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VAT in UK, case of cultural industry and overseas invoices | Your answer will need loads of information and clarification, so I will ask you to visit the VAT and have a peruse. 1) Obligation is for you to find out the correct rate of VAT, charge and pay tax accordingly. You can call up the HMRC VAT helpline for help, which they will be happy to oblige. Normally everybody pays VA... |
What is the difference between “good debt” vs. “bad debt”? | All very good answers for the most part, but I have a definition for Good and Bad debt which is a little bit different from those mentioned here so far. The definitions come from Robert Kiyosaki in his book "Rich Dad Poor Dad", which I have applied to all my debts. Good Debt - Good Debt is debt used to fund a money mak... |
Who maintains receipt for employee expense reimbursements? | In the normal course of events, you should receive a separate check for the amount of the purchase, and that amount should not be included in your wages as shown on your W-2 statement. If the amount is included on your paycheck, it should still be listed separately as a non-taxable item, not as part of wages paid. In... |
Are stock index fund likely to keep being a reliable long-term investment option? | The idea behind investing in index funds is that you will not under perform the market but also at the same time not over perform against the market either. It is meant for those (majority of the investing population) who do not or cannot invest more time in actively researching different investment options. So even co... |
Formula for recalculation of a bad loan, i.e. where payments were missed? | It sounds like there are no provisions in the loan document for how to proceed in this case. I would view this as creating a brand new loan. The amount owed is going to be (Principal remaining + interest from 2 years + penalties). If you created a new loan for 13 years, that would not be how I would expect a lender ... |
Buying a house for a shorter term | To answer your question, you need to ask yourself Common transaction costs can be really hard to compensate in a single year. It can include house inspections, closing costs, agents commissions, etc---all together, it can be up to 6-10% of the value of your house. This is a difficult goal to beat in a year, and your m... |
As a total beginner, how do I begin to understand finance & stocks? | Let me first give you my definitions of the words 'investor' and 'speculator'. To me, anyone looking to 'buy low, sell high' is a speculator. Only 'buy and hold' people are investors. The news agencies love to report on changes in the price of a stock. This gives them something to talk about. So speculation is encoura... |
Should I get a car loan before shopping for a car? | Yes, you are correct to go to the credit union first. Get approved for a loan first. Often, upon approval, the credit union will give you a blank check good for any amount up to the limit of the loan. When you buy the car, make it payable to the dealer, write in the amount and sign it. Enjoy the new car! |
Thorough Description of Yield to Maturity? | What is a bond price? A bond is an asset, and like any tradeable asset it has a price. If I hold $10K face value of a certain GM bond, then I would be willing to sell it at some price, which may be more or less than $10K. Whoever is willing to sell it for the lowest amount determines the price. The price is determi... |
Bonds vs equities: crash theory | Diversify into leveraged short/bear ETFs and then you can quit your job and yell at your boss "F you I'm short your house!" edit: this is a quote from Greg Lippmann and mentioned in the book "The Big Short" |
How can a U.S. citizen open a bank account in Europe? | Be mindful of your reporting requirements. Besides checking the box on Schedule B of your 1040 that you have a foreign bank account, you also need to file a TD F 90-22.1 FBAR report for any year that the total of all foreign bank accounts reaches a value of $10,000 at any time during the year. This is filed separately ... |
Is there a legal deadline for when your bank/brokerage has to send your tax forms to you? | I got notice from Charles Schwab that the forms weren't being mailed out until the middle of February because, for some reason, the forms were likely to change and rather than mail them out twice, they mailed them out once. Perhaps some state tax laws took effect (such as two Oregon bills regarding tax rates for higher... |
How does Vanguard determine the optimal asset allocation for their Target Retirement Funds? | Googling vanguard target asset allocation led me to this page on the Bogleheads wiki which has detailed breakdowns of the Target Retirement funds; that page in turn has a link to this Vanguard PDF which goes into a good level of detail on the construction of these funds' portfolios. I excerpt: (To the question of why s... |
Paying taxes on dividends even though your capital gains were $0? | How and why is this considered fair (and/or legal)? Let's use an analogy. The issue is not fairness, it is just the rules. The assets you own and the cash you receive are reported differently. If the rules don't make sense, I suggest you hire an adviser that can teach you and help you get the most out of your investme... |
