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May 6, 2010 stock market decline/plunge: Why did it drop 9% in a few minutes?
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No one is quite sure what happened (yet). Speculation includes: The interesting thing is that Procter & Gamble stock got hammered, as did Accenture. Both of which are fairly stable companies, that didn't make any major announcements, and aren't really connected to the current financial instability in Greece. So, there is no reason for there stock prices to have gone crazy like that. This points to some kind of screw up, and not a regular market force. Apparently, the trades involved in this event are going to be canceled. Edit #1: One thing that can contribute to an event like this is automatic selling triggered by stop loss orders. Say someone at Citi makes a mistake and sells too much of a stock. That drives the stock price below a certain threshold. Computers that were pre-programmed to sell at that point start doing their job. Now the price goes even lower. More stop-loss orders get triggered. Things start to snowball. Since it's all done by computer these days something like this can happen in seconds. All the humans are left scratching their heads. (No idea if that's what actually happened.) Edit #2: IEEE Spectrum has a pretty concise article on the topic. It also includes some links to follow. Edit #3 (05/14/2010): Reuters is now reporting that a trader at Waddell & Reed triggered all of this, but not through any wrongdoing. Edit #4 (05/18/2010): Waddell & Reed claims they didn't do it. The House Financial Services Subcommittee investigated, but they couldn't find a "smoking gun". I think at this point, people have pretty much given up trying to figure out what happened. Edit #5 (07/14/2010): The SEC still has no idea. I'm giving up. :-)
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For a major expensive home renovation (e.g. addition, finished basement, or new kitchen) should one pay cash or finance with a loan? Would such a loan be “good” debt?
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Good debt is very close to an oxymoron. People say student loans are "good debt," but I beg to differ. The very same "good debt" that allowed me to get an education is the very same "bad debt" that doesn't allow me to take chances in my career - meaning, I would prefer to have a 'steady' job over starting a business. (That's my perogative, of course, but I am not willing to take that 'risk.' /endtangent @Harmanjd provided the two really good reason for using cash over borrowing. We have a tendency in this culture to find reasons to borrow. It is better for you to make a budget, based on what you want, and save up for it. Make a "dream list" for what you want, then add up the costs for everything. If that number makes your head hurt, start paring down on things you 'want.' Maybe you install just a wine cooler instead of a wine cooler and a beer tap, or vice-versa. And besides, if something comes up - you can always stop saving money for this project and deal with whatever came up and then resume saving when you're done. Or in the case of the kitchen, maybe you do it in stages: cabinets one year, countertops the next, flooring the year after that, and then the appliances last. You don't have to do it all at once. As someone who is working toward debt freedom, it feels nice whenever we have one less payment to budget for every month. Don't burden yourself to impress other people. Take your time, get bids for the things you can't (or won't) do yourself, and then make a decision that's best for your money.
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Where do I find the exercise price and date for warrants?
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I agree that a random page on the internet is not always a good source, but at the same time I will use Google or Yahoo Finance to look up US/EU equities, even though those sites are not authoritative and offer zero guarantees as to the accuracy of their data. In the same vein you could try a website devoted to warrants in your market. For example, I Googled toronto stock exchange warrants and the very first link took me to a site with all the information you mentioned. The authoritative source for the information would be the listing exchange, but I've spent five minutes on the TSX website and couldn't find even a fraction of the information about that warrant that I found on the non-authoritative site.
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Legitimate unclaimed property that doesn't appear in any state directory?
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@ Chris: Companies like Keane, ours, and others know where to look for these funds and where to ask at the correct agencies that are holding this money that is not part of the public links that you have access to. This is how we find this information. Our types of companies spend significant time, money and resources in finding out about the money, then finding who it actually belongs to (because it does not always belong to who is mentioned on the list) and then finding the correct individual. @ jdsweet: I apologize if you think this is a marketing ploy. It is not. Our company doesn't even take phone calls from people that want us to find them money. Only if we contact someone, because at that time we're confident that the person we touch base with is due the funds. Again, I am not plugging our company, but trying to let Neil know that in some cases he is right, you don't need a third party to claim funds for you - if you can find them. In this case, he has looked and cannot find them. Keane is charging a fair amount to retrieve funds he cannot find and doesn't know about and is not charging him anything to do all the work. Again, as mentioned above, the direct answer is that we know how to access information and lists that have this money hidden from the public because the agency holding the funds doesn't want you to know about it so that they can escheat the funds. Escheating is the state's legal way to confiscate your money. See, if you don't put in a claim for the money (depending on what type it is and where it is located) the agency and state holding the funds has certain time frames for you to get the money. If you don't, again, they get to keep it and that is what they want despite what they say. That is why there is approximately $33 Billion that is known to the public and really $1 Trillion that's out there. I apologize if you think that this is a plug for my company, it's not because we're not looking for calls, we make them. I'm also not asking Neil for his business. From all accounts on my side, this seems like a fair deal.
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If I use stock as collateral for a loan and I default, does the bank pay taxes when they sell my stock?
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Will the bank be taxed on the $x received through selling the collateral? Why do you care? They will, of course, although their basis will be different. It is of no concern for you. What is your concern is that the write-off of the loan is taxed as ordinary income (as opposed to capital gains when you sell the stocks) for you. So when the bank seizes the stocks, they will also report to the IRS that they gave you the amount of money that you owed them (which they will "give you" and then put it on the account of the loan). So you get taxed on that amount as income. In addition, you will be taxed on the gains on the stocks, as giving them to the bank is considered a sale. So you may actually find yourself in a situation where you'd be paying taxes twice, once capital gains, and once as ordinary income, on the same money. I would strongly advise against this. If it is a real situation and not a hypothetical question - get a professional tax advice. I'm not a professional, talk to a CPA/EA licensed in your state.
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Which Novo Nordisk ticker is most tax efficient in a UK SIPP?
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What I ended up doing was finding where each ticker of Novo was registered (what exchange), then individually looking up the foreign taxation rules of the containing country. Luckily, most companies only have a few tickers so this wasn't too hard in the end.
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eBay Account and SIM cards sent to my address
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In your mother's position, I would do two things: Get a copy of her credit report. Money Advice Service has a useful page on how to do this - it is cheap (£2) or free to do and will immediately tell you if someone else is using her address for anything untoward. Check with the Post Office whether anyone has set up a redirect on mail to your Mum's address. You can redirect by individual names, so if Joe Bloggs buys a bunch of stuff and has it sent to him at your Mum's address, he could set up a redirect at the Post Office so any post for Joe Bloggs at that address gets redirected to Joe Blogg's real address. There is a page about this on the Post Office website, I don't know exactly how to check if someone else has set this up but I'm sure the Post Office would help you find out. Additionally, I would consider visiting the address (the same house number in the "Road" where hers is in the "Avenue") and see whether the occupants have anything useful to say about this. I would just say you'd had some mis-delivered post, and want to check what their names are so that you can pass on anything that is intended for them that comes to your address (and ask them to do likewise for you). Depending on how that goes you could also ask about the ebay store and see whether it really is them that set it up.
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Calculate time to reach investment goals given starting balance?
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Fairly straightforward to match the result from the calculator soup link. There is a formula to calculate n from the future value s (using natural logs) In Excel This was derived as shown To calculate n from the inflation-adjusted future value si requires using a solver since an algebraic formula cannot be formulated. As demonstrated Calculations done using Mathematica 7.
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What can I do with “stale” checks? Can I deposit/cash them?
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Check is an obligation to pay, and is unconditional. In the US, checks don't expire (there are countries where they do). Endorsements such as "void after X days" are meaningless and don't affect the obligation to pay. The bank is under no obligation to honor a check that is more than 6 months old (based on the date on the check, of course). This is from the Unified Commercial Code 4-404. However, this refers to the bank, not to the person who gave you the check. The bank may pay, if the check is deposited in good faith and there's nothing wrong with it or with the account. So the first thing you can do is deposit the check. If asked - you can say that the person just wrote the wrong date, which is true. Worst case the check bounces. If the check bounces - you can start with demand letters and small claim courts. The obligation to pay doesn't go away unless satisfied, i.e.: paid.
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What are my chances at getting a mortgage with Terrible credit but High income
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With bad credit but good income, I would simply save a large down payment. You're much more likely to get a mortgage with 25% down and a history of recently saving that 25% to show.
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Can you buy gift cards at grocery store to receive a higher reward rate?
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Understand that buying a Starbucks gift card at the grocery store to receive 6% back on your coffee rather than 6% back on your groceries is an exploit of a flaw in the benefits program, not a feature. It's definitely not a blanket yes or no answer, the only way to find out is to try. Separately, I don't know why you would find this "concerning." This will vary greatly between merchants and cards. There will always be new points churning exploits, they don't last forever and you can't expect every customer service rep to be well versed in methods employed to juice cardmember programs. Hell, a number of years ago one person figured out that he could buy rolls of $1 coins from the US treasury with free shipping and no additional fees. This guy was literally buying thousands of dollars of cash each month to deposit and pay his credit card bill; completely against the terms of the treasury program for distributing the $1 coins. A number of people had their cards and points/cash back revoked for that one.
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What does “points” mean in such contexts (stock exchange, I believe)?
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Points are the units of measurement of the index. They're calculated based on the index formula, which in turn based on the prices of the underlying stocks. Movement in points is not really interesting, the movement as a percentage of the base price (daily opening, usually) is more interesting since it gives more context.
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What to do when a job offer is made but with a salary less than what was asked for?
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In my experience of doing software development for a little longer than I care to remember, salaries are always assumed to be negotiable. I know you said you don't like haggling (a lot of people don't) but you'll have to get used to that and you might have to be a little more flexible. Being able to negotiate something as important as your salary is a very important skill. That said, there might be several reasons why they're not willing to offer more: Here's what I would do:
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What's the difference when asked for “debit or credit” by a store when using credit and debit cards?
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When using a debit card in a "credit" way, you don't need to enter your PIN, which protects you from skimmers and similar nastiness. Also, assuming it's a Visa or Mastercard debit card, you now have access to all of the fraud protection and other things that you would get with a credit card. The downside for the merchant is that credit card transaction fees are typically higher than debit card transaction fees. I'm less familiar with using a credit card in a "debit" way, so don't have anything to offer on that part of your question.
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Can one use dollar cost averaging to make money with something highly volatile?
