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Does this sound like a great idea regarding being a landlord and starting a real estate empire? | This is a reasonable idea and many people have done it. But there are some risks that you need to mitigate. This is a viable business model, but it is a business and you need to treat it as such and expect to work quite hard at it. |
Buying & Selling Call Options | If you sold bought a call option then as you stated sold it to someone else what you are doing is selling the call you bought. That leaves you with no position. This is the case if you are talking about the same strike, same expiration. |
Why is the stock market closed on the weekend? | The stock markets are closed on week-ends and public holidays because the Banks are closed. The Banking is a must to settle the payment obligations. So you may buy and sell as much as you wish, but unless money changes hands, nothing has really happened. Now as to why Banking itself is closed on week-ends and public holidays, well a different question :) Keeping the system 24 hrs up and running does not actually push volumes, but definately push expenses for brokers, Banks etc. There definately is some convinience to buyers and sellers. |
Table of how many years it takes to make a specified return on the stock market? | The Money Chimp site lets you choose two points in time to see the return. i.e. you give it the time (two dates) and it tells you the return. One can create a spreadsheet to look at multiple time periods and answer your question that way, but I've not seen it laid out that way in advance. For what it's worth, I am halfway to my retirement number. I can tell you, for example that at X%, I hit my number in Y years. 8.73% gets me 8/25/17 (kid off to college) 3.68% gets me 8/25/21 (kid graduates), so in a sense, we're after the same type of info. With the long term return being in the 10% range, you're going to get 3 years or so as average, but with a skewed bellish curve when run over time. |
Is there a dollar amount that, when adding Massachusetts Sales Tax, precisely equals $200? | Don't worry about it. The State doesn't care about rounding error. All you need to do is say "We charge our prices with tax included" - you know, like carnivals and movie theaters. Then follow the procedures your state specifies for computing reportable tax. Quite likely it wants your pre-tax sales total for the reporting period. To get that, total up your gross sales that you collected, and divide by (1 + tax rate). Just like DJClayworth says, except do it on total sales instead of per-item. If you need to do the split per-transaction for Quickbooks or something, that's annoying. What Quickbooks says will be pennies off the method I describe above. The state don't care as long as it's just pennies, or in their favor. |
Single investment across multiple accounts… good, bad, indifferent? | One implication is the added fees if you are investing in something with a trading cost or commission, such as your stock purchase. If you pay low costs to trade (e.g. with a discount broker) and don't switch your investments often, then costs overall should remain reasonable .. but always be aware of your costs and seek to minimize them. |
Determining amount of inflation between two dates | You want percent change between the two numbers listed under whatever heading you'll be using in the CPI. As an example, you'd probably want to use the All Items heading listed here on Page 4 of the August 2016 CPI tables as 240.853, and from August 2015 was listed as 238.316. Percent change is So 1.06% inflation from August 2015 to August 2016. |
What's the benefit of a credit card with an annual fee, vs. a no-fee card? | Just to make this a little less vauge, I will base everything on the Mercedes Benz American Express (MB AMEX) card, which is the closest to a $100 annual fee I found on American Express's website. The benefits of a card with an annual fee generally are worth the cost if (and only if) you spend enough money on the card, and avoid paying interest to offset the benefit. Using the MB AMEX card as a reference, it offers 5X points for Mercedes Benz purchases, 3X points at gas stations, 2X points at restaurants, and 1X points everywhere else. Even if we only make purchases at the 1X rate, it only takes charging $10,000 to the card in a year in order to make up the difference. Not too hard to do on a card someone uses as their main method of payment. Every dollar spent at the higher rates only makes that easier. There are a number of other benefits as well. After spending $5,000 on the card in a year, you receive a $500 gift card towards the purchase of a Mercedes Benz car. For anyone on the market for a Mercedes Benz, the card pays for itself multiple times with just this benefit. |
How much money do I need to have saved up for retirement? | Invest in kids, not pension - they never inflate. Without kids your retirement will be miserable anyway. And with them you'll be good. Personally, I do not believe that that our current savings will be worth it in 30 years in these times. |
What are the reasons to get more than one credit card? | Another reason is that the amount of unused credit you have is a positive factor on your credit score. It's generally easier to open several different accounts for $X dollars each with different banks than to get your current bank to raise your limit severalfold in a single go. Your current bank has to worry about why you suddenly are asking for a large additional amount of credit; while other banks will be willing to offer you smaller amounts of credit in the hope that you transfer your business from your current bank to them. |
How is your credit score related to credit utilization? | 1 - yes, it's fine to pay in full and it helps your score. 2 - see chart above, it's calculated based on what the bill shows each month. 3 - answered by chart. 1-19% utilization is ideal. 0% is actually worse than 41-60% Note: The above image was from Credit Karma. A slightly different image appears at the article The Relationship Between Your Credit Score and Credit Card Utilization Rate. I don't know how true this really is. Since writing this answer, I've seen offers of a true "FICO score" from multiple credit cards, and have tinkered with my utilization. I paid my active cards before the reporting date, and saw 845-850 once my utilization hit 0. Credit Karma still has me at 800. |
I cosigned for a friend who is not paying the payment | I think I'm reading that you cosigned a loan with a friend, and they've stopped paying on their loan. Not a whole lot of options here. You'll have to pay the loan off by yourself or allow the loan to go into collections in hopes that you'll get more money later and pay it off then. Small claims court is definitely an option at that point. Next time, perhaps try not to cosign loans with friends unless you really trust them and are confident that you can pay the loan off if they cannot. |
How should I think about stock dividends? | Dividends are actually a very stable portion of equity returns, the Great recession and Great Depression notwithstanding: However, dividends, with lower variance have lower returns. Most of the return is due to the more variant price: So while dividends fell by 25% during the worst drop since the Great Depression, prices fell almost by 2/3. If one can accumulate enough wealth to live only off of dividend income, the price risk becomes much more manageable. This is the ideal circumstance for retirement. |
Where can I find a definition of psychological barriers with respect to marketable securities? | GuruFocus has an excellent summary of psychological barriers in the markets: http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=88451 |
Can rent be added to your salary when applying for a mortgage? | The days are long gone when offered mortgages were simply based on salary multiples. These days it's all about affordability, taking into account all incomes and all outgoings. Different lenders will have different rules about what they do and don't accept as incomes; these rules may even vary per-product within the same lender's product list. So for example a mortgage specifically offered as buy-to-let might accept rental income (with a suitable void-period multiplier) into consideration, but an owner-occupier mortgage product might not. Similarly, business rules will vary about acceptance of regular overtime, bonuses, and so on. Guessing at specific answers: #1 maybe, if it's a buy-to-let product, Note that these generally carry a higher interest rate than owner-occupier mortgages; expect about 2% more #2 in my opinion it's extremely unlikely that any lender would consider rental income from your cohabiting spouse #3 probably yes, if it's a buy-to-let product |
Purchasing options between the bid and ask prices, or even at the bid price or below? | I frequently do this on NADEX, selling out-of-the-money binary calls. NADEX is highly illiquid, and the bid/ask is almost always from the market maker. Out-of-the-money binary calls lose value quickly (NADEX daily options exist for only ~21 hours). If I place an above-ask order, it either gets filled quickly (within a few minutes) due to a spike in the underlying, or not at all. I compensate by changing my price hourly. As Joe notes, one of Black-Scholes inputs is volatility, but price determines (implied) volatility, so this is circular. In other words, you can treat the bid/ask prices as bid/ask volatilities. This isn't as far-fetched as it seems: http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/volatility-quoting-fx-options.html |
Bitcoin Cost Basis Purchases | As long as the IRS treats bitcoin as property, then whenever you use bitcoin to buy anything you are supposed to consider the capital gain or capital loss. There is no "until it's converted to fiat". You are paying local sales tax and capital gains, or paying local sales tax and reporting capital loss. As long as you are consistent, you can use either the total cost basis, or individual lot purchases. The same as other property like stocks (except without stock specific regulations like wash-sale rules :D ). There are a lot of perks or unintentional loopholes for speculators, with the property designation. There are a lot of disadvantages for consumers trying to use it like a currency. Someone mixing investment and spending funds across addresses is going to have complicated tax issues, but fortunately the exchanges have records of purchase times and prices, which you can compare with the addresses you control. Do note, after that IRS guideline, another federal agency designated Bitcoin as a commodity, which is a subset of "property" with its own more favorable but different tax guidelines. |
What ways are there to invest in stocks, options, indexes, etc, and where should one start (what funds)? | Ryan's suggestion to index for your main strategy is dead on. Your risk is highest with one given stock, and decreases as you diversify. Yet, picking the stocks one at a time is an effort, when done right, it's time consuming. For what one can say about Jim "mad money" Cramer, his advice to spend an hour a month studying each stock you own, is pretty decent advice. Penny stocks are sub one dollar priced, typically small companies which in theory can grow to be large companies, but the available information tends to be tougher to get hold of. Options are a discussion for a different thread, I discussed the covered call strategy elsewhere and show that options are not necessarily high risk, it depends how they are used. |
Is there such a thing as a deposit-only bank account? | Usually the most significant risk scenarios here are: Third parties can abuse your routing/account numbers to initiate debits, but this is a type of fraud that is easily traced. It can happen, but it is more likely that it would be a scenario where you were specifically targeted vs. the victim of some random fraud. Defending against someone who is specifically going after you is very difficult, especially if you don't know about it. Your SSN isnt used for the bank transfer, you are providing it so that the entity making the payments can report on payments to you for tax purposes. If you are truly worried about this type of scenario, I suggest setting up a dedicated savings account for the purpose of receiving these payments and then sweeping (either manually or automatically) the funds into another account. Most stock brokers will allow you to automate this, and most banks will let you do this manually. |
