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How to invest in a specific market without investing in a specific company?
You need to hope that a fund exists targeting the particular market segment you are interested in. For example, searching for "cloud computing ETF" throws up one result. You'd then need to read all the details of how it invests to figure out if that really matches up with what you want - there'll always be various trad...
Having trouble with APR calculation
Check your calculation of A**. I was able to duplicate their calculations using excel. Make you sure have accounted for all the terms, it can be easy to be one off. They are making a guess at the interest rate which will be wrong, then they are adjusting it to see how wrong it is, then making another adjustment. They w...
What's the difference between Buy and Sell price on the stock exchange [duplicate]
To add to @Victor 's answer; if you are entering a market order, and not a limit order (where you set the price you want to buy or sell at), then the Ask price is what you can expect to pay to purchase shares of stock in a long position and the Bid price is what you can expect to receive when you sell stock you own in ...
What intrinsic, non-monetary value does gold have as a commodity?
This was answered wonderfully in a recent Planet Money podcast: Why Gold?. Here are some higlights of gold: If listening to podcasts isn't your thing, read this summary.
How to share income after marriage and kids?
I started this off as a comment to Joe's answer, but it got rather messy in that form so I'll just post it as a separate answer instead. I suggest that you read Joe's answer first. I believe you are overthinking this. First, you really should be discussing the matter with your girlfriend. We can provide suggestions, bu...
Should I pay off a 0% car loan?
Between now and October, your $3,000 will earn $30 in your savings account. If you are late on a payment for your 0% loan, your interest rate will skyrocket. In my opinion, the risk is just not worth the tiny gain you are trying to achieve in the savings account. If it was me, I would pay off the loan today. A few mor...
Perform exercise-and-hold AND exercise-and-sell-to-cover?
The simplest thing to do here is to speak to your employer about what is allowed. This should be spelt out in your company's "Stock Options Plan" documentation. In particular, this document will include details of the vesting schedule. For example, the schedule may only allow you to exercise 25% in the first year, 2...
Help required on estimating SSA benefit amounts
The social security administration has a webpage to get your Social Security estimate. It replaces the yearly estimate they used to mail everybody. It shows the amount you paid for social security and medicare and what they estimate you will receive at your retirement age. They also discuss disability benefits. Everybo...
A debt collector will not allow me to pay a debt, what steps should I take?
This is somewhat unbelievable. I mean if you had a business of collecting debts, wouldn't you want to collect said debts? Rather than attempting to browbeat people with these delinquent debts into paying, you have someone volunteering to pay. Would you want to service that client? This would not happen in just abou...
“Occupation” field on IRS Form 1040
It doesn't generally matter, and I'm not sure if it is in fact in use by the IRS other than for general statistics (like "this year 20% of MFJ returns were with one spouse being a 'homemaker'"). They may be able to try and match the occupation and the general levels and types of income, but for self-employed there's a ...
What headaches will I have switching from Quicken to GnuCash?
Instead of gnucash i suggest you to use kmymoney. It's easier
Can an F1 student working on OPT with a STEM extension earn unrelated self employed income from a foreign employer?
From tax perspective, any income you earn for services performed while you're in the US is US-sourced. The location of the person paying you is of no consequence. From immigration law perspective, you cannot work for anyone other than your employer as listed on your I-20. So freelancing would be in violation of your vi...
Is there an academic framework for deciding when to sell in-the-money call options?
If any academic framework worked, your teachers would be the richest people on the planet. However, you must read up on macro and micro economic factors and make an educated guess where the market(or stock) would be at the date of expiry. Subtract the Strike Price from your determined price and calculate your potential...
Data source for historical intra-day bid/ask price data for stocks?
This amazing site will answer all your data questions. You will need some patience and willingness to spend to get the data that you want. A lot of data is available for free too` https://www.quandl.com/
Finding out actual items bought via credit card issuer and not the store receipt?
The stores track the individual items for inventory planning and marketing purposes. Having worked in the transaction processing business for a time (writing one), I can say with confidence that the credit/debit card companies do not receive an itemized list of the items involved in the transaction. There is usually a ...
