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How to tell if you can trust a loan company? | Look for people who have done business with them. If you don't know anyone who has used their services, look for a company that at least has a brick and mortar branch in your area. Being able to deal with them face to face is a must. Have you checked with your local bank? |
Why would anyone buy a government bond? | Great question. There are several reasons; I'm going to list the few that I can think of off the top of my head right now. First, even if institutional bank holdings in such a term account are covered by deposit insurance (this, as well as the amount covered, varies geographically), the amount covered is generally trivial when seen in the context of bank holdings. An individual might have on the order of $1,000 - $10,000 in such an account; for a bank, that's basically chump change, and you are looking more at numbers in the millions of dollars range. Sometimes a lot more than that. For a large bank, even hundreds of millions of dollars might be a relatively small portion of their holdings. The 2011 Goldman Sachs annual report (I just pulled a big bank out of thin air, here; no affiliation with them that I know of) states that as of December 2011, their excess liquidity was 171,581 million US dollars (over 170 billion dollars), with a bottom line total assets of $923,225 million (a shade under a trillion dollars) book value. Good luck finding a bank that will pay you 4% interest on even a fraction of such an amount. GS' income before tax in 2011 was a shade under 6.2 billion dollars; 4% on 170 billion dollars is 6.8 billion dollars. That is, the interest payments at such a rate on their excess liquidity alone would have cost more than they themselves made in the entire year, which is completely unsustainable. Government bonds are as guaranteed as deposit-insurance-covered bank accounts (it'll be the government that steps in and pays the guaranteed amount, quite possibly issuing bonds to cover the cost), but (assuming the country does not default on its debt, which happens from time to time) you will get back the entire amount plus interest. For a deposit-insured bank account of any kind, you are only guaranteed (to the extent that one can guarantee anything) the maximum amount in the country's bank deposit insurance; I believe in most countries, this is at best on the order of $100,000. If the bank where the money is kept goes bankrupt, for holdings on the order of what banks deal with, you would be extremely lucky to recover even a few percent of the principal. Government bonds are also generally accepted as collateral for the bank's own loans, which can make a difference when you need to raise more money in short order because a large customer decided to withdraw a big pile of cash from their account, maybe to buy stocks or bonds themselves. Government bonds are generally liquid. That is, they aren't just issued by the government, held to maturity while paying interest, and then returned (electronically, these days) in return for their face value in cash. Government bonds are bought and sold on the "secondary market" as well, where they are traded in very much the same way as public company stocks. If banks started simply depositing money with each other, all else aside, then what would happen? Keep in mind that the interest rate is basically the price of money. Supply-and-demand would dictate that if you get a huge inflow of capital, you can lower the interest rate paid on that capital. Banks don't pay high interest (and certainly wouldn't do so to each other) because of their intristic good will; they pay high interest because they cannot secure capital funding at lower rates. This is a large reason why the large banks will generally pay much lower interest rates than smaller niche banks; the larger banks are seen as more reliable in the bond market, so are able to get funding more cheaply by issuing bonds. Individuals will often buy bonds for the perceived safety. Depending on how much money you are dealing with (sold a large house recently?) it is quite possible even for individuals to hit the ceiling on deposit insurance, and for any of a number of reasons they might not feel comfortable putting the money in the stock market. Buying government bonds then becomes a relatively attractive option -- you get a slightly lower return than you might be able to get in a high-interest savings account, but you are virtually guaranteed return of the entire principal if the bond is held to maturity. On the other hand, it might not be the case that you will get the entire principal back if the bank paying the high interest gets into financial trouble or even bankruptcy. Some people have personal or systemic objections toward banks, limiting their willingness to deposit large amounts of money with them. And of course in some cases, such as for example retirement savings, it might not even be possible to simply stash the money in a savings account, in which case bonds of some kind is your only option if you want a purely interest-bearing investment. |
How long to wait after getting a mortgage to increase my credit limit? | 8 hard inquiries spread over two years is not a negative factor, with a score of 750. Real question #1: How much of your credit limits are you currently using? Less than 30% of your credit limits is good. Less than 15% is even better, 10% is great You don't need to wait X amount of days after applying for a mortgage or a card to increase your chances of getting approved for something else. You do need to be conscious of how many hard pulls you have done in a reporting period though, but again as I said, 8 spread over two years is not a whole lot. Real question #2: What negative things do you have in your credit history? Young age, income, delinquent payments, bankruptcies, low limits? Some of these negative factors are catch-22's (low limits, young age = low limits because of age and young credit history) but these contribute to how much institutions would be willing to lend you |
Can limits be placed by a merchant on which currency notes are accepted as legal tender? [duplicate] | Can they reject a hundred dollar bill as a payment of debt?! No. A creditor cannot refuse payment in cash, whatever denomination you use. HOWEVER, when you're buying stuff - you don't owe anything to the business owner. There's no debt, so the above rule doesn't apply. As long as there's no debt in existence, the matter of payment is decided between two parties based on the mutual agreement. The demand not to use large bills is reasonable in places like 7/11 or taxi-cab that are frequently robbed, or at a small retailer that doesn't want to invest into forgery detection and fraud prevention. So the answer to this question: Is it the case where this practice of accepting small bills and rejecting large bills is perfectly legal? Is yes. You can find the full explanation on Treasury.gov, including code references. |
How to model fees from trades on online platforms? | where A1 is the number of trades. you may have to change the number 100 to 99 depending on how the 100th trade is charged. The idea is to use the if statement to determine the price of the trades. Once you are over the threshold the price is 14*number over threshold. |
Why do stocks go up? Is it due to companies performing well, or what else? [duplicate] | The value of a stock ultimately is related to the valuation of a corporation. As part of the valuation, you can estimate the cash flows (discounted to present time) of the expected cash flows from owning a share. This stock value is the so-called "fundamental" value of a stock. What you are really asking is, how is the stock's market price and the fundamental value related? And by asking this, you have implicitly assumed they are not the same. The reason that the fundamental value and market price can diverge is that simply, most shareholders will not continue holding the stock for the lifespan of a company (indeed some companies have been around for centuries). This means that without dividends or buybacks or liquidations or mergers/acquisitions, a typical shareholder cannot reasonably expect to recoup their share of the company's equity. In this case, the chief price driver is the aggregate expectation of buyers and sellers in the marketplace, not fundamental evaluation of the company's balance sheet. Now obviously some expectations are based on fundamentals and expert opinions can differ, but even when all the experts agree roughly on the numbers, it may be that the market price is quite a ways away from their estimates. An interesting example is given in this survey of behavioral finance. It concerns Palm, a wholly-owned subsidiary of 3Com. When Palm went public, its shares went for such a high price, they were significantly higher than 3Com's shares. This mispricing persisted for several weeks. Note that this facet of pricing is often given short shrift in standard explanations of the stock market. It seems despite decades of academic research (and Nobel prizes being handed out to behavioral economists), the knowledge has been slow to trickle down to laymen, although any observant person will realize something is amiss with the standard explanations. For example, before 2012, the last time Apple paid out dividends was 1995. Are we really to believe that people were pumping up Apple's stock price from 1995 to 2012 because they were waiting for dividends, or hoping for a merger or liquidation? It doesn't seem plausible to me, especially since after Apple announced dividends that year, Apple stock ended up taking a deep dive, despite Wall Street analysts stating the company was doing better than ever. That the stock price reflects expectations of the future cash flows from the stock is a thinly-disguised form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), and there's a lot of evidence contrary to the EMH (see references in the previously-linked survey). If you believe what happened in Apple's case was just a rational re-evaluation of Apple stock, then I think you must be a hard-core EMH advocate. Basically (and this is elaborated at length in the survey above), fundamentals and market pricing can become decoupled. This is because there are frictions in the marketplace making it difficult for people to take advantage of the mispricing. In some cases, this can go on for extended periods of time, possibly even years. Part of the friction is caused by strong beliefs by market participants which can often shift pressure to supply or demand. Two popular sayings on Wall Street are, "It doesn't matter if you're right. You have to be right at the right time." and "It doesn't matter if you're right, if the market disagrees with you." They suggest that you can make the right decision with where to put your money, but being "right" isn't what drives prices. The market does what it does, and it's subject to the whims of its participants. |
How to prepare to purchase a house? (Germany) | Figure out how much money you earn, what you spend it on, and how that will change when you have kids (will one of you stay at home? if not, how much will daycare cost and how do you finance the first few month when your child is still too young for daycare?) You will usually plan to spend your current Kaltmiete (rent without utilities) on your mortgage (the Darlehen that is secured by your house) - keep in mind though that a house usually has a higher utility cost than an appartment. When you've figured out what you can save/pay towards a house now and how that will change when you have kids, you can go on to the next step. If you don't want to buy now but want to commit to saving up for a house and also want to secure today's really low interest rates, consider getting a "Bausparvertrag". I didn't find a good translation for Bausparvertrag, so here is a short example of how it works: You take a building saving sum (Bausparsumme) of 150000€ with a savings goal (Sparziel) of 50000€ (the savings goal is usually between 20% and 50% of the sum) and then you make monthly payments into the Bausparvertrag until you reach the savings goal at which point you can take out your savings and a loan of 100000 € (or whatever your difference between the Bausparsumme and Sparziel is). If you're living in an expenisve area, you're likely to need more than 150000 but this is just an example. Upsides: Downsides: If you decide to buy sooner, you can also use your Bausparvertrag to refinance later. If you have a decent income and a permanent job, then ask your bank if they would consider financing your house now. To get a sense of what you'll be able to afford, google "wie viel Haus kann ich mir leisten" and use a few of the many online calculators. Remember that these websites want to sell you on the idea of buying a house instead of paying rent, so they'll usually overestimate the raise in rents - repeat the calculation with rent raise set to 0% to get a feeling for how much you'll be able to afford in today's money. Also, don't forget that you're planning to get children, so do the calculation with only one income, not two, and add the cost of raising the kids to your calculation. Once you've decided on a property, shop around a bit at different banks to get the best financing. If you decide to buy now (or soon), start looking at houses now - go to model homes (Musterhäuser) to find out what style of house you like - this is useful whether you want to buy an existing house or build a new one. If buying an existing house is an option for you, start visiting houses that are on sale in your area in order to practice what to ask and what to look for. You should have a couple of visits under your belt before you really start looking for the one you want to buy. Once you're getting closer to buying or making a contract with a construction company, consider getting an expert "Bausachverständiger". When buying an existing house they can help you estimate the price and also estimate the renovation cost you'll have to factor in for a certain house (new heating, better insulation, ...). When building a new house they can advise you on the contract with the construction company and also examine the construction company's work at each major step (Zwischenabnahme). Source: Own experience. |
Do Square credit card readers allow for personal use? | My husband used this device at work in an organization/club that collects dues for fundraisers. The fundraisers are only for the club. So I think that is not business at all. They have no business tax id#, etc? and they use it for personal reasons when collecting money via Cc#'s if this helps you. |