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if you know when and by how much something will fluctuate, you can always make money. Buy it when it's cheaper and sell it when it's more expensive. If you just know that it fluctuated a lot recently, then you don't know what it will do next. Most securities that go to zero or go much higher bounce all over the place for a while first. But you don't know when they'll move decisively lower or higher. So how could you figure out if you'll make money - you can't know. DCA will on average make you better off, unless the extra commissions are too high relative to your purchase sizes. But it will in retrospect make you worse off in many particular cases. This is true of many investment disciplines, such as rebalancing. They are all based on averages. If the volatility is random then on average you can buy more shares when the price is lower using DCA. But when the lowest price turns out to have been on a certain day, you'd have been better off with a single lump sum put in on that day. No way to know in advance. Degree of volatility shouldn't matter; any fluctuation is enough for DCA or rebalancing to get you ahead, though it's true they get you ahead farther if the fluctuations are larger, since there's then more difference between DCA and a lump purchase. I think the real reason to do DCA and rebalancing is risk control. They reduce the risk of putting a whole lump sum in on exactly the wrong day. And they can help keep a portfolio growing even if the market is stagnant.
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Which set of earnings is used to work out the P/E of a stock
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There are two common types of P/E ratio calculations: "trailing" and "forward" (and then there are various mixes of the two). Trailing P/E ratios are calculated as [current price] / [trailing 12-month EPS]. An alternative is the Forward P/E ratio, which is based on an estimate of earnings in the coming 12 months. The estimate used is usually called "consensus" and, to answer your question, is the average estimate of analysts who cover the stock. Any reputable organization will disclose how they calculate their financials. For example, Reuters uses a trailing ratio (indicated by "TTM") on their page for BHP. So, the first reason a PE ratio might not jump on an announcement is it might be forward looking and therefore not very sensitive to the realized earnings. The second reason is that if it is a trailing ratio, some of the annual EPS change is known prior to the annual announcement. For example, on 12/31 a company might report a large drop in annual earnings, but if the bulk of that loss was reported in a previous quarterly report, then the trailing EPS would account partially for it prior to the annual announcement. In this case, I think the first reason is the culprit. The Reuters P/E of nearly 12 is a trailing ratio, so if you see 8 I'd think it must be based on a forward-looking estimate.
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Options for dummies. Can you explain how puts & calls work, simply?
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In addition to all these great answers, check out the Wikipedia entry on options. The most important thing to note from their definition is that an option is a derivative (and nothing about any derivative is simple). Because it is a derivative, increases or decreases in the price of the underlying stock won't automatically result in the same amount of change in the value of the option.
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Is it a good practice to keep salary account and savings account separate?
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Well the idea of 'good practice' is subjective so obviously there won't be an objectively correct answer. I suspect that whatever article you read was making this recommendation as a budgeting tool to physically isolate your reserve of cash from your spending account(s) as a means to keep spending in check. This is a common idea that I've heard often enough, though I don't think I am alone in believing that it's unnecessary except in the case of a habitual spender who cannot be trusted to stay within a budget. I suppose there is a very small argument to be made about security where if you use a bank account for daily spending and that account is somehow compromised, the short-term damage is limited. In the end, I would argue that if you're in control of spending and budgeting, have a single source of income that is from regular employment, and you use a credit card for most of your daily spending, there's no compelling reason to have more than one bank account. Some people have a checking and savings account simply for the psychological effect of separating their money, some couples have 3-4 accounts for income, personal spending, and savings, other people have separate accounts for business/self-employment funds, and a few people like having many accounts that act as hard limits for spending in different categories. Of course, the other submitted answer is correct in noting that the more accounts that you have, the more you are opening yourself up to accounting issues if funds don't transfer the way you expect them to (assuming you're emptying the accounts often). Some banks are more lenient with this, however, and may offer you the option to freely 'overdraft' by pulling funding from another pre-designated account that you also hold at the same bank.
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Why do people always talk about stocks that pay high dividends?
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There are strategies based on yields. Dogs of the Dow being a specific example while Miller Howard has a few studies around dividends that may be of use if you additional material. Selling off a portion of the holding can run into problems as how could one hold 10 shares, selling a non-zero whole number every year for over 20 years if the stock doesn't ever pay a dividend in additional shares or cash?
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How much of each stock do index funds hold?
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Note that an index fund may not be able to precisely mirror the index it's tracking. If enough many people invest enough money into funds based on that index, there may not always be sufficient shares available of every stock included in the index for the fund to both accept additional investment and track the index precisely. This is one of the places where the details of one index fund may differ from another even when they're following the same index. IDEALLY they ought to deliver the same returns, but in practical terms they're going to diverge a bit. (Personally, as long as I'm getting "market rate of return" or better on average across all my funds, at a risk I'm comfortable with, I honestly don't care enough to try to optimize it further. Pick a distribution based on some stochastic modelling tools, rebalance periodically to maintain that distribution, and otherwise ignore it. That's very much to the taste of someone like me who wants the savings to work for him rather than vice versa.)
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How long do you have to live somewhere to be a resident for tax purposes?
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It's not so much about time but about intent. If your intent is to move there permanently, it would be when you arrive in the state for the purposes of living there (i.e. not from a while before that when you went to check a place out or for an interview). I believe that most (if not all) states expect you to get a Driver's License from that state within 30-days of moving there. Something like a Driver's License or State ID would be proof of your residency. These things vary greatly from state to state, so you'd have to research particular states. Or find someone who's done that already. A bit of searching, specifically for Texas, brought me to this forum thread: If you / he wish to establish residency here -- here being Texas -- get a Texas Driver's License and Voter Registration here. Government issued ID with a Texas address is pretty much bulletproof defense against being found to be a resident of elsewhere. Your battle, if there is one, will not be with Texas, but with your present home of record state and/or local government if there are income taxes associated with having been a resident there during the tax year. Which brings up the other question: You would need to make sure that California does not have some provision that would cause you issues. (This isn't so much a case of income from a company in the state as it about capital gains, but it is still prudent to check.)
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Why would this FHA refinance cause my mortgage insurance payment to increase so much?
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The PMI premium you pay is dependent on a very large number of variables in the finance market. Mortgage insurance, at the higher inter-bank levels, is handled with credit default swaps (the ones you've been hearing about on the news for the past 4 years), where the lender bundles a block of mortgages, takes them to a guarantor like AIG or Freddie Mac, and says "We bet you that these mortgages will default this month, because the homeowners have little or no equity to deter them; if we win, you agree to swap these debts for their current face value". The lender examines the mortgages, calculates the odds of a default severe enough that the bank would come to collect, using complex environmental heuristics, multiplies by the value of the potential payout, adds a little for their trouble, and says "well, we'll take that bet if you pay us $X". The bank takes the deal, then divvies up that cost among the mortgages and bills the homeowner for their share. The amount you pay for PMI can therefore depend on pretty much anything in this entire process; the exact outstanding amount and equity status of your loan, the similar status of other mortgages your loan will be bundled with for assessment, who the guarantor is, what exact heuristic they use to come up with an amount, the weighting the bank uses to divvy it up, and how much they actually pass on to you. Most of these same variables are at play when you shop for actual insurance for your car or home, which is why your premiums will go up or down with the same insurer and why someone else always seems to have a better deal (pretty much every insurer can say that "drivers who switched saved an average of $X"; of course they did, otherwise they wouldn't have switched). Thinking of it in those terms, it's easy to see how this number can vary widely based on numbers you can't see. You're free to say no, and it will cost you nothing right up until you sign something that says you agree to be penalized for saying no. While the overall amount of the payments does decrease, the PMI has gone up, and that's money you'll never see again just like interest (except you can deduct interest; not PMI). I would do the tax math; find out how much you could deduct over the next year in interest on your current loan, then on their proposed terms, and what the resulting tax bills will be from both. You may save monthly only to pay more than you saved to Uncle Sam at the end of the year. You're also free to negotiate. The worst they can do is stay firm on their offer, but they may take a second look and say "you're right, that PMI is rather high, we'll try again and see if we can do better". They can either negotiate with their insurer, or they can eat some of the PMI cost that they're currently passing on to you.
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How can I check my credit score?
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Check with your bank. As of January, 2015, the following banks and credit unions are offering free credit-scores: Announced, in the pipeline: Source: Banks to offer FICO credit scores for free Personal Experience: I've been receiving free FICO score from my credit union for more than 6 months now. Advice: Most people have multiple bank/credit-union accounts. The FICO score will be the same whoever offers it. If none of your financial institutions offer you a free credit-score then you may opt for free services like creditkarma.com or other paid services. Please note that a credit-score is number summarizing your credit-report and should not be confused. In the news:
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I got my bank account closed abruptly how do I get money out?
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First, make sure you are contacting the bank directly - use an old invoice you have on hand with a phone number direct to the bank and call them. Do not use the provided number, or you may wind up being pulled into a scam (It is entirely possible that the bank is also confused at this point - so you should not rely on the number provided at all). Second, once you can confirm that your account is being closed, find out when it is being closed so you know when you need to act on it - it's possible you still have access to your account, and do not need to launch into a panic just yet. Third, get the bank to explain exactly why they are closing your account - make it clear that if they cannot explain, you will be forced to transfer to a new account and close business with them permanently - this is not a threat, this is a matter of fact because... Finally, if you cannot keep your account open, find a different bank and open up a new account. Frankly, if your current bank is closing your account and only managed to get a letter out to you a month late, you should probably find a new bank. If instead they simply cannot figure out if your bank account is closed or not, this is also a bad sign and you may want a new bank account anyway. But please, go through these steps in order, because you need to verify with your bank what is going on. Keep @Brick 's answer in mind as well, in case you need to get your money out of your account quickly.
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15 year mortgage vs 30 year paid off in 15
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Besides the reason in @rhaskett's answer, it is important to consider that paying off a 30-year mortgage as if it was a 15-year is much more inconvenient than just paying the regular payments of a 15-year mortgage. When you pay extra on your mortgage, some lenders do not know what to do with the extra payment, and need to be told explicitly that the extra needs to be applied toward the principal. You might need to do this every month with every payment. In addition, some lenders won't allow you to set up an automatic payment for more than the mortgage payment, so you might need to explicitly submit your payment with instructions for the lender each month, and then follow up each month to make sure that your payment was credited properly. Some lenders are better about this type of thing than others, and you won't really know how much of a hassle it will be with your lender until you start making payments. If you intend to pay it off in 15 years, then just get the 15-year mortgage.
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Is the contribution towards Employment Insurance (EI) wasted if I never get fired, or are my premiums refunded?
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Actually, most insurance policies DON'T have a cash value if you don't make a claim. The reason that some life insurance policies do this is that they are really tax sheltered investments posing as insurance. With that in mind, the root of your question is really whether insurance premiums are wasted if you never make a claim. It really makes no difference if you are talking about EI, Auto, or Homeowner's insurance. My answer to that is no. What you are paying for when you buy insurance is financial risk avoidance. Look at it this way, you don't buy EI as an investment where you hope to get a return on your investment. You are buying the right to be protected against catastrophic financial difficulty associated with losing your job. Whether you claim it or not you did receive that protection. This is what drives me so crazy when I hear people talk about how an insurance company is ripping you off because you paid more in premiums than they paid out in benefits. Of course you did! If most people didn't pay in more than the company paid out there would be no financial interest for someone to form an insurance company.
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What is a good 5-year plan for a college student with $15k in the bank?