How much house can a retired person afford | Consider property taxes (school, municipal, county, etc.) summing to 10% of the property value. So each year, another .02N is removed. Assume the property value rises with inflation. Allow for a 5% after inflation return on a 70/30 stock bond mix for N. After inflation return. Let's assume a 20% rate. And let's bump the .05N after inflation to .07N before inflation. Inflation is still taxable. Result Drop in value of investment funds due to purchase. Return after inflation. After-inflation return minus property taxes. Taxes are on the return including inflation, so we'll assume .06N and a 20% rate (may be lower than that, but better safe than sorry). Amount left. If no property, you would have .036N to live on after taxes. But with the property, that drops to .008N. Given the constraints of the problem, .008N could be anywhere from $8k to $80k. So if we ignore housing, can you live on $8k a year? If so, then no problem. If not, then you need to constrain N more or make do with less house. On the bright side, you don't have to pay rent out of the .008N. You still need housing out of the .036N without the house. These formulas should be considered examples. I don't know how much your property taxes might be. Nor do I know how much you'll pay in taxes. Heck, I don't know that you'll average a 5% return after inflation. You may have to put some of the money into cash equivalents with negligible return. But this should allow you to research more what your situation really is. If we set returns to 3.5% after inflation and 2.4% after inflation and taxes, that changes the numbers slightly but importantly. The "no house" number becomes .024N. The "with house" number becomes So that's $24,000 (which needs to include rent) versus -$800 (no rent needed). There is not enough money in that plan to have any remainder to live on in the "with house" option. Given the constraints for N and these assumptions about returns, you would be $800 to $8000 short every year. This continues to assume that property taxes are 10% of the property value annually. Lower property taxes would of course make this better. Higher property taxes would be even less feasible. When comparing to people with homes, remember the option of selling the home. If you sell your .2N home for .2N and buy a .08N condo instead, that's not just .12N more that is invested. You'll also have less tied up with property taxes. It's a lot easier to live on $20k than $8k. Or do a reverse mortgage where the lender pays the property taxes. You'll get some more savings up front, have a place to live while you're alive, and save money annually. There are options with a house that you don't have without one. |
How to Deduct Family Health Care Premiums Under Side Business | No, not on schedule C, better. Its an "above the line" deduction (line 29 on your 1040). Here's the turbo tax article on it. The instructions for this line set certain limitations that you must take into the account, and yes - it is limited to the net profit from the business. One of the following statements must be true. You were self-employed and had a net profit for the year. You were a partner with net earnings from self-employment. You used one of the optional methods to figure your net earnings from self-employment on Schedule SE. You received wages in 2011 from an S corporation in which you were a more-than-2% shareholder. Health insurance premiums paid or reimbursed by the S corporation are shown as wages on Form W-2. The insurance plan must be established under your business. Your personal services must have been a material income-producing factor in the business. If you are filing Schedule C, C-EZ, or F, the policy can be either in your name or in the name of the business. |
Why would a public company not initiate secondary stock offerings more often? | Selling stock means selling a portion of ownership in your company. Any time you issue stock, you give up some control, unless you're issuing non-voting stock, and even non-voting stock owns a portion of the company. Thus, issuing (voting) shares means either the current shareholders reduce their proportion of owernship, or the company reissues stock it held back from a previous offering (in which case it no longer has that stock available to issue and thus has less ability to raise funds in the future). From Investopedia, for exmaple: Secondary offerings in which new shares are underwritten and sold dilute the ownership position of stockholders who own shares that were issued in the IPO. Of course, sometimes a secondary offering is more akin to Mark Zuckerberg selling some shares of Facebook to allow him to diversify his holdings - the original owner(s) sell a portion of their holdings off. That does not dilute the ownership stake of others, but does reduce their share of course. You also give up some rights to dividends etc., even if you issue non-voting stock; of course that is factored into the price presumably (either the actual dividend or the prospect of eventually getting a dividend). And hopefully more growth leads to more dividends, though that's only true if the company can actually make good use of the incoming funds. That last part is somewhat important. A company that has a good use for new funds should raise more funds, because it will turn those $100 to $150 or $200 for everyone, including the current owners. But a company that doesn't have a particular use for more money would be wasting those funds, and probably not earning back that full value for everyone. The impact on stock price of course is also a major factor and not one to discount; even a company issuing non-voting stock has a fiduciary responsibility to act in the interest of those non-voting shareholders, and so should not excessively dilute their value. |
Where do I invest my Roth IRA besides stock market and mutual funds? | Many investment companies are also offering target retirement date portfolios to invest in. They manage reducing the risk over time so you don't have to worry about it if you choose not to. |
Why are credit cards preferred in the US? | For me, it is mostly for the fraud protection. If I have a debit card and someone makes a fraudulent charge the money is removed from my bank account. From my understanding, I can then file a fraud complaint with the bank to recover my money. However, for some period of time, the money is missing from my bank account. I've heard conflicting stories of money being returned quickly while the complaint is undergoing investigation as well as money being tied up for several days/weeks. It may depend on the bank. With a credit card, it is the banks money that is tied up. |
what would you do with $100K saving? | 4) Beef up my emergency fund, make sure my 401(k) or IRA was fully funded, put the rest into investments. See many past answers. A house you are living in is not an investment. It is a purchase, just as rental is a purchase. Buying a house to rent out is starting a business. If you want to spend the ongoing time and effort and cash running a business, and if you can buy at the right time in the right place for the righr price, this can be a reasonable investment. If you aren't willing to suffer the pains of being a landlord, it's less attractive; you can hire someone to manage it for you but that cuts the income significantly. Starting a business: Remember that many, perhaps most, small businesses fail. If you really want to run a business it can be a good investment, again assuming you can buy at the right time/price/place and are willing and able to invest the time and effort and money to support the business. Nothing produces quick return with low risk. |
What to do if my aging father is sustaining a hobby that is losing several thousand dollars every month? | You've already counted the cost. It will cost your family ~$10,000 per month until your father dies, or until there's no money left, to enable him to pretend that he is a successful business owner. I'd ask him when he thinks business is going to pick up again. He may be honest with himself. Or, ask him to consider what will happen if he outlives the money that's going out the door. Ask him if he would like to be bankrupt on top of needing to close his business. (I don't view asking those questions as being unloving, by the way.) |
Is there any instance where less leverage will get you a better return on a rental property? | I would say that you should keep in mind one simple idea. Leverage was the principal reason for the 2008 financial meltdown. For a great explanation on this, I would HIGHLY recommend Michael Lewis' book, "The Big Short," which does an excellent job in spelling out the case against being highly leveraged. As Dale M. pointed out, losses are greatly magnified by your degree of leverage. That being said, there's nothing wrong with being highly leveraged as a short-term strategy, and I want to emphasize the "short-term" part. If, for instance, an opportunity arises where you aren't presently liquid enough to cover then you could use leverage to at least stay in the game until your cash situation improves enough to de-leverage the investment. This can be a common strategy in equities, where you simply substitute the term "leverage" for the term "margin". Margin positions can be scary, because a rapid downturn in the market can cause margin calls that you're unable to cover, and that's disastrous. Interestingly, it was the 2008 financial crisis which lead to the undoing of Bernie Madoff. Many of his clients were highly leveraged in the markets, and when everything began to unravel, they turned to him to cash out what they thought they had with him to cover their margin calls, only to then discover there was no money. Not being able to meet the redemptions of his clients forced Madoff to come clean about his scheme, and the rest is history. The banks themselves were over-leveraged, sometimes at a rate of 50-1, and any little hiccup in the payment stream from borrowers caused massive losses in the portfolios which were magnified by this leveraging. This is why you should view leverage with great caution. It is very, very tempting, but also fraught with extreme peril if you don't know what you're getting into or don't have the wherewithal to manage it if anything should go wrong. In real estate, I could use the leverage of my present cash reserves to buy a bigger property with the intent of de-leveraging once something else I have on the market sells. But that's only a wise play if I am certain I can unwind the leveraged position reasonably soon. Seriously, know what you're doing before you try anything like this! Too many people have been shipwrecked by not understanding the pitfalls of leverage, simply because they're too enamored by the profits they think they can make. Be careful, my friend. |
I made an investment with a company that contacted me, was it safe? | My personal experience tells me that nearly 100% of people who approach you have their own interests in mind. Things you searched yourself will be more beneficial. |
Low Fee Income Generating Investments for a Trust | If your primary goal is no / minimized fees, there are 3 general options, as I see it: Based on the fact that you want some risk, interest-only investments would not be great. Consider - 2% interest equals only $1,500 annually, and since the trust can only distribute income, that may be limited. Based on the fact that you seem to have some hesitation on risk, and also limited personal time able to govern the trust (which is understandable), I would say keep your investment mix simple. By this I mean, creating a specific portfolio may seem desirable, but could also become a headache and, in my opinion, not desirable for a trust executor. You didn't get into the personal situation, but I assume you have a family / close connection to a young person, and are executor of a trust set up on someone's death. That not be the case for you, but given that you are asking for advice rather than speaking with those involved, I assume it is similar enough for this to be applicable: you don't want to set yourself up to feel emotionally responsible for taking on too much risk, impacting the trustee(s)'s life negatively. Therefore, investing in a few limited index funds seems to match what you're looking for in terms of risk, reward, and time required. One final consideration - if you want to maximize annual distributions to the trustee(s)'s, consider that you may be best served by seeking high-dividend paying stock (although again, probably don't do this on a stock-by-stock basis unless you can commit the time to fully manage it). Returns in the form of stock increases are good, but they will not immediately provide income that the trust can distribute. If you also wish to grow the corpus of the trust, then stock growth is okay, but if you want to maximize immediate distributions, you need to focus on returns through income (dividends & interest), rather than returns through value increase. |