What does it mean to be “offset against taxable gains”? | Offset against taxable gains means that the amount - $25 million in this case - can be used to reduce another sum that the company would otherwise have to pay tax on. Suppose the company had made a profit of $100 million on some other investments. At some point, they are likely to have to pay corporation tax on that amount before being able to distribute it as a cash dividend to shareholders. However if they can offset the $25 million, then they will only have to pay tax on $75 million. This is quite normal as you usually only pay tax on the aggregate of your gains and losses. If corporation tax is about 32% that would explain the claimed saving of approximately $8 million. It sounds like the Plaintiffs want the stock to be sold on the market to get that tax saving. Presumably they believe that distributing it directly would not have the same effect because of the way the tax rules work. I don't know if the Plaintiffs are right or not, but if they are the difference would probably come about due to the stock being treated as a "realized loss" in the case where they sell it but not in the case where they distribute it. It's also possible - though this is all very speculative - that if the loss isn't realised when they distribute it directly, then the "cost basis" of the shareholders would be the price the company originally paid for the stock, rather than the value at the time they receive it. That in turn could mean a tax advantage for the shareholders. |
What do brokers do with bad stock? | For every seller, there's a buyer. Buyers may have any reason for wanting to buy (bargain shopping, foolish belief in a crazy business, etc). The party (brokerage, market maker, individual) owning the stock at the time the company goes out of business is the loser . But in a general panic, not every company is going to go out of business. So the party owning those stocks can expect to recover some, or all, of the value at some point in the future. Brokerages all reserve the right to limit margin trading (required for short selling), and during a panic would likely not allow you to short a stock they feel is a high risk for them. |
Investing Account Options | Immediately move your Roth IRA out of Edward Jones and into a discount broker like Scottrade, Ameritrade, Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, or E-Trade. Edward Jones will be charging you a large fraction of your money (probably at least 1% explicitly and maybe another 1% in hidden-ish fees like the 12b-1). Don't give away several percent of your savings every year when you can have an account for free. Places like Edward Jones are appropriate only for people who are unwilling to learn about personal finance and happy to pay dearly as a result. Move your money by contacting the new broker, then requesting that they get your money out of Edward Jones. They will be happy to do so the right way. Don't try and get the money out yourself. Continue to contribute to your Roth as long as your tax bracket is low. Saving on taxes is a critically important part of being financially wise. You can spend your contributions (not gains) out of your Roth for any reason without penalty if you want/need to. When your tax bracket is higher, look at traditional IRA's instead to minimize your current tax burden. For more accessible ways of saving, open a regular (non-tax-advantaged) brokerage account. Invest in diversified and low-cost funds. Look at the expense ratios and minimize your portfolio's total expense. Higher fee funds generally do not earn the money they take from you. Avoid all funds that have a nonzero 12b-1 fee. Generally speaking your best bet is buying index funds from Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, or their close competitors. Or buying cheap ETF's. Any discount brokerage will allow you to do this in both your Roth and regular accounts. Remember, the reason you buy funds is to get instant diversification, not because you are willing to gamble that your mutual funds will outperform the market. Head to the bogleheads forum for more specific advice about 3 fund portfolios and similar suggested investment strategies like the lazy portfolios. The folks in the forums there like to give specific advice that's not appropriate here. If you use a non-tax-advantaged account for investing, buy and sell in a tax-smart way. At the end of the year, sell your poor performing stocks or funds and use the loss as a tax write-off. Then rebalance back to a good portfolio. Or if your tax bracket is very low, sell the winners and lock in the gains at low tax rates. Try to hold things more than a year so you are taxed at the long-term capital gains rate, rather than the short-term. Only when you have several million dollars, then look at making individual investments, rather than funds. In a non-tax-advantaged account owning the assets directly will help you write off losses against your taxes. But either way, it takes several million dollars to make the transactions costs of maintaining a portfolio lower than the fees a cheap mutual/index fund will charge. |
World Indexes - Variance between representation of a country's stocks and the country's proportion of world GDP | Stock market indexes are generally based on market capitalization, which is not the same as GDP. GDP includes the value of all goods and services produced in a country; this includes a large amount of small-scale production which may not be reflected in stock market capitalizations. Thus the ratio between countries' GDPs may not be the same as the ratio of their total market capitalization. For instance, US GDP is approximately 3.8 times as much as Japan's (see here), but US total market cap is about 5.5 as much as Japan's (see here). The discrepancy can be even more severe when comparing "developed" economies like the US to "developing" (or "less-developed") economies in which there is less participation in large-scale financial systems like stock markets. For instance, US GDP is roughly 10 times that of Brazil, but US total market cap is roughly 36 times that of Brazil. Switzerland has a total market cap nearly double that of Brazil despite its total GDP being less than half of Brazil's. Since the all-world index includes all investable economies, it will include many economies whose share of market cap is disproportionately lower than their share of GDP. In addition, according to the fact sheet you linked to, that index tracks only large- and mid-cap stocks. This will further skew the weighting to developed economies and to the US in particular, since the US has a disproportionate share of the largest companies. Obviously one would need to take a more detailed look at all the weights to determine if these factors account precisely for the level of discrepancy you see in this particular index. But hopefully that explanation gives an idea of why the US might be weighted more heavily in a stock index than it is in raw GDP. |
Should I be worried that I won't be given a receipt if I pay with cash? | There are number of reasons why someone doesn't want to give you a receipt for cash payment. Anything ranging from not wanting to pay taxes, to being able to deny you gave them money for service in the event you're not happy with the service and ask for money back. You won't get in trouble for giving him cash, however you should be worried because any "reputable" person providing any type of service/product will provide a receipt regardless of payment type. |
Best Time to buy a stock in a day | The best time to buy a stock is the time of day when the stock price is lowest! Obviously you learned nothing from that sentence, but unfortunately you won't get a much better answer than that. Here's a question that is very similar to yours: "Is it better to have a picnic for lunch or for dinner to minimize the chance of getting rained out?" Every day is different... |
Why is a home loan (mortgage) cheaper than gold loan? | My doubt is whether Govt./Reserve Bank of India gives any explicit incentives to banks to offer cheaper home loans ? Currently NO. In the past Loan against GOLD was considered priority sector lending [Loans to poor and agriculture etc]. Every Bank need to lead around 25% to priority sector. Hence quite a few Banks gave loans relatively cheaper to todays rate rather than giving it as Farm loan that almost never get recovered. It is no longer the case now as Loan against GOLD is not considered priority lending. If it were just demand/supply, I feel that gold loans should have been cheaper It is demand and supply. There are quite a few reasons for this; |
Impact of EIN on taxation | Your question mixes up different things. Your LLC business type is determined by how you organize your business at the state level. Separately, you can also elect to be treated in one of several different status for federal taxation. (Often this automatically changes your tax status at the state level too, but you need to check that with your state tax authority.) It is true that once you have an EIN, you can apply to be taxed as a C Corp or S Corp. Whether or not that will result in tax savings will depend on the details of your business. We won't be able to answer that for you. You should get a professional advisor if you need help making that determination. |
What does it mean to a life insurance policy holder to convert from a stock to mutual insurance company? | A stock insurance company is structured like a “normal” company. It has shareholders (that are the company's investors), who elect a board of directors, who select the senior executive(s), who manage the people who run the actual company. The directors (and thus the executives and employees) have a legal responsibility to manage the company in a way which is beneficial for the shareholders, since the shareholders are the ultimate owner of the company. A mutual insurance company is similar, except that the people holding policies are also the shareholders. That is, the policyholders are the ultimate owners of the company, and there generally aren't separate shareholders who are just “investing” in the company. These policyholder-shareholders elect the board of directors, who select the senior executive(s), who manage the people who run the actual company. In practice, it probably doesn't really make a whole lot of difference, since even if you're just a "customer" and not an "owner" of the company, the company is still going to want to attract customers and act in a reasonable way toward them. Also, insurance companies are generally pretty heavily regulated in terms of what they can do, because governments really like them to remain solvent. It may be comforting to know that in a mutual insurance company the higher-ups are explicitly supposed to be working in your best interest, though, rather than in the interest of some random investors. Some might object that being a shareholder may not give you a whole lot more rights than you had before. See, for example, this article from the Boston Globe, “At mutual insurance firms, big money for insiders but no say for ‘owners’ — policyholders”: It has grown into something else entirely: an opaque, poorly understood, and often immensely profitable world in which some executives and insiders operate with minimal scrutiny and, no coincidence, often reap maximum personal rewards. Policyholders, despite their status as owners, have no meaningful oversight of how mutual companies spend their money — whether to lower rates, pay dividends, or fund executive salaries and perks — and few avenues to challenge such decisions. Another reason that one might not like the conversion is the specific details of how the current investor-shareholders are being paid back for their investment in the process of the conversion to mutual ownership, and what that might do to the funds on hand that are supposed to be there to keep the firm solvent for the policyholders. From another Boston Globe article on the conversion of SBLI to a mutual company, “Insurer SBLI wants to get banks out of its business,” professor Robert Wright is cautiously optimistic but wants to ensure the prior shareholders aren't overpaid: Robert Wright, a professor in South Dakota who has studied insurance companies and owns an SBLI policy, said he would prefer the insurer to be a mutual company that doesn’t have to worry about the short-term needs of shareholders. But he wants to ensure that SBLI doesn’t overpay the banks for their shares. “It’s fine, as long as it’s a fair price,” he said. That article also gives SBLI's president's statement as to why they think it's a good thing for policyholders: If the banks remained shareholders, they would be likely to demand a greater share of the profits and eat into the dividends the insurance company currently pays to the 536,000 policyholders, about half of whom live in Massachusetts, said Jim Morgan, president of Woburn-based SBLI. “We’re trying to protect the policyholders from having the dividends diluted,” Morgan said. I'm not sure there's an obvious pros/cons list for either way, but I'd think that I'd prefer the mutual approach, just on the principle that the policyholders “ought” to be the owners, because the directors (and thus the executives and employees) are then legally required to manage the company in the best interest of the policyholders. I did cast a Yes vote in my proxy on whether SBLI ought to become a mutual company (I'm a SBLI term-life policyholder.) But policy terms aren't changing, and it'd be hard to tell for sure how it'd impact any dividends (I assume the whole-life policies must be the ones to pay dividends) or company solvency either way, since it's not like we'll get to run a scientific experiment trying it out both ways. I doubt you'd have a lot of regrets either way, whether it becomes a mutual company and you wish it hadn't or it doesn't become one and you wish it had. |
Why is the dominant investing advice for individuals to use mutual funds, exchanged traded funds (ETFs), etc | I'll give the TLDR answer. 1) You can't forecast the price direction. If you get it right you got lucky. If you think you get it right consistently you are either a statistical anomaly or a victim of confirmation bias. Countless academic studies show that you can not do this. 2) You reduce volatility and, importantly, left-tail risk by going to an index tracking ETF or mutual fund. That is, Probability(Gigantic Loss) is MUCH lower in an index tracker. What's the trade off? The good thing is there is NO tradeoff. Your expected return does not go down in the same way the risk goes down! 3) Since point (1) is true, you are wasting time analysing companies. This has the opportunity cost of not earning $ from doing paid work, which can be thought of as a negative return. "With all the successful investors (including myself on a not-infrequent basis) going for individual companies directly" Actually, academic studies show that individual investors are the worst performers of all investors in the stock market. |
What things are important to consider when investing in one's company stock? | You really have asked two different questions here: I'm interested in putting away some money for my family Then I urge you to read up on investing. Improving your knowledge in investing is an investment that will very likely pay off in the long-term - this can't be answered here in full length, pointers to where to start are asset allocation and low-cost index funds. Read serious books, read stackexchange posts, and try avoid the Wall Street marketing machine. Also, before considering any long term investments, build an emergency fund (e.g. 6 months worth of your expenses) in case you need some liquid money (loss of job etc.), and also helps you sleep better at night. What things are important to consider before making this kind of investment? Mainly the risk (other answers already elaborate on the details). Investing in a single stock is quite risky, even more so when your income also depends on that company. Framed another way: which percentage of your portfolio should you put into a single stock? (which has been answered in this post). If after considering all things you think it's a good deal, take the offer, but don't put a too great percentage of you overall savings into it, limit it to say 10% (maybe even less). |