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I just checked TCF's rates, and they only pay a miserly rate of 0.25%. Banks like Capital One or Sallie Mae pay about 1.15%, which is more than 4x, though still nothing great. Do you expect to use these funds in 5 years (e.g. for down payment on a house), or could you contribute them to an IRA?
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Buy tires and keep car for 12-36 months, or replace car now?
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There are a few factors I like to consider when I'm reasoning financially over my households cars. How many KMs will the car travel each year because I like to factor in how often tires will need to be changed, how much tires for my models cost as well as how gas efficient they are. Knowing how much the car is driven and in what environmental/road conditions is also important factors to know because that will help guestimate possible repairs cost. Also possible taxes should be taken in to consideration. For example a few years ago I had a diesel Citroen C5 that had yearly taxes of roughly 500$. The replacement costs only 150$ a year in taxes. So switching cars 3 years early would have saved me 1050$ in taxes. So some information on possible taxes, how far you drive each year, what environmental conditions, type of driving (daily long rides or just short etc..) as well as the fuel efficiency of both cars would help to better calculate your costs for say three scenarios. Car change in 12, 24 and 32 months respectively.
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Should I lease, buy new, or buy used?
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Welcome to Personal Finance and Money. This answer will depend a lot on what is most important to the buyer, for example, whether it is important to always be in a newer car, to save money, or strike a balance between the two. There are trade-offs and I don't think there is one right answer for all circumstances. Leasing Leasing does make financial sense for at least two types of people I'm aware of: The company I work for provides company cars to sales executives, which we lease. We lease because it wouldn't be appropriate for a salesperson to meet a client in a car that clearly appears used. Similarly, I know people who value being in a newer car all the time, and for them, leasing makes more financial sense then buying a new car every 2-3 years, and selling their old car which is now 2-3 years old and has depreciated significantly. They understand that they are paying more to always be able to be in a newer car. I used to work with a manager who, every time the new model of the car he owned came out, would see the car and buy it on the spot, even though he already owned last year's model, and he didn't need two cars. He just couldn't help himself; he felt he had to have the new model. It's no use sermonizing about how he "should" learn to save money by just being content with what he had. In reality, if he is going to buy the new model every year no matter what, he should lease rather than buy. From my experience, I would only recommend leasing if you would otherwise be buying a new car on a regular basis, and the lease would be less expensive. This is probably the most cost effective way to maintain the highest possible quality, but would cost much more than buying and holding a new car or buying a value used car. I don't see reliability as much of a factor here since the seller will have a very good idea of how much maintenance will cost, but you will pay a premium to be able to pay a fixed cost for maintenance instead of risking a worse-than-average experience. Buying New According to Edmunds and BIGResearch, only a relatively small number of people are ever in the market for a new car at a given point in time. While you do pay quite a bit more to own a brand new car instead of the same car that is 2-3 years old, there are several reasons I'm aware of why people buy new cars: Number 4 is probably the biggest reason, and many people are willing to pay for the certainty of knowing that the miles are correct, the parts are new, the car is in good working condition, etc. Additionally, some makes of cars have much higher resale values than others (such as Hondas), meaning that there isn't as large of a drop in price between a new car and a used car. Many people consider buying a new car the best way to ensure they get the best reliability since they know the initial condition of the car and can care for it meticulously from that point on. This can especially make sense when the buyer intends to keep the car for the like of the car as the buyer will then benefit from having no car payments once it is paid off. Buying Used Buying a used car is the most affordable option, but for a given quality of car the reliability can be a significant potential pitfall. It can be very difficult for a non-professional to tell whether they are getting a good value. Additionally, it is hard for an owner who wants to sell a used car in excellent condition to get the true value of the car, and much easier for an unscrupulous seller to to get the market price by selling to an unaware buyer (the "lemons" problem in economics). You could buy an inspected car with a limited warranty from a retail seller like CarMax or a dealership, but you often pay a significant premium that cancels out much of the biggest reason to buy used - saving money. However, there is an opportunity to save money when buying used if you're willing to compromise on the condition of the car (if you don't care whether a car has hail damage, for example), or if you are able to wait until you find a motivated/distressed seller who needs to sell quickly and is willing to sell at a discount. If cost is your primary priority, buying a used car is likely the best option, but I would recommend the following in all circumstances: If the seller isn't willing to offer both of these, I would walk away. When buying used, you will also need to consider maintenance, which will vary significantly based on the make and model of the car as well as the condition, which is another risk you need to be willing to take on if you choose to buy used.
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How can one identify institutional accumulation of a particular stock using price and volume data?
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A couple ways, but its not a guarantee. You have to have special charts. Instead of each tick being 1 min, 5 min, or whatever, it is a set number of trades. Say 2000. Since retail investors only buy and sell in small amounts, there will be small volume per tick. An institutional investor, however, would have a much much higher trade lot size, even if using an algo. Thus, large volume spikes in such a chart would signal institutional activity over retail. Similarly, daily charts showing average trade size can help you pick out when institutional activity is highest, as they have much larger trade sizes. You could also learn how the algos work and look for evidence one is being used. ie every time price hits VWAP a large sell order goes through would indicate an institutional investor is selling, especially if it happens multiple times in a row.
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Should I sell a 2nd home, or rent it out?
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I don't see anything in this forum on the leverage aspect, so I'll toss that out for discussion. Using generic numbers, say you make a $10k down payment on a $100,000 house. The house appreciates 3% per year. First year, it's $103,000. Second year, $106090, third it's 109,272.70. (Assuming straight line appreciation.) End of three years, you've made $9,272.70 on your initial $10,000 investment, assuming you have managed the property well enough to have a neutral or positive cash flow. You can claim depreciation of the property over those rental years, which could help your tax situation. Of course, if you sell, closing costs will be a big factor. Plus... after three years, the dreaded capital gains tax jumps in as mentioned earlier, unless you do a 1031 exchange to defer it.
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Does owning BP ADR from US stock market required to pay custody fees
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New SEC rules also now allow brokers to collect fees on non-dividend bearing accounts as an "ADR Pass-Through Fee". Since BP (and BP ADR) is not currently paying dividends, this is probably going to be the case here. According to the Schwab brokerage firm, the fee is usually 1-3 cents per share. I did an EDGAR search for BP's documents and came up with too many to read through (due to the oil spill and all of it's related SEC filings) but you can start here: http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/m/q207/adr.html
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Is this investment opportunity problematic?
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Every time I have loaned money to family members I have never gotten the money back. If they can't make the down payment, they should not be taking out the loan. It's a bad idea to loan money to friends, because when they can't pay you back (which might be forever) they avoid you. So, you lose both your money and your friends.
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Real estate loans for repairs
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If you intend to flip this property, you might consider either a construction loan or private money. A construction loan allows you to borrow from a bank against the value of the finished house a little at a time. As each stage of the construction/repairs are completed, the bank releases more funds to you. Interest accrues during the construction, but no payments need to be made until the construction/repairs are complete. Private money works in a similar manner, but the full amount can be released to you at once so you can get the repairs done more quickly. The interest rate will be higher. If you are flipping, then this higher interest rate is simply a cost of doing business. Since it's a private loan, you ca structure the deal any way you want. Perhaps accruing interest until the property is sold and then paying it back as a single balloon payment on sale of the property. To find private money, contact a mortgage broker and tell them what you have in mind. If you're intending to keep the property for yourself, private money is still an option. Once the repairs are complete, have the bank reassess the property value and refinance based on the new amount. Pay back the private loan with equity pulled from the house and all the shiny new repairs.
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Single investment across multiple accounts… good, bad, indifferent?
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The main restrictions you see with IRA's involve contributions, and not the actual investments themselves. I would be indifferent to having a single investment across multiple accounts. It might be a bit trickier to manage, especially if your strategy involves some specific asset allocation. Other than account management though, there's no big issue.
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How to measure a currencies valuation or devaluation in relevance to itself
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It's very hard to measure the worth of an abstract concept like money, particularly over long periods of time. In the modern era we have things like the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the United States, where the Bureau of Labor Statistics literally sends "shoppers" out to find prices of things and surveys people to find out what they buy. This results in a variety of "indexes" which variously get reported by media outlets as "inflation" (or "deflation" if the change in value goes the other way). There are also other measurements available like the MIT Billion Prices Project which attempt to make their own reading of the "worth" of currencies. Those kinds of things are about the only ways to measure a currency's change in "value to itself" because a currency is basically only worth what one can buy with it. While it isn't "all the world's currencies combined", there is a concept of the International Monetary Fund's "Special Drawing Rights (SDR)", which is a basket of five currencies used by world central banks to help "back" each other's currencies, and is (very) occasionally used as a unit of currency for international contracts. One might be able to compare the price of one currency to that of the SDR, or even to any other weighted average of world currencies that one wanted, but I don't think it's done nearly as often as comparing currencies to the basket of goods one can buy to find "inflation". Even though one might think what would be important to measure would be overall Money Supply Inflation, much more often people care more about measuring Price Inflation. (Occasionally people worry about Wage Inflation, but generally that's considered a result of high Price Inflation.) In order to try to keep this on topic as a "personal finance" thing rather than an "economics" thing, I guess the question is: Why do you want to know? If you have some assets in a particular currency, you probably care most about what you'll be able to buy with them in the future when you want or need to spend them. In that sense, it's inflation that you're likely caring about the most. If you're trying to figure out which currency to keep your assets in, it largely depends on what currency your future expenses are likely to be in, though I can imagine that one might want to move out of a particular currency if there's a lot of political instability that you're expecting to lead to high inflation in a currency for a time.
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Joint Account for Common Earnings
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Short Answer: Go to the bank and ask them about your options for opening a business account. Talk to an attorney about the paperwork and company structure and taxes. Long Answer: You and your buddies jointly own an unincorporated business. This is called a partnership. Yes, there is paperwork involved in doing it properly and the fact that you guys are minors might complicate that paperwork a little bit. In terms of what type of account to open: A business account! Running a business through a personal account (joint or otherwise) is a sure way to get that account shut down. Your bank will want to know the structure of the business, and will require documentation to support that. For a partnership, they will probably want a copy of the partnership agreement. For an LLC, they'll probably want a copy of the filing with Ohio Secretary of State as well as the operating agreement etc. That said, pop into a local bank and ask a business banker directly what you should do. They deal with new businesses all the time, and would probably be best qualified to help you figure out the bank account aspect of it. Regarding business structure... this really impacts a lot more than just the type of bank account to open and how you file your taxes. It is something you guys should really discuss with an attorney. What happens if down the road one of you quits? What happens if you want to bring in a new partner later? What if there is a disagreement about something? These are all things that the attorney can help you address ahead of time - which is a heck of a lot easier (and cheaper) than trying to figure it out later. You're brining in enough that you should certainly be able to buy a couple hours of a lawyer's time. Getting the formation stuff right could save all of you a lot of money and heartache later.
