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Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited.
How do I use investments to lower my taxes [US]?
Consider the individual who pays $1,000,000 in taxes. His/her income must be substantial. That is what one should aim for. Investments for the most part, do not lower ones taxes. In one of John Grisham's novels, tax shelters are being discussed. Sorry, I do not remember which book. The discussion goes something ...
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Gap in domestic Health Insurance coverage, expect higher premiums?
The insurance company is must assume you do have a preexisting condition you are unaware of. The reason for that is that Affordable Care Act precludes the Insurance company from denying coverage of them if you do. Insurance companies are businesses. They are in business to make money(unless you have a nonprofit insu...
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Gap in domestic Health Insurance coverage, expect higher premiums?
I bought Health Insurance for myself after a period without it, and my premiums were not terrible. I was a 27 year old man, living in California, no preexisting conditions, and I paid approximately 90$ a month. This was for a standard Health Insurance plan. However, when I moved back to NY a little while later, insura...
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When is it necessary to apply taxes for web freelancing services in Quebec, Canada?
AFAIK, there are two kinds of taxes your web freelancing income may be subject to in Quebec: On the income taxes: The net income you realize from your web freelancing activities would be considered taxable income. Assuming you are not operating as an incorporated business, you would need to declare the freelancing in...
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What are the basics of apartment rental finances?
Well for starters you want to rent it for more than the apartment costs you. Aside from mortgage you have insurance, and maintenance costs. If you are going to have a long term rental property you need to make a profit, or at a bare minimum break even. Personally I would not like the break even option because there ...
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Why do bank statements end on *SUCH* wildly inconsistent days of the month?
Looking at your dates, I think I see a pattern. It appears that your statement closing date is always 17 business days before the last business day of the month. For example, if you start at May 31 and start counting backwards, skipping Saturdays, Sundays, and May 30 (Memorial Day), you'll see that May 5 is 17 busine...
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Why do bank statements end on *SUCH* wildly inconsistent days of the month?
They need to spread the work for all customers over the whole month, and they don't work on weekends. Combine the two, and the rule becomes clear - if months have minimum of N working days, 1/N of all customers gets set on each day. You seem to be on day 5: If the month starts with a Monday, the fifth working day is th...
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Online tutorials for calculating DCF (Discounted Cash Flow)?
Here's a link to an online calculator employing the Discounted Cash Flow method: Discounted Cash Flows Calculator. Description: This calculator finds the fair value of a stock investment the theoretically correct way, as the present value of future earnings. You can find company earnings via the box below. ...
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Online tutorials for calculating DCF (Discounted Cash Flow)?
Check out Professor Damodaran's website: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ . Tons of good stuff there to get you started. If you want more depth, he's written what is widely considered the bible on the subject of valuation: "Investment Valuation". DCF is very well suited to stock analysis. One doesn't need to know,...
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Online tutorials for calculating DCF (Discounted Cash Flow)?
what do you mean exactly? Do you have a future target price and projected future dividend payments and you want the present value (time discounted price) of those? Edit: The DCF formula is difficult to use for stocks because the future price is unknown. It is more applicable to fixed-income instruments like coupon bo...
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Taking out a loan to pay down a mortgage
You're not crazy, but the banks are. Here's the problem: You're taking 100% LTV on property A - you won't be able to get a second mortgage for more than 80% total (including the current mortgage) LTV. That's actually something I just recently learned from my own experience. If the market is bad, the banks might even lo...
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Taking out a loan to pay down a mortgage
You have the 2 properties, and even though the value of property B is less than the amount you owe on it hopefully you have some equity in propery A. So if you do have enough equity in property A, why don't you just go to the one lender and get both property A and B refinanced under the same mortgage. This way hopefull...
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If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
When you operate outside of the law, you bear the risks of that decision. When you operate within the law, you have a number of avenues, such as the courts and police to mediate disputes or other problems.
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If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
If you get counterfeit money, then you're dealing with the criminal who is going to be punished by the law for doing that. The portion of the total sum that was paid with the counterfeit currency is considered unpaid and you can claim the money from the criminal and sue him, while he's in jail. He'll work hard on those...
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If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
I'd not do business under these terms. A bill of sale needs a signature, right? Your signature is your word, and your word is your bond. I wouldn't participate in such a fraud, nor would I accept this sum of cash, who knows its origins?
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If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
I'd worry more about falsifying documents of sale. No good reason at all to do that. Detecting counterfeit bills is easy if they're all new bills. Hold them up to the light and look for the watermark and the numbered tape in the bill. Refuse any bad ones.