Malaysian real estate: How to know if the market is overheated or in a bubble? | The Motley Fool suggested a good rule of thumb in one of their articles that may be able to help you determine if the market is overheating. Determine the entire cost of rent for a piece of property. So if rent is $300/month, total cost over a year is $3600. Compare that to the cost of buying a similar piece of propert... |
Is it smarter to buy a small amount of an ETF every 2 or 3 months, instead of monthly? | Note, the main trade off here is the costs of holding cash rather than being invested for a few months vs trading costs from trading every month. Let's start by understanding investing every month vs every three months. First compare holding cash for two months (at ~0% for most Canadians right now) and then investing... |
what is the likely reason that the bank have a different year end than the other companies | The exact Financial calander followed is different for different regions/countires. The difference is more historical and a convinient practise that has no advantage / reason to change. Many Countries like US/Japan the Financial year can be choosen by companies and needs to be same every year. This need not be same as ... |
What do Earnings Per Share tell potential shareholders? | Earnings per share is the company profit (or loss), divided by the number of outstanding shares. The number should always be compared to the share price, so for instance if the EPS is $1 and the share price is $10, the EPS is 10% of the share price. This means that if the company keeps up this earning you should expect... |
Checking the math on a Truth-in-Lending Disclosure | As your question is written now, it looks like you have a typo. Your stated APR is 5.542% = 0.05542, not 0.005542 as you've written. I ran the numbers that you gave (accounting for the typo) through the formula at Wikipedia and got $849.2528 / month, which will round to $849.25 for most payments. That doesn't match ... |
How can I find out what percentage the publicly traded shares (float) are of the total company? | I think you're looking for the public float: Public float or the unqualified term may also refer to the number of outstanding shares in the hands of public investors as opposed to company officers, directors, or controlling-interest investors. Assuming the insider held shares are not traded, these shares are the ... |
Is sales tax for online purchases based on billing- or shipping address? | The technical answer is defined by the laws of state you live in but most (all?) states with a sales tax have some form of use tax. Where if you buy something in another state for use in your home state you are technically liable for sales tax on it regardless of whether the merchant charged you tax on it or not. I don... |
Which practice to keep finances after getting married: joint, or separate? | My wife and I have a different arrangement. I like to track everything down to the transaction level. She doesn't want everything tracked. We have everything joint and I track everything except she has one credit card where I do not see the statements only the total. She is more comfortable, because she can buy thi... |
Is selling put options an advisable strategy for a retiree to generate stable income? | Selling options is a great idea, but tweak it a bit and sell credit spreads on both sides of the market, i.e. sell OTM bear call spreads and OTM bull put spreads. This is also known as an iron condor, and limits risk, and allows for much more flexibility. |
Why is the buy price different from the sell price of a stock? [duplicate] | This is called the Ask-Bid Spread. The difference varies based on the liquidly of the asset. The more liquid or the higher the volume of trades for the asset then the smaller the spread is. The spread goes to the broker to pay for some of the cost of the trade. My guess is that when there is a higher volume of shares b... |
For very high-net worth individuals, does it make sense to not have insurance? | I think that insurance is one of the best things ever created for this reasons: |
What home improvements are tax deductible? | On a personal income tax return home improvements are generally not deductible on a federal level. There might be some exceptions made for special tax programs, such as solar panels, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. |
Do US banks exchange info with countries abroad? | Banks do not report transactions within accounts except as required by law, usually as part of anti-money-laundering efforts. Generally those involve tracking large cash transactions. As far as large payments go, there are two reasons they might be reported to the government: taxes, and criminal investigations. For tax... |
Error in my car loan papers, what do I do? | The absolute first thing you need to do is contact the bank. Also, do you have a copy of the loan papers you signed? You should look over those as soon as possible as well. I'm sure you want these payments going toward your FICO score and not your mothers. |
