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Why does Bank of America sometimes refer to itself as Banc of America on some documents? | From https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Banc: Banq (also Banc, banc-corp, bancorp, or bancorporation) is an intentionally erroneous spelling of the word bank, but pronounced the same way. It has been adopted by companies which are not banks but wish to appear as such, and satisfy legal restrictions on the u... |
How is stock price determined? | Yes, stock price is determined by the last trade price. There are always going to be people who have put in a price to buy a stock (called a bid price) and people who have put in a price to sell a stock (called an ask price). Based on your example, if the last trade price for the stock was $1.23, then you might have th... |
Buying a house, how much should my down payment be? | The reason to put more money down or accept a shorter maximum term is because the bank sweetens the deal (or fails to sour it in some fashion). For example, typically, if there is less than 20% down, you have to pay an premium called "Private Mortgage Insurance", which makes it bad deal. But I see banks offering the s... |
How can I pay for school to finish my degree when I can't get a student loan and have bad credit? | Here's what you can do: roll up your sleeves and get to work. Work 2 or 3 jobs while you take 12 credit hours. Live in the cheapest available housing (that is reasonably safe). Have no social life. Wake up, work, class, eat, work, study, sleep. Every day. Don't eat at restaurants. Eat only simple meals at home. ... |
Where can I find the nominal price of a stock prior a split into multiple companies? | When Hewlett Packard split they changed their name to HP Inc. and spun off Hewlett Packard Enterprise as a new corporation. This means HP Inc. has the same stock history and ticker (HPQ) as Hewlett Packard did so that's the one you want to search for. As you noticed this also means it's impossible to search for old Hew... |
What is a good asset allocation for a 25 year old? | In my opinion, the key variable for you (and others) is not age, but "vintage." Your "age" suggests that you were born in the mid-1980s, in the middle of a bull market. The most remunerative investing periods for you are likely to be in your childhood (past) and middle age (forties and early fifties). Also your, "old-o... |
Is it accurate to say that if I was to trade something, my probability of success can't be worse than random? | In theory, in a perfect world, what you state is almost true. Apart from transaction fees, if you assume that the market is perfectly efficient (ie: public information is immediately reflected in a perfect reflection of future share value, in all share prices when the information becomes available), then in theory any ... |
UK university student finance - should I use my sponsorship money to pay the debt? | Borrow the lot (as your family recommended)! The extra money will come in useful when you want to buy a house and move back to the area where your employer is. The government loan in the UK is a fantastic system, just a shame they are charging you so much in tuition fees... |
Real Estate: Please review my recent investment (with numbers from recent purchase) | Okay so I am going to break this answer into a couple sections: Okay so first things first. Did you get a good deal? This is challenging to answer for a number of reasons. First, a good deal is relative to the buyers goals. If you're attempting to buy an asset that provides passive income then maybe you met your goal a... |
What taxes are assessed on distributions of an inherited IRA? | All transactions within an IRA are irrelevant as far as the taxation of the distributions from the IRA are concerned. You can only take cash from an IRA, and a (cash) distribution from a Traditional IRA is taxable as ordinary income (same as interest from a bank, say) without the advantage of any of the special tax ra... |
Why do Americans have to file taxes, even if their only source of income is from a regular job? | For two reasons: 1- People are entitled to deductions and credits that your employer cannot possibly know. Only you as an individual know about your personal situation and can therefore claim these deductions and credits by filing income tax returns. 2- Me telling you that you made $100,000 last year is not the same as... |
Why would a stock opening price differ from the offering price? | The offering price is what the company will raise by selling the shares at that price. However, this isn't usually what the general public sees as often there will be shows to drive up demand so that there will be buyers for the stock. That demand is what you see on the first day when the general public can start buy... |
Should I pay half a large balance this month before I get my CC statement? | Utilization is near real-time. What that means is that what is reported is what is taken in terms of debt-to-income (DTI) ratios. When a mortgage broker pulls your credit, they will pull the latest balances with the minimum payments. This is what is taken to determine DTI along with your gross monthly income. If you do... |