When should I walk away from my mortgage?
To put a different spin on it, suppose you loaned someone $100K, expecting that they would pay it back, and then a little later they decided not too. They are perfectly capable of paying back the money, but just decided they didn't want to, and it seems the laws of your state said you couldn't make them. How would you ...
Personal credit card for business expenses
Early on, one might not be able to get credit for their business. For convenience, and the card perks, it makes sense to use the personal card. But for sake of a clean paper trail, I'd choose 1 card and use it exclusively, 100% for the business. Not one card here, one card there.
When investing, is the risk/reward tradeoff linear?
The relationship is not linear, and depends on a lot of factors. The term you're looking for is efficient frontier, the optimal rate of return for a given level of risk. The goal is to be on the efficient frontier, meaning that for the given level of risk, you're receiving the greatest possible rate of return (reward)....
What's wrong with this margin calculation?
As the referenced document says, there are 3 formulas, and you need to use the formula which results the greatest margin requirement. In your case, you need to use the 10% formula:
Do investors go long option contracts when they cannot cover the exercise of the options?
I think it depends on your broker. Some brokers will not try to auto exercise in the money options. Others will try to do the exercise it if you have available funds. Your best bet, if find yourself in that situation, is to sell the option on the open market the day of or slightly before expiration. Put it on your cale...
How to withdraw money from currency account without having to lose so much to currency conversion?
In your position I would use one of the existing Polish currency exchange platforms (you can find a list here: http://jakikantor.pl). A few of them have bank accounts in Britain so the exchange rate will be close to market price.
Ticker symbols differences between Yahoo Finance and BestInvest
BestInvest is a UK site looking at that URL, base on the "co.uk" ending. Yahoo! Finance that you use is a US-based site unless you add something else to the URL. UK & Ireland Yahoo! Finance is different from where you were as there is something to be said for where are you looking. If I was looking for a quarter dollar...
How to protect myself against unauthorized recurring CC charges?
The bank SHOULD be able to issue you a new card without letting vendors roll over the recurring payments. In fact, I've never had a bank move recurring payments to a new card automatically, or even upon request; they've always told me to contact the vendor and give them my new card number. So go back to the bank, tell ...
Is there a significant danger to market orders as opposed to limit orders?
If you want your order to go through no matter what then you should be using market orders rather than limit orders. With limit orders you may get the price you are after or better but you are not guaranteed to get your order transacted. With a market order you are guaranteed to get you order transacted but may get a p...
Single employee - paying for health insurance premiums with pre-tax money
The answer likely depends a bit on which state you are in, but this should be true for most states. I don't know anything about Pennsylvania specifically unfortunately. The Affordable Care Act created the SHOP marketplace, which allows small businesses to effectively form larger groups for group coverage purposes. SH...
Why do stocks track the price of Oil?
Anthony Russell - I agree with JohnFx. Petroleum is used in making many things such as asphalt, road oil, plastic, jet fuel, etc. It's also used in some forms of electricity generation, and some electric cars use gasoline as a backup form of energy, petrol is also used in electricity generation outside of cars. Source ...
How can an Indian citizen get exposure to global markets?
There are some ETF's on the Indian market that invest in broad indexes in other countries Here's an article discussing this Be aware that such investments carry an additional risk you do not have when investing in your local market, which is 'currency risk' If for example you invest in a ETF that represents the US S&...
Why would you elect to apply a refund to next year's tax bill?
If your refunds are subject to seizure because of certain debt arrears, it makes sense to let the IRS hold onto them until next year.
Is this Employee Stock Purchase Plan worth it when adding my student loan into the equation?
It's 5% free money, if you believe the company's stock is fairly valued and likely to grow and/or return reasonable dividends until you're ready to sell it. There's usually a minimum holding period of a few months to a year before these discounted shares can be sold; take that into account
What evidence exists for claiming that you cannot beat the market?