Can another tax loss be used to offset capital gains taxes? How does it work? | Capital gains and losses offset each other first, then your net gain is taxed at the applicable rate. If you have a net loss, you can offset your other income by up to $3,000. In your example, you have no net-gain or loss, so no tax implications from your activity. |
How to value employee benefits? | Employee Stock Purchase Plans (ESPPs) were heavily neutered by U.S. tax laws a few years ago, and many companies have cut them way back. While discounts of 15% were common a decade ago, now a company can only offer negligible discounts of 5% or less (tax free), and you can just as easily get that from fluctuations in t... |
The board of directors in companies | Boards of Directors are required for corporations by nearly all jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions have almost self-defeating requirements however, such as in tax havens. Boards of Directors are compensated by the company for which they sit. Historically, they have set their own compensation almost always with tight q... |
Do I need to invest to become millionaire? | You're ignoring inflation. Even if we assume the ECB sticks to its 2% inflation target, and your salary only rises in line with inflation, you will be saving considerably more in forty years' time than you are today. In fact, an interest rate of 2% and an inflation rate of 2% make the sums exceptionally easy. You need... |
My friend wants to put my name down for a house he's buying. What risks would I be taking? | This is not a full answer and I have no personal finance experience. But I have a personal story as I did this. As Vicky stated Another point: there are various schemes available to help first time buyers. By signing up for this, you would exclude yourself from any of those schemes in the future. I did this for my ... |
Company requires me to use my personal cell phone to work. Writeoff? | Not authoritative, but according to TurboTax: If your new cell phone acts as both your business and personal phone, you are only allowed to deduct the portion used for business from your taxable income. It’s important for you to hang on to your itemized phone bill and receipts to ensure that you’re deducting the right ... |
Should I use put extra money toward paying off my student loans or investing in an index fund? | First, I'd like to congratulate you on your financial discipline in paying off your loans and living well within your means. I have friends who make more than twice your salary with similar debt obligations, and they barely scrape by month to month. If we combine your student loan debt and unallocated income each mont... |
Can I borrow against my IRA to pay off debt or pay for a car? | No. Borrowing is not allowed, but if you take a withdrawal, you have 60 days to deposit into another IRA account. This effectively creates a 60 day loan. Not what you're really looking for. If you take this withdrawal and re-deposit to new account within 60 days, no problem. If not, you owe tax on the untaxed amount a... |
What happens if a company I have stock in is bought out? | A buy out is agreed by shareholders. Plus most countries have regulation protecting minority interest. Depending on the terms of buy out, you may get equivalent shares of buyer company or cash or both. |
How does one value Facebook stock as a potential investment? | You could try this experiment: pay for an Ad/banner on Facebook for 1 month. The Ad/banner should link to your ecommerce site. Then see if the Ad/banner does or does not convert into ecommerce orders ("converting" means that people coming to your eccomerce site from Facebook after having clicked on your Ad/banner reall... |
Why is early exercise generally not recommended for an in-the-money option? | For a deep in the money, it almost makes no difference because the intrinsic value, the price of the option, is seldom far above the liquidation value, the price of the underlying less the strike price. For an at the money, ceteris paribus, an early exercise would immediately cut the value of the option to 0; however, ... |
Should I exclude bonds from our retirement investment portfolio if our time horizon is still long enough? | This is always a judgement call based on your own tolerance for risk. Yes, you have a fairly long time horizon and that does mean you can accept more risk/more volatility than someone closer to starting to draw upon those savings, but you're old enough and have enough existing savings that you want to start thinking a... |
irr calculation on stock with dividends | I use the following method. For each stock I hold long term, I have an individual table which records dates, purchases, sales, returns of cash, dividends, and way at the bottom, current value of the holding. Since I am not taking the income, and reinvesting across the portfolio, and XIRR won't take that into account, I... |
Vanguard Mutual Funds — Diversification vs Share Class | There's really no right or wrong answer here because you'll be fine either way. If you've investing amounts in the low 5 figures you're likely just getting started, and if your asset allocation is not optimal it's not that big a deal because you have a long time horizon to adjust it, and the expense ratio differences h... |
