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Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Tax implications of diversification ### Answer: (All for US.) Yes you (will) have a realized long-term capital gain, which is taxable. Long-term gains (including those distributed by a mutual fund or other RIC, and also 'qualified' dividends, both not relevant here) are taxed at lower rates than 'ordinary' income but are still bracketed almost (not quite) like ordinary income, not always 15%. Specifically if your ordinary taxable income (after deductions and exemptions, equivalent to line 43 minus LTCG/QD) 'ends' in the 25% to 33% brackets, your LTCG/QD income is taxed at 15% unless the total of ordinary+preferred reaches the top of those brackets, then any remainder at 20%. These brackets depend on your filing status and are adjusted yearly for inflation, for 2016 they are: * single 37,650 to 413,350 * married-joint or widow(er) 75,300 to 413,350 * head-of-household 50,400 to 441,000 (special) * married-separate 37,650 to 206,675 which I'd guess covers at least the middle three quintiles of the earning/taxpaying population. OTOH if your ordinary income ends below the 25% bracket, your LTCG/QD income that 'fits' in the lower bracket(s) is taxed at 0% (not at all) and only the portion that would be in the ordinary 25%-and-up brackets is taxed at 15%. IF your ordinary taxable income this year was below those brackets, or you expect next year it will be (possibly due to status/exemption/deduction changes as well as income change), then if all else is equal you are better off realizing the stock gain in the year(s) where some (or more) of it fits in the 0% bracket. If you're over about $400k a similar calculation applies, but you can afford more reliable advice than potential dogs on the Internet. (update) Near dupe found: see also How are long-term capital gains taxed if the gain pushes income into a new tax bracket? Also, a warning on estimated payments: in general you are required to pay most of your income tax liability during the year (not wait until April 15); if you underpay by more than 10% or $1000 (whichever is larger) you usually owe a penalty, computed on Form 2210 whose name(?) is frequently and roundly cursed. For most people, whose income is (mostly) from a job, this is handled by payroll withholding which normally comes out close enough to your liability. If you have other income, like investments (as here) or self-employment or pension/retirement/disability/etc, you are supposed to either make estimated payments each 'quarter' (the IRS' quarters are shifted slightly from everyone else's), or increase your withholding, or a combination. For a large income 'lump' in December that wasn't planned in advance, it won't be practical to adjust withholding. However, if this is the only year increased, there is a safe harbor: if your withholding this year (2016) is enough to pay last year's tax (2015) -- which for most people it is, unless you got a pay cut this year, or a (filed) status change like marrying or having a child -- you get until next April 15 (or next business day -- in 2017 it is actually April 18) to pay the additional amount of this year's tax (2016) without underpayment penalty. However, if you split the gain so that both 2016 and 2017 have income and (thus) taxes higher than normal for you, you will need to make estimated payment(s) and/or increase withholding for 2017. PS: congratulations on your gain -- and on the patience to hold anything for 10 years! ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Tax implications of diversification ### Answer: If so, are there ways to reduce the amount of taxes owed? Given that it's currently December, I suppose I could sell half of what I want now, and the other half in January and it would split the tax burden over 2 years instead, but beyond that, are there any strategies for tax reduction in this scenario? One possibility is to also sell stocks that have gone down since you bought them. Of course, you would only do this if you have changed your mind about the stock's prospects since you bought it -- that is, it has gone down and you no longer think it will go up enough to be worth holding it. When you sell stocks, any losses you take can offset any gains, so if you sell one stock for a gain of $10,000 and another for a loss of $5,000, you will only be taxed on your net gain of $5,000. Even if you think your down stock could go back up, you could sell it to realize the loss, and then buy it back later at the lower price (as long as you're not worried it will go up in the meantime). However, you need to wait at least 30 days before rebuying the stock to avoid wash sale rules. This practice is known as tax loss harvesting. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Recognizing the revenue on when virtual 'credits' are purchased as opposed to used ### Answer: I'll assume United States as the country; the answer may (probably does) vary somewhat if this is not correct. Also, I preface this with the caveat that I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant. However, this is my understanding: You must recognize the revenue at the time the credits are purchased (when money changes hands), and charge sales tax on the full amount at that time. This is because the customer has pre-paid and purchased a service (i.e. the "credits", which are units of time available in the application). This is clearly a complete transaction. The use of the credits is irrelevant. This is equivalent to a customer purchasing a box of widgets for future delivery; the payment is made and the widgets are available but have simply not been shipped (and therefore used). This mirrors many online service providers (say, NetFlix) in business model. This is different from the case in which a customer purchases a "gift card" or "reloadable debit card". In this case, sales tax is NOT collected (because this is technically not a purchase). Revenue is also not booked at this time. Instead, the revenue is booked when the gift card's balance is used to pay for a good or service, and at that time the tax is collected (usually from the funds on the card). To do otherwise would greatly complicate the tax basis (suppose the gift card is used in a different state or county, where sales tax is charged differently? Suppose the gift card is used to purchase a tax-exempt item?) For justification, see bankruptcy consideration of the two cases. In the former, the customer has "ownership" of an asset (the credits), which cannot be taken from him (although it might be unusable). In the latter, the holder of the debit card is technically an unsecured creditor of the company - and is last in line if the company's assets are liquidated for repayment. Consider also the case where the cost of the "credits" is increased part-way through the year (say, from $10 per credit to $20 per credit) or if a discount promotion is applied (buy 5 credits, get one free). The customer has a "tangible" item (one credit) which gets the same functionality regardless of price. This would be different if instead of "credits" you instead maintain an "account" where the user deposited $1000 and was billed for usage; in this case you fall back to the "gift card" scenario (but usage is charged at the current rate) and revenue is booked when the usage is purchased; similarly, tax is collected on the purchase of the service. For this model to work, the "credit" would likely have to be refundable, and could not expire (see gift cards, above), and must be usable on a variety of "services". You may have particular responsibility in the handling of this "deposit" as well. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: End of financial year: closing transactions ### Answer: I'm not sure there's a good reason to do a "closing the books" ceremony for personal finance accounting. (And you're not only wanting to do that, but have a fiscal year that's different from the calendar year? Yikes!) My understanding is that usually this process is done for businesses to be able to account for what their "Retained Earnings" and such are for investors and tax purposes; generally individuals wouldn't think of their finances in those terms. It's certainly not impossible, though. Gnucash, for example, implements a "Closing Books" feature, which is designed to create transactions for each Income and Expenses account into an end-of-year Equity Retained Earnings account. It doesn't do any sort of closing out of Assets or Liabilities, however. (And I'm not sure how that would make any sense, as you'd transfer it from your Asset to the End-of-year closing account, and then transfer it back as an Opening Balance for the next year?) If you want to keep each year completely separate, the page about Closing Books in the Gnucash Wiki mentions that one can create a separate Gnucash file per year by exporting the account tree from your existing file, then importing that tree and the balances into a new file. I expect that it makes it much more challenging to run reports across multiple years of data, though. While your question doesn't seem to be specific to Gnucash (I just mention it because it's the accounting tool I'm most familiar with), I'd expect that any accounting program would have similar functionality. I would, however, like to point out this section from the Gnucash manual: Note that closing the books in GnuCash is unnecessary. You do not need to zero out your income and expense accounts at the end of each financial period. GnuCash’s built-in reports automatically handle concepts like retained earnings between two different financial periods. In fact, closing the books reduces the usefulness of the standard reports because the reports don’t currently understand closing transactions. So from their point of view it simply looks like the net income or expense in each account for a given period was simply zero. And that's largely why I'm just not sure what your goals are. If you want to look at your transactions for a certain time, to "just focus on the range of years I'm interested in for any given purpose" as you say, then just go ahead and run the report you care about with those years as the dates. The idea of "closing books" comes from a time when you'd want to take your pile of paper ledgers and go put them in storage once you didn't need to refer to them regularly. Computers now have no challenges storing "every account from the beginning of time" at all, and you can filter out that data to focus on whatever you're looking for easily. If you don't want to look at the old data, just don't include them in your reports. I'm pretty sure that's the "better way to keep the books manageable". ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How much would it cost me to buy one gold futures contract on Comex? ### Answer: When you buy a futures contract you are entering into an agreement to buy gold, in the future (usually a 3 month settlement date). this is not an OPTION, but a contract, so each party is taking risk, the seller that the price will rise, the buyer that the price will fall. Unlike an option which you can simply choose not to exercise if the price goes down, with futures you are obligated to follow through. (or sell the contract to someone else, or buy it back) The price you pay depends on the margin, which is related to how far away the settlement date is, but you can expect around 5% , so the minimum you could get into is 100 troy ounces, at todays price, times 5%. Since we're talking about 100 troy ounces, that means the margin required to buy the smallest sized future contract would be about the same as buying 5 ounces of gold. roughly $9K at current prices. If you are working through a broker they will generally require you to sell or buy back the contract before the settlement date as they don't want to deal with actually following through on the purchase and having to take delivery of the gold. How much do you make or lose? Lets deal with a smaller change in the price, to be a bit more realistic since we are talking typically about a settlement date that is 3 months out. And to make the math easy lets bump the price of gold to $2000/ounce. That means the price of a futures contract is going to be $10K Lets say the price goes up 10%, Well you have basically a 20:1 leverage since you only paid 5%, so you stand to gain $20,000. Sounds great right? WRONG.. because as good as the upside is, the downside is just as bad. If the price went down 10% you would be down $20000, which means you would not only have to cough up the 10K you committed but you would be expected to 'top up the margin' and throw in ANOTHER $10,000 as well. And if you can't pay that up your broker might close out your position for you. oh and if the price hasn't changed, you are mostly just out the fees and commissions you paid to buy and sell the contract. With futures contracts you can lose MORE than your original investment. NOT for the faint of heart or the casual investor. NOT for folks without large reserves who can afford to take big losses if things go against them. I'll close this answer with a quote from the site I'm linking below The large majority of people who trade futures lose their money. That's a fact. They lose even when they are right in the medium term, because futures are fatal to your wealth on an unpredicted and temporary price blip. Now consider that, especially the bit about 'price blip' and then look at the current volatility of most markets right now, and I think you can see how futures trading can be as they say 'Fatal to your Wealth' (man, I love that phrase, what a great way of putting it) This Site has a pretty decent primer on the whole thing. their view is perhaps a bit biased due to the nature of their business, but on the whole their description of how things work is pretty decent. Investopedia has a more detailed (and perhaps more objective) tutorial on the futures thing. Well worth your time if you think you want to do anything related to the futures market. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How much would it cost me to buy one gold futures contract on Comex? ### Answer: Brokers usually have this kind of information, you can take a look at interactive brokers for instance: http://www.interactivebrokers.co.uk/contract_info/v3.6/index.php?action=Details&site=GEN&conid=90384435 You are interested in the initial margin which in this case is $6,075. So you need that amount to buy/sell 1 future. In the contract specification you see the contract is made for 100 ounces. At the current price ($1,800/oz), that would be a total of $180,000. It is equivalent to saying you are getting 30x leverage. If you buy 1 future and the price goes from $1,800 to $1,850, the contract would go from $180,000 to $185,000. You make $5,000 or a 82% return. I am pretty sure you can imagine what happens if the market goes against you. Futures are great! (when your timing is perfect). ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How much would it cost me to buy one gold futures contract on Comex? ### Answer: The lot size is 100 troy ounce. See the contract specification at the same site; http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/gold_contract_specifications.html So with the current price of around $1785, one lot would cost you around 178,500. There may be other sites that offer smaller lots you would need to check with your broker. if the price moves up by $500, you gain $50,000 for a lot. The margin required changes from time to time: Currently it's $3666, with a maintenance of $3332, so a drop of $3.34 per oz of gold will cause a margin call. You make or lose 100 times the per oz movement as there are 100oz in the contract you cited. There's also a broker fee analogous to the commission on a stock trade. The other option would be to buy a fund that invests in Gold, this will be more easier to buy and the lot sizes will be much less. I hope you jumped into this great opportunity. At the time, experts said gold would have a straight run to $5000. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How much would it cost me to buy one gold futures contract on Comex? ### Answer: In order to understand how much you might gain or lose from participating in the futures markets, it is important to first understand the different ways in which the slope of the futures markets can be described. In many of the futures markets there is a possibility of somebody buying a commodity at the spot price and selling a futures contract on it. In order to do this they need to hold the commodity in storage. Most commodities cost money to hold in storage, so the futures price will tend to be above the spot price for these commodities. In the case of stock index futures, the holder receives a potential benefit from holding the stocks in an index. If the futures market is upward sloping compared to the spot price, then it can be called normal. If the futures market is usually downward sloping compared to the spot price then it can be called inverted. If the futures market is high enough above the spot price so that more of the commodity gets stored for the future, then the market can be called in contango. If the futures market is below the point where the commodity can be profitably stored for the future, and the market can be called in backwardation. In many of these cases, there is an implicit cost that the buyer of a future pays in order to hold the contract for certainly time. Your question is how much money you make if the price of gold goes up by a specific amount, or how much money you lose if the price of gold goes down by the same specific amount. The problem is, you do not say whether it is the spot price or the futures price which goes up or down. In most cases it is assumed that the change in the futures price will be similar to the change in the spot price of gold. If the spot price of gold goes up by a small amount, then the futures price of gold will go up by a small amount as well. If the futures price of gold goes up by a small amount, this will also drive the spot price of gold up. Even for these small price changes, the expected futures price change in expected spot price change will not be exactly the same. For larger price changes, there will be more of a difference between the expected spot price change in expected future price change. If the price eventually goes up, then the cost of holding the contract will be subtracted from any future gains. If the price eventually goes down, then this holding cost should be added to the losses. If you bought the contract when it was above the spot price, the price will slowly drift toward the spot price, causing you this holding cost. If the price of gold does not change any from the current spot price, then all you are left with is this holding cost. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: what is difference between stock and dividend? ### Answer: stocks represent ownership in a company. their price can go up or down depending on how much profit the company makes (or is expected to make). stocks owners are sometimes paid money by the company if the company has extra cash. these payments are called dividends. bonds represent a debt that a company owes. when you buy a bond, then the company owes that debt to you. typically, the company will pay a small amount of money on a regular basis to the bond owner, then a large lump some at some point in the future. assuming the company does not file bankrupcy, and you keep the bond until it becomes worthless, then you know exactly how much money you will get from buying a bond. because bonds have a fixed payout (assuming no bankrupcy), they tend to have lower average returns. on the other hand, while stocks have a higher average return, some stocks never return any money. in the usa, stocks and bonds can be purchased through a brokerage account. examples are etrade, tradeking, or robinhood.com. before purchasing stocks or bonds, you should probably learn a great deal more about other investment concepts such as: diversification, volatility, interest rates, inflation risk, capital gains taxes, (in the usa: ira's, 401k's, the mortgage interest deduction). at the very least, you will need to decide if you want to buy stocks inside an ira or in a regular brokerage account. you will also probably want to buy a low-expense ration etf (e.g. an index fund etf) unless you feel confident in some other choice. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: what is difference between stock and dividend? ### Answer: From Wikipedia - Stock: The stock (also capital stock) of a corporation constitutes the equity stake of its owners. It represents the residual assets of the company that would be due to stockholders after discharge of all senior claims such as secured and unsecured debt. Stockholders' equity cannot be withdrawn from the company in a way that is intended to be detrimental to the company's creditors Wikipedia - Dividend: A dividend is a payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, it can re-invest it in the business (called retained earnings), and pay a fraction of this reinvestment as a dividend to shareholders. Distribution to shareholders can be in cash (usually a deposit into a bank account) or, if the corporation has a dividend reinvestment plan, the amount can be paid by the issue of further shares or share repurchase. Wikipedia - Bond: In finance, a bond is an instrument of indebtedness of the bond issuer to the holders. It is a debt security, under which the issuer owes the holders a debt and, depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay them interest (the coupon) and/or to repay the principal at a later date, termed the maturity date. Interest is usually payable at fixed intervals (semiannual, annual, sometimes monthly). Very often the bond is negotiable, i.e. the ownership of the instrument can be transferred in the secondary market. This means that once the transfer agents at the bank medallion stamp the bond, it is highly liquid on the second market. Thus, stock is about