Buying a house for a shorter term | If there are a lot of houses for sale, can you be sure that in a year or two you can sell yours? How long does the average house in that area stay on the market before it is sold? What percentage of houses never get sold? If it can't be sold due to the crowded market you will be forced to rent the house. The question ... |
How is a probability cone read? | A number of ways exist to calculate the chances of a particular outcome. Options, for example, use current price, cost of money, and volatility among other factors to price the chance of an underlying asset reaching a certain price in a certain timeframe. A graphical forecast simply puts these calculations into a visu... |
Disputing Items to Improve Credit Report | Disputing the remark seems unlikely to move your score, since it is just that -- a remark. It's hard to say whether the scoring models can/do read the remarks and incorporate them (somehow) into the scoring metric itself. Disputing the revolving account that should be reported as closed is a different matter. The que... |
Paying extra on a mortgage. How much can I save? [duplicate] | If you're truly ready to pay an extra $1000 every month, and are confident you'll likely always be able to, you should refinance to a 15 year mortgage. 15 year mortgages are typically sold at around a half a point lower interest rates, meaning that instead of your 4.375% APR, you'll get something like 3.875% APR. That... |
What one bit of financial advice do you wish you could've given yourself five years ago? | I wish I would have: |
Canadian personal finance software with ability to export historical credit card transactions? | Yodlee and Mint are good solutions if you don't mind your personal financial information being stored "in the cloud". I do, so I use Quicken. Quicken stores whatever you give to it for as long as you want: so the only question is how to get the credit card transactions you want into it? All my financial institutions al... |
Ordering from Canada, charged in CAD or USD? | Typically, businesses always charge their 'home' currency, so if the shop is in Canada, you will pay Canadian Dollars. Normally you don't have any choices either. Your credit card company will convert it to your currency, using the current international currency exchange rate (pretty good), plus a potential fee between... |
Why does ExxonMobil's balance sheet show more liabilities than assets? | I believe you are missing knowledge of how to conduct a ratio analysis. Understanding liquidity ratios, specifically the quick or acid-test ratio will be of interest and help your understanding. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/acidtest.asp Help with conducting a ratio analysis. http://www.demonstratingvalue.org/res... |
Taking a car loan vs cash and effect on credit score | Imagine that your normal mode of using credit gets you a score of X. As time goes by your score trends upward if the positive items (length of credit) outweigh your negative items. But there are no big increases or decrease in your score. Then you make a one time change to how you use credit. If this is a event that he... |
A guy scammed me, but he gave me a bank account number & routing number. Can I use that to take out what he owes me? | You're potentially in very deep water here. You don't know who this person is that you're dealing with. Before you'd even met him, he just gave you his banking info, seemingly without a second thought. You have no idea what the sources of his money are, so what happens if the money is stolen or otherwise illegal? I... |
For insurance, why should you refuse $4,000/year for only 10 years and prefer $500/year indefinitely? | The breakeven amount isn't at 8 years. You calculated how many years of paying $500 it would take to break even with one year of paying $4000. 8 x 10 years = 80 years. So by paying $500/year it will take you 80 years to have spent the same amount ($40000 total) as you did in 10 years. At this point it may seem obvious ... |
1099 Misc for taking care of foreign exchange students | According to Intuit, you cannot claim the $50 charitable contribution, so the entire $2000 / month will be taxable instead of $1900. That's only an extra $35 if your combined tax rate is 35%. As TTT mentioned, do this for the experience, not for the money. My wife and I have been hosting international students for 10 y... |
Do Banks Cause Inflation? What are other possible causes? | No, it isn't generally believed that inflation is caused by individual banks printing money. Governments manage money supply through Central Banks (which may, or may not, be independent of the state). There are a number of theories about money supply and inflation (from Monetarist, to Keynesian, and so on). The Quanti... |
Any advantage to exercising ISO's in company that is not yet public? | As far as I know, the AMT implications are the same for a privately held company as for one that is publicly traded. When I was given my ISO package, it came with a big package of articles on AMT to encourage me to exercise as close to the strike price as possible. Remember that the further the actual price at the ti... |
What happens to bonds values when interest rates rise? [duplicate] | You can look at TIPS (which have some inflation protection built in). Generally short term bonds are better than long if you expect rates to rise soon. Other ways that you can protect yourself are to choose higher yield corporate bonds instead of government bonds, or to use foreign bonds. There are plenty of bond funds... |