What are the procedures or forms for a private loan with the sale of a vehicle? | Draft up a promissory notes. Have a lawyer do it use one of those online contract places if you have simple needs. Your promissory note need to cover Be specific. There are probably a lot more items that can be included, and if a quick internet search is any indication it gets deep fast. http://lmbtfy.com/?q=car+sal... |
How to continuously plot futures data | Note that the series you are showing is the historical spot index (what you would pay to be long the index today), not the history of the futures quotes. It's like looking at the current price of a stock or commodity (like oil) versus the futures price. The prompt futures quote will be different that the spot quote. I... |
If I use stock as collateral for a loan and I default, does the bank pay taxes when they sell my stock? | The short answer is that the exchange of the stock in exchange for the elimination of a debt is a taxable exchange, and gains or losses are possible for the stock investor as well as the bank. The somewhat longer answer is best summarized as noting that banks don't usually accept stocks as collateral, mostly because ... |
Can a company charge you for services never requested or received? | In general, you can only be charged for services if there is some kind of contract. The contract doesn't have to be written, but you have to have agreed to it somehow. However, it is possible that you entered into a contract due to some clause in the home purchase contract or the contract with the home owners' associat... |
Should I pay off my credit card online immediately or wait for the bill? | It is COMPLETELY no use to pay earlier (during a billing cycle) to better your credit score! Your credit score gets affected ONLY once a month from each creditor, and that happens when they post your monthly statement. Thus, no matter what you do or pay and how many times a month or how many days earlier than your due ... |
I am moving to a new city. How do I plan and prepare - financially - for the move? | Some of the costs you might incur include: |
How does the wash sale rule work in this situation? | The way the wash sale works is your loss is added to your cost basis of the buy. So suppose your original cost basis is $10,000. You then sell the stock for $9,000 which accounts for your $1,000 loss. You then buy the stock again, say for $8,500, and sell it for $9,000. Since your loss of $1,000 is added to your c... |
Is the stock market too risky for long term retirement funds? Why should a 20- or 30-something person invest in stocks? | I would start with long term data. It would show how 40 years worth of stock investing puts the investor so far ahead of the "safe" investor that they can afford to lose half and still be ahead. But - then I would explain about asset allocation, and how the soon to be retired person had better be properly allocated if ... |
What's an Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF)? | ETFs offer the flexibility of stocks while retaining many of the benefits of mutual funds. Since an ETF is an actual fund, it has the diversification of its potentially many underlying securities. You can find ETFs with stocks at various market caps and style categories. You can have bond or mixed ETFs. You can even ge... |
Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT | The biggest disadvantage to you is that your tenant now knows your bank information, which means he can easily identify your source of money in the event he wins a lawsuit and wins a judgement. He will be able to have a court marshall freeze your account. However, if you deposit your tenant's check into your account a... |
Is it okay to be married, 30 years old and have no retirement? | First, I would recommend getting rid of this ridiculous debt, or remember this day and this answer, "you will be living this way for many years to come and maybe worse, no/not enough retirement". Hold off on any retirement savings right now so that the money can be used to crush this debt. Without knowing all of your ... |
Should I finance a new home theater at 0% even though I have the cash for it? | You should look at the opportunity cost for your money (i.e. what kind of return it could generate otherwise). We took advantage of these types of offer (zero interest for x months) in the past with the goal to redirect the money to the mortgage (it was 7.5% back then) and we made sure we don't get hosed by the surpri... |
Employer options when setting up 401k for employees | If you were looking to maximize your ability to save in a qualified plan, why not setup a 401K plan in Company A and keep the SEP in B? Setup the 401K in A such that any employee can contribute 100% of their salary. Then take a salary for around 19K/year (assuming under age 50), so you can contribute and have enough t... |
Possible to purchase multiple securities on 1 transaction? | No you can't, as you would have to have a different order for each security. Usually the bigger the order the more the brokerage you would also pay. |
How does the currency between countries relate | It's called correlation. I found this: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/school/tabid/426/ID/437424/currency-pair-correlations it looks a good place to start Similar types of political economies will correlate together, opposite types won't. Also there are geographic correlations (climate, language etc) |