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Why buy insurance?
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Discussions around expected values and risk premiums are very useful, but there's another thing to consider: cash flow. Some individuals have high value assets that are vital to them, such as transportation or housing. The cost of replacing these assets is prohibitive to them: their cashflow means that their rate of saving is too low to accrue a fund large enough to cover the asset's loss. However, their cashflow is such that they can afford insurance. While it may be true that, over time, they would be "better off" saving that money in an asset replacement fund, until that fund reaches a certain level, they are unprotected. Thus, it's not just about being risk averse; there are some very pragmatic reasons why individuals with low disposable income might elect to pay for insurance when they would be financially better off without it.
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15 year mortgage vs 30 year paid off in 15
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Why would anyone ever get a 15 year instead of just paying off a 30 year in 15 years? Because the rate is not the same. Never that I've seen in my 30 years of following rates. I've seen the rate difference range from .25% to .75%. (In March '15, the average rate in my area is 30yr 3.75% / 15yr 3.00%) For a $150K loan, this puts the 15yr payment at $1036, with the 30 (at higher rate) paid in 15 years at $1091. This $55 difference can be considered a flexibility premium," as it offers the option to pay the actual $695 in any period the money is needed elsewhere. If the rate were the same, I'd grab the 30, and since I can't say "invest the difference," I'd say to pay at a pace to go 15, unless you had a cash flow situation. A spouse out of work. An emergency that you funded with a high interest rate loan, etc. The advice to have an emergency fund is great until for whatever reason, there's just not enough. On a personal note, I did go with the 15 year mortgage for our last refinance. I was nearing 50 at the time, and it seemed prudent to aim for a mortgage free retirement.
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Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing
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Organize your expenses in order of the rate of return, and pay them in that order. By far the highest rate of return on your list is: Nowhere else are you going to see an immediate 100% return (or 50%, depending on the company's matching policy) on every dollar you allocate to this pot. Second would probably be: Money that you do not allocate here will usually incur a 15%-29% penalty. Outside of large expenses like a home, education, or a reasonable car, you never want to pay to use your own money (and borrowed money is still yours, remember that someday you have to pay all of it back). Avoiding a negative rate of return (interest) can be just as beneficial as finding a high positive rate of return on an investment. Continue down the list determining what must be paid first, and what the highest rates are in the immediate future and the long run. Meanwhile, live within your means, and set aside a portion of your monthly income towards things like a rainy day fund (up to a level which is not touched when reached). Additional savings through work or your personal investments should not be neglected (money saved early and compounded is worth many times what a dollar saved down the road will gain) especially if you are young in your career.
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Right account for local purchases, loan EMI, and investments
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What is the best and most economical way for me to pay the loan EMIs directly? (whether from a Singapore account or a NRE/NRO account) It is advisable to have it via the NRE account as this would be easier. If you already have funds in NRO account, you can use that before you use the funds from NRE account. For all expenses I make in India (e.g shopping, general expenses in India visits) what account should I be using, ideally? Is the route to transfer into NRE then NRO and then withdraw from NRO? Whatever is convenient. Both are fine. If I plan to make any investments in SIPs/Stock markets, should I link my NRE account with a demat account and directly use that? If I sell the shares will the earnings come back into NRO or NRE? You need to open a DEMAT PINS Account and link it to NRE account. You are sell and repatriate the funds without any issue from PINS account. Related question Indian Demat account
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Family suggests my first real estate. Advice?
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Living in one unit of a multi-family while renting out the others, although not without its risks, can be a viable (if gradual) way to build wealth. It's been rebranded recently as "house hacking", but the underlying mechanics have been around for many years (many cities in the Northeast in particular remain chock full of neighborhoods of 3-family homes built and used for exactly that purpose for decades, though now frequently sub-divided into condos). It's true you'd need to borrow money, but there are a number of reasons why it's certainly at least worth exploring (which is what you seem to be asking -- should you bother doing the homework -- tl;dr: yes): And yes, you would be relying on tenants to meet your monthly expenses, including a mortgage bill that will arrive whether the other units are vacant or not. But in most markets, rental prices are far less volatile than home prices (from the San Francisco Federal Reserve): The main result from this decomposition is that the behavior of the price-rent ratio for housing mirrors that of the price-dividend ratio for stocks. The majority of the movement of the price-rent ratio comes from future returns, not rental growth rates. (Emphasis added) It's also important to remember that rental income must do more than just cover your mortgage -- there's lots of other expenses associated with a rental property, including insurance, taxes, maintenance, vacancy (an allowance for the periods when the property will be empty in between tenants), reserves for capital improvements, and more. As with any investment, it's all about whether the numbers work. (You mentioned not being interested in the "upkeep work", so that's another 8-10% off the top to pay for a property manager.) If you can find a property at an attractive price, secure financing on attractive terms, and can be reasonably confident that it will rent in the ballpark of 1.5-2% of the purchase price, then it might be a fine choice for you, assuming you are willing and able to handle the work of being a landlord -- something worth at least as much of your research time as the investment itself. It sounds like you're still a ways away from having enough for even an FHA down payment, which gives you a great opportunity to find and talk with some local folks who already manage rental properties in your area (for example, you might look for a local chapter of the national Real Estate Investment Association), to get a sense of what's really involved.
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Is diversification better
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Diversification tends to protect you from big losses. But it also tends to "protect" you from big gains. In any industry, some companies provide good products and services and prosper while others have problems and fail. (Or maybe the winners are just lucky or they paid off the right politicians, whatever, not the point here.) If you put all your money in one stock and they do well, you could make a bundle. But if you pick a loser, you could lose your entire investment. If you buy a little stock in each of many companies, then some will go up and some will go down, and your returns will be an average of how everyone in the industry is doing. Suppose I offered to bet you a large sum of money that if I roll a die, it will come up 6. You might be reluctant to take that bet, because you can't predict what number will come up on one roll of a die. But suppose I offered to bet you a large sum of money that a die will come up 6, 100 times in a row. You might well take that bet, because the chance that it will turn up 6 time after time after time is very low. You reduce risk by spreading your bets. Anyone who's bought stock has surely had times when he said, "Oh man! If only I'd bought X ten years ago I'd be a millionaire now!" But quite a few have also said, "If only I'd sold X ten years ago I wouldn't have lost all this money!" I recently bought a stock a stock that within a few months rose to 10 times what I paid for it ... and then a few months later the company went bankrupt and the stock was worth nothing. I knew the company was on a roller coaster when I bought the stock, I was gambling that they'd pull through and I'd make money. I guessed wrong. Fortunately I gambled an amount that I was willing to lose.
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How do I find the value of British Energy Nuclear Power Notes?
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This BBC article says that nuclear power notes came about when the French energy company EDF purchased British Energy in 2008: The note changes in value with wholesale energy prices and power output levels from British Energy's existing nuclear stations. EDF Energy's website describes these notes under the section titled "Nuclear Power Notes": When EDF acquired British Energy in January 2009, Nuclear Power Notes were issued to British Energy shareholders who chose to take them in lieu of 74 pence of cash per British Energy share held. The Nuclear Power Notes are ten year financial instruments (2009 – 2019) which give ex British Energy shareholders a continuing interest in the “EDF Energy Nuclear Generation Fleet”. They are traded on the ICAP Securities & Derivatives Exchange (formerly known as the PLUS Quoted exchange). Each year a pre-defined calculation is performed to determine whether any cash will be paid to Nuclear Power Note holders. The calculation is dependent on the nuclear output of the EDF Energy Nuclear Generation Fleet (“Eligible Nuclear Output”) and market power prices (“Power Prices”). This calculation may or may not result in a cash payment each year to Nuclear Power Note holders. The MWh/TWh are figures you see are measures of watt-hours, i.e. energy output. The value of nuclear power notes is tied to this output. Looking at the most recent statement (June 2013), you can see a line that looks like this: Month Ahead Price in respect of July 2013: 47.46 GBP/MWh which is an energy spot price for the output of the nuclear plants. I'm not entirely sure of the relationship between this and the payment to shareholders, but if you look at the 2012 Yearly Payment Calculation Notice on the same page, you'll see this in the first section: (a) the Yearly Payment for the period 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2012, (the Relevant Year ) payable in respect of each CVR on 31 January 2013 shall be zero; The payments were also zero for 2010 and 2011. The 2009 calculation notice, however, states that (a) the Yearly Payment for the period 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2009, (the Relevant Year) payable in respect of each CVR on 31 January 2010 shall be 11.497164 pence stated to 6 decimal places I presume that payment would have appeared in whatever account holds these notes, e.g. your brokerage account. Technically, the financial statements above refer to a Contingent Value Rights (CVR) instrument, which is a derivative linked to the Nuclear Power Notes. This site sums it up better than I can: The British Energy CVRs were created by the issue of nuclear power notes (NPNs) to the target’s shareholders who opted to take up this alternative. The NPNs were issued by Barclays Bank plc and were linked to guaranteed contingent value rights instruments that were issued to Barclays by EDF’s acquisition vehicle (Lake Acquisitions) and which were ultimately guaranteed by EDF Energy plc (Lake CVRs). Barclays is required to make yearly payments to noteholders for 10 years, the amount of which is limited to the corresponding amount paid by Lake Acquisitions to Barclays for the Lake CVRs. Basically, there is a chain of payments through these derivatives that eventually links back to nuclear energy output.
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How can I legally and efficiently help my girlfriend build equity by helping with a mortgage?
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Have her pay something like a friendly monthly rent. This should be less than half of the monthly mortgage cost, since you are assuming the risk (and benefits) of a mortgage and closer to the rent of similar places near you. For when you get married and she is to have half the apartment, have a pre-agreed way to calculate a lump-sum that she needs to provide to match your own contributions up to that time, as if you two had equal contributions from the beginning. The financially precise way to do it would be to have her pay more than the mere sum of the amount (since she will be providing the amount at a later time than you), but I would be generous and skip this in your place if the difference is not too big. If you break up, she will have payed what would be a fair amount of rent, as if you two were renting, so, in this sense, it is fair that she would not have a claim on the apartment. In case that you two would like that she keeps the apartment, you can just sell it to her, having her pay this same amount as above and assume responsibility for the rest of the mortgage.