How should one structure a portfolio given the possibility that a Total Stock Market Index might decline and not recover for a long time? | Here are a few things that you could try. But note that they are all capable of failing. They will just reduce the chance of you personally having a lost decade. First a quibble: John Bogle advocates a total stock market index (something like Vanguard's VTSMX) instead of an S&P fund, as the latter represents "only" 85% or so of the US market's total capitalization. Smaller companies behave slightly differently than members of the S&P, so this might provide a small help. Bogle also advocates holding some bonds in addition to equities. I'll expand on that below. Account for dividends. Just because the value of the index is the same as its value 10 or 20 years ago doesn't necessarily mean that decade was lost. The companies in the S&P are currently paying out an annualized dividend of about 2%. Even if the actual value of the index doesn't change, you're still getting that 2% per year. Include bonds. As I mentioned above, Bogle recommends holding some bonds. I have seen two common rules. One is to never have less than 20% of your total holdings in bonds, and never have more than 80% of your total holdings in bonds. The other popular rule is to hold your age in bonds. For example, I'm about 30, so I should keep about 30% of my holdings in bonds. Regardless of the split, rebalance periodically to keep yourself at that split. What effect would holding bonds have on a lost decade? To make the math easy, let's say you split your holdings evenly between an S&P fund and 10 year Treasuries. Coincidentally, 10 year T-notes have the same 2% yield as the S&P dividends. If you're getting that on half your holdings, and nothing on the other half, you're netting 1% per year. Not great, but not totally lost. To illustrate the effect of rebalancing, use my example of a 70/30 stock/bond split. The S&P lost about 50% of its value from its peak to the bottom of the market in early 2008. If you only held stock, you would need the market to increase in value by 100% in order for you to recover that value. If 30% of your holdings are in bonds, and you rebalance at exactly the bottom of the stock market, you only need the stock index to increase in value by about 80% from the bottom in order to make you whole again. I mention those two to emphasize that your investment return is not just a function of the price of a stock index. Dollar cost average. It's rare that you will actually face the situation of putting (say) $100,000 into the market all at once, let it sit for 10-20 years, then take it all out at once. The situation you face is closer to putting about $1000 into the market every month for 100 months. If you do that, then you're getting a different price for each purchase you make. Your actual return will be a weighted average of the return from each of those purchases. But note that this could help or hurt you. Using the chart Victor showed in his answer, if your lost decade is from one peak to the next peak, your average price will be below the price you would have entered and left at. So this helps. But if your lost decade is from trough to trough, then your average price is higher than the start and end price, so this has hurt you. Those are the two extreme cases, and the general case will be somewhere in between. And you can use these regular purchases to help you carry out your regular rebalancing. Foreign equities. Since you mention the S&P500 specifically, I assume that you are in the United States. The US equities is approximately 45% of the world equities market. So even if the S&P500 has a lost decade, it's unlikely that the rest of the world will also have a lost decade at the same time. For comparison, the Tokyo Stock Exchange is the third largest in the world (behind the US's NYSE and NASDAQ); the market cap of the TSE is less than 20% that of the combined market cap of the NYSE and the NASDAQ, which puts it at about 10% of the world's market cap. When the Nikkei had its lost decades, no one else had a lost decade. Note that buying foreign equities is more expensive than buying domestic, and it exposes you to fluctuations in the exchange rate of the currencies. But the benefit of diversification probably outweighs those downsides. And obviously it's easier to diversify away from Japan than it is to diversify away from the United States. But there are people who advocate holding exactly the market weight of every country in the world. |
Is it safe to accept money in the mail? | The US Postal Service to my recollection recommends only mailing cash or items with cash-like characteristics using Registered Mail service. Registered mail is expensive and a pain in the butt for everyone, as it requires an audit trail for each individual who touches the mailing. If you're doing a lot of business and word gets out that you're accepting cash payments via the mail, you'll probably attract unwanted attention from the tax authorities as well. It's fairly unusual. |
When are stop market/limit orders visible on the open market? | From the non-authoritative Investopedia page: A stop-limit order will be executed at a specified price, or better, after a given stop price has been reached. Once the stop price is reached, the stop-limit order becomes a limit order to buy or sell at the limit price or better. So once the stop price has been breached, your limit order is placed and will be on the order books as a $9 ask. For a vanilla stop order, a market order will be placed and will be filled using the highest active bid(s). |
How smart is it to really be 100% debt free? | Would you run a marathon with ankle weights on? It starts off as ankle weights, but then grows into a ball and chain as you dig yourself a little deeper each time you use your credit card (and then don't payoff the balance because "something more important came up"). I would love for my wife to be able to be home and raise our son, but we simply can't afford to do that with the amount of debt we have. We are clawing our way out, and will pay off one student loan and a car loan, then start saving for a house and once we have that, we'll get back to debt reduction. Get debt free. That's where we are headed. Most of it is student loans at this point, but debt will take away your freedom to do whatever you like down the line. It just increases your overhead in the long run. |
My bank often blocks my card during purchases - what is the most reliable bank card? (UK) | This question is likely to be closed as a product recommendation request. But if you are willing to change the question a bit, perhaps to "How do I avoid having my debit card declined when I know I have good funds" it becomes a reasonable general question. And my answer follows. I can tell you the same thing happens to those of us with credit cards. It can happen when your buying pattern changes. Suddenly buying a lot of merchandise, especially away from home. Nothing like having your card declined while with relatives you visit or while on vacation. I'd talk to the bank and ask for advice how to avoid this. I've called my card issuer to tell them I'll in X city for these dates, to expect charges from there. That seems to work well. |
How can I stop wasting food? | You want to combine a set of techniques to avoid throwing food away. Consider setting aside a weekend day or other non-busy time to do some food prep. Check to see if there is anything in the fridge that needs to be used quickly and prioritize meals that use that item. Make a weekly menu and get your groceries. Chop all the vegetables and fruits you need for the week's meals. Cook meats that can be cooked in advance. Chefs call the concept of having everything ready for making a meal "mis en place." Try to do yours in advance to energize you for cooking and also make you more likely to cook on those nights you've been at the office late. Get to know and love your freezer. Buy frozen meat in bulk and portion individually (wrap 1/2 lb blocks of ground beef and chicken pieces in foil then store in freezer bags, for example). Get frozen packaged fish fillets for seafood. Boil a whole chicken, shred the meat, and have on hand for easy meals like tacos, enchiladas, chicken pot pie, pasta, etc. Do the same with beef roasts or pork shoulder for pulled pork, etc. Freeze vegetables and fruits if you can't use them in time (or buy frozen vegetables to begin with). You can even consider making dumplings like perogis or pelmeni and freezing for a homemade alternative to a frozen food aisle meal. You can even go all the way with freezer cooking. Cook with shelf-stable items. Rice, pasta, beans, lentils, canned goods, and other items can be made into major components of a meal. When you do buy something perishable that doesn't freeze well, try to utilize it in more than one of your meals for the week. This works well for items like fresh herbs. If you don't want to spend a lot of time cooking, a source like stonesoup is a great place to start - many recipes there can be finished in under 10 minutes, most are five ingredients or less, and all are tasty and good for you. This question from Seasoned Advice has a lot of great suggestions, although geared towards a college student, that you should consider. |
Can paying down a mortgage be considered an “investment”? | Your mortgage represents a negative cash flow of $X for N months. The typical mortgage prepayment doesn't reduce your next payment, but does reduce the length of the mortgage. If you look at the amortization table of a 30 year loan, you might see a payment of $1000 but only $50 going to principal. So if on day one you send an extra $51 or so to the bank, you find that in 30 years you just saved that $1000 payment. In effect, it was a long term bond or CD, yielding the post tax rate of the mortgage. Say your loan were 7%. At 7%, money doubles every 10 years or so. 30 years is 3 doubles or 8X. If I were to offer you $1000 and ask for $7500 in 30 years, you might accept it, with an agreement to buy me out if you refinanced. For me, that would be an investment. Just like buying a bond. In fact, there is a real return, as you see the cash flow at the end. The payments 'not made' are your payback. Those who insist it's not an investment are correct in the strict sense of the word's definition, but pedantic for the fact in practice, the prepayment is a choice to be considered alongside other investment choices. When I have a mortgage, I am the mortgagor, the bank, the mortgagee. Same as a company issuing a bond, the Bank holds my bond and I'm making payments to them. They hold my bond as an investment. There is no question of that. In fact, they package these and sell them as CMOs, groups of mortgages. A pre-payment is me buying back the last coupon on my mortgage. I fail to see the distinction between me 'buying back' $10K in future coupons on my own loan or me investing $10K in someone else's loans. The real question for me is whether this makes sense when rates are so low. At 4%, I'd say it's a matter of prioritizing any high rate debt and any other investments that might yield more. But even so, it's an investment yielding 4%. Over the years, I've developed the priorities of where to put new money - The priorities are debatable. I have my opinion, and my reasons to back them up. In general, it's a balance between risk and return. In my opinion, there's something wrong with ignoring a dollar for dollar match on the 401(k) in most circumstances. Others seem to prefer being 100% debt free before saving at all. There's a balance that might be different for each individual. As I started, the mortgage is a fixed return, with no chance to just get it back if needed. If your cash savings is pretty high, and the choice is a .001% CD or prepay a 4% mortgage, I'd use some funds to pay it down. But not to the point you have no liquid reserves. |
That “write your own mortgage” thing; how to learn about it | It sounds like you are describing "seller-financed" mortgages (also sometimes called "self-financed", where "self" is the seller). In essence the buyer and seller enter into a legal contract (a promissory note) that specifies the payment schedule, interest rate, etc. The nature of the agreement is similar to the kind of mortgage agreement you'd get from the bank, but no bank is involved; it's just an agreeement directly between the buyer and seller. If you search for "seller-financed mortgage" or "self-financed mortgage" you can find a good deal more info about this kind of arrangement. Here is a useful article from Investopedia, here is one from Forbes, and here is one from Nolo. Broadly speaking, the advantages and disadvantages of seller financing are two sides of the same coin: by doing the agreement yourself without bank involvement, you can cut out procedural red tape, delays, and requirements that a bank might insist on --- but in so doing you may expose yourself to risks that those procedures are designed to shield you from. Most obviously, as the seller, you receive only the down payment up front (not the entire purchase price, as you would if the buyer got a bank loan), and if the buyer doesn't follow through on the agreement, you're on your own as far as starting foreclosure, etc. You can read up on some of the linked pages for more details about the pros and cons. In general, as those pages note, seller-financed mortgages are relatively rare. A home is a big purchase, and if you don't know what you're doing it's easy to screw up in a way that could cost you a large amount of money if things go wrong. |