Why is RSU tax basis based on remaining shares after shares are witheld? | Here is how it should look: 100 shares of restricted stock (RSU) vest. 25 shares sold to pay for taxes. W2 (and probably paycheck) shows your income going up by 100 shares worth and your taxes withheld going up by 25 shares worth. Now you own 75 shares with after-tax money. If you stop here, there would be no stock sal... |
Why would I choose a 40-Year depreciation instead of the standard 27.5-Year? | There are specific cases where you are required to use ADS: Required use of ADS. You must use ADS for the following property. Listed property used 50% or less in a qualified business use. See chapter 5 for information on listed property. Any tangible property used predominantly outside the United States during the ye... |
What is market order's relation to bid ask spread? | Because in the case for 100/101, if you wanted to placed a limit buy order at top of the bid list you would place it at 101 and get filled straight away. If placing a limit buy order at the top of 91 (for 90/98) you would not get filled but just be placed at the top of the list. You might get filled at a lower price if... |
Calculating the total capital of a company? | Opening capital = opening assests-opening liabilities |
Why buy bonds in a no-arbitrage market? | Rates are a complex field. I will assume that context wise you are talking about rates for a individual saver quantities. The two rates you are asking about are personal bank saving account and exchange traded bonds. The points you want to compare between them are. In general, a bond is what we called a fixed rate inst... |
How can I find out how much a currency is traded? | This is actually a fairly hard question to answer well as much of the currency trading that is done in financial markets is actually done directly with banks and other financial institutions instead of on a centralized market and the banks are understandably not always excited to part with information on how exactly th... |
Paying restaurants in cash instead of credit card - how signficant is this? | You know those perks/benefits that you don't want to give up? Those are funded by the fees you are trying to eliminate by paying cash. The credit card company makes money by interest, merchant fees, and other fees such a annual fees. They give you perks to generate more transactions, thus bringing in more merchant fees... |
How can I find ISIN numbers for stock options? | Go to http://www.isincodes.net/, and enter your data. For example entering Alphabet gives you the ISIN US02079K1079 (for standard US shares). If you want to understand the number format (and build them yourself), check wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Securities_Identification_Number |
Where should my money go next: savings, investments, retirement, or my mortgage? | As the others said, you're doing everything right. So, at this it's not a matter of what you should do, it's a matter of what do you want to do? What would make you the happiest? So, what would you like to do most with that extra money? The point is, since you're already doing everything right with the rest of your mo... |
Can I get a tax deduction for PMI? | No. And I'll let my good friend and fellow blogger Kay Bell answer in some detail, in her article Deducting private mortgage insurance. |
What headaches will I have switching from Quicken to GnuCash? | The best way to answer this question is to try. GnuCash is free, so setting it up and giving it a go shouldn't be too hard. After all, what really matters is how helpful the program is for your purposes. One aspect of personal finance that stops me from jumping to GnuCash/KMyMoney/MoneyDance is the ability to download ... |
What is the easiest way to back-test index funds and ETFs? | Back-testing itself is flawed. "Past performance is no guarantee of future results" is an important lesson to understand. Market strategies of one kind or another work until they don't. Edited in -- AssetPlay.net provides a tool that's halfway to what you are looking for. It only goes back to 1972, however. Just to tr... |
What should I be aware of as a young investor? | Consistently beating the market by picking stocks is hard. Professional fund managers can't really do it -- and they get paid big bucks to try! You can spend a lot of time researching and picking stocks, and you may find that you do a decent job. I found that, given the amount of money I had invested, even if I beat th... |
Bed and Breakfast, Same Day Capital Gains UK | The 'same day rule' in the UK is a rule for matching purposes only. It says that sales on any day are matched firstly with purchases made on the same day for the purposes of ascertaining any gain/loss. Hence the phrase 'bed-and-breakfast' ('b&b') when you wish to crystalise a gain (that is within the exempt amount) an... |
I bought a new car for a month and wanted to return it | Following up on @petebelford's answer: If you can find a less expensive loan, you can refinance the car and reduce the total interest you pay that way. Or, if your loan permits it (not all do; talk to the bank which holds the loan and,/or read the paperwork you didn't look at), you may be able to make additional paymen... |