What is the difference between shares and ETF? | A mutual fund has several classes of shares that are charged different fees. Some shares are sold through brokers and carry a sales charge (called load) that compensates the broker in lieu of a fee that the broker would charge the client for the service. Vanguard does not have sales charge on its funds and you don't need to go through a broker to buy its shares; you can buy directly from them. Admiral shares of Vanguard funds are charged lower annual expenses than regular shares (yes, all mutual funds charge expenses for fund adninistration that reduce the return that you get, and Vanguard has some of the lowest expense ratios) but Admiral shares are available only for large investments, typically $50K or so. If you have invested in a Vanguard mutual fund, your shares can be set to automatically convert to Admiral shares when the investment reaches the right level. A mutual fund manager can buy and sell stocks to achieve the objectives of the fund, so what stockes you are invested in as a share holder in a mutual fund will typically be unknown to you on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are fixed baskets of stocks, and you can buy shares in the ETF. These shares are bought and sold through a broker (so you pay a transaction fee each time) but expenses are lower since there is no manager to buy and sell stocks: the basket is fixed. Many ETFs follow specific market indexes (e.g. S&P 500). Another difference between ETFs and mutual funds is that you can buy and sell ETFs at any time of the day just as if you could if you held stocks. With mutual funds, any buy and sell requests made during the day are processed at the end of the day and the value of the shares that you buy or sell is determined by the closing price of the stocks held by the mutual fund. With ETFs, you are getting the intra-day price at the time the buy or sell order is executed by your broker. |
Did my salesman damage my credit? What can I do? | Hindsight is 20/20, but I offer some suggestions for how this might have gone down. If you had told the bank what was going on they might have extended the terms of your loan until the truck was ready. Alternatively you might have taken the loan (was it secured on the truck?) and put the money in a savings account until the truck showed up, while asking the dealer to pay the interest on it until the truck showed up. Or you might asked the dealer to supply you with a rental truck until yours showed up. I'm not saying I would have thought of these under the circumstances, but worth trying. |
Do my 401k/Roth accounts benefit from compounding? | During the course of the year, the S&P individual stocks will have some dividends. Not every last stock but a good number of them. Enough that the average dividend for the S&P has been about 2% recently. So if the S&P index goes up, say 10%, an S&P fund should go up closer to 12%. For a fund holder, you'd normally see a declared dividend and cap gain distribution toward the end of each year. When you hold shares in a 401(k), dividends are reinvested into the fund, usually with no involvement from the members. |
I spend too much money. How can I get on the path to a frugal lifestyle? | Use software that calculates your net worth and track it over time. I track my personal finances in Mint, and I love checking my net worth every week. It's turned into a kind of competition with myself... It's like keeping track of how fast you run a 5k, or how many pounds of weight you've lost. It helps you determine if you are making progress, and if you, it's positive reinforcement that you are doing the right things. |
How does an index rearrange its major holdings | S & P Index Announcements would have notes on when there are changes to the index. For example in the S & P Small-cap 600 there is a change that takes affect on Feb. 19, 2013. As for how index funds handle changes to the fund, this depends a bit on the nature of the fund as open-end mutual funds would be different than exchange-traded funds. The open-end fund would have to sell and purchase to keep tracking the index which can be interesting to see how well this is handled to keep the transaction costs down while the ETFs will just unload the shares in the redemption units of the stock leaving the index while taking in new shares with creation units of the newly added stock to the index. |
ETF vs Mutual Fund: How to decide which to use for investing in a popular index? | If you just want to track an index, then ETFs are, generally speaking, the better way. |
Strategies for paying off my Student loans | Considering I'm in a nearly identical situation, I'll speak to my personal strategy and maybe there's some value for you as well. You have ~$22k in loans, which you say you could pay off today. So, what I read is that you're sitting there with a $22k investment and want to know which investment to make: pay down debt, invest in yourself/start up, or some variation between those options. Any investor worth his salt will ask a couple of questions: what is my risk, and what is my gain? Paying off your student loans offers no financial risk at the cost of opportunity risk, and gains you returns of 3.4%, 6.8%, 3.4%, 4.5%, and 6.8%. Those percentage gains are guaranteed and the opportunity risk is unknown. Investing in a startup is inherently risky, with the potential for big payoffs. But with this investment, you are accepting a lot of risk for potentially some gain (it could be the next Apple, it could also fail). So, with your situation (like mine), I'd say it's best to accept the easy investment for now and fully vet out your tech start up idea in the meantime. |
Setting up general ledger/tax reporting for a Real Estate Rental LLC in GnuCash | You will need to set up accounts in your chart of accounts for each of the partners. These are equity accounts where you can track your contributions, share of the profits and losses, and distributions. You're going to have to go back into the beginning years to get this right. I'm not sure what you mean by a "Built-in function". All the accounting software I'm familiar with requires data entry of some kind. You need to post your contributions and distributions to the correct accounts, and close properly at year end. You were indeed legally considered a partnership as soon as you started a for-profit business venture together. It's a bug in the legal system that a written partnership agreement is not necessarily required - you can form a partnership unknowingly. (BTW, a partnership actually is pretty far off from a sole proprietorship, legally and taxwise - the change from one person to two is major. It's the change from two to three or four or more that's incremental ;) I know you said you didn't want to consult a professional, but I have to say that I think it's worth the money to get your books set up by someone who has experience and can show you how to do it. And get a separate bank account for the partnership, if you haven't done so already. And check with your state to see if there are any requirements regarding partnerships. Hope this helps, Mariette IRS Circular 230 Notice: Please note that any tax advice contained in this communication is not intended to be used, and cannot be used, by anyone to avoid penalties that may be imposed under federal tax law. |
Am I still building a credit score if I use my credit card like a debit card? | I always hesitate to provide an answer to "how does this affect my credit score?" questions, because the credit agencies do not publish their formulas and the formulas do change over time. And many others have done more reverse engineering than I to figure out what factors do affect the scores. To some extent, there is no way to know other than to get your credit score and track it over time. (The credit report will tell you what the largest negative factors are.) However, let me make my prediction. You have credit, you aren't using a large percentage of it, and don't have defaults/late payments. So, yes, I think it would help your credit score and would build a history of credit. Since this is so unusual, this is just an educated guess. |
Is This A Scam? Woman added me on LinkedIn first, then e-mailed offering me millions of dollars [duplicate] | It is absolutely a scam. Anyone who tells you they can give you a large amount of money for free is trying to scam you. Additional warning signs include: |
Good books for learning about tax strategy/planning | J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax is, remarkably, a great read. It's a line by line review of the tax forms, and offers commentary and examples for every scenario. Of course, it's updated every year to reflect new rules and numbers. I actually read it from cover to cover the first year I started working. It's not going to offer convoluted strategies to use, but, you'll understand your tax return well enough to respond to the advice you encounter elsewhere. To mhoran's point - "Don't let the tax tail wag the investing dog." Taxes are important, but should take a back step to earning and investing. Those who didn't sell at the height of the dotcon bubble "to avoid the big tax bill" only saw in hindsight that paying taxes is part of success not failure. |
What financial data are analysed (and how) to come up with a stock recommendation? | Let me start with a somewhat sarcastic statement: There are probably as many things done to analyze a stock as there are people doing the analysis! That said, at a general level an analyst researches the historical performance of the company at a fairly detailed level (operations within divisions of the company, product development cycles within divisions, expenses vs income trends for each division and product, marketing costs, customer acquisition costs, etc); gathers information about what the company is doing now AND planning to do in the future -- often by a discussion with principles at the company; establishes a view on related macro-economic trends, sector and industry trends, demographic trends, etc.; and combines it all to forecast a change in revenues, margins, free cash flow, dividends, etc. over a period of time. They then apply statistics that relate those numbers to stock price in order to imply stock prices and price ranges over those same periods. Finally, depending on how those stock prices compare to the current stock price, they'll classify the stock as Buy, Sell, Hold, etc. This sounds like alot of work. And it generally is if you get detailed about it, which is what professionals or significant money managers are doing. However, there are also lots of arm-chair analysts posting their output on any number of financial sites (Seeking Alpha, Motley Fool, etc.) if you'd like to really explore the range of detail some people consider as a "stock analysis". That sounds more negative than I intended it to be, so let me clarify that I think some of these write-ups are really quite good IMO. |
How accurate is Implied Volatility in predicting future moves? | A change in implied volatility tells us something about what investors are thinking (or fearing) about the volatility going forward for the life of the associated option contracts (which may be short or long-lived). IV does a good job of summarizing the information available to investors, which includes information about the past and the present. However, whether these investor views actually translate into what happens in the future is a topic of debate in the finance literature--investors do not generally know the future--there are conflicting results available. There have been papers that show that implied volatility has predictive power in some situations, time periods, and horizons (though it is also biased) and other papers that show that it does not have statistically significant predictive power at all. The consensus last time I checked was that implied volatility is no worse than historical volatility (including methods that use trends in historical volatility to forecast where it is going) at predicting future volatility. Whether it is significantly better and whether either reliably predicts the future is something that is not agreed on. I take this lack of consensus as evidence that if it does predict future volatility, it does so poorly. Somewhat dated FAJ survey on the subject |
I am the sole owner of an LLC. Does it make a difference if I file as an S-Corp or a sole-member LLC? | I'm assuming that when you say "convert to S-Corp tax treatment" you're not talking about actually changing your LLC to a Corporation. There are two distinct pieces of the puzzle here. First, there's your organizational form. Your state, which is where the business is legally formed and recognized, creates the LLC or Corporation. "S-Corp" doesn't come into play here: your company is either an LLC or a Corporation. (There are a handful of other organizational types your state might have, e.g. PLLC, Limited Partnership, etc.; none of these are immediately relevant to this discussion). Second, there's the tax treatment you receive by the IRS. If your company was created by the state as an LLC, note that the IRS doesn't recognize LLCs as a distinct organizational type: you elect to be taxed as an individual (for single member LLCs), a partnership (for multiple member LLCs), or as a corporation. The former two elections are "pass through" -- there's no additional level of taxation on corporate profits, everything just passes through to the owners. The latter election introduces a tax on corporate profits. When you elect pass-through treatment, a single-member LLC files on Schedule C; a multiple-member LLC will prepare a form K-1 which you will include on your 1040. If your company was created by the state as a Corporation (not an LLC), you could still elect pass-through taxation if your company qualifies under the rules in Subchapter S (i.e. "an S-Corp"). States do not recognize "S-Corp" as part of the organizational process -- that's just a tax distinction used by the IRS (and possibly your state's tax authorities). In your case, if you are a single-member LLC (and assuming there are no other reasons to organize as a corporation), talking about "S-Corp tax treatment" doesn't make any sense. You'll just file your schedule C; in my experience it's fairly simple. (Note that this is based on my experience of single- and multiple-member LLCs in just two states. Your state may have different rules that affect state-level taxation; and the rules may change from year to year. I've found that hiring a good CPA to prepare the forms saves a good bit of stress and time that can be better applied to the business.) |
How to make money from a downward European market? | Invest in solid companies, not in esoteric products built on sand. The problem is with finance, not with real economy: oil companies make money, mobile phone companies make money, airlines make money... |