Why don't institutions share stock recommendations like Wall Street analysts? | Primarily because they don't want big price movements when they are in the market. If they spook the markets, either they have to buy at a higher price, or they sell at a lower price or they decrease the price of their holdings(which isn't always a big factor). The 3 situations they didn't want to be in the first place... |
Pros/cons for buying gold vs. saving money in an interest-based account? | What you are seeing is the effects of inflation. As money becomes less valuable it takes more of it to buy physical things, be they commodities, shares in a company's stock, and peoples time (salaries). Just about the only thing that doesn't track inflation to some degree is cash itself or money in an account since th... |
Side work and managing finances? | I have done similar software work. You do not need an LLC to write off business expenses. The income and expenses go on Schedule C of your tax return. It is easy to write off even small expenses such as travel - if you keep records. The income should be reported to you on a 1099 form, filled out by your client, not you... |
How can I make a profit by selling a stock short? | Being "long" - expecting the price to go up to make a profit - is a two step process: 1) buy 2) sell Being "short" - expecting the price to go down to make a profit - is a 5 step process: 1) borrow someone else's asset 2) sell their asset on the open market to somebody else a third party 3) pocket the proceeds of the... |
Is 6% too high to trade stocks on margin? | That seems a little high in my experience. I've used a home equity line of credit instead, as the rates are much lower (~3.5%). |
Need to change cash to cashier's check without bank account (Just arrived to the US) | the easiest thing would be to go to walmart and stock up on 1000$ money orders paying a 70 cents fee for each. your landlord would almost certainly accept money orders, but double check first just in case. i say stock up because you can't get a money order for more than 1000$ and they usually won't let you buy more tha... |
Simple and safe way to manage a lot of cash | As your question appears in the second half, so will my answer. Like you, I will provide some background. I remember buying gasoline for $1.759 per gallon. I am so old that I remember buying gasoline for $0.759 per gallon. I recently paid $2.759 per gallon. You claim that your relative is not getting a very good ... |
Is This Money Laundering? | or is this a form of money laundering? May not be, generally the amounts involved in money laundering are much higher. So if there are quite a few such transactions then yes it could be money laundering. It could also be for circumventing taxes, depending on country regulations one may try to do this to get around gift... |
Investing in real estate when the stock market is high, investing in stocks when it's low? | The right time to buy real estate is easy to spot. It's when it is difficult to get loans or when real estate agents selling homes are tripping over each other. It's the wrong time to buy when houses are sold within hours of the sign going up. The way to profit from equities over time is to dollar-cost average a divers... |
Is Weiss Research, Inc. a legitimate financial research company? | This company was a reputable rating agency for many years. See Weiss Research website, ratings section for a very different perspective on Martin Weiss's work than the websites with which he is now associated. I checked both links provided, and agree with the questioner in every way: These appear to be highly questiona... |
Will I be paid dividends if I own shares? | Yes, as long as you own the shares before the ex-dividend date you will get the dividends. Depending on your instructions to your broker, you can receive cash dividends or you can have the dividends reinvested in more shares of the company. There are specific Dividend ReInvestment Plans (or DRIPs) if you are after stoc... |
When are investments taxed? | An investment is sold when you sell that particular stock or fund. It doesn't wait until you withdraw cash from the brokerage account. Whether an investment is subject to long term or short term taxes depends on how long you held that particular stock. Sorry, you can't get around the higher short term tax by leaving th... |
Mutual fund invests in mostly the same stuff as ETF, but has much higher expense ratio? (biotech sector) | Index funds, like IBB, generally lack active management, which equates to lower expenses. This is simply because the target index, the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index in the case of IBB, is composed of known quantities. This means there won't be stock pickers or analysts constantly swapping holdings, increasing the turnover... |
What is inflation? | Money itself has no value. A gold bar is worth (fuzzy rushed math, could be totally wrong on this example figure) $423,768.67. So, a 1000 dollars, while worthless paper, are a token saying that you own %.2 of a gold bar in the federal reserve. If a billion dollars are printed, but no new gold is added to the treasury, ... |