Working abroad in Australia, what is involved financially and administratively? | If you think there is no complication in your application and you can easily satisfy all criteria you can do the process yourself without using any agent and save few thousand dollars. I have done myself. Another cost Chris forgot to mention is the medical examination cost which is mandatory. If your certificates and docs are non-English translation fees are quite high as well. The immigration process is very bureaucratic and requires lot of supporting documents. As for living in Australia, Rent, Car and living expenses are high compared to US. But in Sydney and Melbourne you can rent near public transport, which isn't too bad (well not like Europe ). So having a car is not essential. Rent for a decent flat in these cities will be $300 - $350 p/w and you may have to pay 4-6 weeks as advance. You can get a lot of information from the dept. of immingration website. |
Does the bid price of a stock change depending on which brokerage I am using? | They could have different quotes as there are more than a few pieces here. Are you talking a Real Time Level II quote or just a delayed quote? Delayed quotes could vary as different companies would be using different time points in their data. You aren't specifying exactly what kind of quote from which system are you using here. The key to this question is how much of a pinpoint answer do you want and how prepared are you to pay for that kind of access to the automated trades happening? Remember that there could well be more than a few trades happening each millisecond and thus latency is something to be very careful here, regardless of the exchange as long as we are talking about first-world stock exchanges where there are various automated systems being used for trading. Different market makers is just a possible piece of the equation here. One could have the same market maker but if the timings are different,e.g. if one quote is at 2:30:30 and the other is at 2:30:29 there could be a difference given all the trades processed within that second, thus the question is how well can you get that split second total view of bids and asks for a stock. You want to get all the outstanding orders which could be a non-trivial task. |
What to do with old company's 401k? [duplicate] | Your best bets are a Roth IRA or traditional IRA. If you roll it to a Roth, you will have to pay taxes on the amount you roll over (unless it was a Roth 401k), however what is in the Roth will grow tax free and it will be tax free when you withdraw. With a traditional IRA, you won't owe taxes on the money now but will pay taxes when you withdraw. You won't be able to withdraw this money until 59 1/2 years of age without paying a penalty, the same goes for your current 401k. If you take the money (for mortgage, other investment, etc.) and don't roll it over to a qualified account, you will owe taxes on it plus a 10% penalty. So you will only get between 60% and 70% of its value. |
What is the rationale behind brokerages establishing tiers/levels for options trading? | The different levels are somewhat related to levels of risk. Writing a covered call is pretty low risk, in the sense that if I buy the stock but sell a call, I now have a lower cost for the stock, and however low the stock drops, I'm still slightly better off than the regular stock buyer. Covered call writing is often used to generate premium income from a stock portfolio, and less as a tool for speculation. Buying a call or put is simpler in execution, but the risk of losing the entire amount spent (I actually avoid the word invested here) due to leverage involved isn't just a possibility — it can be pretty likely depending on the strike price. Put writing and uncovered (naked) call writing can entail even higher risk relative to the premium received — consider extreme moves in the underlying to understand the potential losses involved. The more sophisticated trades are presumed to take a bit more experience and tolerance for risk and each broker has its own set of criteria to allow the client to trade at each level. |
Learning investing and the stock market | It is great that you want to learn more about the Stock Market. I'm curious about the quantitative side of analyzing stocks and other financial instruments. Does anyone have a recommendation where should I start? Which books should I read, or which courses or videos should I watch? Do I need some basic prerequisites such as statistics or macro and microeconomics? Or should I be advanced in those areas? Although I do not have any books or videos to suggest to you at the moment, I will do some more research and edit this answer. In order to understand the quantitative side of analyzing the stock market to have people take you serious enough and trust you with their money for investments, you need to have strong math and analytical skills. You should consider getting a higher level of education in several of the following: Mathematics, Economics, Finance, Statistics, and Computer Science. In mathematics, you should at least understand the following concepts: In finance, you should at least understand the following concepts: In Computer Science, you should probably know the following: So to answer your question, about "do you need to be advanced in those areas", I strongly suggest you do. I've read that books on that topics are such as The Intelligent Investor and Reminiscences of A Stock Operator. Are these books really about the analytics of investing, or are they only about the philosophy of investing? I haven't read the Reminiscences of A Stock Operator, but the Intelligent Investor is based on a philosophy of investing that you should only consider but not depend on when you make investments. |
What's The Best Way To Pay Off My Collections? | If you can pay it then there's no need to involve a credit counselor. After all, their main role when you use them is to negotiate payments with creditors so you can pay off your debts. In this case you have the funds to pay, so why make it any more complicated than it needs to be? To be honest, a 597 score is going to make it tough for you to find auto financing. Whatever options you find, they'll charge pretty steep interest rates and have high payments because they'll keep you on as short a payment term as your finances will allow. I would strongly suggest that you work on improving your score for awhile before trying to buy a car. If you can, buy a car for cash. You might not get much, but it will solve your transportation problem while you work on resolving your credit issues. Using a credit counselor won't have any impact on your credit score as far as the debts are concerned. What will make a difference is not having them show as open collections, which is pretty bad. You'll still take a hit for having gone to collections in the first place, but paying them off will mitigate at least some of the effect. I hope this helps. Good luck! |
A merchant requests that checks be made out to “Cash”. Should I be suspicious? | To put a positive spin on the whole thing, maybe it's a small family shop, and having the check made out to "cash" means that your barber can hand it to someone else without the need to countersign. Or maybe his last name is "Cash" - there was a pretty famous singer who fit that description. Either way, it's not your place to nanny his finances. |
Purpose of having good credit when you are well-off? | Your dad may have paid an "opportunity cost" for that outright purchase. If the money he saved had been invested elsewhere, he may have made more money. If he was that well off, then his interest rate should have been the lowest possible. My own father is a multi-millionaire (not myself) and he could afford to have paid for his house outright. He didn't though. To do so would have meant cashing in on several investments. I don't know his interest rate but let's say it was 2.5%. If he invests that million dollars into something he expects to get a 7% return on in the same period, then he would make more money by borrowing the money. Hence, he would be paying an opportunity cost. Assuming you need to work, some jobs will also do background or credit checks. Credit cards can be used by well off people to actually make them money by offering rewards (compared to straight cash transactions). The better your credit history, the better the cards/rewards you can get. You can build that credit history better by having these loans and making timely payments. |
Buy US ETF as foreigner — a bad idea? | A quick update for people finding this thread through Google. With the help of a few awesome Bogleheads, I compiled all the relevant research done into two Wiki articles: This includes comparing US to Irish domiciled ETFs, how to calculate tax withholding leakage and estate tax concerns. Hope you find this useful. |
How can I increase my hourly pay as a software developer? | Short term: ask for a raise or look for a new job that pays more. Longer term: |
What is an “at close order” in the stock market? | Investopedia defines it in the following way: It's essentially a market order that doesn't get entered until the last minute (or thereabouts) of trading. With this type of order you are not necessarily guaranteed the closing price but usually something very similar, depending on the liquidity in the market and bid-ask for the security in question. Traders who believe that a security or market will move more heavily during the last few minutes of trading will often place such an order in the hopes of having their order filled at a more desirable price. |
Dad paying for my new home in cash. How can I buy the house from him? | Presumably this house is a great deal for you for some reason if you are willing to go to great lengths such as these to acquire it. I suggest you have your father purchase the house with cash, then you purchase the house from him. You might want to discuss this with the title company, it's possible that there are some fees that they will waive if you close both sales through them in a short period of time. If the home will appraise for a higher amount than purchase, then you may be able to get a mortgage without a significant down-payment. If not, then you will need to owe your father at least the amount of the down-payment at closing time. |
Why does a ETN that is supposed to track Crude Oil like UWTI show constant decline every year? And am I an idiot for investing in it? | After looking at both S&P GSCI Crude Oil Index Excess Return (INDEXSP:SPGSCLP) and CS VS 3x LC ETN NYSEARCA: UWTI they seem to track well (using Google Finance). I'm not seeing where your statement this ETN loses whether oil is gaining or not holds true. Both have posted a year-over-year loss. In the past year the Crude Oil index has fallen from a high of 494 on October 6, 2014 to a low of 213 as of today October 5th, 2015. So of course the UWTI will lose as well. Please also notice that that, as stated in the prospectus for UWTI: The ETNs are intended to be daily trading tools for sophisticated investors to manage daily trading risks. They are designed t o achieve their stated investment objectives on a daily basis, but their performance over different periods of time can differ significantly fr om their stated daily objectives. The ETNs are riskier than securities that have intermediate or long-term investment objectives, and may not be sui table for investors who plan to hold them for a period other than one day. You might want to look into investing in an ETF for long term investment goals and objectives. Oil ETF List |
Should I file taxes or Incorperate a personal project? | There are two reasons for incorporating a business in Canada - limiting liability and providing some freedom in structuring your taxes. Since you are asking about taxes, I will restrict myself to that topic. First of all, remember that if you don't make much money, there isn't much tax to save by clever structuring of your affairs. And if you do incorporate, you will pay taxes as a corporation, and pay taxes again on your salary paid from that corporation. It can still be advantageous, because the small business tax rate is less that the higher tax brackets of personal taxes, and you don't have to pay out all of the profit as salary. If you don't incorporate, you still must pay taxes on your net income from the business. (See brian's answer.) Definitely keep track of your income and expenses, even if you don't plan on making money, in case you get audited. If the CRA wants to call your hobby a business, you will need to show that you haven't made any profit. I am just giving you a few bits of advice because this subject is complicated. Too complicated for an answer on this site. If you are still interested, go to your local library and get some books on the subject. |