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If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
I'd be a bit concerned about someone who wanted to transact that large of a transaction in cash. Also consider what you are going to do with the funds, if you deposit it, you will need to tell the bank where it comes from. Why does the bank want to know, because most legal businesses don't transact business with large...
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If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
Paying tax is a Good Thing. However, warren has made good point and I would like you to consider this other thing: Go into your payees bank with the payee, get the money withdrawn from the teller and take it with you. Unless I am missing something, or the teller handed your payee fake notes, you are "safe"
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If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
The only issue I can see is that the stranger is looking to undervalue their purchase to save money on taxes/registration (if applicable in your state). Buying items with cash such as cars, boats, etc in the used market isn't all that uncommon* - I've done it several times (though not at the 10k mark, more along about ...
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If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting?
I would not do a bill of sale for less, but a legal and safe way to reduce the taxes is to write separate bills for the boat, motor and trailer. The taxes are paid at different rates and will represent to full sale price.
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How to pick a state to form an LLC in?
There are very few circumstances where forming an out of state entity is beneficial, but a website is within these circumstances in certain instances. Businesses with no physical operations do not need to care what jurisdiction they are registered in: your home state, a better united state or non-united state. The "lim...
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How to pick a state to form an LLC in?
Generally, you pick the State which you're located at, because you'll have to register your LLC there in any case. In your case that would be either Colorado or Oklahoma - register as domestic in one, as foreign in the other. If your concern is anything other than mere convenience/costs - then you need to talk to a law...
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If a bank has a transfer limit, what happens if another bank pushes/pulls more than that?
If bank B has a transfer limit set, you bet that there is a nice reason for that. Either risk of fraud, liability, client preferences, profiling, credit scoring, etc, etc. For a bank, the cost of denying something [1] is way lower than the potential damages and liabilities of allowing something to go through. Regardin...
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If a bank has a transfer limit, what happens if another bank pushes/pulls more than that?
Or at least I saw it do so with Bank of America.
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Should I pay a company who failed to collect VAT from me over 6 months ago?
It looks like businesses selling services (like software downloads) from outside the EU to the UK have to register for VAT if the amount of such sales goes over the UK VAT registration threshold: [If] the value of the taxable supplies you make is over a specified threshold [then] you must register for VAT So it seems...
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Should I pay a company who failed to collect VAT from me over 6 months ago?
Note: I am not a lawyer. This is my personal opinion and interpretation. First, your source is European Law, which obviously doesn't apply outside of the EU. The EU cannot make laws that bind entities in other countries; so you cannot claim that the VAT was needed to be mentioned. Second, if you owe something, you owe ...
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How does GST on PayPal payments work for Australian Taxation?
TL;DR - my understanding of the rules is that if you are required to register for GST (earning more than $75k per annum), you would be required to pay GST on these items. To clarify firstly: taxable income, and goods and services tax, are two different things. Any income you receive needs to be considered for income ta...
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How does GST on PayPal payments work for Australian Taxation?
Regardless of wether or not you are registered for GST, you are legally required to include a GST total on every invoice sent to an Australian customer. This GST total must be 10% of the payment amount if you are registered for GST, or it must be $0.00 if you are not registered for GST. Since all GST transactions with ...
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Freelancer in India working for Swiss Company
As you are earning an income by working in India, you are required to pay tax in India. If you contract is of freelance, then the income earned by you has to be self declared and taxes paid accordingly. There are some expenses one can claim, a CA should be able to guide you. Not sure why the Swiss comapny is paying t...
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Freelancer in India working for Swiss Company
I am a freelancer based in Europe and I want to tell you: - if you are a freelancer, then you INVOICE your Swizzerland based client The word salary is improper. - So your client will DEDUCE the invoice from its taxes, and NOT pay income tax on top of that invoice. Because invoice = expense. So, ONLY YOU pay income tax...
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Freelancer in India working for Swiss Company
I have some more inputs to investigate: India has dual tax avoidance treaty signed with european countries so that NRIs dont pay tax in both countries. Please check if India has some agreement with Swiss Also for freelance job that is delivered from India, u need to make sure where you have to pay taxes as you are stil...
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What would be the appropriate account for written off loans to friends and family?
A simple way to account debt forgiveness of your receivables is to utilize a "Bad Debt" expense account. Take the following two examples: If you are only forgiving a portion of the principle, another popular term used is Principle Reduction as the expense account.