When I google a ticker like XLE or something, I see a price which updates frequently (about every second or so), where can I find this for options? | You probably will not find to many places if any that give you live quotes on options because for the general public there is not that high of a demand. Most people do not even know what stock options are. You can get update on some sites like CNBC, but you will have refresh constantly to get the latest option prices. You can also try an online broker, most of whom will let you have access to their tools and quotes if you sign up for an account. Some require a deposit before you can access those tools and some don't. Personally, I use TD Ameritrade and I do not believe they require a deposit to use their tools, but don't quote me on that. |
Calculating savings from mortgage interest deduction vs. standard deduction? | It's true that the standard deduction makes the numbers less impressive. I ran your scenario through my favorite, most complete rent vs buy calculator, and your math isn't far off. However, there are a lot of deductions only available if you itemize. Medical expenses, moving expenses, job expenses, charitable contributions, local income/sales taxes, property tax, private mortgage insurance, etc. Property tax on that house alone is going to be nearly equal to the standard deduction, so the point is nearly moot. Anyways, the above linked calculator handles all of those, and more. |
Does it make sense to buy an index ETF (e.g. S&P 500) when the index is at an all-time high? | The simple answer is: Where 'think' stands for "after your calculations, and guts/intuitions, and analysis", of course. |
Is it possible, anywhere in the US for a funding firm to not have a license number showing somewhere? | Well, these can range from loan broker to outright scams. It is pretty typical that loan broker just take some fee in the middle for their service of filling your applications for a bunch of real loan provider companies. Because making a web page costs nothing, a single loan broker could easily have many web pages with a bit different marketing so that they can get as many customers as possible. But of course some of the web pages can be actual scams. As soon as you provide enough information for taking out a loan, they can go to a real financial institution, take out the loan and run with the money. In most countries consumer protection laws do not apply to business-to-business transactions, so you have to be even more wary of scams than usual. |
Is this legal: going long on call options and artificially increasing the price of the underlying asset seconds before expiration? | Despite the fact that I think there is a litany of inaccuracies and misunderstandings related to quoted price and transaction price and the way prices move and assets transact; if you were able to, under these extremely narrow and very unlikely conditions, affect the prices of these assets that would be market manipulation in the eyes of the SEC. Link to the SEC page about market manipulation. |
Changing Mailing Adress | If you call them, you can make sure they'll use the new address, but if you want to do it online, there is some risk that the update is delayed. Note also that an address change with an immediate request for a replacement debit card smells very fishy - this what a hacker / thief would do to get your money. Calling seems to be the better approach, as you can verify your identity further. Otherwise, you might well run into an automated block. |
Selling RSUs that vested at different values | No, you're not missing anything. RSUs are pretty simple when it comes to taxes. They are taxed as compensation at fair market value when they vest, basically equivalent to the company giving you a cash bonus and then using it to buy company stock. The fair market value at vesting then becomes your cost basis. Assuming the value has increased since vesting, selling the shares that vested at least a year ago (to qualify for lower long-term capital gains tax rates) with the highest cost basis with result in the minimum taxes. |
How can I save money on a gym / fitness membership? New Year's Resolution is to get in shape - but on the cheap! | Find a physical activity or programme that interests you. Memberships only have real value if you use them. Consider learning a martial art like karate, aikido, kung fu, tai kwan do, judo, tai chi chuan. :-) Even yoga is a good form of exercise. Many of these are offered at local community centres if you just want to try it out without worrying about the cost initially. Use this to gauge your interest before considering more advanced clubs. One advantage later on if you stay with it long enough - some places will compensate you for being a junior or even associate instructor. Regardless of whether this is your interest or if the gym membership is more to your liking real value is achieved if you have a good routine and interest in your physical fitness activity. It also helps to have a workout buddy or partner. They will help motivate you to try even when you don't feel like working out. |
How credible is Stansberry's video “End of America”? | I listened to about 15 minutes of the video, but then I read your other link, which gives a much better summary. This guy is an idiot. Just consider this statement: "If everyone was taxed at 100%, it wouldn't be enough to balance the federal budget." This is true to some extent. It wouldn't be enough to balance the federal budget in one year. Experts often cite things like debt to GDP to show that a country's debt is ballooning, but they don't mention this obvious fact: We don't have to pay off our debts in a single year. Nobody does. Debt to GDP is a ratio and not the end all be all. Reinhart & Rogoff wrote a paper about how countries with high debt to GDP tend to have slower economic growth, but they don't mention that this occurs at every stage of debt growth. See Debt & Delusion by Dr. Robert Shiller for a great article on this subject. The daily kos article goes over most of the points I would make, but let me generalize a little: Always be wary of doomsday-predictors and free advice. This guy talks about correctly calling Fannie and Freddie. Even if he's right, why is he mentioning it? If he's such a good accountant and financial expert, surely he could've seen the tech bubble before the housing bubble right? It took a lot of analysis to figure out that CDO's were junk - anybody with the ability to read a balance sheet could see that many tech companies were overvalued. Every now and then, you get one hit wonders. They might never be right again, but they have the "credentials." If these people were really that good, they wouldn't be selling investment newsletters. They'd be applying their strategies and getting rich. Buffett has been getting rich for over 50 years, and he's not publishing newsletters with "secret, genius" strategies. He's made it pretty clear what his philosophy is, and anyone who follows it patiently will make money. Stransberry's argument only makes sense if you agree with the assumptions. The US will implode if nobody accepts our money. Nobody will accept our money if we're no longer the reserve currency or hyperinflation occurs or something like that. People have been predicting doom after every bubble, but that doesn't make it true. Some of his points (like the fact that we have too much debt) are valid, and I predict that the world will go into a period of deleveraging now. Nonetheless, the whole "we will implode" story is a scary picture, but it's just that - a picture. |
Why doesn't Japan just divide the Yen by 100? | Think about moving the decimal point in a bunch of accounting software and price stickers. Think about getting confused, "is that price in old yen or new yen?" - not just immediately, but every time you hear a historical price figure. Think of the inconveniences. How many billions of yen would that cost the Japanese economy? It could be a lot. How many billions of yen would the Japanese economy save by enacting such a conversion? Because I doubt it's anywhere that much. |
How to value employee benefits? | Health insurance varies wildly per state and per plan and per provider - but check them out to have a baseline to know what it should cost if you did it yourself. Don't forget vacation time, too: many contract/comp-only jobs have no vacation time - how much is that 10 or 15 days a year worth to you? It effectively means you're getting paid for 2080 hours, but working 2000 (with the 2 week number). Is the comp-only offer allowing overtime, and will they approve it? Is the benefits-included job salaried? If it's truly likely you'll be working more than a normal 40 hour week on a routine basis (see if you can talk to other folks that work there), an offer that will pay overtime is likely going to be better than one that wouldn't .. but perhaps not in your setting if it also loses the PTO. |
How should I invest my money as a young graduate in Europe? | Before starting with investing, you should make sure you are saving enough. Living in a welfare country (France) does not exempt you from potentially needing to save large amounts of money. You state that you do not need much of an emergency day fund, but this is not true. Being dismissed unjustly from your job is not the only way to become unemployed and not all roads lead to unemployment pay. Being fired for cause or leaving your job voluntarily are two work related causes that will leave you without an income source. Unexpected major expenses are another reason you might need to dip into your emergency fund. If your emergency fund is in order, the next thing to investigate is your pension and saving for retirement. In a country with a strong pension system, you need to check how comfortable you are with its sustainability (Greece anyone?) and also whether it will adequately meet your needs. If not, there are no 401ks or IRAs in France, but there is a relatively new personal supplementary pension plan (PERP) that you might investigate contributing to. If you're comfortable with your emergency fund and your retirement savings, then preparing for buying a house is likely your next savings goal. A quick search shows that to get a mortgage to buy a house in France, banks will commonly require a downpayment of 20% plus various closing costs. See for example here. This is 40,000+ euro for a 200k euro house, which will take you several years at the rate of 500 euro / month. France has special plans (Plan d’Epargne Logement) with tax-exempt interest for saving up for a house that you might want to investigate. In your other question, you also ask about buying a cheap car. As you get older and possibly start a family, having a car will likely become more of a necessity. This is another goal you can save for rather than having to take a loan out when you buy one. |
Does a rescheduled conference call generally mean “something's wrong” with a company? | Does the market automatically assume a rescheduled call means something major, like the auditors aren't signing the financials, is going on? Yes. (If so, why?) People - including investors - are emotional. And suspicious. And paranoid. Financial discussions tend to make everything sound like a cold, clinical science, and to some degree that is true. But you should never look past something much more simple - people are people. And of course, once all is said and done, acts like a reschedule often do mean something is up. So you've now got a nice mix of fact and emotion. Does it mean that 95% of the shares' holders are insiders who all decided to sell when they learned about whatever is causing the delay in the con call? No. See Littleadv's answer. |
How can this be enough to fund a scholarship in perpetuity? | The Trinity study looked at 'safe' withdrawal rates from retirement portfolios. They found it was safe to withdraw 4% of a portfolio consisting of stocks and bonds. I cannot immediately find exactly what specific investment allocations they used, but note that they found a portfolio consisting largely of stocks would allow for the withdrawal of 3% - 4% and still keep up with inflation. In this case, if you are able to fund $30,000, the study claims it would be safe to withdraw $900 - $1200 a year (that is, pay out as scholarships) while allowing the scholarship to grow sufficiently to cover inflation, and that this should work in perpetuity. My guess is that they invest such scholarship funds in a fairly aggressive portfolio. Most likely, they choose something along these lines: 70 - 80% stocks and 20 - 30% bonds. This is probably more risky than you'd want to take, but should give higher returns than a more conservative portfolio of perhaps 50 - 60% stocks, 40 - 50% bonds, over the long term. Just a regular, interest-bearing savings account isn't going to be enough. They almost never even keep up with inflation. Yes, if the stock market or the bond market takes a hit, the investment will suffer. But over the long term, it should more than recover the lost capital. Such scholarships care far more about the very long term and can weather a few years of bad returns. This is roughly similar to retirement planning. If you expect to be retired for, say, 10 years, you won't worry too much about pulling out your retirement funds. But it's quite possible to retire early (say, at 40) and plan for an infinite retirement. You just need a lot more money to do so. $3 million, invested appropriately, should allow you to pull out approximately $90,000 a year (adjusted upward for inflation) forever. I leave the specifics of how to come up with $3 million as an exercise for the reader. :) As an aside, there's a Memorial and Traffic Safety Fund which (kindly and gently) solicited a $10,000 donation after my wife was killed in a motor vehicle accident. That would have provided annual donations in her name, in perpetuity. This shows you don't need $30,000 to set up a scholarship or a fund. I chose to go another way, but it was an option I seriously considered. Edit: The Trinity study actually only looked at a 30 year withdrawal period. So long as the investment wasn't exhausted within 30 years, it was considered a success. The Trinity study has also been criticised when it comes to retirement. Nevertheless, there's some withdrawal rate at which point your investment is expected to last forever. It just may be slightly smaller than 3-4% per year. |
About to start being an Independent Contractor - Any advice on estimating taxes? | One possibility that I use: I set up an LLC and get paid through that entity. Then I set up a payroll service through Bank of America and set up direct deposit so that it is free. I pay myself at 70% of my hourly rate based on the number of hours I work, and the payroll service does all the calculations for me and sets up the payments to the IRS. Typically money is left over in my business account. When tax time rolls around, I have a W2 from my LLC and a 1099 from the company I work for. I put the W2 into my personal income, and for the business I enter the revenue on the 1099 and the payroll expenses from paying myself; the left over in the business account is taxed as ordinary income. Maybe it's overkill, but setting up the LLC makes it possible to (a) set up a solo 401(k) and put up to $51k away tax-free, and (b) I can write off business expenses more easily. |