Where should I park my rainy-day / emergency fund? | First off, you generally want to park your emergency fund somewhere that is "safe", meaning something that is not subject to market fluctuations. Your emergency fund is something you need to be able to count on when times are tough! That rules out things like stock market investments. Secondly, you need to think about how quickly you will need access to the money. If you have an emergency, odds are you don't want to be waiting around for weeks/months/years for the money to become available. This rules out most fixed-term investments (Bonds, traditional CDs, etc). If you are concerned that you will need near-instant access to your emergency money, then you probably want to keep it in a Savings or Money Market Account at the same bank as your checking account. Most banks will let you transfer money between local accounts instantly. Unfortunately, your local bank probably has pitiful interest rates for the Savings/MMA, far below the inflation rate. This means your money will slowly lose value over time. Be prepared to keep contributing to it! For most people, being able to draw the cash from your fund within a few days (<1 week) is sufficient. Worst case, you charge something on your credit card, and then pay down the card when the emergency fund withdrawal arrives. If "money within a few days" is okay for you, there are a few options: Money Market (Mutual) Funds (not to be confused with a Money Market Account) - This is the traditional place to keep an emergency fund. These are investment funds you can buy with a brokerage account. An example of such a fund would be Fidelity Cash Reserves. MMFs are not FDIC insured, so they are not exactly zero risk. However, they are considered extremely safe. They almost never go down in value (only a few times in the past few decades), and when they have, the fund manager or the Federal Govt stepped in to restore the value. They usually offer slightly better return than a local savings account, and are available in taxable and non-taxable varieties. Online High-Yield Savings or Money Market Account - These are a relatively new invention. It's basically a the same thing as what your local bank offers, but it's online-only. No local branch means low overhead, so they offer higher interest rates (2.0% vs 0.5% for your local bank). Some of them used to be over 5% before the economy tanked. Like your local bank, it is FDIC insured. One bit of caution: Some of these accounts have become "gimmicky" lately. They have started to do things like promo rates for a few months, only offering the high interest rate on the first few $K deposited, limiting the amount that can be withdrawn, etc. Be sure to read the details before you open an account! No-Penalty CDs - Certificates of Deposit usually offer a better rate than a Savings Account, but your money is locked up until the CD term is up (e.g. 36 months). If you need to cash out before then, you pay a penalty. Some banks have begun to offer CDs that you can cash out with no penalty at all. These can offer better rates than the savings account. Make sure it really is no-penalty though. Also watch what your options are for slowly adding money over time. This can be an issue if you want to deposit $100 from every paycheck. Rewards Checking Accounts - These are checking accounts that will pay a relatively high interest rate (3% or more) provided you generate enough activity. Most of them will have requirements like you must have direct deposit setup with them, and you must do a minimum number of debit card transactions from the account per month. If you can stay on top of the requirements, these can be a great deal. If you don't stay on top of it, your interest rate usually drops back to something pitiful, though. Personally, we use the Online High-Yield Savings Account for our emergency fund. I'm not going to make a specific recommendation as to which bank to use. The best deal changes almost week to week. Instead, I will say to check out Bankrate.com for a list of savings accounts and CDs that you can sort. The Bank Deals blog is a good place to follow rate changes. |
Got a large cash sum, wanna buy stocks. Should I buy all at once, or spread it over time? | Depends on what you are, an investor or a speculator. An investor will look at an 'indefinite' investment period. A speculator will be after a fast buck. If you are an investor, buy your stock once as that will cost less commissions. After all, you'll sell your stock in 10, 15, 20 years. |
Does a stock holder profit from a reverse-stock split? | I just had a reverse split done 1 to 35. I went from 110,000 shares and a negative 13k to 3172 shares, and I still had a negative 13k. If your company does a reverse split take the lost and get out, it's bad news all the way around. |
Warren Buffett and Charles Munger advice for small investors? | Warren Buffett: 'Investing Advice For You--And My Wife' (And Other Quotes Of The Week): What I advise here is essentially identical to certain instructions I’ve laid out in my will. One bequest provides that cash will be delivered to a trustee for my wife’s benefit…My advice to the trustee could not be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard’s.) I believe the trust’s long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors… Similarly from Will Warren Buffett's investment advice work for you?: Specifically, Buffett wants the trustee of his estate to put 10 percent of his wife's cash inheritance in short-term government bonds and 90 percent in a low-cost S&P index fund - and he tips his hat specifically to Bogle's Vanguard in doing so. Says Buffett: "I believe the trust's long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors - whether pension funds, institutions or individuals." |
How much percent of my salary should I use to invest in company stock? | One such strategy I have heard for those who have this opportunity is to purchase the maximum allowed. When the window to sell opens, sell all of your shares and repurchase the most you can with the amount you gained (or keep an equivalent to avoid another transaction fee). This allows you to buy at a discount, and spread out the risk by investing elsewhere. This way you are really only exposing yourself to lose money which you wouldn't have had access to without the stock discount. |
How to quantify differences in return with low expense ratio vs high expense ratio mutual funds? | Yes you should take in the expenses being incurred by the mutual fund. This lists down the fees charged by the mutual fund and where expenses can be found in the annual statement of the fund. To calculate fees and expenses. As you might expect, fees and expenses vary from fund to fund. A fund with high costs must perform better than a low-cost fund to generate the same returns for you. Even small differences in fees can translate into large differences in returns over time. You don't pay expenses, so the money is taken from the assets of the fund. So you pay it indirectly. If the expenses are huge, that may point to something i.e. fund managers are enjoying at your expense, money is being used somewhere else rather than being paid as dividends. If the expenses are used in the growth of the fund, that is a positive sign. Else you can expect the fund to be downgraded or upgraded by the credit rating agencies, depending on how the credit rating agencies see the expenses of the fund and other factors. Generally comparison should be done with funds invested in the same sectors, same distribution of assets so that you have a homogeneous comparison to make. Else it would be unwise to compare between a fund invested in oil companies and other in computers. Yes the economy is inter twined, but that is not how a comparison should be done. |
Are money market instrument and short-term debt same? | The Money Market is a place where one trades Instruments. The market is similar to that of the Stock Market. The instruments traded in Money Markets include Short Term Debt Instruments as well as FX Swap Instruments and Mortgage & Asset Backed Securities. The FX & Mortgage Securities are not Debt instruments per se. They also include other custom created instruments that are traded. The definition of Short Term debt is any guaranteed instrument with a maturity of less than a year. These instruments are used in various transactions, including retail and the Money Market is not the only place these are traded. |
How can I compare the risk of different investing opportunities? | First of all, setting some basics: What is a sound way to measure the risk of each investment in order to compare them with each other ? There is no single way that can be used across all asset classes / risks. Generally speaking, you want to perform both a quantitative and qualitative assessment of risks that you identify. Quantitative risk assessment may involve historical data and/or parametric or non-parametric models. Using historical data is often simple but may be hard in cases where the amount of data you have on a given event is low (e.g. risk of bust by investing in a cryptocurrency). Parametric and non-parametric risk quantification models exist (e.g. Value at Risk (VaR), Expected Shortfall (ES), etc) and abound but a lot of them are more complicated than necessary for an individual's requirements. Qualitative risk assessment is "simply" assessing the likelihood and severity of risks by using intuition, expert judgment (where that applies), etc. One may consult with outside parties (e.g. lawyers, accountants, bankers, etc) where their advisory may help highlighting some risks or understanding them better. To ease comparing investment opportunities, you may want to perform a risk assessment on categories of risks (e.g. investing in the stock market vs bond market). To compare between those categories, one should look at the whole picture (quantitative and qualitative) with their risk appetite in mind. Of course, after taking those macro decisions, you would need to further assess risks on more micro decisions (e.g. Microsoft or Google ?). You would then most likely end up with better comparatives as you would be comparing items similar in nature. Should I always consider the worst case scenario ? Because when I do that, I always can lose everything. Generally speaking, you want to consider everything so that you can perform a risk assessment and decide on your risk mitigating strategy (see Q4). By assessing the likelihood and severity of risks you may find that even in cases where you are comparatively as worse-off (e.g. in case of complete bust), the likelihood may differ. For example, keeping gold in a personal stash at home vs your employer going bankrupt if you are working for a large firm. Do note that you want to compare risks (both likelihood and severity) after any risk mitigation strategy you may want to put in place (e.g. maybe putting your gold in a safety box in a secure bank would make the likelihood of losing your gold essentially null). Is there a way to estimate the probability of such events, better than intuition ? Estimating probability or likelihood is largely dependent on data on hand and your capacity to model events. For most practical purposes of an individual, modelling would be way off in terms of reward-benefits. You may therefore want to simply research on past events and assign them a 1-5 (1 being very low, 5 being very high) risk rating based on your assessment of the likelihood. For example, you may assign a 1 on your employer going bankrupt and a 2 or 3 on being burglarized. This is only slightly better than intuition but has the merit of being based on data (e.g. frequency of burglary in your neighborhood). Should I only consider more probable outcomes and have a plan for them if they occur? This depends largely on your risk appetite. The more risk averse you are, the more thorough you will want to be in identifying, tracking and mitigating risks. For the risks that you have identified as relevant, or of concern, you may opt to establish a risk mitigating strategy, which is conventionally one of accepting, sharing (by taking insurance, for example), avoiding and reducing. It may not be possible to share or reduce some risks, especially for individuals, and so often the response will be either to accept or avoid the given risks by opting in or out on an opportunity. |