The reason for this is arbitrage. In an free and open market, investments that are certain to generate above-average profits would do so by being sold cheaply, while having a high return on investment after that. But in a free market, prices are set by supply and demand. There is a high demand and little supply for inv...
First job: Renting vs get my parents to buy me a house
Seriously. I can't tell you how many times I hear this scenario: Kid graduates college; kid runs out and signs lease on apartment "because that's what you do"**; kid complains that he's in financial trouble and can't make ends meet. Housemate sharing is most famously displayed in hit shows like Big Bang Theory or Ne...
What are the tax benefits of dividends vs selling stock
The benefit is not in taxes. When you sell a portion of your stock, you no longer have a portion of your stock. When you get a dividend, you still have a portion of your stock. Dividends are distributed from the net profits of a company and as such usually don't affect its growth/earning potential much (although there ...
Can one use Google Finance to backtest (i.e. simulate trades in the past)?
Yes, add the stocks/mutual funds that you want and then you would just need to add all the transactions that you theoretically would have made. Performing the look up on the price at each date that you would have sold or bought is quite tedious as well as adding each transaction.
Why pay estimated taxes?
Same argument and answer for investing instead of paying off debt, or borrowing to invest. Risk. What happens if the stocks drop by 10%? Sure, you might come out ahead on average, but a drop in the market could be catastrophic from a cash flow point of view. In addition, federal tax debt is arguably the worst kind. Th...
Credit Card Approval
Bigger than the three mentioned above is on-time payment and/or collections activity. If your report shows you have not paid accounts on time, or have accounts in collections, that is almost guaranteed decline except for the least desirable cards. Another factor is number of hard inquiries. If you have been on a recent...
What's a Letter of Credit? Are funds held in my bank for the amount in question?
Wikipedia has a detailed article explaining this. A standard, commercial letter of credit (LC) is a document issued mostly by a financial institution, used primarily in trade finance, which usually provides an irrevocable payment undertaking. So yes, they are primarily for use by businesses. If you will read the articl...
splitting a joint mortgage - one owner in home
Definitely get a lawyer to write up all the details of the partnership in a formal agreement. If your ex does not want to do this, that is a bad sign. You both need to be clear about expectations and responsibilities in this partnership, and define an exit strategy in the case one of you wants out. This is the most fai...
Is leveraging notoriety to raise stock prices illegal in the US?
Yes, there are legal problems with what he did. To prevent fraud, the US government regulates who can give public investment advice and how they can do it. If you're getting paid to advise an individual, you have to pass certain examinations and maintain ongoing government certification. If you hold a position in a sto...
Why is property investment good if properties de-valuate over time?
I just read this: Housing and inflation Adjusted for inflation the price of a house has increased a miniscule amount. A better investment would be an ETF that buys REIT stocks. You would be investing in real estate but can cash in and walk away at any time. Here is a list of mREITs: Stockchart of REITs
What is the smartest thing to do in case of a stock market crash
Remind yourself that markets recover, usually within a few years. If you believe this and can remind yourself of this, you will be able to see the down cycles of the market as an opportunity to buy stock "on sale". No one knows the future, so many people have found investing on a regular schedule to be helpful. By putt...
Why do investors buy stock that had appreciated?
Imagine how foolish the people that bought Apple at $100 must have felt. It was up tenfold for the $10 it traded at just years prior, how could it go any higher? Stocks have no memory. A stock's earnings may grow and justify the new higher price people are willing to pay. When FB came public, I remarked how I'd analyz...
How would I go about selling the stock of a privately held company?
SecondMarket attempts to add liquidity to privately held companies. You may be able to find a buyer there, but this is still incredibly illiquid due to accredited investor regulations constricting businesses from catering to the 99%. As around 1% of the United States population qualifies as an accredited investor.
Should I close unused credit cards before applying for another?
You want to have 2-4 credit cards, with a credit utilization ratio below 30%. If you only have 2 cards, closing 1 would reduce your credit diversity and thus lower your credit score. You also want at least 2 years credit history, so closing an older credit card may shorten your credit history, again lowering your cre...