What are some good, easy to use personal finance software? [UK] | CashBase has a web app, an iPhone app and an Android app, all sync'ed up. It doesn't integrate with banks automatically, but you can import bank statements as CSV. Disclaimer: I'm CashBase's founder. |
How big of a mortgage can I realistically afford? | You're biting off a lot. Let's say you can swing 5% for a down payment: $13k. A 30-year loan on $247k at the rate you quote gives you a payment of $1,270 per month. This does not include taxes, insurance, or private mortgage insurance (which you'll pay because you have a down payment less than 20%). The PMI will run ... |
Have plenty of cash flow but bad credit | A) The Credit Rating Agencies only look at the month-end totals that are on your credit card, as this is all they ever get from the issuing bank. So a higher usage frequency as described would not make any direct difference to your credit rating. B) The issuing bank will know if you use the credit with the higher frequ... |
Can rent be added to your salary when applying for a mortgage? | The decision as to what counts as income is up to the bank. You'll need to ask them whether or not rental income can be included in the total. I can offer some anecdotal evidence: when I applied for a mortgage to buy my home, I already had a rental property with a buy-to-let mortgage on it. Initially the bank regarded ... |
Can saving/investing 15% of your income starting age 25, likely make you a millionaire? | Yes, quite easily, in fact. You left a lot of numbers out, so lets start with some assumptions. If you are at the median of middle income families in the US that might mean $70,000/year. 15% of that is an investment of $875 per month. If you invest that amount monthly and assume a 6% return, then you will have a milli... |
Self Assessment UK - Goods and services for your own use | Work on your own site is certainly not relevant here, that's just a part of your trade, not a service you provided to yourself. The business received the benefit of that work, not you. Suppose your business sold televisions. If you took a TV from stock for your own lounge, that would be included in this box because you... |
How much more than my mortgage should I charge for rent? | The rent will be determined by: the rent being charged on similar houses near you. Your mortgage and other costs (very unfortunately!) have no bearing, at all, on the price you will get. |
Why can't the Fed lower interest rates below zero? | If the Federal Reserve were to pay banks to hold money, they would need to get the money from somewhere to do so. They would have three options: Go to Congress, and request and authorization of funds. As an quasi-independent entity, however, it would be both highly unorthodox for an institution to diminish its own aut... |
Fundamentals of creating a diversified portfolio based on numbers? | Good question. There are plenty of investors who think they can simply rely on intuition, and although luck is always present it is not enough to construct a proper portfolio. First of all there are two basic types of portfolio management: Passive and Active. The majority of abnormal gains are made with active portfoli... |
What is the maximum number of options I can buy if the price is $0.01? | Options trading at $.01 have the same position limits as other options. Self regulatory organizations set the position limits for options which can be 250,000 contracts on one side of the book, as an example. Weeklies that are expiring soon have lots of liquidity while trading at $0.01, you can see this in Bank of Amer... |
Is Amazon's offer of a $50 gift card a scam? | The 'store card' that Amazon offers gives 5% back on Amazon purchases. Some time ago, when I realized how much of my spending was going through Amazon, I chose that card over this one. If you want the card, that's fine, but if you are going to play the reward game, there are far higher bonuses available for card signu... |
Paying Off Principal of Home vs. Investing In Mutual Fund | Paying off the debt is low-risk, low-reward. You're effectively guaranteed a 4% return. If you buy a mutual fund, you're going to have to take some risk to have a decent chance of getting better than 4% and change return in the long run, which probably means a fund that invests primarily in stocks. Buying a stock mu... |
Is Cost of Living overstated? | after 30 years, you'd have a million dollar house vs a quarter million dollar house. You've captured three quarters of a million dollars in rent, given my napkin math hypothetical. As I figure the math, a 250,000 house appreciating to a million dollar house in 30 years requires a sustained ~4.9% appreciation every year... |
Will a small investment in a company net a worthwhile gain? | If you bought 5 shares @ $20 each that would cost you $100 plus brokerage. Even if your brokerage was only $10 in and out, your shares would have to go up 20% just for you to break even. You don't make a profit until you sell, so just for you to break even your shares need to go up to $24 per share. Because your share ... |