What home improvements are tax deductible? | Home Improvements that improve the home's Energy Efficiency are currently eligible for federal tax credits. This includes renewable energy equipment (solar panels, etc.) and Nonbusiness Energy Property Tax Credit. The credit is 30% of the cost. From Intuit Turbo Tax: Energy Tax Credit: Equipment and materials can qualify for the Nonbusiness Energy Property Credit only if they meet technical efficiency standards set by the Department of Energy. The manufacturer can tell you whether a particular item meets those standards. For this credit, the IRS distinguishes between two kinds of upgrades. The first is "qualified energy efficiency improvements," and it includes the following: •Home insulation •Exterior doors •Exterior windows and skylights •Certain roofing materials The second category is "residential energy property costs." It includes: •Electric heat pumps •Electric heat pump water heaters •Central air conditioning systems •Natural gas, propane or oil waterheaters •Stoves that use biomass fuel •Natural gas, propane or oil furnaces •Natural gas, propane or oil hot water boilers •Advanced circulating fans for natural gas, propane or oil furnaces |
Will I be able to purchase land? | If there is land for sale, you can buy it. The United States doesn't have many restrictions on the purchase of land. However, you need to be able to afford it. Dependent on where you are looking $20,000 can either be a lot or very little land, I suspect that the question you were looking to ask is 'can I afford it?'. Have a look around, there should be plenty of places for you to find land for sale. As for credit, it is more important that you don't build bad credit. With things like mortgages, your salary is likely to be more important than your credit score alone, but no one will give you a dime if you have a record of not paying your bills. |
Guide to save money in all-time life | You will find lots of rules of thumb but there is no universal truth to how much you should save. There are factors you DO need to consider though: you should start as early as possible to set money aside for retirement. You should then use a retirement calculator to at least get an understanding of the amount you need to set aside each month to achieve the desired retirement income; your default should be not to spend money and only spend money when you must. Leisure, travel and eating out should come last after you have saved up; you should have funds for different terms. For example, my wife and I have an emergency fund for unexpected expenses or losses in income. The rule of thumb here generally is to have 3-6 months of salary saved up. A longer term fund should be created for larger expenses like buying a car or preparing the cashdown on a property. Finally, the retirement fund which should cover your needs after you have retired. |
Paid cash for a car, but dealer wants to change price | On the surface this sounds ridiculous, which makes me suspect that there might be something that the dealer intends to cling on to; otherwise it sounds like the dealer should be ashamed to even call your son about its own incompetence. I'd recommend politely refusing the request since said mistake didn't happen on your end, and wait to see if the dealer comes back with some sort of argument. |
Prepaying a loan: Shouldn't the interest be recalculated like a shorter loan? | When you pay off a loan early, you pay the remaining principal, and you save all of the remaining interest. So you do save on interest, but it's the interest you would have paid in the future, not the interest you have paid in the past. (Your remaining balance when you pay off the loan only includes the principal, not the projected interest.) Interest is a factor of the amount borrowed, the interest rate and the amount of time you borrow the money. The sooner you repay the money, the less interest you pay. Imagine if you had taken a 30 year loan at 4% interest but were allowed to make no payments until the loan term ended. If you waited 15 years to make your first payment, you wouldn't owe the same money as if you'd made payments every month. No, instead of owing ~$64k, you'd owe ~$182k, because you had borrowed $100k for 15 years (plus the interest due) rather than borrowing a declining sum. So that's why you don't get a refund on interest for previous months. If you had started with a 16 year loan, then you would have been paying more principal every month, and your monthly amount due would have been higher to reflect that. As you paid the principal off faster, the interest each month would drop faster. Paying a huge portion of the principal at the end of the loan is not the same as steadily paying it down in the same time frame. You will pay a lot more interest in the former case, and rightfully so. It might help to consider a credit card payment in comparison. If you run up a balance and pay only the minimum each month, you pay a lot of interest over time, because your principal goes down slowly. If you suddenly pay off your credit card, you don't have to pay any more interest, but you also don't get any interest back for previous months. That's because the interest accrued each month is based on your current balance, just like your mortgage. The minimum payments are calculated differently, but the interest accrued each month uses essentially the same mechanism. |
Canada discount stock brokers: Interactive Brokers vs. Questrade? | I have had accounts at both IB and Questrade. Whatever you've heard about Questrade, sadly much of it is true pertaining to 2007-2009. I have not had any issues with their service, and making the few trades I do with the QuestraderWEB service has been flawless. In the time that I've had the account, their service has constantly been improving (statements are easier to read, customer service is more responsive). You should read what FrugalTrader and Canadian Capitalist have to say along with the combined 1000+ comments before deciding. Interactive Brokers is a whole different world. Those guys are the definition of real-time. You can get daily and weekly statements, along with the typical monthly statements. Buying power, margin, etc, is all updated in real-time and viewable in their TWS software. Trading fees are definitely lower than Questrade unless you're routinely trading 800-1000+ shares. Most of my trades cost $1. Options have a lower limit before Questrade makes more sense. And nothing beats IB for forex. Ultimately it really depends on what you will be doing. Note that IB charges a minimum monthly fee of $10 ($3 if you're young and foolish). If you don't hit that with commissions, the balance is taken from your account. Also, all other fees are passed on to you (e.g. data, order cancellation). IB also doesn't have any registered accounts such as TFSA or RRSP, and doesn't plan to. If you'll be doing a bunch of hefty trading, IB offers a trading platform free of charge, but charges for everything else. Questrade instead has a monthly fee for its QuestraderPRO and QuestraderELITE services, but that includes data and flat rate commissions. If you're just looking for a place to invest cheaply without extra fees and plan on making a few trades a year, Questrade might be the right choice. |
W8-BEN for an Indian Citizen | For filling out the W8-BEN form, please refer to the instructions in the document named: Instructions for Form W-8BEN Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding and Reporting |
Is a currency “hedged” ETF actually a more speculative instrument than an unhedged version? | I will just try to come up with a totally made up example, that should explain the dynamics of the hedge. Consider this (completely made up) relationship between USD, EUR and Gold: Now lets say you are a european wanting to by 20 grams of Gold with EUR. Equally lets say some american by 20 grams of Gold with USD. Their investment will have the following values: See how the europeans return is -15.0% while the american only has a -9.4% return? Now lets consider that the european are aware that his currency may be against him with this investment, so he decides to hedge his currency. He now enters a currency-swap contract with another person who has the opposite view, locking in his EUR/USD at t2 to be the same as at t0. He now goes ahead and buys gold in USD, knowing that he needs to convert it to EUR in the end - but he has fixed his interestrate, so that doesn't worry him. Now let's take a look at the investment: See how the european now suddenly has the same return as the American of -9.4% instead of -15.0% ? It is hard in real life to create a perfect hedge, therefore you will most often see that the are not totally the same, as per Victors answer - but they do come rather close. |
How risky are penny stocks? | Penny stocks are only appealing to the brokers who sell the penny stocks and the companies selling "penny stock signals!". Generally penny stocks provide abysmal returns to the average investor (you or me). In "The Missing Risk Premium", Falkenstein does a quick overview on average returns to penny stock investors citing the following paper "Do Investors Overpay for Stocks with Lottery-Like Payoffs? An Examination of the Returns on OTC Stocks". Over the 2000 to 2009 time period, average investors lost nearly half their investment. A comparable investment in the S&P over this period would have been flat see here. There is a good table in the book/paper showing that the average annual return for stocks priced at either a penny or ten cents range from -10 percent (for medium volume) to -30% to -40% for low or high volume. A different paper, "Too Good to Ignore? A Primer on Listed Penny Stocks" that cites the one above finds that listed, as opposed to OTC "Pink Sheet" penny stocks", have better returns, but provide no premium for the additional risk and low liquidity. The best advice here is that there is no "quick win" in penny stocks. These act more like lottery tickets and are not appropriate for the average investor. Stear clear! |
When shorting a stock, do you pay current market price or the best (lowest) available ask price? | I would never use a market order. Some brokerages have an approval process your short-sale goes through before going to market. This can take some time. So the market prices may well be quite different later. Some brokerages use a separate account for short sales, so you must get their approval for the account before you can do the trade. I like the listing of shares available for shorting the Interactive Brokers has but I have experienced orders simply going into dead-air and sitting there on the screen, not being rejected, not going to market, not doing anything --- even though the shares are on the list. |
How can my friend send $3K to me without using Paypal? | Most bank bill pay services will work for this purpose. Generally you can pay any person or business that has a valid address. As an added Paypal will no longer take ~3% of the money. |
Reconciling transactions reimbursing myself for expenses as self-employed (UK) | Any money that ScottMcGready gives to the company is a personal loan that must be repaid by the company at some point without tax consequences. Any money that the company gives to ScottMcGready is either salary (Scott pays income tax, company counts this as cost), or a dividend (Scott pays dividend tax), or a loan (Scott must repay the loan). |
What are the risks of Dividend-yielding stocks? | The risk in a divident paying stock can come from 2 sources. The business of the company, or the valuation of the stock at the time you buy. The business of the company relates to how they are running things, the risks they are taking with the company, innovations in their pipeline, and their competitive landscape. You can find all sorts of examples of companies that paid nice dividends but didn't end so well... Eastman Kodak, Enron, Lehman brothers, all used to pay very nice dividends at some point... On the other hand you have the valuation. The company is running great, but the market has unrealistic expectations about it. Think Amazon and Yahoo back in 2001... the price was way too high for the company's worth. As the price of a stock goes up, the return that you get from its future cash flows (dividends) goes down (and viceversa). If you want to go deep into the subject, check out this course from Chicago U they spend a lot of time talking about dividends, future returns from stocks and the risk rewards of finding stocks by methods such as these. |
What is the preferred way to finance home improvements when preparing to sell your house? | sheegaon's reply looks fine to me, a HELOC can usually be set up for a minimal ($50?) fee, and is currently a pretty low rate, mine is 2.5%. If this doesn't appeal to you, my other suggestion is a 401(k) loan. While this is usually a last resort and 'not' recommended, a short term use may make sense. The rate is low, and you can pay in back in full after moving into the new house. |