Claiming mileage allowances, what are the rules/guidelines?
I believe so (that you can, not that you are greedy) I run my own business and, generally speaking, am 'charging' my company 40p per mile as per the quote above. I did not know about the ability to claim the shortfall, as it is not relevant to me, but it makes perfect sense and I'm sure that a phone call to HMRC will h...
If a mutual fund did really well last year, then statistically speaking, is it likely going to do bad this year?
This can be answered by looking at the fine print for any prospectus for any stock, bond or mutual fund. It says: "Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.". A mutual fund is a portfolio of common stocks, managed by somebody for a fee. There are many factors that can drive performance of a fund up or...
How to manage household finances (income & expenses) [duplicate]
My wife and I have close to equal incomes, and are not young. What we have is this: Some people would classify our system as a bit draconian as we each have "allowance"; however, it makes sure spending does not get out of wack and we work together to meet our goals.
How to keep control of shared expenses inside marriage?
Being new does not allow me yet to vote on your question, but what a good question it is. We share our opinion in separating finances in our very well going mariage. Currently I have found a sort of okay solution in two websites. These are http://www.yunoo.nl and http://www.moneytrackin.com/. You can actually tag spend...
Can an unmarried couple buy a home together with only one person on the mortgage?
I did that. What is allowed changes over time, though — leading up to the crisis, lenders would approve at the flimsiest evidence. In particular, my SO had only been in the country a couple years and was at a sweet spot where lack of history was no longer counting against her. Running the numbers, the mortgage was a f...
How can I get a wholesaler ID number?
Seems like it's more dependent on who you want to be your supplier. The times I've been involved in requesting this, each company had its own application form. They usually need proof of business activity, which gets back to SpecKK's answer.
Deceived by car salesman
The only thing that is important here is the documentation you and your daughter signed. If that documentation states that you were a co-signer and that your daughter was the primary on the loan, and then if the loan is not being reported in your daughter's name, you have a cause for action. If, however, the documentat...
Why REIT prices are not going down while bonds are being hammered?
I don't like REITs because they are more closely correlated to the movement of the stock market. They don't really do the job of diversifying a portfolio because of that correlation. When the stock market dropped in 2008, REITs were hammered as well because the housing bubble burst. Bonds went up, and if you rebalance...
Where can I find a list of all reverse listings on European stock exchanges for a specific period?
I found the zephyr database, which does the job. Nonetheless if someone knows other (open) sources, be welcome to answer.
Best way to invest money as a 22 year old?
Hopefully this $1000 is just a start, and not the last investment you will ever make. Assuming that, there are a couple of big questions to consider: One: What are you saving for? Are you thinking that this is for retirement 40 or 50 years from now, or something much sooner, like buying a car or a house? You didn't say...
Should I open a Roth IRA or invest in the S&P 500?
Anytime you invest in stocks, you do that inside an investment account - such as the type you might open at ETrade, Vanguard, Fidelity or Charles Schwab. Once you have the account and fund it, you can tell the system to invest some/all of your money in When you open your investment account, their first question will...
Calculate a weekly payment on a loan when payment is a month away
Using the standard loan formula with 21% APR nominal, compounded weekly. Calculate an adjusted loan start value by adding 31 - 7 = 24 extra days of daily interest (by converting the nominal compounded weekly rate to a daily rate). For details see Converting between compounding frequencies Applying the standard formula ...
New 1099 employee with Cobra insurance
While COBRA premiums are not eligible to be a "business" expense they can be a medical expense for personal deduction purposes. If you're itemizing your deductions you may be able to deduct that way. However, you will only be able to deduct the portion of the premium that exceeds 10% of your AGI. Are you a full time ...
How can I decide whether do a masters even if I have go into debt after doing it?
Strictly from an ROI perspective, this is likely very dependent on your field. Some masters degrees (quant finance, business, engineering) will be well worth the debt, since a degree from the right university will yield a respectable ROI, whereas other degrees/fields (philosophy, fine arts, etc) will be basically a wa...