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Clarification on student expenses - To file the tax for the next year
Assuming here that you're talking about deducting your tuition as a below the line deduction as a business expense or similar, then it depends. Per 1.162-5, if the education: Then it qualifies as a legitimate business expense and is deductible. If not - if you're going to school for a different career, such as someone...
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
No. This amount of money is not appropriate for friends to go in on. Although you could consider buying a house with a business partner, have the contracts drawn up, see an attorney, read up on the penalties if one of the partners doesn't hold up their end from the law's point of view. Also, since this is a business a...
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
Unlike others who have answered the question - I have done this. Here is my experience - your mileage and friendship may vary: I bought a condo years ago with a longtime childhood friend. We did it for all the reasons you mentioned - sick of renting and not building equity, were both young, single professionals who h...
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
I'll chime in here with the "don't do it crowd." I think it's fraught with ugly possibilities. However, you may, for various reasons, decide to say, "to hell with it, we'll make it work." If that is the case, treat it like a business transaction and not an emotional transaction. Work up a binding contract with your att...
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
I did this about 8 years ago with a buddy in Chicago for the reasons specified in the original post. As other posters have suggested, we discussed a lot of the same questions listed above, figured out the possible scenarios, and then had a lawyer draw up a contract. We bought a 3 bedroom house, and rented out the 3r...
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
A real life experience. A friend of mine did that with his housemates. They bought a house together as students and it worked for them. The tricky bit is to have a very good contract with your housemates as to how the venture should work. What if? Somebody can't pay, somebody can't enjoy the house (on an extended trip...
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
I'd be curious to compare current rent with what your overhead would be with a house. Most single people would view your current arrangement as ideal. When those about to graduate college ask for money advice, I offer that they should start by living as though they are still in college, share a house or multibedroomed ...
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
Sure, form an LLC with an attorney's advice. You need a buyout clause, operating agreement, etc. If you're not married, never buy a home for personal use with someone else.
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Should I buy a house with a friend?
There are lots of good reasons not to do this. HOWEVER if you do decide to, there are four things you need to consider:
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Online transaction - Money taken out late
Debit Cards have a certain processing delay, "lag time", before the transaction from the vendor completes with your bank. In the US it's typically 3 business days but I have seen even a 15 day lag from Panera Bread. I guess in the UK, payment processors have similar processing delays. A business is not obliged to run i...
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Online transaction - Money taken out late
When processing credit/debit cards there is a choice made by the company on how they want to go about doing it. The options are Authorization/Capture and Sale. For online transactions that require the delivery of goods, companies are supposed to start by initially Authorizing the transaction. This signals your bank t...
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Does a growing economy mean the economy is becoming less efficient?
It's a kook movie made by folks who combine conspiracy quackery with repackaged socialism. If you're into socialist theory, read Marx or some other intellectual socialist. That said, growth and efficiency are not the same thing. If I'm running a lemonade stand, I can grow by hiring more people at $X/hr or increase effi...
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Does a growing economy mean the economy is becoming less efficient?
Growth and efficiency can occur independently of each other. For instance, if an economy consists of one inefficient business and then a second more efficient business opens to compete agains the first the overall efficiency increases while the economy grows. New industries tend to be inefficient at the beginning (sin...
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Does a growing economy mean the economy is becoming less efficient?
A growing economy should become more efficient because of increased opportunity for division of labor: specialization. External regulation or monetary policy external to the free market can cause parts of the economy to grow in response to said regulations. This creates inefficiencies that are wrung out of the economy...
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How does a Non US citizen gain SEC Accredited Investor Status?
Here are the SEC requirements: The federal securities laws define the term accredited investor in Rule 501 of Regulation D as: a bank, insurance company, registered investment company, business development company, or small business investment company; an employee benefit plan, within the meaning of the Employee Reti...
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I paid a contractor to make roof repairs to a house in my LLC. How can I deduct this cost?
This new roof should go on the 2016 LLC business return, but you probably won't be able to expense the entire roof as a repair. A new roof is most likely a capital improvement, which means that it would need to be depreciated over many years instead of expensed all in 2016. The depreciation period for a residential r...
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Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
Others have tip-toed around this, but I'll just come out and say it. The amount of money you're giving to the church is bordering on irresponsible given that you're just barely breaking even yourself. The best thing you can do if you want to have children is to stop paying such a high amount to the church, and redire...