Is there a government-mandated resource that lists the shareholders of a public company? | You can obtain a stocklist if you file a lawsuit as a shareholder against the company demanding that you receive the list. It's called an inspection case. The company then has to go to Cede and/or the Depository Trust Company who then compiles the NOBO COBO list of beneficiary stockholders. SEC.gov gives you a very limited list of people who have had to file 13g or 13d or similar filings. These are large holders. To get the list of ALL stockholders you have to go through Cede. |
Purchasing options between the bid and ask prices, or even at the bid price or below? | Yes, almost always. I trade some of the most illiquid single stock options, and I would be absolutely murdered if I didn't try to work orders between the bid/ask. When I say illiquid, I mean almost non-existent: ~50 monthly contracts on ALL contracts for a given underlying. Spreads of 30% or more. The only time you shouldn't try to work an order, in my opinion, is when you think you need to trade immediately (rare), if implied volatility (IV) has moved to such a degree that the market makers (MM) won't hit your order while they're offering fair IV (they'll sometimes come down to meet you at their "real" price to get the exchange's liquidity rebate), or if the bid/ask spread is a penny. For illiquid single stock options, you need to be extremely mindful of implied and statistical volatility. You can't just try to always put your order in the middle. The MMs will play with the middle to get you to buy at higher IVs and sell at lower. The only way you can hope that an order working below the bid / above the ask will get filled is if a big player overwhelms the MMs' (who are lined up on the bid and ask) current orders and hits yours with one large order. I've never seen this happen. The only other way is like you said: if the market moves against you, the orders in front of yours disappear, and someone hits your order, but I think that defeats the intent of your question. |
High dividend stocks | You might want to look up Dividend Yield Trap. Many stocks with high dividend yields got that way not because they decided to increase their dividend, but because their prices have dropped. Usually the company is not in good shape and will reduce their dividend, and you're stuck with a low-yield stock which has also decreased in price. |
I'm upside down on my car loan and need a different car, what can I do? | Dealerships make a lot of money in the finance department. One of the thing they play upon is your emotional reaction of purchasing a new vehicle (new to you in this case). They perform all sorts of shenanigans, like adding undercoat, selling gap insurance, or extended warranties. They entice you with a promise of a lower interest rate, but really what they are trying to do is back you into a payment. So if you can fiance 20,000, but the car you are buying is 16,000, then they will try to move that figure up to the 20K mark. In your case it sounded like some borderline (at the least) illegal activity they used to fool you into paying more. It sounds like you regret this decision which puts you a step ahead of most. How many people brag about the extended warranty or gap insurance they got included in the sale? As mentioned in another answer the best bet is to go into the dealership with financing in place. Say you were able to get a 3% loan on 16K. The total interest would be ~1600. If you avoid the finance room, you might avoid their dubious add ons that would probably cost you more then the 1600 even if you can get 0%. If you are going to buy a car on time, my advice would be to not fill out a credit app at the dealership. The dealership people through a conniption fit, but hold your ground. If need be get up and walk out. They won't let you leave. One thing I must mention, is that one feels very wealthy without that monthly pain in the a$$ payment for a car. You may want to try and envision yourself without a car payment, and make steps to making that a reality for the rest of your life. |
Why aren't there solutions for electronic itemized receipt for retail in-store purchases? | In some stores that is done. When I shop at the Apple store or at the Farmers market the receipt is automatically sent to my email address. Why don't others do it? If the target of the itemized receipt is a credit card company they would be sending data that they spent collecting to another corporation. The grocery store is collecting your data so they can sell it to their vendors. They sell to vendors the info that Gen X shoppers that buy cat food are more likely to use brand X laundry detergent then Millennials. The credit card companies could gather even more Meta data that they could sell. Privacy. Some people don't join the reward program at the store because they don't want a company to know exactly what they buy. Even fewer would want the credit card company to have that information. The credit card companies would have to want this level of data that would have to be stored, maintained, and protected. |
Money transfer from Australia to India - avoid receiving ends service tax | All Bank fees were included in the service tax ambit [For example Check bounce, issue of duplicate statement, fees charged for remittance etc]. However as quite a few Banks structured the Remittance Business to show less charges and cover the difference in the Fx rate involved, the Govt has redone the service tax and one needs to pay Rs 120 for an amount of Rs 100,000. There is no way to avoid service tax on remittance if you are using a remittance service. |
How do you find reasonably priced, quality, long lasting clothing? | Use resources like Consumer Reports and recommendations from like-minded friends to figure out brands which have a reputation for making quality clothes. Then trust, but verify. Ideally have a friend who sews a lot go with you on a clothing expedition if you don't know how to determine quality in clothing. People who sew knew their fabrics, and this could be very helpful to you. Start at places that are known for quality clothing, but make sure the reputation hasn't outlived reality. I'd look for: Once you've identified places that you can trust, wait for sales at those stores. I've found that shopping sales at department stores (or better, places like L. L. Bean) is cheaper than a discount retailer and much easier. Even cheaper, go to a thrift store and look for those brands in timeless styles. Your mileage will vary in terms of the what people throw out in your area. Thrift stores work extremely well in high cost of living areas where people give away nearly new items. |
How can I get free or discounted checks for my bank account? | First, if you live in/around a reasonably populated urban area, and you're in the United States, I can't see why you would choose to bank with Chase, B of A, or another large commercial bank. I think you would be much better served by banking at a reasonably large credit union. There are many differences between banks and credit unions, but in a nutshell, credit unions are owned by the members, and operate primarily to provide benefits to their members, whereas a bank is owned by the shareholders, and operates primarily to make profits for the shareholders (not to benefit the customers). The banking industry absolutely hates the credit unions, so if you've ever been nickeled-and-dimed with this fee and that charge by your bank, I have to ask why you're still banking with a company that irritates you and/or actively tries to screw you out of your money? I live in California, and I've banked at credit unions almost exclusively since I started working nearly 30 years ago. Every time I've strayed and started banking at a for-profit bank, I've regretted it. For example, a few years ago I opened a checking account at a now-defunct bank (WaMu) just for online use: eBay and so forth. It was a free checking account. When Chase bought WaMu, the account became a Chase account, and it seemed that every other statement brought new fees, new restrictions, and so forth. I finally closed it when they imposed some stupid fee for not carrying enough of a balance. I found out by logging in to their Web site and seeing a balance of zero dollars; they had imposed the fee a few statements back, and I had missed it, so they kept debiting my account until it was empty. At this point, I do about 90% of my banking at a fairly large credit union. I have a mortgage with a big bank, but that was out of my hands, as the lender/originator sold the mortgage and I had no say in the matter. My credit union has a highly functional Web site, permits me to download my account activity to Quicken, and even has mobile apps which allow me to deposit a check by taking a picture of it, or check my account activity, etc. They (my credit union) are part of a network of other credit unions, so as long as I am using a network ATM, I never pay a fee. In sum, I can't see any reason to go with a bank. Regarding checks, I write a small number of checks per year, but I recently needed to reorder them. My credit union refers members directly to Harland-Clarke, a major-league player in the check printing business. Four boxes of security checks was around $130 plus shipping, which is not small money. However, I was able to order the very same checks via Costco for less than half that amount. Costco refers members to a check printing service, which is a front/subsidiary of Harland-Clarke, and using a promo code, plus the discount given for my Costco membership, I got four boxes of security checks shipped to me for less than $54. My advice would be to look around. If you're a Costco member, use their check printing service. Wal*mart offers a similar service to anyone, as does Sam's Club, and you can search around to find other similar services. Bottom line, if you order your checks via your bank or credit union, chances are you will pay full retail. Shop around, and save a bit. I've not opened a new account at a credit union in some time, but I would not be surprised if a credit union offered a free box of checks when you open a new account with them. |
23 and on my own, what should I be doing? | You are asking all the right questions. I predict a bright future! In addition to the excellent advice from Phil, I would add that NOW is the time to think about investing. If you have not yet started a retirement account, open up a Roth IRA and max it out ($5.5k in 2014) every year. The time value of money is strong and you will be thanking yourself in 40 years for starting now. Yes, paying down debt is important, and you should do that, too. It's a balance. If you get converted to a full-time employee, take part in any retirement plan they offer, and max out any matching because it's free money. |
Can saving/investing 15% of your income starting age 25, likely make you a millionaire? | I just want to point out a couple of things, and I do not have enough reputation to comment. Saving 50% is totally possible. I know people saving 65%. For more see here EDIT: Let me repeat that 4% it the maximum you can assume if you want to be sure to have at least that return in the long term. It's not the average, it's the minimum, the value you can expect and plan with. Just to reinforce the claim, I can cite Irrational Exuberance of Robert Schiller, who explicitly says, on page 135 of the 2015 edition, that from January 1966 to January 1992 the real annual return was just 4.1%. Sure, this does not matter so much if you are investing all the way through, but it's still a 26 year period. |
I can make a budget, but how can I get myself to consistently follow my budget? | Try a tool like mint.com that will send you text messages regarding how you budget is going. If you use mint, set up your budget to send you reminders before you hit your budget. Example: if my budget for dining out is $100, I tell mint.com it is $50 and I get nagging text messages after $50 to remind me to keep a lid on my spending. |
What is an ideal number of stock positions that I should have in my portfolio? | There is no ideal number of stocks you should own. There are several factors you should consider though. First, how actively do you want to manage your portfolio. If you want to be very active then the number of stocks you own should be based on the amount of time you have to research the company, by reading SEC filings and listening to conference calls, so you are not surprised when the company reports every quarter. If you don't want to be very active, then you are better off buying solid companies that have a good reputation and good history of performance. Second, you should decide how much risk you are willing to take. If you have $10,000 that you can afford to lose, then you can put your money into more risky stocks or into fewer stocks, which could potentially have a higher return. If you want your $10,000 grow (or lose) with the market, better off, again, going with the good rep and history stocks or a variety of stocks. Third, this goes along with your risk to some extent, but you should consider if you are looking for short term or long term gains? If you are looking to put your money in the market for the short term, you will probably be looking at fewer stocks with more money in each. If you are looking for long term, you will be around 5 stocks that you swap as they reach goals you set out for each stock. In my opinion, and I am not a financial expert, I like to stay at around 5 companies, mostly for the fact that it is about the ideal number of companies to keep track of. |
Wage earners of age ≥ 60 with dependents: What Life Insurance, if any, should they buy? | The problem above is actually a pretty good list of the concerns around life insurance. While there is no correct answer to the question as posed, this will vary among different WSCs, there is a simpler way to think about insurance in general that may make finding what is right answer for you easier. Buying life insurance, like almost all insurance, is on average a money losing purchase. This is simply because the companies selling wouldn't offer it if they couldn't expect to make money on it. Think about buying insurance (a warranty) on a new cell phone, maybe if you are particularly prone to damaging cell phones it can be in your favor, but for most of the people that buy it will lose money on average. People, of course, still buy insurance anyway to protect themselves from unlikely but very bad consequences. The big reason to make this trade off is if the loss will have big lasting consequences. To stay with our cell phone example having to replace a cell phone, at least for me, would be annoying but not a catastrophic event. For myself, the protection is not worth the warranty cost, but that is not true for everyone. Life insurance is a pretty extreme case of this, but I find the best question to ask is "if you (you and your spouse) were to die will your dependents lives become so much worse that you really dislike the idea of not being insured?" For some working seniors, they already have enough saved to bridge their kids/spouse to adulthood/old-age that insurance makes no sense. For some, their children/husband/wife would be destitute and insurance is an obvious choice and an easy price to pay even if it is very high. The example you suggest seems on the border and good questions to ask are: Thinking about those questions may help you understand if the protection offers is worth the cost. |