Advantages of paying more of your mortgage while you know you won't continue to live there your whole life
The main factors you have to consider are: Could you get a better return on that money by investing it somewhere? The investment rate should basically be more than the mortgage rate. If you find yourself suddenly in need of money (eg, loss of job) do you have enough savings to ride that out? If not, investing the ext...
How do dividends of the underlying security in a security futures contract affect the security futures price?
The price of a future with an underlying that pays dividends is As you can see, since the value of dividends is subtracted from the value of the underlying equity, the future's price is lowered if dividends rise. Compounding that effect with the dividend effect on equity prices, reducing their prices, the future shoul...
Investing/business with other people's money: How does it work?
Basically, you either borrow money, or get other people to invest in your business by buying stock or something analogous. Sometimes you can get people to "park" money with you. For example, many people deposit money in a bank checking account. They don't get any interest or other profit from this, they just do it bec...
What is insider trading exactly?
Using inside sensitive information about corporate and using the same to deal in securities, before the exchanges are made aware of the information. Its mostly used in derivatives to get maximum returns on investmens, but Its illegal in all the exchanges
What is the best way to short the San Francisco real estate market?
You could short home builders who do a lot of their business in Northern California. (Not just San Francisco, Silicon Valley, or even the Bay Area.) Home prices in Sacramento and the northern San Joaquin Valley are correlated with Bay Area home prices. Many of these builders went broke during the last bust, so you mi...
Making higher payments on primary residence mortgage or rental?
I'll assume you live in the US for the start of my answer - Do you maximize your retirement savings at work, at least getting your employer's match in full, if they do this. Do you have any other debt that's at a higher rate? Is your emergency account funded to your satisfaction? If you lost your job and tenant on the...
Resources to begin trading from home?
Since then I had gotten a job at a supermarket stocking shelves, but recently got fired because I kept zoning out at work This is not a good sign for day trading, where you spend all day monitoring investments. If you start focusing on the interesting math problem and ignoring your portfolio, you can easily lose money...
Do high interest rates lead to higher bond yields or lower?
Imagine that the existing interest rate is 5%. So on a bond with face value of 100, you would be getting a $5 coupon implying a 5% yield. Now, if let's say the interest rates go up to 10%, then a new bond issued with a face value of 100 will give you a coupon of $10 implying a 10% yield. If someone in the bond market b...
What U.S. banks offer two-factor authentication (such as password & token) for online banking?
StasM, It's taken a while but many banks offer tokens - although they tend to limit the accounts for which they will be issued. All of the following issue tokens, but there are many more: CitiBank JP Morgan Union Bank Wells Fargo Callaway Bank Wachovia Bank of North Dakota The River Bank of Wisconsin Metcalf Bank, Kans...
How should I value personal use television for donation?
IRS Pub 561 says you have to use fair market value. You cannot simply use a depreciated value. You should attempt to determine what people normally pay for comparable items, and be prepared to defend your determination with evidence in the event of an audit.
Should I use a credit repair agency?
Here's what my wife and I did. First, we stopped using credit cards and got rid of all other expenses that we absolutely didn't need. A few examples: cable TV, home phone, high end internet - all shut off. We changed our cell phone plan to a cheap one and stopped going out to restaurants or bars. We also got rid of ...
Paid cash for a car, but dealer wants to change price
Lets look at it this way. Your son bought the car and then 2 days later, he wants to change the price. Will the dealership let him do that after all the paperwork is signed?
Gigantic point amount on rewards card - what are potential consequences?
What would be the consequences if they do realize their error some day in the far future? You've informed them of the error and they've informed you that nevertheless the points are yours and you should use them. So you have a couple of issues: have you made what your jurisdiction considers a reasonable effort to cor...
Book capital losses in gnucash
According to the gnucash guide, losses are recorded as negative transactions against Income:Capital Gains. I've followed this model in the past when dealing with stocks and commodities. If on the other hand, you're talking about an asset which could normally follow a depreciation schedule, you might want to look at t...