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Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
If you want to have your wife stay home with kids, you'll have to make a plan to get there. As you point out, your situation right now won't support this. Create a budget that will work for you with a single income -- a "zero based" budget, not a budget based on your current expense structure. Figure out what you can a...
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Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
How do people do it? Firstly, I'd advise you to explicitly budget all taxes. The reason is because taxes get complicated when you have a child deduction. Not that raising a child is profitable post taxes, but it can change your perspective. SIWKs with high income get by just fine. The rest sacrifice. They buy less hous...
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Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
As this is anonymous, can you give us actual numbers? I can make guesses based on your percentages, but it would help. Lets assume you both make $35k (since you said child care would take up the bulk of your wife's income, it must be fairly low incomes) The answer usually isn't a simple "do this", but small adjustments...
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Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
With your wife's income, you're not doing to see a net difference if she stops working that job. You may actually yield a little more. At the end of the day, it's doable, but you're going to have to rationalize your spending and one or both of you should pick up a part-time job. Do you remember the last time you bought...
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Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
If commuting is a big budget item, then can you: A side job is one way to make extra money, but I'd suggest a home business. If your wife substitute teaches, I bet she writes fairly well, and in any case you can. Write a personal finance blog or just a site with articles. Focus on surviving and thriving with child(r...
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Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
What makes it hard is that you're making this decision now, when you've already made decisions over the years going in a different route. I've noticed this recently w/some of my friends, that decisions, even small ones, over the years now come back to bite them b/c they didn't have a long term view. Now in early 30's t...
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Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
I see three areas of concern for your budget: This is way high. I am not sure how much of a house you live in, but the total of these two numbers should be around 25% not 41%. I am a person that considers giving an important part of wealth building, and gives to my local church. But as one other person has rightly sa...
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Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
It is simple: G-d provides :). EDIT: By "it" I mean the answer to the question asked. Raising kids is not so simple; G-d does provide :).
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UK sole trader who often buys products/services on behalf of clients – do I deduct from declared income or claim as allowable expenses?
Assuming you buy the services and products beforehand and then provide them to your clients. Should the cost of these products and services be deducted from my declared income or do I include them and then claim them as allowable expenses? You arrive at your final income after accounting for your incomings and outgoing...
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How to distinguish gift from payment for the service?
All of this assumes that this relationship isn't as employer-employee relationship, which would require you to withhold taxes. If you send them a small token of appreciation, and you are unable to record it as a business expense, or some other deductible expense, you don't have to be concerned about how they claim it. ...
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How to distinguish gift from payment for the service?
Generally, a one time thing is considered a gift. For the donor this is obviously not a deductible expense, except for some specific cases (for example promotional gifts under $25 to vendors can be deducted, if you're a business, or charitable contributions to a recognized charity). However, if this is a regular practi...
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How to distinguish gift from payment for the service?
Most people will never need to pay federal gift taxes. The federal gift taxes start after giving away 5.34 million over the course of your life. This number is adjusted annually for inflation. There are only two states that I know of which impose state gift taxes (Connecticut and Minnesota); in Connecticut, you need to...
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Obtaining Pound Sterling Cheque in US to pay for family history records from England?
Most US banks don't allow you the ability to draft a foreign currency check from USD. Though, I know Canadian banks are more workable. For instance, TD allows you to do this from CAD to many other currencies for a small fee. I believe even as a US Citizen you can quite easily open a TD Trust account and you'd be good t...
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Shares in Chinese startup company
Setting up an entity that is partially foreign owned is not that difficult. It takes an additional 1-1.5 months in total, and in this particular case, you guys would be formed as a Joint Venture. It will cost a bit more (about 3-5000). If you're serious about owning a part of a business in China, you should carefully e...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
Yes, it is safe, we have been doing it for years. We prefer our tenants to make their rent payments in this manner. In fact, we prefer that they set up an automatic payment for the rent, either through their online banking or through their bank directly. Apart from getting your rent on time, this method also has the ad...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
I'd consider this offer. Keep in mind, any time you write a check, there's the information he's asking for. If it makes you feel comfortable, use the small balance account, or set up a 4th one you'll use for these incoming deposits only.