Can signing up at optoutprescreen.com improve my credit score? | Some credit checks are ignored as part of the scoring process. Some companies will pull your info, to make sure you haven't become a risk. Others will inquire before they send you an offer. Since you didn't initiate the inquiry it can't impact your score. |
I'm 20 and starting to build up for my mortgage downpayment, where should I put my money for optimal growth? | Good job. Assuming that you are also contributing to retirement, you are bound to be a wealthy person. I'm not really sure how Australia works as far as retirement, but I am pretty sure you are taking care of that too. Given your time frame (more than 5 years) I would consider investing at least a portion of the money. If I was you, I would tend to make that amount significant, say 75% in mutual funds, 25% in your high interest savings. The ratio you choose is up to you, but I would be heavier in the investment than savings side. As the time for home purchase approaches, you may want more in savings and less in investments. You may want to look at a mutual fund with a low beta. Beta is a measure of the price volatility. I did a google search on low beta funds, and came up with a number of good articles that explains this further. Having a fund with a low beta insulates you, a bit, from radical swings in the market allowing you to count more on the money being there when needed. One way to get to the proper ratio, is to contribute all new money to the mutual fund until it is in proper balance. This way you don't lower your interest rate for a month. Given your time frame, salary, and sense of responsibility you may be able to do the 100% down plan. Again, good work! |
What one bit of financial advice do you wish you could've given yourself five years ago? | Now, if I wasn't concerned with the integrity of my already tainted soul I would have given myself the following advice five years ago: |
What are the downsides that prevent more people from working in high-income countries, and then retiring in low-income (and cost of living) ones? | At retirement age, your life priorities are somewhat different, and two key items come to mind. Your social circle, community and extended family contacts are highly related with your lifespan at retirement age. Loneliness kills, literally. Long distance relocation would weaken those ties exactly at the time when you most need and want them. You are also likely to need at least occasional physical assistance at random times, so living in a spot where none your friends&family can visit at a day's notice is hard. Cheaper living locations tend to have worse healthcare. Again, this doesn't matter much for a 25 year old expat, but at an age where you likely have one or multiple chronic diseases, general frailty and a very frequent need for healthcare this is a priority. This might work if you can do it as a family. I met a retired British couple in southern India, and they had a nice system where they were living in UK during the (UK) summer, and in India for the rest of the year. However, the above concerns don't disappear - when at a later time their health deterioates and one of them dies, then it would probably be better for the widow[er] to stay in UK permanently closer to their extended family and with the local healthcare system. |
Are precious metals/collectibles a viable emergency fund? | If you were asking if you should buy silver for an emergency fund, I'd say no. But, you already have it... Note: I wrote most of the below under the assumption that this is silver bullion coins/bars; it didn't occur to me till the end that it could be jewelry. Both of you have good arguments for your points of view. Breaking it down: Her points 1. A very good point. And while she may not be irresponsible, maybe the invisibility of it is good for her psychology? It's her's, so her comfort is important here. 2. Good. Make sure it's explicitly listed on the policy. 3. Bad. I think it will as well, at least the long run. But, this is not a good reason for an emergency fund -- the whole point of which is to be stable in case of emergencies. 4. Good. Identity theft is a concern, though unless her info is already "out there", it's insufficient for the emergency fund. And besides, she could keep cash. Your points 1. Iffy. On the one hand, you're right. On the other hand, Cyprus. It is good to remember that money in accounts is in someone else's control, not yours, as the Cypriots found out to their chagrin. And of course, it can't happen here, but that's what they thought too. There is value in having some hard assets physically in your control. Think of it as an EMERGENCY emergency fund. Cash works too, but precious metals are better for these mega-upheaval scenarios. Again, find out how having such an EMERGENCY fund would make her feel. Does having that give her some comfort? A gift from a family member of this much silver leads me to assume that her family might have a little bit of a prepper culture. If so, then even if she is not a prepper herself, she may derive some comfort from having it, just in case -- it'll be baked into her background. Definitely a topic to discuss with her. 2. Excellent point. This is precisely why you want your emergency fund in some form of cash. 3. Bad. You can walk into any pawn shop and sell it in a heartbeat. Or you can send it in to a company and have cash in days. 4. Bad. If you know a savings account that pays 3%-4%, please, please, please tell me where it is so I can get one. Fact is, all cash instruments pay negligible interest now, and all such savings are being eroded by inflation. 5. Maybe. There is value to looking at your net worth this way, but my experience has been that those that do take it way too far. I think there's more value at looking at allocation within a few broad "buckets" -- emergency fund, savings (car, house, college, etc), and retirement fund. If this is to be an EMERGENCY fund, as per point #1, then you should look at it as its own bucket (and maybe add a little cash too). Another thought to add: This is a gift from a family member -- they gave her a lot of silver. Of course it's your SO's now, and she can do whatever she wants with it, but how would the family member react if she did liquidate it? If that family member is a prepper, and gave her this with the emotional desire to see her prepped, they may be upset if she sold it. It just occurred to me this may be jewelry. Your SO may not have sentimental attachment to it, but what about the family member's sentiments? They may not like to see family silver they loving maintained and passed on casually discarded for mere cash by your SO. Another thing to discuss with her. Wrap up Generally, you are right about not keeping a 6 month emergency fund in silver. But there are other factors to consider here. There's also the fact that it's already bought -- the cost of buying (paying over market) has already been taken. Edit -- so it's silverware Ah, so it's silverware. Well, scratch everything, except how the family member feels about, which now looms large. This doesn't have much value as an emergency fund. Nor really as an investment. If you did keep it as an investment, think of it as an investment in collectibles/art, less so in precious metals. If no one will get upset, I'd say pick out the nicest set to keep for special occasions, and sell the rest. Find out first if it has collectible or historical value. It may be worth far more than the pure weight in silver. Ebay might be the way to go to sell it. |
What are the reasons to get more than one credit card? | Another good reason: if you have to replace a card due to damage, loss, or identity theft it's nice to have a backup you can use until the new card for your primary account arrives. I know folks who use a secondary card for online purchases specifically so they can kill it if necessary without impacting their other uses, online arguably being at more risk. If there's no yearly fee, and if you're already paying the bill in full every month, a second card/account is mostly harmless. If you have trouble restraining yourself with one card, a second could be dangerous. |
Why would a bank need to accept deposits from private clients if it can just borrow from the Federal Reserve? | They don't actually need to. They accept deposits for historical reasons and because they make money doing so, but there's nothing key to their business that requires them to do so. Here's a decent summary, but I'll explain in great detail below. By making loans, banks create money. This is what we mean when we say the monetary supply is endogenous. (At least if you believe Sir Mervyn King, who used to run England's central bank...) The only real checks on this are regulatory--capitalization requirements and reserve requirements, which impose a sort of tax on a bank's circulating loans. I'll get into that later. Let's start with Why should you believe that story--that loans create deposits? It seems like a bizarre assertion. But it actually matches how banks behave in practice. If you go borrow money from a bank, the loan officer will do many things. She'll want to look at your credit history. She'll want to look at your income and assets. She'll want to look at what kind of collateral or guarantees you're providing that the loan will be repaid. What she will not do is call down to the vaults and make sure that there's enough bills stacked up for them to lend out. Loans are judged based on a profitability function determined by the interest rate and the loan risk. If those add up to "profitable", the bank makes the loan. So the limiting factor on the loans a bank makes are the available creditworthy borrowers--not the bank's stock of cash. Further, the story makes sense because loans are how banks make money. If a bank that was short of money suddenly stopped making loans, it'd be screwed: no new loans = no way to make money to pay back depositors and also keep the lights on = no more bank. And the story is believable because of the way banks make so little effort to solicit commercial deposit business. Oh sure, they used to give you a free toaster if you opened an account; but now it's really quite challenging to find a no-fee checking account that doesn't impose a super-high deposit limit. And the interest paid on savings deposits is asymptotically approaching zero. If banks actually needed your deposits, they'd be making a lot more of effort to get them. I mean, they won't turn up their noses; your deposited allowance is a couple basis points cheaper to the bank than borrowing from the Fed; but banks seem to value small-potatoes depositors more as a source of fees and sales opportunities for services and consumer credit than as a source of cash. (It's a bit different if you get north of seven figures, but smaller depositors aren't really worth the hassle just for their cash.) This is where someone will mention the regulatory requirements of fractional reserve banking: banks are obliged by regulators to keep enough cash on hand to pay out a certain percentage of deposits. Note nothing about loans was said in that statement: this requirement does not serve as a check on the bank making bad loans, because the bank is ultimately liable to all its depositors for the full value of their deposits; it's more making sure they have enough liquidity to prevent bank runs, the self-fulfilling prophecy in which an undercapitalized bank could be forced into bankruptcy. As you noted in your question, banks can always borrow from the Fed at the Fed Discount Rate (or from other banks at the interbank overnight rate, which is a little lower) to meet this requirement. They do have to pledge collateral, but loans themselves are collateral, so this doesn't present much of a problem. In terms of paying off depositors if the bank should collapse (and minimizing the amount of FDIC insurance payout from the government), it's really capital requirements that are actually important. I.E. the bank has to have investors who don't have a right to be paid back and whose investment is on the hook if the bank goes belly-up. But that's just a safeguard for the depositors; it doesn't really have anything to do with loans other than that bad loans are the main reason a bank might go under. Banks, like any other private business, have assets (things of value) and liabilities (obligations to other people). But banking assets and liabilities are counterintuitive. The bank's assets are loans, because they are theoretically recoverable (the principal) and also generate a revenue stream (the interest payments). The money the bank holds in deposits is actually a liability, because it has to pay that money out to depositors on demand, and the deposited money will never (by itself) bring the bank any revenue at all. In fact, it's a drain, because the bank needs to pay interest to its depositors. (Well, they used to anyway.) So what happens when a bank makes a loan? From a balance sheet perspective, strangely enough, the answer is nothing at all. If I grant you a loan, the minute we shake hands and you sign the paperwork, a teller types on a keyboard and money appears in your account. Your account with my bank. My bank has simultaneously created an asset (the loan you now have to repay me) and an equal-sized liability (the funds I loaned you, which are now deposited in your account). I'll make money on the deal, because the interest you owe me is a much higher rate than the interest I pay on your deposits, or the rate I'd have to pay if I need to borrow cash to cover your withdrawal. (I might just have the cash on hand anyway from interest and origination fees and whatnot from previous loans.) From an accounting perspective, nothing has happened to my balance sheet, but suddenly you owe me closing costs and a stream of extraneous interest payments. (Nice work if you can get it...) Okay, so I've exhaustively demonstrated that I don't need to take deposits to make loans. But we live in a world where banks do! Here's a few reasons: You can probably think of more, but at the end of the day, a bank should be designed so that if every single (non-borrowing) depositor withdrew their deposits, the bank wouldn't collapse or cease to exist. |