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Calculating pay off for credit card with multiple APRs
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The first thing you need to do is look at your terms and conditions of your credit card, or ask your bank, how they will apply the payments. As Dilip notes in his answer, in the US, they will likely apply the minimum payment to the lower rate balance, and then must apply the rest above the minimum to the higher rate balance. In other countries, this will vary by law and custom. Do not assume it will pay off the higher balance, or proportionally, without asking. Let's take the following example. You owe $6000. $5000 is at 13.5% (normal purchase rate) and $1000 is at 22% (cash advance rate). If your bank applies payments to both balances proportionally, then a payment of $600 will reduce your purchase balance by $500 and your cash advance balance by $100. The average APR, then, is simply sum of the product of the APR times balance. So here, (.135*5000 + .225*1000)/6000 = 15%. This is called a weighted average. If the bank applies the payment differently - such as to the lower rate first, or some specified part to the lower rate and the rest to the higher rate - then this will be misleading if you enter it into a calculator, because your average APR will rise over time as you pay off the purchase balance but don't pay off the cash advance balance, or may decrease if the opposite happens. The weighted average is probably reasonably close in the circumstance that you describe, even if you have rules applying the balance differently, so long as they don't 100% pay down the lower rate - so it may be the simplest option for you in terms of rough calculations (where it's not critical to be correct, just close). One approach using the online calculators that might be better, is to treat these like two separate loans/cards. Many calculators exist for multiple balances. Then you can allocate funds differently to the two 'cards'. This would allow you to see how long you will need until you've paid off the higher balance, for example, although it probably won't perfectly match things - unless you find a site that has this specific option available you probably will have to either live with a small error in your calculations or do the math by hand.
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How does a bank make money on an interest free secured loan?
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Most 0% interest loans have quite high interest rates that are deferred. If you are late on a payment you are hit with all the deferred interest. They're banking on a percentage of customers missing a payment. Also, this is popular in furniture/car sales because it's a way to get people to buy who otherwise wouldn't, they made money on the item sale, so the loan doesn't have to earn them money (even though some will). Traditional banks/lenders do make money from interest and rely on that, they would have to rely on fees if interest were not permitted.
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How to calculate P/E ratio for S&P500 sectors
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For the S&P and many other indices (but not the DJIA) the index "price" is just a unitless number that is the result of a complicated formula. It's not a dollar value. So when you divide said number by the earnings/share of the sector, you're again getting just a unitless number that is incomparable to standard P-E ratios. In fact, now that I think about, it kinda makes sense that each sector would have a similar value for the number that you're computing, since each sector's index formula is presumably written to make all the index "price"s look similar to consumers.
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How do you measure the value of gold?
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You acquire something because you expect to use it, or because you expect to exchange it for something that you want to use. Gold is a good candidate for storing value because it's rare, it's not easily counterfeited, it's divisible, it's portable, etc. Contrast this with your favorite currency: more can be printed up almost at will, etc. Overvaluedness/undervaluedness is only in reference to something else. How many dollars does it take to buy an ounce of gold? (About $1,500.) How many ounces does it take to equal the DJIA? (About 8.) How many ounces of silver does it take to buy an ounce of gold? How many barrels of oil can you buy with an ounce of gold? Etc., etc. But whatever measure you're using, the value of the gold you have is directly related to the mass of gold you own. Two ounces are twice as valuable as one ounce. As the old joke goes (no offense to taxi drivers intended!) when your cabbie starts talking about how to get rich with gold, it's probably overvalued. Sell it all! ;)
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When is an IPO considered failure?
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Just skimming through the Wikipedia article on airberlin, I notice there is more to the story than simply "airberlin's IPO failed, so they postponed it and did it anyways." 3 points to keep in mind about IPOs: 1) An IPO is the mechanism for taking a private company and setting it up for shares to be owned by "the public". 2) The process of selling shares to the public often allows original owners and/or early investors to "cash out". Most countries (including member nations of the EU) limit some transactions like pre-IPO companies to "accredited investors". 3) Selling shares to the public also can allow the company to access more funds for growth. This is particularly important in a capital-intensive business like an airline; new B737-MAX costs >$110M. New A320neo costs >$105M USD. Ultimately, the question of a successful IPO depends on how you define success. Initially, there was a lot of concern that the IPO was set up with too much focus on goal #2... allowing the management & owners to cash out. It looks like the first approach was not meeting good opinions in the market during 2006. A major concern was that the initial approach focused on management only cashing out its shares and no money actually going to the company to support its future. The investment bankers restructured the IPO, including the issuance of more new shares so that more $ could end up in the company's accounts, not just in the accounts of the management. If anything, it's still a pretty successful IPO given that the shares were successfully listed, the company collected the money it needed to invest and grow, and the management still cashed out.
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What is this type of risk-free investment called?
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My Credit Union offers a market-linked CD where the investment has FDIC protection if it is held to maturity, but otherwise they are linked with the S&P 500. it comes with this warning: Market-Link CDs are not appropriate for all depositors including clients needing a guaranteed interest payment or seeking full participation in the stock market. If redeemed prior to maturity, the amount received will be subject to market risk including interest rate fluctuations an issuer credit quality. So they still do exist. Another credit union I belong to has a similar product. The risk is that if you need the money early, there may be losses. There would also not be a way to switch to a more conservative posture as the CD approached maturity, if you were interested in protecting your gains.
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Does financing a portfolio on margin affect the variance of a portfolio?
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Financing a portfolio with debt (on margin) leads to higher variance. That's the WHOLE POINT. Let's say it's 50-50. On the downside, with 100% equity, you can never lose more than your whole equity. But if you have assets of 100, of which 50% is equity and 50% is debt, your losses can be greater than 50%, which is to say more than the value of your equity. The reverse is true. You can make money at TWICE the rate if the market goes up. But "you pay your money and you take your chances" (Punch, 1846).
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How can I diversify investments across currencies in ISA?
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You have to check if the investment vehicle you are planning to buy is acceptable for ISA on a case by case. Then if it is allowed by HMRC you have to check that your ISA provider offers those products (the mainstream providers might offer a more limited range of products and you might have to go to change your provider)
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Equity - date of offer, or date of joining?
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TL;DR: The date they were granted. (Usually, this follows both an offer and acceptance.) It's not uncommon for a new vesting clock to start when there's a new round of funding coming in, because the investors want to make sure the key people are going to be engaged and incentivized going forward from that point. They don't lower their expectations for how long they want folks engaged based on the person having started earlier. Non-institutional investors may have the same concerns as institutional investors here and use the same vesting strategy to address them. Primary recognition of the benefits from having had people start earlier or be there longer (so long as it correlates with having gotten more done) is embedded in the valuation (which affects how much founders' shares are diluted in the raise).
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Can you use external money to pay trading commissions in tax-free and tax-deferred accounts?
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According to Publication 590, broker's commissions for stock transactions within an IRA cannot be paid in addition to the IRA contribution(s), but they are deductible as part of the contribution, or add to the basis if you are making a nondeductible contribution to a Traditional IRA. (Top of Page 10, and Page 12, column 1, in the 2012 edition of Pub 590). On the other hand, trustees' administrative fees can be paid from outside the IRA if they are billed separately, and are even deductible as a Miscellaneous Deduction on Schedule A of your income tax return (subject to the 2% of AGI threshold). A long time ago, when my IRA account balances were much smaller, I used to get a bill from my IRA custodian for a $20 annual administrative fee which I paid separately (but never got to deduct due to the 2% threshold). My custodian also allowed the option of doing nothing in which case the $20 would be collected from (and thus reduce) the amount of money in my IRA. Note that this does not apply to the expenses charged by the mutual funds that you might have in your IRA; these expenses are treated the same as brokerage commissions and must be paid from within the IRA.
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Should I have to pay income tax on contribution to home office rent from company?
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This is essentially a reimbursement of your expense. Since you can deduct the expense, the fact that the reimbursement is taxable doesn't affect you much. You deduct your home office expenses on your annual tax return using form 8829. See the IRS site for more details. If you're asking about the UK tax, there may be some other considerations, but from the US tax perspective it is (nearly) a wash.
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Advice for opening an IRA as a newbie
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If you want to 'offset' current (2016) income, only deductible contribution to a traditional IRA does that. You can make nondeductible contributions to a trad IRA, and there are cases where that makes sense for the future and cases where it doesn't, but it doesn't give you a deduction now. Similarly a Roth IRA has possible advantages and disadvantages, but it does not have a deduction now. Currently he maximum is $5500 per person ($6500 if over age 50, but you aren't) which with two accounts (barely) covers your $10k. To be eligible to make this deductible traditional contribution, you must have earned income (employment or self-employment, but NOT the distribution from another IRA) at least the amount you want to contribute NOT have combined income (specifically MAGI, Modified Adjusted Gross Income) exceeding the phaseout limit (starts at $96,000 for married-joint) IF you were covered during the year (either you or your spouse) by an employer retirement plan (look at box 13 on your W-2's). With whom. Pretty much any bank, brokerage, or mutual fund family can handle IRAs. (To be technical, the bank's holding company will have an investment arm -- to you it will usually look like one operation with one name and logo, one office, one customer service department, one website etc, but the investment part must be legally separate from the insured banking part so you may notice a different name on your legal and tax forms.) If you are satisified with the custodian of the inherited IRA you already have, you might just stay with them -- they may not need as much paperwork, you don't need to meet and get comfortable with new people, you don't need to learn a new website. But if they sold you an annuity at your age -- as opposed to you inheriting an already annuitized IRA -- I'd want a lot of details before trusting they are acting in your best interests; most annuities sold to IRA holders are poor deals. In what. Since you want only moderate risk at least to start, and also since you are starting with a relatively small amount where minimum investments, expenses and fees can make more of an impact on your results, I would go with one or a few broad (= lower risk) index (= lower cost) fund(s). Every major fund familly also offers at least a few 'balanced' funds which give you a mixture of stocks and bonds, and sometimes some 'alternatives', in one fund. Remember this is not committing you forever; any reasonable custodian will allow you to move or spread to more-adventurous (but not wild and crazy) investments, which may be better for you in future years when you have some more money in the account and some more time to ponder your goals and options and comfort level.
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Apartment lease renewal - is this rate increase normal?
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Yes, automatic rate increases are typical in my experience (and I think it's very greedy, when it's based on nothing except that your lease is up for renewal, which is the situation you are describing). Yes, you should negotiate. I've had success going to the apartment manager and having this conversation: Make these points: Conclude: I am not open to a rate increase, though I will sign a renewal at the same rate I am paying now. This conversation makes me very uncomfortable, but I try not to show it. I was able to negotiate a lease renewal at the same rate this way (in a large complex in Sacramento, CA). If you are talking to a manager and not an owner, they will probably have to delay responding until they can check with the owner. The key really is that they want to keep units rented, especially when units are staying empty. Empty units are lost income for the owner. It is the other empty units that are staying empty that are the huge point in your favor.
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My investment account is increasingly and significantly underperforming vs. the S&P 500. What should I do?