Using Marine Traffic (AIS) to make stock picks? | You can. Speculating on marine traffic is more closely tied to oil trades and ocean shipping container rates, than trades on any particular companies. But companies heavily tied to ocean shipping can be ripe for speculation. The baltic dry index is created for this analytical purpose, and that information can be used a... |
Stocks: Where can I find a list of bankrupt/diluting stocks in the US? | The only recommendation I have is to try the stock screener from Google Finance : https://www.google.com/finance?ei=oJz9VenXD8OxmAHR263YBg#stockscreener |
What determines a tax resident in Florida | I think the 60 days/year come from the IRS tax residency determination, which isn't a Florida law but applies to all the states. Have a look at the "substantial presence" paragraph to see where the 60 days are coming from. |
Why would a restaurant offer a very large cash discount? | Why would such a large discount make business sense to the restaurant? The legit reasons could be; Or can I assume that the restaurant is trying to avoid leaving a paper trail so that they could avoid paying tax? The illegal reasons could be; |
Do the activities of my LLC need to be limited to a particular field? | No. When you file your Articles of Organization, simply state that your business will operate under the law. You don't need to give any further specification. |
Is investing in an ETF generally your best option after establishing a Roth IRA? | ETFs are a type of investment, not a specific choice. In other words, there are good ETFs and bad. What you see is the general statement that ETFs are preferable to most mutual funds, if only for the fact that they are low cost. An index ETF such as SPY (which reflects the S&P 500 index) has a .09% annual expense, vs a... |
How do I build wealth? | Another possibility is that a lot of it is bought using borrowed money. Especially if much of your own money is in the stock market, it may be beneficial to take out a loan to buy something compared to selling other assets to raise the same amount of cash. Even going by the likely relatively conservative £200K/year bef... |
Do I even need credit cards? | If you are in the U.S., without credit cards, you probably don't have a credit history. Without a credit history, you won't be able to get a loan/mortgage, and even if you do, you'll get it on very unfavorable terms. Depending on where you live you might even have great difficulty renting an apartment. So, the most imp... |
How important is disability insurance, e.g. long-term, LTD? Employer offers none | The reason to have disability insurance is to replace your income if you become disabled and are no longer able to work. For this purpose, it is kind of similar to life insurance where you want to replace your income to take care of people that depend on your income if you die, but now you are included in the people t... |
How late is Roth (rather than pretax) still likely to help? | My simplest approach is to suggest that people go Roth when in the 15% bracket, and use pre-tax to avoid 25%. I outlined that strategy in my article The 15% solution. The monkey wrench that gets thrown in to this is the distortion of the other smooth marginal tax curve caused by the taxation of social security. For th... |
How will I pay for college? | There are some useful comments about the tradeoffs of the decisions in front of you. Intertwined with the financial choices, hopefully you can see a map opening up. Make a little chart if it helps. Benefit and Cost. If you're looking for financial options, you will have to also add more columns to that chart: Opt... |
What does it mean if a company pays a quarterly dividend? How much would I get quarterly? | Google is a poor example since it doesn't pay a dividend (and doesn't expect to), so let's use another example with easy numbers. Company X has a stock price of $100, and it pays a quarterly dividend (many companies do). Let's assume X pays a dividend of $4. Dividends are always quoted in annual terms, as is dividend y... |
What's the best way to make money from a market correction? | The best way to make money during a market correction is to be a financial services company handling transactions for people who think they can beat the market, and charging a percentage commission on each transaction, while keeping your own money somewhere nice and safe, stable and low-fee. |
Should I change 401k investment options to prepare for rising interest rates? | I see that you're invested in a couple bond funds. You do not want to be invested in bonds when the Fed raises rates. When rates climb, the value of bond investments decline, and vice-versa. So that means you should sell bonds before a rate hike, and buy them before a rate drop. |
Buying a small amount (e.g. $50) of stock via eToro “Social Trading Network” using a “CFD”? | As many people here have pointed out, a CFD is a contract for difference. When you invest in stock at eToro, you buy a CFD reflecting a bid on the price movement of the underlying stock, however, you do not actually own the stock or hold any rights shareholders have. The counterparty to the CFD is eToro. When you close... |
How can I work out how much a side-job contracting will be taxed for? | Being self-employed, your "profit" is calculated as all the bills you send out, minus all business-related cost that you have (you will need a receipt for everything, and there are different rules for things that last for long time, long tools, machinery). You can file your taxes yourself - the HRS website will tell y... |