irr calculation on stock with dividends | Re. question 2 If I buy 20 shares every year, how do I get proper IRR? ... (I would have multiple purchase dates) Use the money-weighted return calculation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_of_return#Internal_rate_of_return where t is the fraction of the time period and Ct is the cash flow at that time period. For ... |
Should I pay off a 0% car loan? | I struggle with 0% interest things in my personal life. A responsible me that thinks logically says continue to pay it on time and take advantage of the benefit of the interest free loan you got. It will keep your funds liquid in the case of an emergency, build your credit and teach you self control. Paying it off no... |
Is short selling a good hedging strategy during overzealous market conditions? | Point of order: "What goes up must come down" refers to gravity of terrestrial objects below escape velocity and should not be generalized beyond its intent. It's not true that stocks MUST come down just because they have gone up. For example, we would not expecting the price of oil to come down to 1999 levels, right... |
What are my tax-advantaged investment options at a university job? | Yes. Two years after your first contribution to the SIMPLE IRA, you can roll it to a traditional IRA. You can still contribute "pre-tax", but the mechanism will be slightly different, since with an employer plan the contribution was automatically deducted from your paycheck. With an individual plan, you make the cont... |
What is the point of the stock market? What is it for, and why might someone want to trade or invest? | I rather like The Ascent of Money, by Niall Ferguson. This comes in several formats. There's a video version, a written version (ISBN-13: 978-1594201929), and an audio version. This book covers the history of financial instruments. It covers the rise of money, the history of bonds and stocks, insurance and hedge funds,... |
What are the pros and cons of investing in a closed-end fund? | One advantage not pointed out yet is that closed-end funds typically trade on stock exchanges, whereas mutual funds do not. This makes closed-end funds more accessible to some investors. I'm a Canadian, and this particular distinction matters to me. With my regular brokerage account, I can buy U.S. closed-end funds t... |
Are large companies more profitable than small ones? | This isn't as rigorous as it should be, but may offer some useful insight into how big and small companies differ operationally. Putting Apple aside, larger companies tend to sell larger volumes of products (even if they're MRI devices, or turbines) relative to what smaller companies can sell (obviously, in absolute te... |
How do I add my income to my personal finance balance? | Create an account called, say, "Paycheck". When you get paid, create an entry with your gross income as a deposit. For each deduction in your paycheck, create a minus (or expense) entry. After doing that, what will be left in the Paycheck account will be your net income. Simply transfer this amount to the real acco... |
Why don't banks give access to all your transaction activity? | Although if you count only your data, it would be quite less 10 MB, multiply this by 1 million customers and you can see how quickly the data grows. Banks do retain data for longer period, as governed by country laws, typically in the range of 7 to 10 years. The online data storage cost is quite high 5 to 10 times mor... |
Value investing | The Investment Entertainment Pricing Theory (INEPT) has this bit to note: The returns of small growth stocks are ridiculously low—just 2.18 percent per year since 1927 (versus 17.47 percent for small value, 10.06 percent for large growth, and 13.99 percent for large value). Where the S & P 500 would be a blend of l... |
What are the economic benefits of owning a home in the United States? | Altough this may vary a lot depending on where you live and your actual finance, here what convinced me buying a home instead of renting : Other benefits : |
Clarification on student expenses - To file the tax for the next year | Assuming here that you're talking about deducting your tuition as a below the line deduction as a business expense or similar, then it depends. Per 1.162-5, if the education: Then it qualifies as a legitimate business expense and is deductible. If not - if you're going to school for a different career, such as someone... |
Exercise an out of the money option | For listed options in NYSE,CBOE, is it possible for an option holder to exercise an option even if it is not in the money? Abandonment of in-the-money options or the exercise of out-of-the-money options are referred as contrarian instructions. They are sometimes forbidden, e.g. see CME - Weekly & End-of-Month (EOM) Op... |
Is investing in housing considered an adequate hedge against inflation? | Yes, in 2 ways: As you mention, the price of a home generally grows with inflation - along with other factors (supply and demand in local markets, etc.). Through financing. If you finance 80% of your purchase today, in 2014 dollars, you will pay back in future dollars. Those future dollars are worth less, because of in... |
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