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Typically you diversify a portfolio to reduce risk. The S&P 500 is a collection of large-cap stocks; a diversified portfolio today probably contains a mix of large cap, small cap, bonds, international equity and cash. Right now, if you have a bond component, that part of your portfolio isn't performing as well. The idea of diversification is that you "smooth out" the ups and downs of the market and come out ahead in most situations. If you don't have a bond or cash component in your portfolio, you may have picked (or had someone pick for you) lousy funds. Without more detail, that's about all that can be said. EDIT: You provided more detail, so I want to add a little to my answer. Basically, you're in a fund that has high fees (1.58% annually) and performance that trails the mid-cap index. The S&P 500 is a large-cap index (large cap == large company), so a direct comparison is not necessarily meaningful. Since you seem to be new at this, I'd recommend starting out with the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX) or ETF (VTI). This is a nice option because it represents the entire stock market and is cheap... it's a good way to get started without knowing alot. If your broker charges a transaction fee to purchase Vanguard funds and you don't want to change brokers or pay ETF commissions, look for or ask about transaction-fee free "broad market" indexes. The expense ratio should be below 0.50% per year and optimally under 0.20%. If you're not having luck finding investment options, swtich to a discount broker like TD Ameritrade, Schwab, ScottTrade or Fidelity (in no particular order)
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Why don't banks print their own paper money / bank notes?
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In Scotland, each bank issues its own separate notes. It's not uncommon to see identical-valued £10 notes, for example, from three different banks in one's wallet.
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Rate of return of stock index
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The return from one day to the next is based on the Day's closing price. To be clear - opening prices can be quite different from the prior day close. In your example, they are pretty close, but this is not always the case. Just pull a larger data set to observe this. The above aside, dividends are not reflected in the index, so, after a dividend has occurred, you'd need to account for this if you are looking for true total return. In 2011, the S&P closed at 1257.60 vs a 2010 year end 1257.64. The return, however was 2.11%, not zero, after accounting for the dividends. To me, articles that suggest the yearly return was zero are inaccurate and misleading.
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Should I put more money down on one property and pay it off sooner or hold on to the cash?
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I'd suggest taking all the money you have saved up and putting in a mutual fund and hold off on buying a rental property until you can buy it outright. I know it seems like this will take forever, but it has a HUGE advantage: I know it seems like it will take forever to save up the money to buy a property for cash, but in the long run, its the best option by far.
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Why do people buy stocks that pay no dividend?
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There are many stocks that don't have dividends. Their revenue, growth, and reinvestment help these companies to grow, and my share of such companies represent say, one billionth of a growing company, and therefore worth more over time. Look up the details of Berkshire Hathaway. No dividend, but a value of over $100,000. Not a typo, over one hundred thousand dollars per share.
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Why does Charles Schwab have a Mandatory Settlement Period after selling stocks?
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Simple Schwaab does not have actually your securities they have leased them out and have to borrow them back. all assets are linked with derivatives now. They show on the balance sheet but have to be untangled. Thats why the market drops disproportionally fast to the actual number of shares sold.
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Does dollar cost averaging really work?
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Here is a deliberately simple example of Dollar Cost averaging: Day 1: Buy 100 shares at $10. Total value = $1,000. Average cost per share = $10.00/share (easy). Day 2: Buy 100 more shares at $9. Total value = $1,900. Average cost per share = $9.50/share (1,900/200). Notice how your average cost per share went from $10.00 to $9.50. Now instead of hoping the stock rises above $10.00 a share to make a profit, you only need it to go to $9.50 a share (assuming no commissions or transaction fees). It's easy to see how this could work to your advantage. The only catch is that you need buy more of a stock that is dropping (people might think you're crazy). This could easily backfire if the stock continues to drop.
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Buying a foreclosed property
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That may depend largely in which country you are in, the legislation in that country and the state of the economy and property market (more specifically) at the time of the foreclosure. In Australia, where we do not have non-recourse loans (except in SMSFs) the banks are obliged to recoup as much as possible for the mortgagee, however they would not hold on to the property indefinitely, as that could cause other problems and they have to return the mortgagee portion of the funds back to them (if there is any funds left after the bank takes their portion). In 2008, when the property market here was weak we had bought some foreclosure houses and were able to get them 20% to 25% below what they were selling at the year before. If there was a forclosure in today's strong market in Australia (and especially in Sydney), I dought you would get much of a discount at all. So it may largly depend on the demand and supply at the time of the forclosure.
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Can't the account information on my checks be easily used for fraud?
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Yes this is a huge security loophole and many banks will do nothing to refund if you are scammed. For example for business accounts some Wells Fargo branches say you must notify within 24 hours of any check withdrawal or the loss is yours. Basically banks don't care - they are a monopoly system and you are stuck with them. When the losses and complaints get too great they will eventually implement the European system of electronic transfers - but the banks don't want to be bothered with that expense yet. Sure you can use paypal - another overpriced monopoly - or much better try Dwolla or bitcoin.
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What is today's price of 15 000 Euro given 15 years ago?
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There's often a legal basis to answer this question. For instance, Austria (guessing from your profile) currently uses a 4% Statutory interest rate. You'll need to dig up not just the actual but also the historical rates. Note that you'll want the non-commercial interest rate - some countries differentiate between loans to businesses and loans to individuals.
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How important is reconciling accounts for a small LLC (Quickbooks)?
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I would suggest opening a new account (credit card and bank) for just your business. This protects you in multiple ways, but is no bigger burden for you other than carrying another card in your wallet. Then QB can download the transactions from your website and reconciling is a cinch. If you got audited, you'd be in for a world of pain right now. From personal experience there are a few charges that go unnoticed that reconciling finds every month at our business. We have a very strict process in place, but some things slip through the cracks.
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In the USA, does the income tax rate on my wages increase with the amount of money in my bank account?
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besides accrued interest But that's important. one has $40,000 in their account and the other $9,000. Does one now pay higher income tax because he has more in his account or does he pay the same because he makes the same? If they are interest bearing accounts, then yes the guy with the $40K balance will pay a little more* income tax than the guy with $9K. * If the account earns 1%/ann and the $40K and $9K have been in there all year, then the big account will earn $401.84 interest, and the smaller will earn $90.41.
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How often do typical investors really lose money?
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I'll just add this: In the best hedge funds and proprietary trading funds, stock selection is approached very scientifically in order to minimize losses/maximize gains. Researchers think of a trading idea and carefully test it to see which methods of stock selection work and how well, and finally they combine them. Every day researchers update their models based on the past performance of each indicator. All this is just too much work to be done manually. Firms use machine learning methods to understand markets. They try to figure out what is normal, what did not happen correctly at a specific time, what will happen in future. For instance, they use deep learning networks to look at unlabeled data, and figure out what is normal and what is not. These networks can analyze an unstructured haystack of noise, and separate out the signal. This is very relevant to finance and markets because finding the patterns and anomalies in market data has been the bread and butter of traders for decades. Deep learning networks give us applications like feature learning. By 'features,' I'm referring to certain attributes in data that indicate an event. By anticipating them, we can help predict future price movements. New technology is allowing us to break new ground in managing risk, to be a-typical and manage risk in ever-improving ways. It's the responsibility of every trader, whether working for themselves or others, to take advantage of this technology to improve the collective investing experience. I care very deeply about this. I have many close friends, in the finance world and without, who have lost large amounts of money to poor trade tools and lack of transparency.
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Is it unreasonable to double your investment year over year?
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Yes. The definition of unreasonable shows as "not guided by or based on good sense." 100% years require a high risk. Can your one stock double, or even go up three fold? Sure, but that would likely be a small part of your portfolio. Overall, long term, you are not likely to beat the market by such high numbers. That said, I had 2 years of returns well over 100%. 1998, and 1999. The S&P was up 26.7% and 19.5%, and I was very leverage in high tech stock options. As others mentioned, leverage was key. (Mark used the term 'gearing' which I think is leverage). When 2000 started crashing, I had taken enough off the table to end the year down 12% vs the S&P -10%, but this was down from a near 50% gain in Q1 of that year. As the crash continued, I was no longer leveraged and haven't been since. The last 12 years or so, I've happily lagged the S&P by a few basis points (.04-.02%). Also note, Buffet has returned an amazing 15.9%/yr on average for the last 30 years (vs the S&P 11.4%). 16% is far from 100%. The last 10 year, however, his return was a modest 8.6%, just .1% above the S&P.
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Are there any benefits of FMLA beyond preserving your job?
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In your situation, it sounds like the only added benefit would be insurance continuance. For employees who can't access short-term disability it is a critical protection against losing their job. I just want to emphasize that given that you are in a pretty decent employment situation.
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What return are you getting on your money from paying down a mortgage on a rental property?
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This is a great question, considering that all of your expenses including PITA, Maintenance, etc. are paid by a tenant, your cash flow is $0. Most people would stop and assume your investment is not performing and your only chance at making money is through appreciation. Your question eliminates appreciation so here are the returns you would get on your investment. The math will probably surprise many that you are actually earning a return on your money. Annual Return = [((Future Value)/(Initial Investment))^((Periods per Year)/(Number of Periods) -1]*100 % 5.51% = [($200,000/$40,000)^(12/360)-1]*100 % As Chris Rea commented: The subtlety that some would miss is that while "income covers expenses exactly", embedded in the "expenses" is actually a repayment of the loan principal (and technically, that's not an "expense") so not all of the income is "lost" covering the "expenses". That repayment of principal portion of the rental income constitutes the return on the original capital invested.
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Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do?
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I believe the only thing you haven't mentioned to him is the possibility that his activity is criminally fraudulent. I would sit him down, and say something substantially similar to the following: We've talked about your investment before, and I know you believe it's fine. I just want to make sure you understand that this is very likely fraudulent activity. I know you believe in it, but you've said you don't understand how or why it works. The problem with that is that if it is a fraud you can't protect yourself from criminal prosecution because you didn't understand what you were doing. The prosecutor will ask you if you asked others to give you or the organization money, and then they will convict you based on trying to defraud others. It doesn't matter whether you did it on purpose, or just because you believed the people you are investing in. So I very strongly advise you to understand exactly what the system is, and how it works, and then make sure with a lawyer that it's legal. If it is, then hey, you've learned something valuable. But if it's not, then you will save yourself a whole lot of trouble and anguish down the road if you step away before someone you attract to the investment decides to talk to their accountant or lawyer. A civil lawsuit may be bad, but if you're criminally prosecuted it will be so much worse. Now that I've said my piece, I won't talk to you about it anymore or bother you about it. I wish you luck, and hope that things work out fine. I wouldn't talk to the police or suggest that I'd do anything of that nature, without proof then there's no real way to start an investigation anyway, and unfortunately scams like this are incredibly hard to investigate, so the police often spend little to no time on them without a high level insider giving up evidence and associates. Chances are good nothing would happen to your friend - one day the organization will disappear and he won't recover any more money - but there's a distinct possibility that when that happens, the people below him will come for him, and he won't be able to look further up the chain for help. Perhaps the threat of illegal activity will be enough to prevent him from defrauding others, but if not I think at least you can let it go, and know that you've done everything for him that might work.
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Should I find a regular job or continue doing what am doing?