Possible to use balance transfers to avoid interest with major credit cards? | Sure of course you can do balance transfers like this but you are way late to the party and it has gotten to be pretty challenging finding new cards to transfer balances to. Before the current financial crisis in the US you could get enormous amounts of credit (2-5 times a person's annual income) and transfer balances ... |
How to correct a tax return filed electronically and already approved? | Simply file an amended return to correct the mistake. This happens all the time and is a standard procedure that every legitimate tax pro can handle. You can work it out with the tax pro about whose mistake it was and who should pay for the additional service. |
When trading put options, is your total risk decreased if you are in a position to exercise the option? | In absolute terms the risk is about the same. If you own the stock and your put option goes in the money, then you have the option to get rid of your stock at yesterday's higher price. If you don't, you can sell the option for a higher price than you paid for it. But, as you calculated yourself, the net gain or loss ... |
Why is it good to borrow money to buy a house? | You can explore the scenarios in which it is better to rent or to buy using this application: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/BuyOrRentInvestmentReturnCalculator/ In the possibly unlikely scenario shown below, at the term of the mortgage (20 years) the tenant and the buyer have practically the same return on investme... |
Why is it not a requirement for companies to pay dividends? | You have plenty of good answers, but I want to add something that might help you grow your intuition on stocks. There are a lot of differences between the example I am going to give and how the stock market actually runs, but the basic concepts are the same. Lets say your friend asks you if he can borrow some money to ... |
Should I replace bonds in a passive investment strategy | The fact that some asset (in this case corporate bonds) has positive correlation with some other asset (equity) doesn't mean buying both isn't a good idea. Unless they are perfectly correlated, the best risk/reward portfolio will include both assets as they will sometimes move in opposite directions and cancel out eac... |
What percent of my salary should I save? | I disagree with the selected answer. There's no one rule of thumb and certainly not simple ones like "20 cents of every dollar if you're 35". You've made a good start by making a budget of your expected expenses. If you read the Mr. Money Mustache blogpost titled The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement, you... |
Should I open a Roth IRA or invest in the S&P 500? | A Roth IRA is simply a tax-sheltered account that you deposit funds into, and then invest however you choose (within the limits of the firm you deposit the funds with). For example, you could open a Roth IRA account with Vanguard. You could then invest the $3000 by purchasing shares of VOO, which tracks the S&P 500 in... |
Is there a limit on the dollar amount of a personal check? | As long as someone is willing to take it, you can write it! I personally wrote a check for a new car. The dealership didn't bat an eye. |
Why don't banks give access to all your transaction activity? | If you need access to your data beyond the online availability, you download the transactions and manage the archive yourself. Six months to eighteen months is generally enough time for most people to manage their own archived data. Big banks have the power to store and retrieve all the data online. Unfortunately, the ... |
Can travel expenses be deducted from Form 1040A if they were used to gather material for a book? | Hobby expenses are not tax deductible. Business expenses are, but only if it's a bona fide business. First they look at profitability: if you reported a net profit (i.e. paid taxes) in your first 3 years, they will believe you rant on Youtube for a living. Remember, by the time they get around to auditing you, you'... |
How can I improve my credit score if I am not paying bills or rent? | One of the other things you could do to improve your score would be along the lines of what Pete said in his answer, but using the current financial climate to your advantage. I'm not sure what interest rates are available to you in the UK, but I currently have 4 lines of credit aside from my house. One is a credit car... |
Do I have to pay a capital gains tax if I rebuy different stocks? | Probably. It sounds like you're looking for a 1031-exchange for stocks and bonds. From the wikipedia page for 1031-exchanges: To qualify for Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, the properties exchanged must be held for productive use in a trade or business or for investment. Stocks, bonds, and other properties... |
Why don't banks give access to all your transaction activity? | Although if you count only your data, it would be quite less 10 MB, multiply this by 1 million customers and you can see how quickly the data grows. Banks do retain data for longer period, as governed by country laws, typically in the range of 7 to 10 years. The online data storage cost is quite high 5 to 10 times mor... |