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
It's safe. You give people those numbers every time you write a check. If a check is forged, and doesn't have your signature on it, the bank has to return the money to you; they get it back from the other bank, who takes whatever action it deems necessary against the forger. They've been doing this for a few hundred y...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
What you've described is the norm in Australia, where it's rare for anyone under sixty to use cheques. Assuming they're transferring the funds using internet banking, I would have the following suggestions: You make it clear that the the funds must reach your account by the due date for rent. It is their (the tenant's)...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
How can someone use the account number to withdraw money without my consent? They can use your account number to game your banks phone support and try to phish their way into your account. Banks have gotten very good at combating this, but theoretically with just the address he lives in, your name, and a bad bank pho...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
It isn't EFT, but you might mention to your tenant, that many banks offer a Bill Pay service (example) where the bank will automatically mail a check to the right person for you. I have my rent setup this way. My bank will send a rent check directly to my landlord 5 days before it is due.
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
I am able to set this up for my tenants by providing them with a form to fill out so that they provide their name and bank account information, and then I gave that to my bank and they establish a recurring ACH transfer. This way the tenant never gets my bank information. One note about this, I had a tenant break her ...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
The biggest disadvantage to you is that your tenant now knows your bank information, which means he can easily identify your source of money in the event he wins a lawsuit and wins a judgement. He will be able to have a court marshall freeze your account. However, if you deposit your tenant's check into your account a...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
Other options would be to use paypal, your tenant would only need your e-mail address. Most banks have a similar system to do a person-to-person transfers. My bank uses an e-mail address and only the last 4 digits of the account number.
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
Similar to @SoulsOpenSource's answer, I would suggest Venmo, which works like PayPal but is free for debit-card-to-debit-card transactions. More information here.
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
The mode of payment mentioned by your bank is called the ACH(Automatic Clearing House) which means that anyone(Trusted payment gateway owners like banks themselves) can process payments. There can be a fraud declared against any payment that you have made and you can get every single penny back. This amount can not be ...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
You can consider opening accounts either in Paypal or Google Wallet. In this way, you link your bank information to these accounts and the only information you need to provide your tenant is your e-mail id. Its safe and in this scenario -- just money transfer through bank account, there is no fee either for the sender ...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
I live in Kenya, and also here we have corruption. However, we use EFT, RTGS, Mobile Money and its more safe than cheques. Beware, that paper based payments cost you way more than anything electronic. Often the bank charge you for the cheque book, they charge for receiving paper based payment instruments, and settlemen...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
In Britain it's standard practice to use an electronic bank transfer, otherwise known as a "standing order" for the monthly rent payment. Many letting agents insist on it here in Britain. It's rare to hear of fraud. It is possible to setup a Direct Debit with the account numbers, as happened in a famous case where Jere...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
You could setup a Ally account to use solely for this. There is no minimum, no opening balance requirement, and you can do up to 6 transfers a month for free. This would partition your money from other accounts, while giving you the flexibility to move it to other accounts with ease.
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
Given a routing number / account number, it's easy to print a check with those details. All you need is a MICR font. No EFT needed. I would recommend that instead, you get his account information, and set up a direct withdrawal. Of course, then you could potentially use HIS account fraudulently, but that would be tr...
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Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT
Alternative solution with possibly better results: Use a 3rd party to transfer money between both of you. 2 Services you may want to look at: Rent share might be the best option. We are using it to split payment between 3 people in our unit. The owner is getting a single check that appears to be coming from all of us. ...
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Learning investment--books to read? Fundamental/Value/Motley Fool
You are smart to read books to better inform yourself of the investment process. I recommend reading some of the passive investment classics before focusing on active investment books: If you still feel like you can generate after-tax / after-expenses alpha (returns in excess of the market returns), take a shot at som...
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Creating a personal company
You're confusing so many things at once here...... First thing first: we cannot suggest you what to do business-wise since we have no idea about your business. How on Earth can anyone know if you should sell the software to someone or try to distribute to customers yourself? How would we know if you should hire employe...
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Which colors can one use to fill out a check in the US?
Keep in mind that many checks are being cashed via scanner or photo. These can be home based, business based or ATM based systems. The key requirement is that the software has to be able to distinguish the "written" parts from the background parts. If the image doesn't have enough contrast for the edge detection to wor...
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Question about dividends and giant companies [duplicate]
Dividends are a way of distributing profits from operating a business to the business owners. Why would you call it "wasting money" is beyond me. Decisions about dividend distribution are made by the company based on its net revenue and the needs of future capital. In some jurisdictions (the US, for example), the tax p...
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Question about dividends and giant companies [duplicate]
I see a false assumption that you are making. (Almost always) When you buy stock the cash you spend does not go to the company. Instead it goes to someone else who is selling their shares. The exception to this is when you buy shares in an IPO. Those of us who have saved all our lives for retirement want income prod...
