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Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Can I buy a new house before selling my current house? | There's also the option to put most of your stuff into storage and rent an apartment or go to an extended stay hotel. Some apartments have month-by-month options at a higher rate, though you may need to ask around. I've known some people to use this as their primary plan because it was easier for them to keep the ho... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | Can I buy a new house before selling my current house? | As the other answers suggest, there are a number of ways of going about it and the correct one will be dependent on your situation (amount of equity in your current house, cashflow primarily, amount of time between purchase and sale). If you have a fair amount of equity (for example, $50K mortgage remaining on a house ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | Can I buy a new house before selling my current house? | If you're living in a market where some houses are going for $150K over asking, then you MUST buy before you sell. In a seller's market, you will get multiple offers on your current house when you decide to sell, it will sell for (well) over asking, and you can dictate possession dates. You do not need to worry about... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Can I buy a new house before selling my current house? | You don't say why you want to move. Without knowing that, it is hard to recommend a course of action. Anyway... The sequence of events for an ECONOMICAL outcome in a strong market is as follows: (1) You begin looking for a new house (2) You rent storage and put large items into storage (3) You rent an apartment and mov... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Can I buy a new house before selling my current house? | I sold my house and had been in the market looking for a replacement house for over 6 months after I sold it. I found someone willing to give me a short term, 3 month lease, with a month to month after that, at an equitable rate, as renters were scarcer than buyers.By the time I found a house, there were bidding wars a... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | When people say 'Interest rates are at all time low!" … Which interest rate are they actually referring to? | You are correct that it could refer to any of the types of interest rates that you've mentioned. In general, though, phrases such as "rising interest rates" and "falling interest rates" refer to the Federal Funds Rate or LIBOR. These are the interest rates at which banks in the U.S. and U.K., respectively, are lending ... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | When people say 'Interest rates are at all time low!" … Which interest rate are they actually referring to? | As Sean pointed out they usually mean LIBOR or the FFR (or for other countries the equivalent risk free rate of interest). I will just like to add on to what everyone has said here and will like to explain how various interest rates you mentioned work out when the risk free rate moves: For brevity, let's denote the ris... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | When people say 'Interest rates are at all time low!" … Which interest rate are they actually referring to? | I would say people are generally talking about the prime lending rate. I have heard the prime lending rate defined as "The rate that banks charge each other when they borrow money overnight." But it often defined as the rate at which banks lend their most creditworthy customers. That definition comes with the caveat th... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Visitor Shopping in the US: Would I get tax refund? Would I have to pay anything upon departure? | The US doesn't have a Value Added Tax, which is the one usually refundable upon departing the country... so sales taxes you pay in this country stay in this country and you don't get a refund. Just remember to treat the tax as an implied part of the price. (And be aware that state and local taxes may vary, so the total... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Visitor Shopping in the US: Would I get tax refund? Would I have to pay anything upon departure? | Tax Refund: The US generally does not refund tax like other countries. For larger sales, you might want to try state tax refunds, check here: https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/373/~/how-to-obtain-a-refund-of-sales-tax-paid-while-visiting-the-united-states US Customs: You never pay US customs when you leave, ... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Visitor Shopping in the US: Would I get tax refund? Would I have to pay anything upon departure? | Yes, you get a refund but only in a couple of states. If you are visiting Louisiana (e.g. New Orleans), there is sales tax refund on tangible items purchased at tax-free stores and permanently removed from the United States (http://www.louisianataxfree.com) . Clothes, shoes, makeup.. these are all items you can claim a... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | Visitor Shopping in the US: Would I get tax refund? Would I have to pay anything upon departure? | Sales tax and luxury tax is what you will have to pay tax wise, and they are non-refundable (in most cases but the rules vary area to area). This really tripped up some friends of mine I had come from England. The rules are complicated and regional. Sales tax is anywhere from 0% to 10.25% and are not usually applied... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | What is Chit funds. And how to invest in it? | Chit funds started as group of people pooling money every month and drawing a lot to determine who would get the entire funds that month. For example 5 people pool together Rs 1000/- on first month person "A" gets the draw and takes the Rs 5000/-. Next month again same set of people pool Rs 1000/-, the person who got t... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Jointly filing taxes in 2 different states | Both states will want to tax you. Your tax home is where you maintain a domicile, are registered to vote, etc. and you will probably want to keep this as MA since you state that MA is your permanent residence and you are staying in a rented place in PA. But be careful about voter registration; that is one of the items ... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How do you measure the value of gold? | Gold may have some "intrinsic value" but it cannot be accurately determined by investors by any known valuation techniques. In fact, if you were to apply the dividend discount model of John Burr Williams - a variation of which is the basis of Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis and the basis of most valuation technique... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | How do you measure the value of gold? | There are three aspects of what to value gold over. It doesn't easily chemically react with anything, so it stays pure over a long period of time (vs, say a bar of iron or a bar of butter). So it's valuable so far as it doesn't rot. It is shiny, and there is the historical allure of having a bag of shiny, jingly gold ... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | How do you measure the value of gold? | Intrinsic value is a myth. There is no such thing. Subjective human demand is the only thing that gives anything value. This subjectivity is different person to person and can change very quickly. Historically there are two main uses for gold: jewelry and money. How can you tell when a particular type of money is u... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | How do you measure the value of gold? | 1) Get some gold. 2) Walk around, yelling, "Hey, I have some gold, who wants to buy it?" 3) Once you have enough interested parties, hold an auction and see who will give you the most dollars for it. 4) Trade the gold for that many dollars. 5) You have just measured the value of your gold. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How do you measure the value of gold? | I can describe the method for determining a price floor, which may help. It starts with looking at the cost of mining. There's a ridiculously small amount of gold in the best ore, so it's measured in tonnes of ore to produce a given ounce of gold. Mines will only operate at a loss for so long, so for any mine which foc... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How do you measure the value of gold? | You acquire something because you expect to use it, or because you expect to exchange it for something that you want to use. Gold is a good candidate for storing value because it's rare, it's not easily counterfeited, it's divisible, it's portable, etc. Contrast this with your favorite currency: more can be printed u... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | How do you measure the value of gold? | There is no such thing as intrinsic value. Gold has value because it is rare and has a market. If any of those things decline, the value plunges. The question of whether gold is overvalued or not is complicated and depends on a lot of factors. The key question in my mind is: Is gold more valuable in terms of US dollar... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | How do you measure the value of gold? | We measure the value of gold by comparing it to other things. Sorry, but there is no better answer than that. There is no gold standard (pun intended) by which objects can be measured in value because "value" is a subjective term. It would be comparable to asking how funny is an object. Different objects are funny to d... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | Can a bunch of wealthy people force Facebook to go public? | In the US, a private company with less than 500 owners can dictate who can or can't become a shareholder (this is true in general, but I'm sure there are loopholes). Prior to Google's IPO I could not buy shares in Google at any price. The reason Google was "forced" to go public is the 500 shareholder rule. At a h... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Can a bunch of wealthy people force Facebook to go public? | @Alex B's answer hits most of it, but leaves out one thing: most companies control who can own their non-public shares, and prohibit transfers, sales, or in some cases, even ongoing ownership by ex-employees. So it's not that hard to ensure you stay under 500 investors. Remember that Sharespost isn't an exchange or c... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Separate bank account for security deposit from tenant | Per Md. REAL PROPERTY Code Ann. § 8-203: (d) (1) (i) The landlord shall maintain all security deposits in federally insured financial institutions, as defined in § 1-101 of the Financial Institutions Article, which do business in the State. (ii) Security deposit accounts shall be maintained in... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Separate bank account for security deposit from tenant | In Massachusetts, we have a similar law. Each tenant fills out a W9 and the account is in their name. You need to find a bank willing to do this at no cost, else fees can be problematic. With today's rates, any fee at all will exceed interest earned. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | If I want a Credit Card offered through a different Credit Union should I slowly transition my banking to that CU? | No. There's no inherent reason to link the place that you bank with any other financial service. There may occasionally be benefits; for instance you can sometime get lower rates on mortgages or loans by having a a checking account with an institution. Or perhaps it'll be easier for you to make a same-day payment on a ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | If I want a Credit Card offered through a different Credit Union should I slowly transition my banking to that CU? | I don't have an account with either of those CUs, but I do have membership at 2 different CUs. If they accept credit card payments online via transfer from another institution, there's no reason to move your money, unless there are other benefits (higher interest rates). All the CUs would likely require is membership ... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | If I want a Credit Card offered through a different Credit Union should I slowly transition my banking to that CU? | As has been stated, you don't need to actively bank with a credit union to apply for one of their credit cards. That said, one benefit to having account activity, and significant capital with a CU, is to increase the likelihood of having a larger credit line granted to you, when you do apply. If you are going to use th... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Flex spending accounts and hsa when changing jobs | Some of this may depend on how your employer chose to deal with your notice period. Most employers employ you for the duration (which means you'd be covered for March on your insurance). They could 'send you home' but pay you (in which case you're an employee for the duration still); or they could terminate you on yo... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Buying my first car: why financing is cheaper than paying cash here and now? | The dealership is getting a kickback for having you use a particular bank to finance through. The bank assumes you will take the full term of the loan to pay back, and will hopefully be a repeat customer. This tactic isn't new, and although it maybe doesn't make sense to you, the consumer, in the long run it benefits t... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | Buying my first car: why financing is cheaper than paying cash here and now? | The advice given at this site is to get approved for a loan from your bank or credit union before visiting the dealer. That way you have one data point in hand. You know that your bank will loan w dollars at x rate for y months with a monthly payment of Z. You know what level you have to negotiate to in order to get a... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | What are the typical repayment plans for Credit Cards in the United States? | In the U.S., when you receive your credit card bill each month there's a "minimum payment amount." That minimum payment is usually the greater of $25 or 1% of the new balance on the card plus new interest and fees. As long as you pay the minimum payment amount, you can pay as much as you want each month. Note, in your ... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What are the typical repayment plans for Credit Cards in the United States? | It is called "Credit card installments" or "Equal pay installments", and I am not aware of them being widely used in the USA. While in other countries they are supported by banks directly (right?), in US you may find this option only in some big stores like home improvement stores, car dealerships, cell phone operators... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Joint account that requires all signatures of all owners to withdraw money? | Savings accounts have lower fees. If you don't anticipate doing many transactions per month, e.g. three or fewer withdrawals, then I would suggest a savings account rather than a checking account. A joint account that requires both account holder signatures to make withdrawals will probably require both account holders... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | I am trying to start a “hedge fund,” and by that, I really just mean I have a very specific and somewhat simple investment thesis that I want to | Kudos for wanting to start your own business. Now let's talk reality. Unless you already have some kind of substantial track record of successful investing to show potential investors, what you want to do will never happen, and that's just giving you the honest truth. There are extensive regulatory requirements for st... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | How should minor children be listed as IRA beneficiaries? | First - for anyone else reading - An IRA that has no beneficiary listed on the account itself passes through the will, and this eliminates the opportunity to take withdrawals over the beneficiaries' lifetimes. There's a five year distribution requirement. Also, with a proper beneficiary set up on the IRA account the wi... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | How should minor children be listed as IRA beneficiaries? | I think that "better" is up to a discussion, but the difference is that while in trust you can control the money after your death in some way - giving it directly to children means you have no such control. I.e.: in trust you can stipulate that the children will be able to spend the money under certain terms or in cert... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How should minor children be listed as IRA beneficiaries? | I would like to bring up some slightly different points than the ones raised in the excellent answers from JoeTaxpayer and littleadv. The estate can be the beneficiary of an IRA -- indeed, as has been pointed out, this is the default beneficiary if the owner does not specify a beneficiary -- but a testamentary trust c... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What could be the harm in sharing my American Express statements online? | American Express is great for this use case -- they have two user roles "Account Agent" and "Account Manager" which allow you to designate logins to review your account details or act on your behalf to pay bills or request service. This scheme is designed for exactly what you are doing and offers you more security and ... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | What could be the harm in sharing my American Express statements online? | If someone gains access to these data, he could use social engineering approach to impersonate you - i.e. call the American Express and ask tell he he is you and he lost the access to the account and he needs the access to be reset and sent to certain email, and if they doubt it's you he would send them the statement d... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | What could be the harm in sharing my American Express statements online? | Call me overly paranoid, but letting unknown people know your charges and your personal information is asking for trouble. They know who you are and how to find you and how much money you typically make. If they are decent people - okay, but otherwise they have good ground for comitting a crime against you - blackmail ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | What could be the harm in sharing my American Express statements online? | As a person who has had several part time assistants in the past I will offer you a simple piece of advise that should apply regardless of what country the assistant is located. If you have an assistant, personal or business, virtual or otherwise, and you don't trust that person with this type of information, get a dif... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Borrowing money for a semi-urgent medical expense | The best option would be to have the dental office allow you pay in installments. That would be probably the cheapest and most convenient way. When high amounts are involved - many medical offices are flexible with payments and allow spreading over long period of time, so you should check it out. Otherwise, credit card... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Borrowing money for a semi-urgent medical expense | I am a bit confused here as to how a 4K loan will negatively effect your credit score if payments are made on time. FICO scores are based upon how well you borrow. If you borrow, pay back on time, your score will not go down. Perhaps a bit in the short run when you first secure the loan, but that should come back qu... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Saving/ Investing a lump sum | In my mind, when looking at a five year period you have a number of options. You didn't specify where you are based, which admittedly makes it harder, to give you good advice. If you are looking for an investment that can achieve large gains, equities are impossible to ignore. By investing in an index fund or other div... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | Saving/ Investing a lump sum | 5 years is very short term, and since you are sure you'll need the money, investing it into the markets should probably not be done. You can toss it in Ally bank for 1% or consider a 5 yr raise your rate CD A decent write-up on time horizons: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/110813/using-time-horizons-inv... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | CFD market makers: How is the price coupled to the underlying security? | CFD providers typically offer CFDs to investors using either the direct market access (DMA) model or the market maker (MM) model. Direct Market Access The DMA model gives you access to trade the Underlying instrument on the relevant Exchange from which the CFD is then derived. All CFD Transactions under the DMA model h... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How exactly does dealing in stock make me money? | This is a very good question! The biggest difference is that when you put money in a savings bank you are a lender that is protected by the government, and when you buy stocks you become an owner. As a lender, whether the bank makes or loses money on the loans it makes, they still maintain your balance and pay you inte... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How exactly does dealing in stock make me money? | You can make money via stocks in two primary ways: Note that there's no guarantee of either. So it may very well not make you money. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | How exactly does dealing in stock make me money? | If you have money and may need to access it at any time, you should put it in a savings account. It won't return much interest, but it will return some and it is easily accessible. If you have all your emergency savings that you need (at least six months of income), buy index-based mutual funds. These should invest... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | How exactly does dealing in stock make me money? | If you buy a stock and it goes up, you can sell it and make money. But if you buy a stock and it goes down, you can lose money. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | How exactly does dealing in stock make me money? | Generally, a share of stock entitles the owner to all future per-share dividends paid by the company, plus a fraction of the company's assets net value in the event of liquidation. If one knew in advance the time and value of all such payouts, the value of the stock should equal the present cash value of that payout s... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Can individuals day-trade stocks using High-Frequency Trading (HFT)? | The answer is to your question is somewhat complicated. You will be unable to compete with the firms traditionally associated with High Frequency Trading in any of their strategies. Most of these strategies which involve marketing making, latency arbitrage, and rebate collection. The amount of engineering required to b... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Can individuals day-trade stocks using High-Frequency Trading (HFT)? | Nobody is going to stop you if you want to try that. But you should keep in mind that you have to invest a lot in getting the best hardware you can lay your hands on, best fail-safe connectivity to the exchanges, best trading algorithms and software that money can buy and loads of other stuff. This all needs quite a bi... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Can individuals day-trade stocks using High-Frequency Trading (HFT)? | Yes you can, but to do so successfully, you need lots of money. You also need to be able to meet the criteria for being classified as a "professional trader" by the IRS. (If not, you'll be buried in paperwork.) The fact that you're asking about it here probably means that you do not have enough money to succeed at HFT. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | Can individuals day-trade stocks using High-Frequency Trading (HFT)? | I just finished a high frequency trading project. Individuals can do it, but you need a lot of capital. You can get a managed server in Times Square for $1500/month, giving you access to 90% of the US exchanges that matter, their data farms are within 3 milliseconds of distance (latency). You can also get more servers ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | Is debt almost always the cause of crashes and recessions? | While debt increases the likelihood and magnitude of a crash, speculation, excess supply and other market factors can result in crashes without requiring excessive debt. A popular counter example of crashes due to speculation is 16th century Dutch Tulip Mania. The dot com bubble is a more recent example of a speculati... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Is debt almost always the cause of crashes and recessions? | The statement can be true, but isn't a general rule. Crashes and recessions are two different things. A crash is when the market rapidly revalues something when prices are out of equilibrium, whether it be stocks, a commodity or even a service. When the internet was new, nobody knew how to design webpages, so web page... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Is debt almost always the cause of crashes and recessions? | The root cause can be said to always be a crisis in confidence. It may be due to a very real event. However, confidence is what pushes the markets up and worries are what bring them down. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Is debt almost always the cause of crashes and recessions? | A lack of trust in the regulator can also stop everyone trading. If you don’t believe the bank notes you are getting paid with are real, why do any work? |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | What factors you have do you count on to speculate effectively? | Strategy would be my top factor. While this may be implied, I do think it helps to have an idea of what is causing the buy and sell signals in speculating as I'd rather follow a strategy than try to figure things out completely from scratch that doesn't quite make sense to me. There are generally a couple of different... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | As a minor in the UK do I need to pay taxes on self-employment income, and if so how? | As a minor you certainly can pay tax, the government wants its cut from you just like everyone else :-) However you do get the personal allowance like everyone else, so you won't have to pay income tax until your net income reaches £10,800 (that's the figure for the tax year from April 2015 to April 2016, it'll probabl... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What factors should I consider when evaluating index funds? | The idea of an index is that it is representative of the market (or a specific market segment) as a whole, so it will move as the market does. Thus, past performance is not really relevant, unless you want to bank on relative differences between different countries' economies. But that's not the point. By far the most ... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What factors should I consider when evaluating index funds? | Your link is pointing to managed funds where the fees are higher, you should look at their exchange traded funds; you will note that the management fees are much lower and better reflect the index fund strategy. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | How to change a large quantity of U.S. dollars into Euros? | To transfer US$30,000 from the USA to Europe, ask your European banker for the SWIFT transfer instructions. Typically in the USA the sending bank needs a SWIFT code and an account number, the name and address of the recipient, and the amount to transfer. A change of currency can be made as part of the transfer. The... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | How to change a large quantity of U.S. dollars into Euros? | The right answer to this question really depends on the size of the transfer. For larger transfers ($10k and up) the exchange rate is the dominant factor, and you will get the best rates from Interactive Brokers (IB) as noted by Paul above, or OANDA (listed by user6714). Under $10k, CurrencyFair is probably your best ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | How to change a large quantity of U.S. dollars into Euros? | Be careful of transferring through the large banks. They may say no/low fees, but they hide their cut in the spread, or worsen the exchange rate, to their favor. Try: - http://fxglobaltransfer.oanda.com/ |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How to change a large quantity of U.S. dollars into Euros? | You would probably be better off wiring the money from your US account to your French account. That IMHO is the cheapest and safest way. It doesn't matter much which bank to use, as it will go through the same route of SWIFT transfer, just choose the banks with the lowest fees on both sides, shop around a little. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Is keeping track of your money and having a budget the same thing? | A budget is a plan for spending money in the future. Tracking spending is only looking at what happened in the past. Many people only track their spending, a proper budget can be key to achieving financial goals. You might earn enough and not spend frivolously enough that you aren't hamstrung by lack of a budget, but ... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Is keeping track of your money and having a budget the same thing? | The two are closely related. A budget is a detailed plan for how to spend. Expense tracking is a tool to analyze your previous spending performance. Creating a plan for how to spend your money without any record of your previous spending--is an empty promise to yourself that you will never follow up on. Did I stay with... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | Is keeping track of your money and having a budget the same thing? | What you are doing is neither one. You are simply watching to make sure you don't overdraw, which itself suggests you might be living hand to mouth and not saving. Keeping track of your money and budgeting are useful tools which help people get on top of their money. Which tends to have the effect of allowing you to... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | Is keeping track of your money and having a budget the same thing? | A budget is a predetermined plan for spending allocated funds to a fixed set of categories according to a schedule. If by, "Keeping track of your money" you mean you are only recording your spending to see on what it is being spent and when, then the answer is no. A budget has constraints on three things: Schedule: ... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How does a big lottery winner cash his huge check risk-free? | If the funds are deposited into a noninterest-bearing account, they will be covered by FDIC insurance regardless of the amount (However, this extended coverage may not be valid after Dec. 31, 2012): On November 9, 2010, the FDIC issued a Final Rule implementing section 343 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consu... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How does a big lottery winner cash his huge check risk-free? | You have a few options: Personally, I would cash the check at my broker and buy a mixture of US Government and New York Tax-Exempt securities until I figured out what to do with it. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | How does a big lottery winner cash his huge check risk-free? | You cant! There is the risk that between the time you get the check and the time you get to the bank that you will be murdered, have a heart attack, stroke, or aneurysm too. And they are probably more likely than the bank going out of business between the time you deposit the money and get access to it. Prior to accep... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | Are all VISA cards connected with bank accounts? | In the United States there are 3 main types of cards. There are organizations that push a credit card with their branding. They aren't a bank so they partner with a bank to offer the card. In the US many colleges and professional sports teams will market a credit card with the team or universities colors and logo. The ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | Are all VISA cards connected with bank accounts? | Not necessarily. You can issue credit cards without a bank involved, although companies which do so may have additional legal complications, such as usury regulations. As an example, AmEx is a network which also issues cards themselves. The company is not a bank; they sold their banking subsidiary in 2007. It's also po... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | US citizen transferring money to Indian fiance to buy property | A. Kindly avoid taking dollars in form of cash to india unless and until it is an emergency. Once the dollar value is in excess of $10,000, you need to declare the same with Indian customs at the destination. Even though it is not a cumbersome procedure, why unnecessarily undergo all sort of documentation and most impo... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Lending to the bank | This will happen automatically when you open an interest-bearing account with a bank. You didn't think that banks just kept all that cash in a vault somewhere, did you? That's not the way modern banking works. Today (and for a long, long time) banks will keep only a small fraction of their deposits on hand (called... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Lending to the bank | The easiest way would be to set up a common savings account. Most of them pay some meager interest rate, and over one night it would be especially meager. A Certificate of Deposit is another way, but you'd have to lock the funds in for an extended period of time. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time? | People rave about Basecamp by 37signals. The impressive part is all the add-ins you can get for it. There are add-ins for invoicing, billing, accounting, and time tracking. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time? | Time Tracker I'm a software engineer and have been using this tool. It is free and has a good user interface. I believe it can very well be used by professional of other areas too. It does support the features that you're looking for regarding project and task tracking. |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time? | There are tonnes, and tonnes of things out there, but you have to be careful what you search for. Be specific about what you want. If you search for "time sheet" for example, you'll just get a bucket of stuff having to do with stylesheets, because there's more of that around. The most common type of small tool for tr... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time? | The best one I've found is TimeSnapper, I have the worst memory but this basically allows me to visually play back the day. It has a bunch of reporting functionality too. |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time? | Surprised nobody has mentioned Freshbooks yet. It's lightweight, easy to use, and free for low-end use (scaling up price-wise as you scale up). |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time? | A free solution that I've been using is Task Coach. It has tasks, subtasks, categories, and all the stuff you would expect from a time tracking program. It also counts each distinct period spent on a task as a separate "effort" that you can add comments, for example to remind you what that chunk of time was spent on. |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time? | I've been using Tick at work now for several months and have really enjoyed it. It's got a nice, simple interface with good time-budgeting and multi-user/project features. It can be used on several platforms, too (website, desktop widgets, and phone apps). |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How to account for Capital Gains (Losses) in double-entry accounting? | First, the balance sheet is where assets, liabilities, & equity live. Balance Sheet Identity: Assets = Liabilities (+ Equity) The income statement is where income and expenses live. General Income Statement Identity: Income = Revenue - Expenses If you want to model yourself correctly (like a business), change your "inc... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How to account for Capital Gains (Losses) in double-entry accounting? | Capital is an Asset. Decreasing value of capital is the decreasing value of an asset. When you buy the forex asset * DR Forex Asset * CR Cash When you sell * DR Cash * CR Forex Asset The difference is now accounted for Here is how: Gains (and losses) are modifications to your financial position (Balance sheet). At the... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | Could someone explain this scenario about Google's involvement in the wireless spectrum auction? | If history is any guide, Page’s idealistic impulses could result in a vaster, more sprawling company. The following is an example of one of Page’s idealistic impulses (wanting people to share spectrum) which could result in a vaster, more sprawling company (if they hadn't been outbid, Google would have expanded by buyi... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | Could someone explain this scenario about Google's involvement in the wireless spectrum auction? | At the time of the auction android was just vaporware but many companies were restricting the phones that they allowed on their networks so that they could control what the phones were being used for. The big guys (AT&T, Verison, and Sprint) feared that being forced to allow phones that could do things they did not ha... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | For young (lower-mid class) investors what percentage should be in individual stocks? | The short answer: zero. dg99's answer gives some good reasons why. You will basically never be able to achieve diversification with individual stocks that is anywhere close to what you can get with mutual funds. Owning individual stocks exposes you to much greater risk in that random one-off events that happen to aff... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | For young (lower-mid class) investors what percentage should be in individual stocks? | You should only invest in individual stocks if you truly understand the company's business model and follow its financial reports closely. Even then, individual stocks should represent only the tiniest, most "adventurous" part of your portfolio, as they are a huge risk. A basic investing principle is diversification. ... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | For young (lower-mid class) investors what percentage should be in individual stocks? | I would not advise any stock-picking or other active management (even using mutual funds that are actively managed). There is a large body of knowledge that needs learning before you even attempt that. Stay passive with index funds (either ETFs or (even better) low-cost passive mutual funds (because these prevent you ... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. | For young (lower-mid class) investors what percentage should be in individual stocks? | I don't believe the decision is decided by age or wealth. You only stock pick when a) you enjoy the process because it takes time and if you consider it 'work' then the cost will probably not be offset by higher returns. b) you must have the time to spend trading, monitoring, choosing, etc. c) you must have the skill... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering | Opening a Roth IRA account, what is the fee structure for Vanguard, Scottrade and TIAA-CREF | This answer is somewhat incomplete as I don't have definitive conclusions about some parts of your question. Your question includes some very specific subquestions that may best be answered by contacting the investment companies you're considering. I don't see any explicit statement of fees for TIAA-CREF either. I su... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. | Is 401k as good as it sounds given the way it is taxed? | Your analysis is not comparing apples to apples which is why it looks like investing money in a non-qualified account is better than a 401k (traditional or Roth). For the non-qual you are using post tax dollars (money that has already been taxed). Now on top of that original tax you are also going to pay capital gains... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Is 401k as good as it sounds given the way it is taxed? | There are 3 options (option 2 may not be available to you) When you invest 18,000 in a Traditional 401k, you don't pay taxes on the 18k the year you invest, but you pay taxes as you withdraw. There's a Required Minimum Distribution required after age 70. If your income is low enough, you won't pay taxes on your withd... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Is 401k as good as it sounds given the way it is taxed? | Before anything, I see that no one mentioned the one thing about 401(k) accounts that's just shy of magic - The matching deposit. In 2015, 42% of companies offered a dollar for dollar match on deposits. Can't beat that. (Note - to respond to Xalorous' comment, the $18K OP deposits can be nearly any percent of his inco... |
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