Assessed value of my house | You said the tax assessor gave you an appraised value, but I think you mean assessed value. This article YOUR HOME; Market vs. Appraisal: What's the Real Value? explains the differences pretty well. |
Avoid Capital Gains on Rental | Your question is best asked of a tax expert, not random people on the internet. Such an expert will help you ask the right questions. For example you did not point out the country or state in which you live. That matters. First point is that you will not pay tax on 60K, its expensive to transact real estate, so you... |
Should I get an accountant for my taxes? | Let me offer an anecdote to this - I started helping a woman, widowed, retired, who had been paying $500/yr to get her taxes done. As I mentioned in my comment here, she got a checklist each year and provided the info requested. From where I sat, it seemed a clerk entered the info into tax software. As part of the tr... |
Do Square credit card readers allow for personal use? | What I should have done in the first place was just ask them. From their customer support team: Thanks for writing in and for your interest in Square. It is perfectly acceptable to use Square for personal business, such as a yard sale. You do not need to have a registered business to take advantage of Square and the a... |
Does an employee have the right to pay the federal and state taxes themselves instead of having employer doing it? | No, even businesses pay taxes quarterly. So if you formed Nathan, LLC, or otherwise became self employed, you'd still have to file quarterly estimates and make tax payments. This would cause taxes to be a much more high touch part of your life. However, you should ensure that you're claiming the proper exemptions etc... |
Investing in dividend-yielding stocks with money borrowed from margin account? | Is it safe to invest in a portfolio of dividend stocks yielding 7-9% with the money borrowed at 3-4% from one of these brokerages? Yes and no. It depends on your risk profile! Any investment has its risks of losing your capital, but not investing is a guaranteed risk, as you will be guaranteed to fall behind the rate o... |
Foreign Earned Income Exclusion - Service vs. Product? | As the name says, its for income earned in a Foreign country. If you have been paying US income tax on this while living in the US, nothing is going to change here. You should be informing yourself on how to avoid double taxation in your new country of residence. Passive income earned abroad (dividends, interest) also ... |
Dormant company, never paid taxes, never traded in UK - should I have notified the HMRC? | You don't have to register for corporation tax until you start doing business: After you’ve registered your company with Companies House, you’ll need to register it for Corporation Tax. You’ll need to do this within 3 months of starting to do business. Since you haven't needed to do that yet, there also shouldn't be an... |
Why do some people go through contortions to avoid paying taxes, yet spend money on expensive financial advice, high-interest loans, etc? | To some extent, I suppose, most people are okay with paying Some taxes. But, as they teach in Intro to Economics, "Decisions are made on the margin". Few are honestly expecting to get away with paying no taxes at all. They are instead concerned about how much they spend on taxes, and how effectively. The classic defens... |
Invest all at once after maxing out Roth IRA - or each time I contribute? | If you are like most people, your timing is kind of awful. What I mean by most, is all. Psychologically we have strong tendencies to buy when the market is high and avoid buying when it is low. One of the easiest to implement strategies to avoid this is Dollar Cost Averaging. In most cases you are far better off ma... |
Is the average true range a better measure of volatility than historical volatility | ATR really looks at the volatility within the day -- So you would be able to see if the stock is becoming more or less volatile in daily trading. This is often useful for charting and finding entry and exit locations. Traditional historic volatility (as you cited) will give you a look at the long term volatility of ... |
Is buying a lottery ticket considered an investment? | Although this has been touched upon in comments, I think the following line from the currently accepted answer shows the biggest issue: There is a clear difference between investing and gambling. The reality is that the difference isn't that clear at all. Tens of comments have been written arguing in both directions an... |
Why I cannot find a “Pure Cash” option in 401k investments? | There is no zero risk option! There is no safe parking zone for turbulent times! There is no such thing as a zero-risk investment. You would do well to get this out of your head now. Cash, though it will retain its principle over time, will always be subject to inflation risk (assuming a positive-inflation environmen... |
How are stock buybacks not considered insider trading? | In fact, buybacks WERE often considered a vehicle for insider trading, especially prior to 1982. For instance, Prior to the Reagan era, executives avoided buybacks due to fears that they would be prosecuted for market manipulation. But under SEC Rule 10b-18, adopted in 1982, companies receive a “safe harbor” from ... |
