims that it's the larger set, and securities is contained in a subset. Comparing the two, it seems pretty consistent. Yes, Securities include derivatives. Transferable is close to tradable, although to me tradable implies a market as compared to private transfers. I don't believe there's an opposite, per se, but there's 'other stuff.' My house has value, but is not a security. My coffee cup has no value. Back to the concept of Venn. There aren't really opposites, just items falling outside the set we're discussing. I'd caution, this is a semantic exercise. If you know what you're buying, a stock, a bond, a gold bar, etc, whether it's a financial instrument or security doesn't matter to you. |
Can you explain “time value of money” and “compound interest” and provide examples of each? | Here are some really excellent video tutorials on these topics: Introduction to Compound Interest Introduction to Present Value |
Are stock index fund likely to keep being a reliable long-term investment option? | When you are putting your money in an index fund, you are not betting your performance against other asset classes but rather against competing investments withing the SAME asset class. The index fund always wins due to two factors: diversity, and lower cost. The lower cost attribute is essentially where you get your performance edge over the longer run. That is why if you look at the universe of mutual funds (where you get your diversification), very few will have beaten the index, assuming they have survived. -Ralph Winters |
What are my options to deal with Student Loan debt collectors? | You should hire a lawyer. The fact that they told you your personal information shows that they actually had it, and are not imposters, which is a good thing. The fact that they mislead you means that their intentions are not pure (which is not surprising coming from a collection agency of course). When dealing with collections (or any matter of significance for that matter), don't rely on their recording of the call, because they can always conveniently lose it. Make sure to write down every single detail discussed, including the date and time of the call, and the ID/name of the person on the other side. If possible - make your own recording (notifying them of it of course). It's too late to record the calls now, but do try to reconstruct as much information as possible to provide to your lawyer to deal with it. In the end of the day they will either provide you with the recording (and then you might be surprised to hear that what they said was not in fact what you thought they said, and it was just your wishful thinking, it is very possible to be indeed the case), or claim "we lost it" and then it will be a problem to either of you to prove who said what, but they'll have the better hand (having better lawyers) in convincing the court that you're the one trying to avoid paying your debts. That is why proper representation at all stages is important. As to the bankruptcy - it won't help for student loans, student loans is one of the very few types of debts you can't really run away from. You have to solve this, the sooner the better. Get a professional advice. For the future (and for the other readers) - you should have gotten the professional advice before defaulting on these loans, and certainly after the first call. |
If a fund holds stocks paying dividends and doesn't give a payout, is it necessarily re investing those dividends? | It is not necessary that the mutual fund pays out the dividend. The money would be used to buy more shares of the same stock or of some other stock depending on overall policy goal of the fund and current allocation of funds. This would increase the NAV of the mutual fund and hence its indirectly comes to you once you sell the mutual fund. The dividend would not be taxable as its not directly paid out. |
Why do car rental companies prefer/require credit over debit cards? | People with credit cards tend to have better credit than those who only have debit cards. People with better credit tend to not abuse such things as car rentals. It costs money for any company to run your credit. It doesn't cost a rental company any outflow of money to reject debit cards. So the possession of a credit card becomes a stand-in for running your credit before you rent a car. |
Home owners association for houses, pro/cons | I agree with the basic purpose of an HOA. Unlike the poster above Jay, I do believe that people painting their houses purple will definitely affect the value of my house or property. I for one would not want to live next to someone who has a wild purple house, even though it is his right to do so. In saying that I know that there are very few people who would want to buy my house were it situated next to the "purple house". So in the sense of limiting known eyesores I agree with the purpose of HOA's. That being said, I do not agree with the fact that HOA's are not regulated and that its rules are formed by community members who may be very strict on what or what isn't allowed. If it were simple rules like not painting the house disturbing colors (we all know what they are) or not having junk cars or loud music after a certain time (except on holidays or special calendar days like New Years etc. |
Confirming that stocks are listed under my name | Street name is not what you think it is in the question. The broker is the owner in street name. There is no external secondary owner information. I don't know if there is available independent verification, but if the broker is in the US and they go out of business suddenly, you can make a claim to the SIPC. |
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