How can a 'saver' maintain or increase wealth in low interest rate economy? | Since the other answers have covered mutual funds/ETFs/stocks/combination, some other alternatives I like - though like everything else, they involve risk: Example of how these other "saving methods" can be quite effective: about ten years ago, I bought a 25lb bag of quinoa at $19 a bag. At the same company, quinoa is now over $132 for a 25lb bag (590%+ increase vs. the S&P 500s 73%+ increase over the same time period). Who knows what it will cost in ten years. Either way, working directly with the farmers, or planting it myself, may become even cheaper in the future, plus learning how to keep and store the seeds for the next season. |
Option trading: High dollar value stock option and equity exposure | You're forgetting the fundamental issue, that you never have to actually exercise the options you buy. You can either sell them to someone else or, if they're out of the money, let them expire and take the loss. It isn't uncommon at all for people to buy both a put and call option (this is a "straddle" when the strike price of both the put and call are the same). From Investopedia.com: A straddle is an options strategy in which the investor holds a position in both a call and put with the same strike price and expiration date, paying both premiums. This strategy allows the investor to make a profit regardless of whether the price of the security goes up or down, assuming the stock price changes somewhat significantly. Read more: Straddle http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/straddle.asp#ixzz4ZYytV0pT |
Who can truly afford luxury cars? | How can people afford luxury cars? The same way they can afford anything: by finding it cheaply, saving for it, or adjusting their priorities. Company cars - either paid for by the company, or as part of a bonus/compensation/salary sacrifice scheme. I have friends who drive luxury cars, but they pay £200/month - not much more than, for example, finance on a used Honda People who have paid off their mortgage. There are people who spend a decade pouring every cent they have into a mortgage. Once paid off, they have £500-1500 a month "spare" People who have different priorities to you. I'm not bothered about big houses and holidays, but I love cars: I'd rather spend an extra £100/month on my car and have a holiday every 2 years, not every year People who only run one car in the family: if you're running two cars at £200/month, then discover one of you can work from home, you could have one £400 car and still be saving money on running costs. People who don't have (or want) children. Children are expensive, if they aren't part of your plans then you can save a lot of money for luxuries. |
Equation to determine if a stock is oversold and by how much? | There are those who would suggest that due to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, stocks are always fairly valued. Consider, if non-professional posters on SE (here) had a method that worked beyond random chance, everyone seeking such a method would soon know it. If everyone used that method, it would lose its advantage. In theory, this is how stocks' values remain rational. That said, Williams %R is one such indicator. It can be seen in action on Yahoo finance - In the end, I find such indicators far less useful than the news itself. BP oil spill - Did anyone believe that such a huge oil company wouldn't recover from that disaster? It recovered by nearly doubling from its bottom after that news. A chart of NFLX (Netflix) offers a similar news disaster, and recovery. Both of these examples are not quantifiable, in my opinion, just gut reactions. A quick look at the company and answer to one question - Do I feel this company will recover? To be candid - in the 08/09 crash, I felt that way about Ford and GM. Ford returned 10X from the bottom, GM went through bankruptcy. That observation suggests another question, i.e. where is the line drawn between 'investing' and 'gambling'? My answer is that buying one stock hoping for its recovery is gambling. Being able to do this for 5-10 stocks, or one every few months, is investing. |
How to reconcile performance with dividends? | You didn't identify the fund but here is the most obvious way: Some of the stocks they owned could had dividends. Therefore they would have had to pass them on to the investors. If the fund sold shares of stocks, they could have capital gains. They would have sold stocks to pay investors who sold shares. They also could have sold shares of stock to lock in gains, or to get out of positions they no longer wanted. Therefore a fund could have dividends, and capital gains, but not have an increase in value for the year. Some investors look at how tax efficient a fund is, before investing. |
What is a “retail revolving account,” and does it improve my credit score? | A retail revolving account is a more formal name for a general credit card. A revolving account is an account created by a lender to represent debts where the outstanding balance does not have to be paid in full every month by the borrower to the lender. The borrower may be required to make a minimum payment, based on the balance amount. Retail Revolving Account Wikipedia This is different from something like a car loan or mortgage or other more structured or secured debt. It used to be somewhat common for very large retailers to issue lines of credit to their customers in the form of a store card. This card was a lot like a credit card but only accepted at the specific retailer. These kinds of cards are all but extincted. Now major retailers will simply co-brand a credit card with a major bank, the differentiation being preferred rewards when used at the retailer. |
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. |
Understanding the phrase “afford to lose” better | Well.... If you have alllll your money invested, and then there's a financial crisis, and there's a personal crisis at the same time (e.g. you lose your job) then you're in big trouble. You might not have enough money to cover your bills while you find a new job. You could lose your house, ruin your credit, or something icky like that. Think 2008. Even if there's not a financial crisis, if the money is in a tax-sheltered retirement account then withdrawing it will incur ugly penalities. Now, after you've got an emergency fund established, things are different. If you could probably ride out six to twelve months with your general-purpose savings, then with the money you are investing for the long term (retirement) there's no reason you shouldn't invest 100% of the money in stocks. The difference is that you're not going to come back for that money in 6 months, you're going to come back for it in 40 years. As for retirement savings over the long term, though, I don't think it's a good idea to think of your money in those terms. If you ever lose 100% of your money on the stock market while you've invested in diversified instruments like S&P500 index funds, you're probably screwed one way or another because that represents the core industrial base of the US economy, and you'll have better things to worry about, like looking for a used shotgun. Myself, I prefer to give the suggestion "don't invest any money in stocks if you're going to need to take it out in the next 5 years or so" because you generally shouldn't be worried about a 100% loss of all the money in stocks your retirement accounts nearly so much as you should be worried about weathering large, medium-term setbacks, like the dot-com bubble crash and the 2008 financial crisis. I save the "don't invest money unless you can afford to lose it all" advice for highly speculative instruments like gold futures or social-media IPOs. Remember also that while you might lose a lot of your money on the stock market, your savings accounts and bonds will earn you pathetic amounts by comparison, which you will slowly lose to inflation. If you've had your money invested for decades then even during a crash you may still be coming out ahead relative to bonds. |
Trouble sticking to a budget when using credit cards for day to day transactions? | Similar to what Adam F says above, except instead of just transfering the amount you spend on the credit card into the high interest account, why not keep the majority of your funds (apart from a small amount, say a couple of hundred for emergencies) in the high interest account until the credit card needs to be paid off. Even better, if you have a mortgage with an 100% offset account keep all your funds in this, and pay off your credit card in full from it on or before the due date. Being a 100% offset to your mortgage interest rate you will be saving at a higher rate than a high interest rate savings account, and you will be able to do all your normal banking from it unlike a high interest account which you usually have to link to an additional account to deposit and withdrawl money to and from. If you are to use a credit card keep these simple rules in mind: Hope this has helped, Regards Victor |
Do I have to pay taxes on income from my website or profits? | I am not an accountant, but I do run a business in the UK and my understanding is that it's a threshold thing, which I believe is £2,500. Assuming you don't currently have to submit self assessment, and your additional income from all sources other than employment (for which you already pay tax) is less than £2,500, you don't have to declare it. Above this level you have to submit self assessment. More information can be found here I also find that HMRC are quite helpful - give them a call and ask. |
Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT | I live in Kenya, and also here we have corruption. However, we use EFT, RTGS, Mobile Money and its more safe than cheques. Beware, that paper based payments cost you way more than anything electronic. Often the bank charge you for the cheque book, they charge for receiving paper based payment instruments, and settlement is often a day or two, while mobile/electronic settlement is instant. Seen from a tenants perspective, its also easier. Imagine too, the small likelihood that you loose the cheques from your tenants? Your fear for your account is understandable, but you may need to learn a little now, about how accounts are handled. In an online community only the persons with the necessary electronic credentials can withdraw from your account, being it online via your screen, or at the cashier, or by other means. Therefore, your money are safer via the electronic means. The cause of your concern / unease can be that you are relinquishing your control from a paper-based, visible system, into a system which you may not know so much about, maybe because of that you have not done so much on computers, yet. As a most recent caveat, though, don't get into the so called bitcoin technology, it is not safe, and as you saw, most recently, the very owner himself became the perpetrator breaking his very own bank by artificially inflating amounts on his own account, according to Japanese authorities. Now, electronic banking has been in existence since soon 40 years. Its based on cash, so behind the scenes, between the banks, huge deposits of cash are being moved physically, around from vault to vault, in the bank's money exchange / transaction settlement system. Thereby, a bank does not need to physically transfer money from one physical bank building to another - as they have huge loads of cash stashed in central depositories, between which they can now exchange money as compensation for cheques and electronic transfers. So, behind the scene of the electronic world, there are still physical cash being moved around, deep under the ground, in such vaults. I hope this has given you a little bit of confidence in the "modern times". If you have further questions, you are welcome. These were my 50 cents :-). My background is in software development, where I have worked on banking systems for more than 10 years, making banking systems, as part of huge teams, working for the largest banks in the world. |
What are the reasons to get more than one credit card? | nan |