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This might sound harsh, but the first thing I would suggest is to stop making excuses. I wasn't able to continue due to pressure from college and family The college I went to was horrible. Employers can very easily hire foreign work-force for very cheap; for example as a citizen if I work $10 an hour, they can get someone from outside to work for $5 per hour There's no guarantee that the project will succeed. I cannot really work and at the same time develop software on my free time. Despite my failures in the past, I was not the main person that's responsible for those failures. Even if all of this is true, it's not helping you move forward and it seems to be getting in the way of creating a good action plan and motivating yourself to succeed. If you believe (based on past experiences) that you are doomed to fail, then you are indeed doomed to fail. You need to take a step back and re-evaluate your current circumstances and what you can do to reach your goals. You have a couple of things working in your favor here. It's great that you are debt free. That already puts you ahead of a lot of your peers. You have the option of living with your parents. Presumably for no rent, or at least much lower rent than you would have to pay if you move out. This is worth literally thousands of $/£/€ for every year you stay. Now, onto your questions: 1) Should I quit regular programming for a normal job because I never monetized programming so I can move out of my parents' home? Are you being paid for this "regular programming"? If so, are you being paid more than minimum wage? If not, it's perfectly acceptable to consider alternative ways to spend your time and generate income. However, this doesn't have to be at the expense of living with your parents. Have you thought about getting a new or second job while still living with them? If you absolutely must move out of your parent's home, consider renting a room in a house with other people to keep the rent costs to a minimum. That way, even if your main job is low paying, you should be able to put aside some money each month for future endeavors. 2) Should I monetize programming and gamble with the future? What does this mean? Are you thinking you'll write a mobile app and sell thousands of copies for 99¢ each? That would indeed be a big gamble, but maybe that's not what you meant, so you'll need to clarify. 3) Would it be wise to essentially quit programming for the sake of a minimum wage job? I'm not sure how this is different from question 1. So I'll reiterate what I said there - moving out is going to be expensive. You can still do it, but you're asking on a Personal Finance site where the focus is usually how to minimize living costs and maximize income. Without knowing more about where you live (employment opportunities, cost of living) the default recommendation is usually to save money by staying in your parents house. TLDR: Don't focus on anyone else. They are not preventing you from getting the job you want. Look at your own skills and qualifications (not just programming, consider all of your abilities). What are you good at? Who might need those skills? What is the cost of reaching those people (commute time, moving nearer)? What is the reward? If the reward exceeds the cost, start approaching those people. Show them what you can do.
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How could a company survive just on operations cash flow, i.e. no earnings?
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It is true that operation profit comes from gross profit however it is possible for a company to have negative net profit yet have postive cash flow , it has to do with the accounting practice A possible example is that a company has extremely high depreciation expense of fixed asset hence net profit will be negative but cash flow will be positive. Assuming the fixed asset has been fully paid for in earlier years
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What happened when the dot com bubble burst?
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To add to the already existing answers, most of the dotcom companies used an accounting sheningan so profusely that everything looked rosy. To account for revenues, what dotcom companies did was, get into a barter transaction with another dotcom company by selling advertising space and stuff on each other's website. So the final outcome was each had quite a substantial amount of revenue while in reality there wasn't any revenue earned. This cooked up their books to look quite rosy to investors who then poured in their money, without realizing they were pouring money into a black hole. As someone mentioned Cisco, which sells networking gear and was heavily dependent on the dotcom boost. So when everything went bust, its stock price also crashed heavily. This was for the losers, but some good ones did sail through. Dotcom companies which had substance took a hit, in fact everybody did, during the bust but more than made up for it later on when investors realized they are valuable.
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Is the very long-term growth of the stock market bound by aggregate net income?
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I am a believer in that theory. My opinion is that over the long term, we can expect 25% of income to reflect the payment on one's mortgage, and if you drew a line over time reflecting the mortgage this represents plus the downpayment, you'd be very close to a median home price. The bubble that occurred was real, but not as dramatic as Schiller's chart implies. $1000 will support a $124K 30yr mortgage, but $209K at 4%. This is with no hype, and exact same supply/demand pressures. The market cap of all US companies adds to about $18T. The total wealth in the US, about $60T. Of course US stocks aren't just held by US citizens, it's a big world. Let me suggest two things - the world is poor in comparison to much of the US. A $100,000 net worth puts you in the top 8% in the world. The implication of this is that as the poorer 90% work their way up from poverty, money will seek investments, and there's room for growth. Even if you looked at a closed system, the US only, the limit, absent bubbles, would be one that would have to put a cap on productivity. In today's dollars we produce more than we did years ago, and less than we will in the future. We invent new things faster than the old ones are obsoleted. So any prognostication that our $18T market can grow to say, $30T, does not need to discuss P/Es or bubbles, but rather the creation of new products and businesses that will increase the total market. To summarize - Population growth (not really discussed), Productivity, and long term reduced Poverty will all keep that boundary to be a growing number. That said, this question may be economic, and not PF, in which case my analysis is bound for the Off-Topic barrel. Fascinating question.
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Do I make money in the stock market from other people losing money?
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Do I make money in the stock market from other people losing money? Sometimes. If the market goes down, and someone sells -- on a panic, perhaps, or nervousness -- at a loss, if you have extra cash then you can buy that stock on the hope/expectation that its value will rise.
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What would I miss out on by self insuring my car?
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One way to look at insurance is that it replaces an unpredictable expenses with a predictable fees. That is, you pay a set monthly amount ("premium") instead of the sudden costs associated with a collision or other covered event. Insurance works as a business, which means they intend to make a substantial profit for providing that service. They put a lot of effort in to measuring probabilities, and carefully set the premiums to get make a steady profit*. The odds are in their favor. You have to ask yourself: if X happened tomorrow, how would I feel about the financial impact? Also, how much will it cost me to buy insurance to cover X? If you have a lot of savings, plenty of available credit, a bright financial future, and you take the bus to work anyway, then totaling your car may not be a big deal, money wise. Skip the insurance. If you have no savings, plenty of debt, little prospects for that improving, and you depend on your car to get to work just so you can pay what you already owe, then totaling your car would probably be a big problem for you. Stick with insurance. There is a middle ground. You can adjust your deductible. Raise it as high as you can comfortably handle. You cover the small stuff out of pocket, and save the insurance for the big ticket items. *Insurance companies also invest the money they take as premiums, until they pay out a claim. That's not relevant to this discussion, though.
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What are the top “market conditions” to follow?
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Check out http://garynorth.com if you have $15/month. Or at least subscribe to his free newsletters (Tip of the Week, Reality Check). Well worth it. He doesn't pay much attention to the US market indicators, except to note that people are about 20% poorer than they were 10 years ago. He looks at more basic indicators like M1, treasury rates, unemployment figures, etc. He recommended buying gold in 2001. He changed his recommended investment portfolio most recently about a couple of years ago (!) and it's done quite well.
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Can I invest in the USA or EU from an Asian 3rd-world country, over the Internet?
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Absolutely. It does highly depend on your country, as US brokerages are stricter with or even closed to residents of countries that produce drugs, launder money, finance terror, have traditional difficulty with the US, etc. It also depends on your country's laws. Some countries have currency controls, restrictions on buying foreign/US securities, etc. That said, some brokerages have offices world-wide, so there might be one near you. If your legal situation as described above is fortunate, some brokers will simply allow you to setup online using a procedure not too different from US residents: provide identification, sign tons of documents. You'll have to have a method to deliver your documentation in the ways you'd expect: mail, fax, email. E*Trade is the best starter broker, right now, imo. Just see how far you can go in the sign-up process.
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Is 401k as good as it sounds given the way it is taxed?
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Be sure to consider the difference between Roth 401K and standard 401K. The Roth 401K is taxed as income then put into your account. So the money you put into the Roth 401K is taxed as income for the current year, however, any interest you accumulate over the years is not taxed when you withdraw the money. So to break it down: You may also want to look into Self Directed 401K, which can be either standard or Roth. Check if your employer supports this type of account. But if you're self employed or 1099 it may be a good option.
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Is a stock's trade size history publicly available?
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My Broker and probably many Brokers provide this information in a table format under "Course of Sale". It provides the time, price and volume of each trade on that day. You could also view this data on a chart in some charting programs. Just set the interval to "Tick by Tick" and look at the volume. "Tick by Tick" will basically place a mark for every trade that is taken and then the volume will tell you the size of that trade.
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What is the US tax owed when gifting India Shares to my brother?
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Here's an excerpt from the Charles Schwab website which I think will help evaluate your position: The simple answer to your question is no, the value of a gift of stock for gift tax liability is NOT the donor's cost basis, but rather the fair market value of the stock at the time the gift is given. So let's say you purchased 100 shares of XYZ stock at $50 a share. Your cost basis is $5,000. Now the stock is $80 a share and you give it as a gift. The value of your gift for gift tax purposes is $8,000. In 2015, you can give up to $14,000 to an unlimited number of individuals each year without paying a gift tax or even reporting the gifts. If you give over that amount to any individual, however, you must report the gift on your tax return, but you don't have to pay taxes until you give away more than the current lifetime limit of $5,430,000—for the amount above and beyond $14,000 per person per year. So in the example above, there would be no gift tax liability. However, if the stock happened to be $150 a share, the value of the gift would be $15,000. You'd then have to report it and $1,000 would be applied toward your $5,430,000 lifetime exclusion. You will need to pay a gift tax on the current value of the stock. I'm not familiar with the tax laws in India, but if your brother was in the US, he wouldn't pay taxes on that gift until he sells the stock. The recipient doesn’t have to worry about gift taxes. It's when the recipient decides to sell the stock that the issue of valuation comes up—for income taxes. And this is where things can get a bit more complicated. In general, when valuing a gift of stock for capital gains tax liability, it's the donor's cost basis and holding period that rules. As an example, let's say you receive a gift of stock from your grandfather. He bought it for $10 a share and it's worth $15 a share on the day you receive it. If you then sell the stock, whether for a gain or a loss, your cost basis will be the same as your grandfather’s: $10 per share. Sell it at $25 and you'll pay tax (at the short- or long-term rate, depending on how long he owned the stock) on a gain of $15 a share; sell it at $8 and your capital loss will be $2 a share. Ultimately, with a gift this large that also crosses international borders, you really should hire a professional who is experienced with these types of transactions. Their fees/commission will be completely offset by the savings in risk and paperwork. http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/How-Do-You-Value-a-Gift-of-Stock-It-Depends-on-Whether-You-re-the-Giver-or-the-Receiver
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Are Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) less safe than regular mutual funds?