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Are Chase credit cards commonly accepted for purchases?
If you read the fine print in the Pricing & Terms section of that card, you'll see: By becoming a Visa Business Card cardmember, you agree that the card is being used only for business purposes and that the card is being issued to a public or private company including a sole proprietor or employees or contractors of an...
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What happened when the dot com bubble burst?
From the perspective of an investor and someone in high-tech during that period, here is my take: A few high tech companies had made it big (Apple, Microsoft, Dell) and a lot of people were sitting around bemoaning the fact that we all should have realized that computers were going to be huge and invested early in tho...
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What happened when the dot com bubble burst?
It's tough to share exactly what happened. Go to yahoo and look at the chart for Cisco from 1990 to 2003 or so. From a split adjusted 8 cents a share, it peaked at just under $80 in March 2000, up by a factor of 1000. People were buying in thinking this stock would continue to rise at this pace, but logic says that's p...
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What happened when the dot com bubble burst?
The dot.com companies were purveyors of the Internet, then a "new" technology around 2000. Everyone "knows" that such a new technology will change the economy and society. What people didn't know at the time was WHICH companies would be the leaders/beneficiaries of such change. So investors pushed up the stock prices o...
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What happened when the dot com bubble burst?
What happened was that people would start an "Internet" company without any viable business plan, and investors would pour money. Any company with ".COM" or "eSomething" or "netXXX" or whatever would get tons of money from investors, basically selling dreams of getting rich fast. The companies that flourished back than...
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What happened when the dot com bubble burst?
To add to the already existing answers, most of the dotcom companies used an accounting sheningan so profusely that everything looked rosy. To account for revenues, what dotcom companies did was, get into a barter transaction with another dotcom company by selling advertising space and stuff on each other's website. So...
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What happened when the dot com bubble burst?
Two big things: In many ways, the early internet people were correct -- in 2011 we are much more productive as a society than we were in 1991. (Which comes with downsides, such as high unemployment) The bubble was a result of over-estimating those improvements and under-estimating the time required to yield those produ...
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What happened when the dot com bubble burst?
Well basically a lot of dot-com companies that had no real plans for having actual profit's, self-destructed. I had worked for a company called VarsityOnline.com which was depending on endless money from investor's, and had never really made any kind of profit, for which it had ample opportunity. People lost sight of r...
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How can I find a lost 401K from a past employer?
The Employee Benefits Security Administration within the US Department of Labor is tasked with keeping track of pension and 401K programs. The even have a website to search for abandoned plans: it helps participants and others find out whether a particular plan is in the process of being, or has been, terminated and th...
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Is there any circumstance in which it is necessary to mark extra payments on a loan as going to “principal and not interest”?
It could be a couple of things besides extra principal: I seem to remember hearing that some (shady?) lenders would just pocket extra payments if you didn't specify where they were headed, but I've also been told that this just isn't true.
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Is there any circumstance in which it is necessary to mark extra payments on a loan as going to “principal and not interest”?
The mortgage I got last year through Wells Fargo explicitly indicates in its terms that excess payment will be considered against future payments (i.e., pay $500 extra in January and you owe $500 less in February) unless indicated otherwise. It goes on to state that with electronic payments you do not get to specify wh...
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Is there any circumstance in which it is necessary to mark extra payments on a loan as going to “principal and not interest”?
I had a car loan through GMAC and extra money was applied to future payments. At one point, I received a statement telling me I had 15 months until my next payment was due because I had not marked extra payments as going to principal.
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Is there any circumstance in which it is necessary to mark extra payments on a loan as going to “principal and not interest”?
I would always presume that given a choice of doing what is in its own self interest verses in the customer's interest, a bank will ALWAYS do the former rather than the latter. Banks are in the business of making money, always presume that their policies, processes and contractual terms will be slanted to maximize thei...
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How can small children contribute to the “family economy”?
Another suggestion I heard on the radio was to give the child the difference between the name brand they want, and the store brand they settle on. Then that money can be accumulated as savings. Saving money is as important a feature of the family economy as earning money. Be careful with what you have a child do for r...
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How can small children contribute to the “family economy”?
Similar to the lawn care you mentioned: if you have space, you could have the kids create a mini-farmstand. They could grow flowers for cutting, some vegetables, etc. It would be a different twist on the classic lemonade stand. If the kids are into animals and space and zoning allows, you could keep chickens and add eg...