How much time should be spent on Penny Stocks Trading a day? | 1) Don't trade individual stocks. You expose yourself to unnecessary risk. 2) Pick a fund with low expenses that pays a dividend. Reinvest the dividend back into the fund. To quote Einstein: The greatest power on earth is compound interest. Something is wrong with the software of the site. It will not allow me to answer mark with another comment. So I have to edit this answer to be able to answer him. @mark No, I am not hoping the price will go up. The price is only relevant in comparison to the dividend. It is the dividend that is important, not the price. The price is irrelevant if you never sell. Dividend paying securities are what you buy and hold. Then you reinvest the dividend and buy more of the security. As I am buying the security with the dividend I am actually pleasantly surprised when the price goes down. When the price goes down, but the dividend remains the same, I am able to buy more shares of the security withwith that dividend. So if the price goes down, and the dividend remains the same, it is a good thing. Again, the site will not allow me to add another comment. @mark I profit from my investment, without selling, by receiving the dividend. I used to be a speculator, trying to get ahead of the market by 'buy low, sell high' but all that did was make money for the broker. I lost as much as I gained trying to do that. The broker made money on each transaction, regardless if I did or not. It took me decades to learn the lesson that 'buy and hold' of dividend paying securities is the way to go. Don't make my mistake. I now get, at least, 5.5% yeald on my investment (look at PGF, which forms the backbone of my investments). That is almost 0.5% per month. Each month that dividend is reinvested into PGF, with no commission. You can't beat that with a stick. |
Is there a generally accepted term for fractions of Currency Units? | of course if you asked me to give you $24.4955 I can't. No, but if I asked you to give me $24.4955 and you gave me a piece of paper saying "I O U $24.4955", and then this happened repeatedly until I had collected 100 of these pieces of paper from you, then I could give them back to you in exchange for $2449.55 of currency. There's nothing magical about the fact that there doesn't happen to be a $0.001 coin in current circulation. This question has some further information. |
Full-time work + running small side business: Best business structure for taxes? | A tax return is a document you sign and file with the government to self-report your tax obligations. A tax refund is the payment you receive from the government if your payments into the tax system exceeded your obligations. As others have mentioned, if an extra $2K in income generated $5K in taxes, chances are your return was prepared incorrectly. The selection of an appropriate entity type for your business depends a lot on what you expect to see over the next several years in terms of income and expenses, and the extent to which you want or need to pay for fringe benefits or make pretax retirement contributions from your business income. There are four basic flavors of entity which are available to you: Sole proprietorship. This is the simplest option in terms of tax reporting and paperwork required for ongoing operations. Your net (gross minus expenses) income is added to your wage income and you'll pay tax on the total. If your wage income is less than approximately $100K, you'll also owe self-employment tax of approximately 15% in addition to income tax on your business income. If your business runs at a loss, you can deduct the loss from your other income in calculating your taxable income, though you won't be able to run at a loss indefinitely. You are liable for all of the debts and obligations of the business to the extent of all of your personal assets. Partnership. You will need at least two participants (humans or entities) to form a partnership. Individual items of income and expense are identified on a partnership tax return, and each partner's proportionate share is then reported on the individual partners' tax returns. General partners (who actively participate in the business) also must pay self-employment tax on their earnings below approximately $100K. Each general partner is responsible for all of the debts and obligations of the business to the extent of their personal assets. A general partnership can be created informally or with an oral agreement although that's not a good idea. Corporation. Business entities can be taxed as "S" or "C" corporations. Either way, the corporation is created by filing articles of incorporation with a state government (doesn't have to be the state where you live) and corporations are typically required to file yearly entity statements with the state where they were formed as well as all states where they do business. Shareholders are only liable for the debts and obligations of the corporation to the extent of their investment in the corporation. An "S" corporation files an information-only return similar to a partnership which reports items of income and expense, but those items are actually taken into account on the individual tax returns of the shareholders. If an "S" corporation runs at a loss, the losses are deductible against the shareholders' other income. A "C" corporation files a tax return more similar to an individual's. A C corporation calculates and pays its own tax at the corporate level. Payments from the C corporation to individuals are typically taxable as wages (from a tax point of view, it's the same as having a second job) or as dividends, depending on how and why the payments are made. (If they're in exchange for effort and work, they're probably wages - if they're payments of business profits to the business owners, they're probably dividends.) If a C corporation runs at a loss, the loss is not deductible against the shareholders' other income. Fringe benefits such as health insurance for business owners are not deductible as business expenses on the business returns for S corps, partnerships, or sole proprietorships. C corporations can deduct expenses for providing fringe benefits. LLCs don't have a predefined tax treatment - the members or managers of the LLC choose, when the LLC is formed, if they would like to be taxed as a partnership, an S corporation, or as a C corporation. If an LLC is owned by a single person, it can be considered a "disregarded entity" and treated for tax purposes as a sole proprietorship. This option is not available if the LLC has multiple owners. The asset protection provided by the use of an entity depends quite a bit on the source of the claim. If a creditor/plaintiff has a claim based on a contract signed on behalf of the entity, then they likely will not be able to "pierce the veil" and collect the entity's debts from the individual owners. On the other hand, if a creditor/plaintiff has a claim based on negligence or another tort-like action (such as sexual harassment), then it's very likely that the individual(s) involved will also be sued as individuals, which takes away a lot of the effectiveness of the purported asset protection. The entity-based asset protection is also often unavailable even for contract claims because sophisticated creditors (like banks and landlords) will often insist the the business owners sign a personal guarantee putting their own assets at risk in the event that the business fails to honor its obligations. There's no particular type of entity which will allow you to entirely avoid tax. Most tax planning revolves around characterizing income and expense items in the most favorable ways possible, or around controlling the timing of the appearance of those items on the tax return. |
How to spend more? (AKA, how to avoid being a miser) | Maybe minimalism is an option for you. Make your self clear what you really want You only buy what you really need and for that you spend the money. Then there is no point of saving money, i.e. I for example like to invite friends and cook them some fancy diner with expensive products, but the value I get from that exceeds any money I spend. On the other hand most present are the opposite, they have less value to recipient than what they originally have costs. |
My university has tranfered me money by mistake, and wants me to transfer it back | Confirming whether the payment was an error The simplest method is to confirm manually with the University whether the payment was a mistake and satisfy that between yourselves. If you're concerned it's fraudulant, I recommend calling the University finance office on a phone number you find on their website, or call one of the people you know. Reversing the payment To formally reverse the payment, I'd check your Product Disclosure Statement on your account with the bank. There's almost always a fee involved where a payment is reversed. It's probably easiest to just issue the payment back to the university to an agreed BSB/Account Number. |
How would I use Google Finance to find financial data about LinkedIn & its stock? | When fundamentals such as P/E make a stock look overpriced, analysts often point to other metrics. The PEG ratio, for example, can be applied to cast growth companies in a better light. Fundamental analysis is highly subjective. For further discussion on the pitfalls of fundamentals, I suggest A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. |
What is approximate tax deduction for this scenario? | House rent allowance:7500 House Rent can be tax free to the extent [less of] Medical allowance : 800 Can be tax free, if you provide medical bills. Conveyance Allowance : 1250 Is tax free. Apart from this, if you invest in any of the tax saving instruments, i.e. Specified Fixed Deposits, NSC, PPF, EPF, Tution Fees, ELSS, Home Loan Principal etc, you can get upto Rs 150,000 deductions. Additional Rs 50,000 if you invest into NPS. If you have a home loan, upto Rs 200,000 in interest can be deducted. So essentially if you invest rightly you need not pay any tax on the current salary, apart from the Rs 200 professional tax deducted. |
How expensive is it to keep minimal cash at a brokerage? | Losses at a brokerage firm due to fraud are insured up to $500,000 per account for securities by the SIPC (Securities Investors' Protection Corporation), which is the stock market version of the FDIC (that insures deposits). The protection amount for cash is $250,000. That's small comfort to "big" players in MF Global. But it does protect "small" investors like you. |
Getting over that financial unease? Budgeting advice | You sound like you are budgeting too much for food. Try limiting yourself to $200 a month for food and take that out in cash. When it's up, it's up. It's a hard way to learn but if you can tackle that, then budgeting for other things gets easier. In terms of your fear of doing a financial bellyflop, which is valid, it sounds like you may need to both sit down and learn a little more about personal finance. Try mrmoneymustache.com or fivecentnickel, or any of the other frugal living blogs that are out there. There are whole communities that can help you and give you tips to do more with less, and learn budgeting and finance and how to handle your money and your future. And no worries, the fact you are concerned enough to look for direction now means you may be able to avoid your fear completely. |
If a stock doesn't pay dividends, then why is the stock worth anything? | This is an excellent question, one that I've pondered before as well. Here's how I've reconciled it in my mind. Why should we agree that a stock is worth anything? After all, if I purchase a share of said company, I own some small percentage of all of its assets, like land, capital equipment, accounts receivable, cash and securities holdings, etc., as others have pointed out. Notionally, that seems like it should be "worth" something. However, that doesn't give me the right to lay claim to them at will, as I'm just a (very small) minority shareholder. The old adage says that "something is only worth what someone is willing to pay you for it." That share of stock doesn't actually give me any liquid control over the company's assets, so why should someone else be willing to pay me something for it? As you noted, one reason why a stock might be attractive to someone else is as a (potentially tax-advantaged) revenue stream via dividends. Especially in this low-interest-rate environment, this might well exceed that which I might obtain in the bond market. The payment of income to the investor is one way that a stock might have some "inherent value" that is attractive to investors. As you asked, though, what if the stock doesn't pay dividends? As a small shareholder, what's in it for me? Without any dividend payments, there's no regular method of receiving my invested capital back, so why should I, or anyone else, be willing to purchase the stock to begin with? I can think of a couple reasons: Expectation of a future dividend. You may believe that at some point in the future, the company will begin to pay a dividend to investors. Dividends are paid as a percentage of a company's total profits, so it may make sense to purchase the stock now, while there is no dividend, banking on growth during the no-dividend period that will result in even higher capital returns later. This kind of skirts your question: a non-dividend-paying stock might be worth something because it might turn into a dividend-paying stock in the future. Expectation of a future acquisition. This addresses the original premise of my argument above. If I can't, as a small shareholder, directly access the assets of the company, why should I attribute any value to that small piece of ownership? Because some other entity might be willing to pay me for it in the future. In the event of an acquisition, I will receive either cash or another company's shares in compensation, which often results in a capital gain for me as a shareholder. If I obtain a capital gain via cash as part of the deal, then this proves my point: the original, non-dividend-paying stock was worth something because some other entity decided to acquire the company, paying me more cash than I paid for my shares. They are willing to pay this price for the company because they can then reap its profits in the future. If I obtain a capital gain via stock in as part of the deal, then the process restarts in some sense. Maybe the new stock pays dividends. Otherwise, perhaps the new company will do something to make its stock worth more in the future, based on the same future expectations. The fact that ownership in a stock can hold such positive future expectations makes them "worth something" at any given time; if you purchase a stock and then want to sell it later, someone else is willing to purchase it from you so they can obtain the right to experience a positive capital return in the future. While stock valuation schemes will vary, both dividends and acquisition prices are related to a company's profits: This provides a connection between a company's profitability, expectations of future growth, and its stock price today, whether it currently pays dividends or not. |
How can I profit on the Chinese Real-Estate Bubble? | Create, market and perform seminars advising others how to get rich from the Chinese Real-Estate Bubble. Much more likely to be profitable; and you can do it from the comfort of your own country, without currency conversions. |
Freehold and Leasehold for Pub/Bar? | Freehold is simple - it's when you own the building and the land it's on. There's no rent to pay (but you will still have to pay taxes!). Leasehold is when the property is leased - rented out for a fixed period that could be anything from 6 months to 199 years. There will be a rent to pay. The person who owns the property is still the freeholder. There may be some confusion caused by what is being sold. You can buy out a lease from the current leaseholder. It's also possible to buy the freehold of a property that is currently leased to someone else. It is also possible to have a freehold building on leasehold land. |