Why do banks finance shared construction as mortgages instead of financing it directly and selling the apartments in a building? | Historically, Banks are mandated to take relatively safe risks with their money. In exchange, they gain a de-facto permission to invent new money. They have regulations about what mix of assets they are permitted to own. Real estate speculation will be in a different category than a mortgage to someone with good credit. Second, mortgages with a secured asset are pretty safe almost all of the time. That person might stop paying their mortgage, but it is secured; when that happens, the bank gets the secured asset (the right-to-apartment or house or what have you). In a sense, the bank loses only if both the person paying the mortgage is less creditworthy than they look, and the secured asset cannot recoup their losses. In comparison, the person paying the mortgage loses if the secured asset cannot recoup their losses. The bank is buffered from risk two fold. What more, the bank uses the customer to determine what to invest in. Deciding what to do with money is expensive and hard. By both having a customer willing to put their good credit on the line and doing due diligence on the apartment, the Bank in effect uses you as a consultant who decides this may be a solid investment. Much of the risk of failure is on you, so you have lots of incentive to make a good choice. If the Bank was instead deciding which apartment where worth buying, who would decide? A bank employee, whose bonus this year depends on finding a "great apartment to invest in?", but the consequence of a bad choice doesn't show up for many years? The people selling the bank the apartments? Such a business can exist. There are real estate companies that take money, and invest it in real estate. Often the borrow money from Banks secured against their existing real estate and use it to build more real estate. (Notice the bit about it being secured against existing real estate; things go south, Bank gets stuff). The Bank's indirect investment in that apartment in the current system is covered by appraisals, the seller, the mortgage holder, and the system deciding that the mortgage holder is creditworthy. Banks sell risk. They lend you money, you go off and do something risky with it, and they get a the low-risk return on investment of your loan. Multiple such low-risk investments provides them with a relatively dependable stream of money, which they give out to their bondholders, deposit account customers, shareholders or what have you. When you take a mortgage out for that, you are buying risk from the bank. You are more exposed to the failure of the investment than they are. They get less return if things go really well. |
Are there statistics showing percentage of online brokerage customers that are actually making a profit trading forex/futures/options? | Finding statistics is exceedingly hard, because the majority of traders lose money. That is, not only they don't "beat the markets", not only they don't "beat the benchmark" (S&P 500 being used a lot as reference): they just lose money. Finding exact numbers, quality statistics and so on is very difficult. Finding recent ones, is almost impossible. With enormous effort I have found two references that might help make an idea. One is very recent, Forex "centered" and has been prepared by a large finance group for the the Europen Central Bank (ECB). It's available on their website, at an obscure download location. The document is stated to be confidential, but its download location has been disclosed to the public by CNBC. I can't post CNBC's link because I have just joined this Stack Exchange portal so I don't have enough reputation. You can find it by looking for their article about FXCM Forex broker debacle due to the Swiss Central Bank removing the EUR/CHF peg at 1.20. The second is a 2009-ish paper about Taiwanese retail traders profitability statistics published by Oxford University Press and talks about stocks. Both documents focus on retail traders. I strongly suggest you to immediately save those documents because they tend to disappear after a while. We had a fantastic and complete statistics report made by a group of German Banks in 2011... they pulled it off in 2012. |
Are mutual funds safe from defaults? | There are very strict regulations that requires the assets which a fund buys on behalf of its investors to be kept completely separate from the fund's own assets (which it uses to pay its expenses), except for the published fees. Funds are typically audited regularly to ensure this is the case. So the only way in which a default of the fund could cause a loss of invstor money would be if the fund managers broke the regulations and committed various crimes. I've never heard of this actually happening to a normal mutual fund. There is of course also a default risk when a fund buys bonds or other non-equity securities, and this may sometimes be non-obvious. For example, some ETFs which are nominally based on a stock index don't actually buy stocks; instead they buy or sell options on those stocks, which involves a counterparty risk. The ETF may or may not have rules that limit the exposure to any one counterparty. |
Financing a vehicle a few months before I expect to apply for a mortgage? | If your debt will all be less than 25% gross (yes, I see you said take home) you are in great shape. I'd get the car and not worry. The well written mortgage is 20% down, with a housing payment (which of course includes prop tax and insurance, as noted by mhoran, below) under 28% and total debt under 36%. You are well within the limits, not even close. That's great. |
One of my stocks dropped 40% in 2 days, how should I mentally approach this? | There are 2 approaches. One of them is already mentioned by @Afforess. If the approach by @Afforess is not feasible, and you can not see yourself making an unbiased decision, close the position. By closing the position you will not get the best price. But by removing a distraction you will reduce amount of mistakes you make in the other stocks. |
When writing a covered call, what's the difference between a “net debit” and a “net credit”? | When you buy a stock and sell a covered call, the call can't be valued higher than the stock, right? How can a call on a $10 stock sell for more than the stock? So, the initial position of a covered call will cost you something. The transaction is a debit to you. The net amount of the deal, usually prices as per stock/option single share. For the image showing net credit, it's as if you expect to get paid for you to take this deal. |
Why did my number of shares of stock decrease? | During a stock split the only thing that changes is the number of shares outstanding. Typically a stock splits to lower its price per share. Sometimes if a company's value is falling it will do a reverse split where X shares will be exchanged for Y shares. This is typically done to avoid being de-listed from an exchange if the price per share falls below a certain threshold, usually $1. Again the only thing changing is the number of shares outstanding. A 20 for 1 reverse split means for every 20 shares outstanding the shareholder will be granted one new share. Example X Co. has 1,000,000 shares outstanding for a price of $100 per share. It does a 1 for 10 split. Now there are 10,000,000 shares outstanding for a price of $10 per share. Example Y Co has 1,000,000 shares outstanding for a price of $1 per share. It does a 10 for 1 reverse split. Now there are 100,000 shares outstanding for a price of $10. Quickly looking at the news for ASTI it looks like it underwent a 20 for 1 reverse split. You should probably look at your statements and ask your broker how the arithmetic worked in your case. Investopedia links for Reverse Stock Split and Stock Split |
What fees should I expect when buying and/or selling a house? | Typical costs to buy might include: One piece of advice if you've never bought, fixing problems with a house always seems to cost more than the discount in price due to the problems. Say the house needs a 15K new kitchen it seems like it will be just 7K cheaper than a house with a good kitchen, that kind of thing. Careful with the fixer uppers. Costs to sell include: Doing your own cleaning, repairs, moving, etc. can save a lot. You can also choose to work without an agent but I don't know how wise it is, especially for a first time buyer. In my town there are some agents that are buyers only, never seller's agents, which helps keep them unconflicted. Agent commissions may be lower in some areas or negotiable anywhere. Real estate transfer taxes may be owed by buyer or seller depending on location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_transfer_tax |
How does a bank make money on an interest free secured loan? | Generally speaking, an interest-free loan will be tied to a specific purchase, and the lender will be paid something by the vendor. The only other likely scenario is an introductory offer to try to win longer-term more profitable business, such as an initial interest-free period on a credit card. Banks couldn't make money if all their loans were interest-free, unless they were getting paid by the vendors of whatever was being purchased with the money that was lent. |
How meaningful is the “stock price” of a stock? | The information on GOOG or other sites is the average price of the stock and is indicative of the price at with the stock would be available. The actual trades happen at different values throught the day ... So the prices are good for most purposes and if you need the exact prices, you can thne decided to log into you trading terminal and get the actual quotes This is similar to FX quotes or any other such quotes and give you a general sense |
Malaysian real estate: How to know if the market is overheated or in a bubble? | I am also from Malaysia and I just purchase a property around Klang Valley area. Property market is just like share market. You will never know when is the highest peak point and when is the lowest peak point. Yes. Not only you, but everyone of us. What I would say that, just buy according to your need and your financial status. If you feel that you need a comfortable place to stay rather than renting a room, and buying that property will not burden your financial status too much, why not go for it? The best time to purchase property is perhaps last year when world economic is down turn. But thing is over and can never go back. Since all of us don't have a crystal ball to tell the future, why not just act according to your heart and common sense (Buy according to need) ;) |
Where can publicly traded profits go but to shareholders via dividends? | Where can publicly traded profits go but to shareholders via dividends? They can be retained by the company. |
Are limit orders safe? | Limit orders are generally safer than market orders. Market orders take whatever most-favorable price is being offered. This can be especially dangerous in highly volatile stocks which have a significant spread between the bid and ask. That being said, you want to be very careful that you enter the price you intend into a limit order. It is better to be a bit slower at entering your orders than it is to make a terrible mistake like the one you mention in your question. |
What resources can I use to try and find out the name of the manager for a given fund? | The fund prospectus is a good place to start. |
How do I choose 401k investment funds? | Here is the "investing for retirement" theoretical background you should have. You should base your investment decisions not simply on the historical return of the fund, but on its potential for future returns and its risk. Past performance does not indicate future results: the past performance is frequently at its best the moment before the bubble pops. While no one knows the specifics of future returns, there are a few types of assets that it's (relatively) safe to make blanket statements about: The future returns of your portfolio will primarily be determined by your asset allocation . The general rules look like: There are a variety of guides out there to help decide your asset allocation and tell you specifically what to do. The other thing that you should consider is the cost of your funds. While it's easy to get lucky enough to make a mutual fund outperform the market in the short term, it's very hard to keep that up for decades on end. Moreover, chasing performance is risky, and expensive. So look at your fund information and locate the expense ratio. If the fund's expense ratio is 1%, that's super-expensive (the stock market's annualized real rate of return is about 4%, so that could be a quarter of your returns). All else being equal, choose the cheap index fund (with an expense ratio closer to 0.1%). Many 401(k) providers only have expensive mutual funds. This is because you're trapped and can't switch to a cheaper fund, so they're free to take lots of your money. If this is the case, deal with it in the short term for the tax benefits, then open a specific type of account called a "rollover IRA" when you change jobs, and move your assets there. Or, if your savings are small enough, just open an IRA (a "traditional IRA" or "Roth IRA") and use those instead. (Or, yell at your HR department, in the event that you think that'll actually accomplish anything.) |
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