What is the theory behind Rick Van Ness's risk calculation in the video about diversification?
He's calculating portfolio variance. The general formula for the variance of a portfolio composed of two securities looks like this: where w_a and w_b are the weights of each stock in the portfolio and the sigmas represent the standard deviation/risk of each asset or portfolio. In the case of perfect positive or nega...
found a 1994 uncashed profit sharing retirement plan check
Checks (in the US, anyway) are only good for six months after they have been written. After that. under the US Uniform Commerical Code they are considered "stale checks" and banks need not accept them. My experience is that they generally won't -- but you probably shouldn't count on that, either when figuring out wheth...
Old Cancelled Cards
FICO 08, a newer fico formula that many lenders are simultaneously switching to now, ignores artificially lengthened credit history/score by piggybacking. So don't feel left out in that regard. Average age of accounts is affected when closed accounts fall off your credit report, which can take 7 years, not just by clo...
One of my stocks dropped 40% in 2 days, how should I mentally approach this?
Like @chirs, I'm of the opinion that you might want to buy more. I've done this a couple of times, price dropped a bunch, and I said, heck, I bought some last week, and this week I can get twice as much stock for about the same price. Brought down my average cost per share, and when the company was taken private, I act...
Is there any advantage to owning equity in a company compared to a royalty agreement?
Each way you go is a little bit of a gamble. Owning equity in the company is best in situations where you can trade and sell that equity, or where the dilution of your royalty product would affect your returns, or if you can maintain a certain equity stake without working at the company or if you can hold out on taki...
Why is a stock dividend considered a dividend? What makes it different from a stock split?
You can argue that cash dividend is a kind of split as well by this logic. The stock price on ex-dividend gets a hit coincidental with the dividend to be paid, so one can argue that the investor has the same cash value on the day the dividend was paid as if it wouldn't be paid at all. However, for the company to distri...
Deposit a cheque in an alternative name into a personal bank account (Australia)
You don't have much choice other than to open an account in your business name, then do a money transfer, as @DJClayworth says. You will not without providing your name and street address and possibly other information that you may consider to be of a private nature. This is due to laws about fraud, money laundering ...
In which situations is it better to consider a loan instead of paying cash?
A loan with modest interest is better than paying by cash if there are better alternatives for investment. For example, suppose you are buying a house. Consider two extremes: a) you pay the house entirely by cash, b) the entire buy is financed by the bank. Historically, real (subtracting inflation) house prices (at le...
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?
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....
Best way to buy Japanese yen for travel?
Check whether you're being charged a "Cash advance" fee with your withdrawals, because it's being withdrawn from your credit card account. If that's happening to you, then having a positive balance on your credit card account will dramatically reduce the fees. Quoting from my answer to a similar question on Travel Stac...
What are the disadvantages of using a small leverage?
The major drawback to borrowing to invest (i.e. using leverage) is that your return on investment must be high enough to overcome the cost of finance. The average return on the S&P 500 is about 9.8% (from CNBC) a typical unsecured personal loan will have an interest rate of around 18-36% APR (from NerdWallet). This mea...
Will the stock market continue to grow forever?
The stock market may not grow "forever". There will be growth in the stock market, though. The stock market is a positive-sum game, since it is driven in large part by the profits earned by the companies. This doesn't mean that any individual stock will go up forever, it doesn't mean that any given index will go up for...
Buying under my bid price
It definitely depends on the exchange you are trading on. I'm not familiar with Scottrade, but a standard practice is to fulfill limit orders in the order they are placed. Most of the time, you wouldn't see stocks trade significantly under your bid price, but since penny stocks are very volatile, it's more likely the...
How to check the paypal's current exchange rate?
There is a way I discovered of finding the current exchange rate before committing to buy, go to send payments, put in your own second email, pay 1gbp as the amount and it will give you the exchange rate and fees in your own currency, in my case euro, before you have to click on send payment
How do I find out the Earnings Per Share of a Coca Cola Co Share?