How to prevent myself from buying things I don't want | I use cash exclusively. I go to the cash machine once a week and withdraw the money I want to spend in one week (so I have to plan if I want to buy something expensive). Otherwise I leave the card at home. As bonus you get anonymity, i.e. big brother cannot track you. |
Treasury Bonds, and why has the NYSE 20+ Year Treasury Bond index (AXTWEN) gone up so much in the last year (2011)? | The NYSE 20 Year Plus Treasury Bond Index (AXTWEN) is a multiple-security fixed income index that aims to track the total returns of the long-term 20 year and greater maturity range of the U.S. Treasury bond market. The index constituent bonds are weighted by their relative amounts outstanding.One cannot directly inves... |
Are buyouts always for higher than the market value of a stock? | Buyouts are usually for more than the ORIGINAL value of a stock. That's because the price "premium" represents an incentive for holders to "tender" their shares to the would-be buyer. Sometimes in these situations, the stock price rises above the proposed buyout price, in anticipation of a higher takeover bid from a SE... |
How smart is it to really be 100% debt free? | When you're debt free everything you own feels different. The lack of financial stress in your life goes away. BUT! before you do go gung-ho on paying down debt think through these steps (and no I did not come up with them. Dave Ramsey did and others). Truncated from - http://www.daveramsey.com/new/baby-steps/ I have 1... |
MasterCard won't disclose who leaked my credit card details | As indicated in comments, this is common practice in the US as well as EU. For example, in this Fox Business article, a user had basically the same experience: their card was replaced but without the specific merchant being disclosed. When the reporter contacted Visa, they were told: "We also believe that the public ... |
Please explain the relationship between dividend amount, stock price, and option value? | Regarding: 1) What's the point of paying a dividend if the stock price automatically decreases? Don't the shareholders just break even? As dividends distribution dates and amounts are announced in advance, probably the stock price will rise of the same amount of the divident before the day of distribution. If I kno... |
Which countries allow eChecks? | eChecks (and ACH) are a (desperate?) try of the US banking system to get into the 21st century. All EU countries (and some others) have direct deposits and transfers as the standard way of transferring money since about 20 years, and since about 5 years it is cost-free and one-day across all the EU. The rest of the wor... |
What are good games to play to teach young children about saving money? | I know this question is closed now, but I just found this site that people might be interested in... http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/games/ |
Has anyone compared an in-person Tax Advisor to software like Turbo Tax? | I have fairly simple tax returns and my experience was that TurboTax software produced roughly the same result as human accountant and costs much less. The accountant was never able to find any deductions that the program couldn't find. Of course, if you have business, etc. you probably need an accountant to help you ... |
gift is taxable but is “loan” or “debt” taxable? | (a) you give away your money - gift tax The person who receives the gift doesn't owe any tax. If you give it out in small amounts, there will be no gift tax. It could have tax and Estate issues for you depending on the size of the gift, the timing, and how much you give away in total. Of course if you give it away to... |
How can I detect potential fraud in a company before investing in them? | Given that such activities are criminal and the people committing them have to hide them from the law, it's very unlikely that an investor could detect them, let alone one from a different country. The only things that can realistically help is to keep in mind the adage "If something sounds too good to be true, it prob... |
Is it OK to use a credit card on zero-interest to pay some other credit cards with higher-interest? | The short answer is: it depends. The longer answer is that balance transfers are tricky, and often a bait-and-switch; they'll offer 0% interest, but charge a 3-4% "fee" (which isn't interest and is perfectly legal) on the amount transferred. If you transfer $5000, you now owe the new card company $5,200. Now, that coul... |
Should I pay off my student loan before buying a house? | Paying off your student loan before buying a house is certainly a great risk reduction move for you. It will lower your debt to income ratio allowing your mortgage approval to go easier and it will free up more of your dollars to pay for the many miscellaneous projects that come with buying a house. I think that if you... |
Option spreads in registered accounts | From my own personal experience, you cannot trade spreads in RRSP or TFSA accounts in Canada. You can only buy options (buy a call or buy a put) or you can sell calls against your stock (covered call selling). You will not be able to sell naked options, or trade any type of spread or combo (calendars, condors, etc). I ... |
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