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I wonder if ETF's are further removed from the actual underlying holdings or assets giving value to the fund, as compared to regular mutual funds. Not exactly removed. But slightly different. Whenever a Fund want to launch an ETF, it would buy the underlying shares; create units. Lets say it purchased 10 of A, 20 of B and 25 of C. And created 100 units for price x. As part of listing, the ETF company will keep the purchased shares of A,B,C with a custodian. Only then it is allowed to sell the 100 units into the market. Once created, units are bought or sold like regular stock. In case the demand is huge, more units are created and the underlying shares kept with custodian. So, for instance, would VTI and Total Stock Market Index Admiral Shares be equally anchored to the underlying shares of the companies within the index? Yes they are. Are they both connected? Yes to an extent. The way Vanguard is managing this is given a Index [Investment Objective]; it is further splitting the common set of assets into different class. Read more at Share Class. The Portfolio & Management gives out the assets per share class. So Vanguard Total Stock Market Index is a common pool that has VTI ETF, Admiral and Investor Share and possibly Institutional share. Is VTI more of a "derivative"? No it is not a derivative. It is a Mutual Fund.
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Good book-keeping software?
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I like using Mint.com to track my expenses. It makes it very easy to watch my budget and monitor my spending.
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Is there a standard check format in the USA?
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Legally, a check just needs to have a certain list of things (be an instruction to one's bank to pay a specific amount of money to bearer or to a specific entity, have a date, have a signature, etc.) There are anecdotes around of a guy depositing a junk mail check and it accidentally qualifying as a real check (which he turned into a live show), or of writing a check on a door, cow, or "the shirt off your back". What kind of checks your bank will process is technically up to them. Generally, if you get your blank checks printed up by any reputable firm, they'll have similar information in similar places, as well as the MICR line (the account and routing number in magnetic ink on the bottom) to allow for bank to process the checks with automated equipment. As long as it's a standard size, has the MICR line, and has the information that a check needs, your bank is likely to be fine with it. So, there are some standards, but details like where exactly the name of the bank is, or what font is used, or the like, are up to whoever is printing the check. For details on what standards your bank requires in order to process your checks, you'd have to check with your bank directly. Though, it wouldn't surprise me if they just directed you to their preferred check printer provider, as they know that they accept their check format fine. Though as I said, any reputable check printer makes sure that they meet the standards to get processed by banks without trouble. Unless you're a business that's going to be writing a lot of checks and pay a lot of fees for the privilege, a bank is not likely to want to make exceptions for you for your own custom-printed octagonal checks written in ancient Vulcan.
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I have $100,000 in play money… what to do?
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If you want a concrete investment tip, precious metals (e.g. gold, silver) are on a pretty good run these days, personally I still think they have ways to go as there are just too many problems with modern monetary policy of an almost existential nature, and gold and silver are better stores of value than fiat money. Silver is particularly hot right now, but keep in mind that the increased volatility means increased risk. If the Fed keeps its foot on the pedals of the dollar printing press and we get QE3 this summer, that will most likely mean more people piling into the PMs to hedge against inflation. If the Fed starts to tighten it's policy then that's probably bad news for both equities and bonds and so PMs could be seen as a safe haven investment. These are the main reasons why PMs take up a good portion of my portfolio and will continue to do so untill I see how the global economy plays out over the next couple of years.
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How do you invest in real estate without using money?
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There is (almost) always money involved somewhere, but it doesn't have to come from you. It can be investors, credit cards, or even seller-financing (I've done all 3). Examples: If you can find partners with the money to make the deals happen, then your job is to put the deal together. Find the properties, negotiate the price, even get the property under contract (all without any obligation or cost on your part... yes it absolutely can be done). Then your partners will fund the deal if it's good enough and their terms are met, etc. In some areas you can put a property on a credit card. If you find a house say for $25,000 that will rent for $300/month, and you can put it on a credit card (especially at zero percent for a year or something similar), then you can generate cashflow as a landlord without putting up any cash of your own on the purchase. Of course there are many risks associated with landlording and i could tell you horror stories... but we're not addressing that here. You can negotiate a sale with an owner who agrees to finance the entire purchase for you. I once purchased 3 properties at once this way from a seller who financed the entire sale, all closing costs, everything, this way. Of course they needed a lot of repair and such so I had to fund that another way, but at least the purchase itself cost me no money out of pocket. So these infomercials/courses are not inherently scams in the sense that what they are teaching is (usually... I'm sure there are exceptions) true. However they generally give you enough information to get into trouble, and not out. But that's what true learning is... it's getting into trouble and finding a way out that doesn't kill you. =) That's called experience, and you can't buy that for any price.
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Townhouse or stand-alone house for a first home?
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If you buy a townhouse, you often are in a condominium arrangement in the US (when you're really in a rowhouse in particular). So that's a downside right away: you have to have a HOA, or at least some sort of common agreement, though it might not have formal meetings. Everyone who owns an interest in the entire group of townhouses gets some say in landscaping and such. Beyond that though, townhouses (and similarly, condominiums) are often easier to own (as they don't have as much maintenance that you have to do), but more expensive because you pay someone to do it (the landscaping, the external repairs, etc.). You likely don't have as much control over what the external looks like (because you have to be in agreement with the other owners), but you also don't have to do the work, unless your agreement is to collectively do the mowing/landscaping, which you should know in advance. I wouldn't underestimate the value of easier, by the way; it's very valuable to not have to deal with as many repairs and to be able to go a week without thinking about mowing or watering. In that sense it can be a nice transition into ownership, getting some-but-not-all of the obligations. But if that's something you really value, doing the landscaping and mowing and whatnot, that's relevant too. You can always tell your realtor to look for townhouses where the owners do some/all of the landscaping, though that opens up a different can of worms (where you rely on others to do work that they may not do, or do well). They're also somewhat noisier; you may be sharing a wall (but not necessarily, air-gap townhouses do exist) and either way will be closer to your neighbors. Does noise bother you? Conversely, are you noisy? In a college town this is probably something to pay attention to. Price wise, of course stay well within your means; if being close to the city center is important, that may lead you to buy a townhouse in that area. If being further out isn't a problem, you'll probably have similar choices in terms of price as long as you look in cheaper areas for single family homes.
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Track uninvoiced (pre-invoiced?) expected income in Quicken
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You are right on track with your idea of setting up a separate account for invoiced income. Create a new account with the type other asset and call it "Receivables" (or something similar). Every time you invoice a client, enter a credit to this account with the amount of the invoice. Once the client pays and you deposit a check, enter a transfer from the "Receivables" account to the bank account. EDIT I overlooked that you wish to account for not-yet-invoiced income. I think that's a bad idea. It will become confusing and will give you the false sense that your financial condition is better than it really is. There are plenty of stories about businesses that have stellar sales, but fail because of lack of cash flow (the business' bills become due before it gets paid by its own customers).
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Why is day trading considered riskier than long-term trading?
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It's important to distinguish between speculation and investing. Buying something because you hope to make money on market fluctuations is speculation. Buying something and expecting to make money because your money is providing actual economic value is investing. If Person A buys 100 shares of a stock with the intent of selling them in a few hours, and Person B buys 100 shares of the same stock with the intent of holding on to it for a year, then obviously at that point they both have the same risk. The difference comes over the course of the year. First, Person B is going to be making money from the economic value the company provides over the whole year, while the only way Person A can make money is from market fluctuation (the economic value the company provides over the course of an hour is unlikely to be significant). Person B is exposed to the risk of buying the stock, but that's counterbalanced by the profit from holding the stock for a year, while Person A just has the risk. Second, if Person A is buying a new stock every hour, then they're going to have thousands of transactions. So even though Person B assumed just as much risk as Person A for that one transaction, Person A has more total risk.
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How to know more about my tax situation in the States
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The LLC (not you) is probably in debt to the California FTB. Any LLC registered in California must pay at least $800 a year, until it is officially dissolved (i.e.: notice of cancellation/dissolution properly filed with the California Secretary of State). The FTB may come after members (including you) personally, if it can prove that the failure to pay was due to your negligence. Talk to a CA-licensed EA/CPA about how to resolve this. Otherwise, at least from what you've described, there were no other taxable events. LLC is a disregarded entity, so the IRS doesn't care about it much anyway (unless someone was stupid enough to elect it to be taxed as a corporation, that is). Keep in mind that when in doubt - you are always better off with a professional (a CPA/EA licensed in your State) advice.
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Why can it be a bad idea to buy stocks after hours?
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Unless you want to be a short term day trader, then it is not foolish to be an end of day trader. If you are looking to be a medium to long term trader/investor then it is quite acceptable to put orders in after market close. Some would say it is even less risky, because you are not watching the price fluctuate up and down and letting your emotions getting the best of you.
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What one bit of financial advice do you wish you could've given yourself five years ago?
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Planned my grocery shopping better. You can't just wake up on Saturday hungry go to the grocer and buy what looks good. Take the time to clip some coupons and more importantly make a shopping list.
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Need your help and suggestion
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How much amount can we transfer from India to the USA? Is the limit per year? As I understand your father in law is Indian Citizen and his tax paid earnings need to be transferred outside of India. Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme by RBI, one can transfer upto 2,50,000 USD. Please check with your Bank for the exact paperwork. A form 15CA and 15CB [by CA] are required to establish taxes have been paid. What documents we have to present to the bank? See above. Should money be transferred to company's account(Indian Company) to USA company? or can be transferred to my husband's account. Transfer of funds by a Indian Company to US Company has some restrictions. Please check with CA for details. If you father in law has sold the Indian Company and paid the taxes in India; he can transfer the proceeds to his son in US as per the Liberalized Remittance Scheme. Can they just gift the whole amount to my husband? What will be the tax implication on my husband's part in USA and on my father in law in India. The whole amount can be gifted by your father in law to your husband [his son]. There is no tax implication in India as being an Indian resident, gift between close relatives is tax free. There is no tax implication to your husband as he is a US Citizen and as per gift tax the person giving the gift should be paying the applicable taxes. Since the person gifting is not US Citizen; this is not applicable.
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US Tax Form 1040EZ: Do I enter ALL income or ONLY income specified in W-2 forms?
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Yes, you need to include income from your freelance work on your tax return. In the eyes of the IRS, this is self-employment income from your sole-proprietorship business. The reason you don't see it mentioned in the 1040EZ instructions is that you can't use the 1040EZ form if you have self-employment income. You'll need to use the full 1040 form. Your business income and expenses will be reported on a Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ, and the result will end up on Line 12 of the 1040. Take a look at the requirements at the top of the C-EZ form; you probably meet them and can use it instead of the more complicated C form. If you have any deductible business expenses related to your freelance business, this would be done on Schedule C or C-EZ. If your freelance income was more than $400, you'll also need to pay self-employment tax. To do this, you file Schedule SE, and the tax from that schedule lands on form 1040 Line 57.
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Are wash sale rules different for stocks and ETFs / Mutual Funds?
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What JoeTaxpayer means is that you can sell one ETF and buy another that will perform substantially the same during the 30 day wash sale period without being considered substantially the same from a wash sale perspective more easily than you could with an individual stock. For example, you could sell an S&P 500 index ETF and then temporarily buy a DJIA index ETF. As these track different indexes, they are not considered to be substantially the same for wash sale purposes, but for a short term investing period, their performance should still be substantially the same.
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