Market cap should be share price times number of shares, right? That's several orders of magnitude right there...
Ethics and investment
Peer to peer lending such as Kiva, Lending Club, Funding Circle(small business), SoFi(student loans), Prosper, and various other services provide you with access to the 'basic form' of investing you described in your question. Other funds: You may find the documentary '97% Owned' fascinating as it provides an overview...
Is it sensible to redirect retirement contributions from 401(k) towards becoming a landlord?
Here are the issues, as I see them - It's not that I don't trust banks, but I just feel like throwing all of our money into intangible investments is unwise. Banks have virtually nothing to do with this. And intangible assets has a different meaning than you assume. You don't have to like the market, but try to under...
Options for dummies. Can you explain how puts & calls work, simply?
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 automati...
Why is OkPay not allowed in the United States?
Here's the real reason OKPay (actually the banks they interface with) won't accept US Citizens. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act Congress passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in 2010 without much fanfare. One reason the act was so quiet was its four-year long ramp up; FATCA did not really take ...
Are car buying services worth it?
The buying service your credit union uses is similar to the one my credit union uses. I have used their service several times. There is no direct cost to use the service, though the credit union as a whole might have a fee to join the service. I have used it 4 times over the decades. If you know what make and model you...
Should I include retirement funds in calculating my asset allocation?
Personally, I do asset allocation separately for personal investing and for retirement investing, as I the two have vastly different purposes and I have vastly different goals for each. YMMV depending on how you view your non-retirement investments, and how close you are to retirement.
How much money do you have to make every year before you have to pay tax?
Since your YouTube income is considered self-employment income and because you probably already made more than $400 in net income (after deducting expenses from the $4000 you've received so far), you will have to pay self-employment tax and file a return. This is according to the IRS's Publication 17 (2016), Your Fede...
Do stocks give you more control over your finances than mutual funds?
The issue with trading stocks vs. mutual funds (or ETFs) is all about risk. You trade Microsoft you now have a Stock Risk in your portfolio. It drops 5% you are down 5%. Instead if you want to buy Tech and you buy QQQ if MSFT fell 5% the QQQs would not be as impacted to the downside. So if you want to trade a mutual fu...
What part of buying a house would make my net worth go down?
In general, buying a house will improve your net worth over the long haul, because unlike cars, houses don't suffer as much from depreciation. The problem with real property is that markets are very cyclic and aren't very liquid assets. Farmers with thousands of acres of valuable land are often cash poor for that very...
Are there “buy and hold” passively managed funds?
They pretty much already have what you are looking for. They are called Unit Investment Trusts. The key behind these is (a) the trust starts out with a fixed pool of securities. It is completely unmanaged and there is no buying or selling of the securities, (b) they terminate after a fixed period of time, at which ...
If the U.S. defaults on its debt, what will happen to my bank money?
I have been through default in Ukraine august 1998. That was a real nightmare. The financial system stopped working properly for 1 month, about 30% of businesses went bankrupt because of chain effect, significant inflation and devaluation of currency. So, it is better to be prepared, because this type of processes resu...
Tracking Gold and Silver (or any other commodity investment) in Quicken 2010?
I was able to find a fairly decent index that trades very close to 1/10th the actual price of gold by the ounce. The difference may be accounted to the indexes operating cost, as it is very low, about 0.1%. The index is the ETFS Gold Trust index (SGOL). By using the SGOL index, along with a Standard Brokerage investmen...
Where are open-end funds traded?
Close-end funds just means there's a fixed number of shares available, so if you want to buy some you must purchase from other existing owners, typically through an exchange. Open-end funds mean the company providing the shares is still selling them, so you can buy them directly from the company. Some can also be trad...
Allocating IRA money, clarification needed
You'll likely see several more scary market events before your autumn years. Ahhh, everyone has an opinion on this so here is mine :) If you are constrained to picking canned mutual fund products then I would target something with decent yield for two points. The third is to keep some in cash for an 'event'. I would ...