Why use accounting software like Quickbooks instead of Excel spreadsheets? | I would say that all of the reasons you list in your question are valid, and I would add the following... You are in the landscaping business, not the accounting business. If you manage everything in spreadsheets, at least one of you has to become the bookkeeper and leave the landscaping to the others. Spreadsheets are "agnostic" in how you use them, so you have to turn them into an accounting system, which means you're now not only more of a bookkeeper, but you're also more of a developer, too, and even less of a landscaper. Accounting software is already developed by developers who understand accounting. Using it requires you to only perform the data entry tasks, and then you can focus on the landscaping, customer service, sales and marketing, etc., things that actually contribute to your business. It is still good for you to understand basic accounting principles. Specialized accounting software will guide you through the process of learning and help you avoid making many of the costly mistakes you might have made in that learning process. |
How does a stake sale affect a company's stock price? | Is it normal for such transactions to create new outstanding shares? Yes a company can create new shares or a Majority share holder can sell some of his stake or it can be a mix of both. how will this news affect the short-term and long-term price of the company's stock? This is opinion based and not apt for this site. It can be positive or negative depending on how the market reacts to the news. |
Do my 401k/Roth accounts benefit from compounding? | Sure, stocks don't pay interest. I just looked up the word "compound" in a couple of dictionaries and the relevant definition in all of them just mentioned interest and not growth in the value of stock. So it may be technically inaccurate to talk about "compound growth" of a stock. I'll yield to someone more knowledgeable about the technical language of finance to answer that part. But regardless of whether the word strictly applies, the concept certainly does. Suppose you put $1000 into a mutual fund and the fund grows by 10%. You now have $1100. The next year the fund grows by 15%. So you gain 15% of what? Of your original $1000? No, of your present balance, $1100. The effect is the same as compound interest. There is the fundamental difference that interest is normally a fixed rate: you get such-and-such percent a year as spelled out in a contract. But change in the value of a stock depends on many factors, none of them guaranteed. |
Pay off car or use money for down payment | The best thing to do is pay off the car. Adding more variables to a negotiation with a car dealer (in this case, a trade in), is always going to go in their favor. This is why people recommend negotiating a price down first, before ever mentioning to the dealer you want to do a trade in or financing. |
How did Bill Gates actually make his money? | Bill was the founder of Microsoft, so he did indeed have a large number of shares as the company was growing exponentially. He has previously donated a large share of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, so his fortune would be even greater were it not for the philanthropy. He is still a large holder of Microsoft stock at about $12B according to your link, but it wouldn't be wise to hold his entire fortune in one company, so he has diversified. You can see that his investment portfolio at Cascade includes ~$28B in Televisa and ~$7B in Berkshire Hathaway. http://www.tickerspy.com/pro/Bill-Gates---Cascade-Investment And you can keep track of whether he stays at the top by watching the bloomberg billionaires list. http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/ |
Should I switch to this high rate checking account for my emergency fund? | Check out the "rewards checking" accounts listed on this thread at fatwallet finance forums. You could easily get 3.5% - 4% right now if you are willing to do the rewards checking dance. If not, you should look into the 1-2% accounts at the top. I use Alliant CU and their website is nice (and they give you your credit score every six months). |
Are stories of turning a few thousands into millions by trading stocks real? | you'll need 25k to start or 2k in multiple accounts, that way you have access to margin, and don't have to worry about Pattern day trading limits. Be right more than you are wrong. Go up look for 3x potential up vs down risk. Compound daily. you can't double a penny every day every day for a month it becomes to difficult. but you can do 1%/day or maybe better. 2k compounded 1% every day becomes 75k at the end of a year (but you'll likely have to take weekends off, or look for other markets) |
Investment Options for 14-year old? | A fourteen-year-old can invest a few thousand into commuting to a part-time job or an education. If you can wait five years for a couple hundred you can wait two to four years for a car (or gas money) or a class (or some textbooks.) |
What items are exempt from the VAT? [U.K.] | I'm thinking about visiting the UK and I'm wondering which things are affected by the VAT and which are not. Most consumer goods are subject to VAT at the standard rate. Most food sold in shops is zero-rated, with the exception of a handful of luxury foods. Food in cafes/restaurants and some takeaway food is subject to VAT at the standard rate. Most paper books are zero rated (IIRC books that come with CDs are an exception). Some services are exempt, insurance is a notable one, so are some transactions with charities. Some small buisnesses and sole traders may not be VAT registered in which case there is no VAT for you to pay (but they can't reclaim VAT on the goods and services they buy). (there is a distinction between zero-rated and exempt but it's not relavent to you as a customer). Some goods have special rules, notably second hand goods. Prices are normally given inclusive of VAT. The exception to this is suppliers who mostly deal in business to business transactions. Also as a non-UK resident is there a way to get a rebate/reimbursement on this tax? There is something called the "retail export scheme" which can get you a refund but there are a number of catches. |
What credit card information are offline US merchants allowed to collect for purposes other than the transaction? | Zip code, as well as billing address, is used in conjunction with the Address Verification Service (AVS). AVS is a web (or phone) service that actually verifies the address with the billing address on file with the issuing bank. It does not use the credit card stripe. You can see more information from various sources such as bank merchant help pages like Bank of America's. As far as what is stored on the stripe, it varies some by bank (as there are some "optional" areas). The standards are discussed here. Fields include your account number, name, the expiration date, some card-specific stuff, and then the discretionary section. I would not expect much in terms of address type information there. So - the answer to your question is that they can't really take much more than your name and CC #, unless you give it to them. If you give a false zip code, you may have your purchase rejected. They certainly do keep track of the credit card number, and I would suppose that is the most valuable piece to them; they can see you make purchases across time and know for a fact that it's the same exact person (since it's the same card). Additionally, zip codes for AVS from pay-at-the-pump are supposedly not generally used for marketing (see this article for example). That is probably not true at at-the-register (in-person) collections, most of those aren't for AVS anyway. Even California permits the pay-at-the-pump zip verification as long as it's only used for that (same article). I would assume any information given, though, is collected for marketing purposes. |
How high should I set my KickStarter funding goal in order to have $35,000 left over? | There's two big problems here and they are both related to the same thing: The last line says it all: you live in California. CA is a terrible state to do business in. the taxes on this money alone are crushing. Also, while I think you need to re-visit your budget and lifestyle, the cost of living is very, very high in CA and affecting your decisions. Of course, all of this raises the question - if you can afford 12K in expenses each month, and I'm assuming you're the only source of income, then you should be able to afford funding your own game :D |
Why can't house prices be out of tune with salaries | The three basic needs are food, clothing, and shelter. Housing falls into the third category. Because it is "basic," housing takes up a large part of one's disposable income. The rule of thumb is that you shouldn't spend more than 25% of your income on rent or mortgages. And that is income BEFORE taxes. Anything much more than that takes up too much of one's budget. You simply CAN'T double housing's share of the budget from 25% to 50%. Whereas, it's easy to go from 1% to 2% for say, a cellphone upgrade. In the long run, housing prices are constrained by the size of people's housing budgets, which in turn are tied to incomes. Nowadays, that includes FOREIGN buyers. So there may be a case where west coast housing prices are driven up by Asian buyers, or Florida housing by buyers from Latin America, driving Americans out of local markets. |
Who receives the money when one company buys another? | It's tempting to think of a corporation as a real thing, because in many respects it seems to be. But it isn't a corporeal thing (despite the root word of the name). It may own corporeal things, and employ corporeal people, but it is not itself a real thing. Borrowing heavily from Prof Joseph Heath: It might be better to think of a corporation as the nexus of four separate entities: investors who provide capital, employees who do the work, suppliers who provide raw material, etc., and customers who purchase the products or services the corporation buys. In different organizations the 'owners' are different: in co-ops it's the suppliers, mutual insurance companies the customers, in employee-owned companies the employees, but in 90% of cases (including Monsanto) it's the investors. The investors who provided capital by buying shares of stock are the owners, and will be compensated. This frequently happens indirectly: You may own Monsanto stock through a mutual fund or other such aggregate which means that your mutual fund will get the money. Whether that winds up being a profit or loss is more complicated. |
How to incentivize a real-estate broker to find me a cheap house | From your profile, I see you are in Israel. The process is probably different from in the US. In the US, an agent is usually happy to work with a buyer. After all, When I list a house, there are potential buyers all over my state and elsewhere. The best thing you can do is first, have your financing in order. A bank will be able to tell you how much you can afford and how much they'll lend you. If you approach an agent and tell them the exact range of price, area you're interested in, and other specifics such as number of bedrooms, etc, that agent should be happy to find houses to fit your request. Obviously, an agent listing million dollar homes, busy with those all day, is not going to want to handle a buyer looking for a $200K home. But in the end, the real estate agents aren't all listing high end, and someone is moving the smaller houses as well. Often, an office will have a call center where agents who are less busy will answer the phone hoping to get a client that will bring a sale. That's one way to go. The other is word of mouth. Just ask others who you work with or socialize with if they know a good agent. In my case, I'd be happy to get such a referral. |
What are the advantages and disadvantages of leasing out a property or part of a property (such as a basement apartment)? | It doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a house/condo and rent it out now. On the other hand, I think finishing your basement and then renting it out is an excellent idea. The ROR is excellent as long as you can deal with the "strangers" in the basement, have the extra driveway space and negative association with renting out your basement. HTH |
Should I wait to save up 20% downpayment on a 500k condo? | The simple answer is yes - put 20% (or more) down. In the past I have paid PMI and used a combination first and second mortgage to get around it. I recommend avoiding both of those situations. I am much more comfortable now with just a regular mortgage payment. The more equity you have in your home the more options you will have in the future. |
200K 10-Year Investment Safest 5% Annual Return? | Invest in a high quality dividend paying group of stocks. Look up "stock aristocrats" to find longterm quality stocks that have regularly increased their dividends for over 20'years. 10'years is a safe period of time to invest in stocks. If you had bought stocks at their hight in 2007 and kept them through the 40% decline thru 2008 and 2009 and held on to them for 10 years until 2017, you would have earned a 40 % increase from when you purchased them. That is pretty much a worst case scenerio. If you had invested in dividend paying stocks and had earned an additional 2.5% per year, you would have exceeded your 5% goal. The lifetime yearly return of the stock market is 10%. Time is the only downside, but with ten years, you are almost certainly immune. |
Personal finance management: precise or approximately? | If you are off by coins, how can you be sure that you only made a typo and didn't miss a transaction? To start off, I would strongly you find a way to be precise. It doesn't matter so much in the accounting, but the habit of doing a thorough job will pay off in other dividends down the line. Basically, do the pennies now. Tryout some free online software to save the headache of data entry. But........ Since my primary goal is to get you to do the budgeting, and if you really hate the coins, just be consistent in how you fudge the debits and the credits. Always round down to the nearest whole in income, and always round up on expenses. You won't overspend this way, and your back account should have a little bit of padding because you will assume less money in and more money out. Honestly, I do tracking in both Quicken and Mint.com, so the transaction size is no big deal to me. If I did it all in Excel, I would round to whole notes. You didn't tag your question with a country, so I don't know if or similar is available to you. |
Is the return on investment better with high or low dividends? | Someone (I forget who) did a study on classifying total return by the dividend profiles. In descending order by category, the results were as follows: 1) Growing dividends. These tend to be moderate yielders, say 2%-3% a year in today's markets. Because their dividends are starting from a low level, the growth of dividends is much higher than stocks in the next category. 2) "Flat" dividends. These tend to be higher yielders, 5% and up, but growing not at all, like interest on bonds, or very slowly (less than 2%-3% a year). 3) No dividends. A "neutral" posture. 4) Dividend cutters. Just "bad news." |
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