ownership in the company, dividends are the payments those owners receive, which may be additional shares or cash usually, and bonds are about lending money. Stocks are usually bought through brokers on various stock exchanges generally. An exception can be made under "Employee Stock Purchase Plans" and other special cases where an employee may be given stock or options that allow the purchase of shares in the company through various plans. This would apply for Canada and the US where I have experience just as a parting note. This is without getting into Convertible Bond that also exists: In finance, a convertible bond or convertible note or convertible debt (or a convertible debenture if it has a maturity of greater than 10 years) is a type of bond that the holder can convert into a specified number of shares of common stock in the issuing company or cash of equal value. It is a hybrid security with debt- and equity-like features. It originated in the mid-19th century, and was used by early speculators such as Jacob Little and Daniel Drew to counter market cornering. Convertible bonds are most often issued by companies with a low credit rating and high growth potential. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: what is difference between stock and dividend? ### Answer: Stock basically implies your ownership in the company. If you own 1% ownership in a company, the value of your stake becomes equal to 1% of the valuation of the entire company. Dividends are basically disbursal of company's profits to its shareholders. By holding stocks of a company, you become eligible to receiving dividends proportional to your ownership in the company. Dividends though are not guaranteed, as the company may incur losses or the management may decide to use the cash for future growth instead of disbursing it to the shareholders. For example, let's say a company called ABC Inc, is listed on NYSE and has a total of 1 million shares issued. Let's say if you purchase 100 stocks of ABC, your ownership in ABC will become Let's say that the share price at the time of purchase was $10 each. Total Investment = Stock Price * Number of Stocks Purchased = $10 * 100 = $1,000 Now, let's say that the company declares a dividend of $1 per share. Then, Dividend Yield = Dividend/Stock Price = $1/$10 = 10% If one has to draw analogy with other banking products, one can think of stock and dividend as Fixed Deposits (analogous to stock) and the interest earned on the Fixed Deposit (analogous to dividend). ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Is it possible to improve stock purchase with limit orders accounting for volatility? ### Answer: If you can afford the cost and risk of 100 shares of stock, then just sell a put option. If you can only afford a few shares, you can still use the information the options market is trying to give you -- see below. A standing limit order to buy a stock is essentially a synthetic short put option position. [1] So deciding on a stock limit order price is the same as valuing an option on that stock. Options (and standing limit orders) are hard to value, and the generally accepted math for doing so -- the Black-Scholes-Merton framework -- is also generally accepted to be wrong, because of black swans. So rather than calculate a stock buy limit price yourself, it's simpler to just sell a put at the put's own midpoint price, accepting the market's best estimate. Options market makers' whole job (and the purpose of the open market) is price discovery, so it's easier to let them fight it out over what price options should really be trading at. The result of that fight is valuable information -- use it. Sell a 1-month ATM put option every month until you get exercised, after which time you'll own 100 shares of stock, purchased at: This will typically give you a much better cost basis (several dollars better) versus buying the stock at spot, and it offloads the valuation math onto the options market. Meanwhile you get to keep the cash from the options premiums as well. Disclaimer: Markets do make mistakes. You will lose money when the stock drops more than the option market's own estimate. If you can't afford 100 shares, or for some reason still want to be in the business of creating synthetic options from pure stock limit orders, then you could maybe play around with setting your stock purchase bid price to (approximately): See your statistics book for how to set ndev -- 1 standard deviation gives you a 30% chance of a fill, 2 gives you a 5% chance, etc. Disclaimer: The above math probably has mistakes; do your own work. It's somewhat invalid anyway, because stock prices don't follow a normal curve, so standard deviations don't really mean a whole lot. This is where market makers earn their keep (or not). If you still want to create synthetic options using stock limit orders, you might be able to get the options market to do more of the math for you. Try setting your stock limit order bid equal to something like this: Where put_strike is the strike price of a put option for the equity you're trading. Which option expiration and strike you use for put_strike depends on your desired time horizon and desired fill probability. To get probability, you can look at the delta for a given option. The relationship between option delta and equity limit order probability of fill is approximately: Disclaimer: There may be math errors here. Again, do your own work. Also, while this method assumes option markets provide good estimates, see above disclaimer about the markets making mistakes. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Is it possible to improve stock purchase with limit orders accounting for volatility? ### Answer: There is no such thing as buying at the best price. That only exists in hindsight. If you could consistently predict the lower bound, then you would have no reason to waste your time investing. Quit your job and bet with all leverage in. What if the price never reaches your lower bound and the market keeps rallying? What if today is crash day and you catch a falling knife? I'd say the best strategy would be just buy at whatever the market price is the moment your investment money hits your account with the smallest possible commission. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Is it possible to improve stock purchase with limit orders accounting for volatility? ### Answer: The simplest solution to fire-and-forget is to pick something like a Target Date mutual fund made up of low-overhead index funds (within your 401k or a Roth IRA, perhaps) and set up automatic purchase to that. If you're talking about limit orders and so on, that ain't simple. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Given current market conditions, how / when should I invest a $200k inheritance? ### Answer: E) Spend a small amount of that money on getting advice from a paid financial planner. (Not a broker or someone offering you "free" advice; their recommendations may be biased toward what makes them the most money). A good financial planner will talk to you about your plans and expectations both short and long term, and about your risk tolerance (would a drop in value panic you even if you know it's likely to recover and average out in the long run, that sort of thing), and about how much time and effort you want to put into actively managing your portfolio. From those answers, they will generate an initial proposed plan, which will be tested against simulations of the stock market to make sure it holds up. Typically they'll do about 100 passes over the plan to get a sense of its probable risk versus growth-potential versus volatility, and tweak the plan until the normal volatility is within the range you've said you're comfortable with while trying to produce the best return with the least risk. This may not be a perfect plan for you -- but at the very least it will be an excellent starting point until you decide (if you ever do decide) that you've learned enough about investing that you want to do something different with the money. It's likely to be better advice than you'll get here simply because they can and will take the time to understand your specific needs rather than offering generalities because we're trying to write something that applies to many people, all of whom have different goals and time horizons and financial intestinal fortitude. As far as a house goes: Making the mistake of thinking of a house as an investment is a large part of the mindset that caused the Great Recession. Property can be an investment (or a business) or it can be something you're living in; never make the mistake of putting it in both categories at once. The time to buy a house is when you want a house, find a house you like in a neighborhood you like, expect not to move out of it for at least five years, can afford to put at least 20% down payment, and can afford the ongoing costs. Owning your home is not more grown-up, or necessarily financially advantageous even with the tax break, or in any other way required until and unless you will enjoy owning your home. (I bought at age 50ish, because I wanted a place around the corner from some of my best friends, because I wanted better noise isolation from my neighbors, because I wanted a garden, because I wanted to do some things that almost any landlord would object to, and because I'm handy enough that I can do a lot of the routine maintenance myself and enjoy doing it -- buy a house, get a free set of hobbies if you're into that. And part of the reason I could afford this house, and the changes that I've made to it, was that renting had allowed me to put more money into investments. My only regret is that I didn't realise how dumb it was not to max out my 401(k) match until I'd been with the company for a decade ... that's free money I left on the table.) ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Setting up auto-pay. Should I use my bank that holds mortage or my personal bank? ### Answer: One factor to consider is timing. If you set up the automatic payments through the bank that holds the mortgage (I'll call them the "receiving" bank), they will typically record the transactions as occurring on the actual dates you've set up the automatic payments to occur on, which generally eliminates e.g. the risk of having late payments. By contrast, setting up auto-pay through your personal bank (the "sending" bank) usually amounts to, on the date you specify, your bank deducts the amount from your account and sends a check to the receiving bank (and many banks actually send this check by mail), which may result in the transaction not being credited to your mortgage until several business days later. A second consideration (and this may not be as likely to occur on a loan payment as with a utility or service) is the amount of the payment. When you set up your auto-pay through the sending bank, you explicitly instruct your bank as to the amount to send (also, if you don't have enough in your account, your bank may wait to send the bill payment until you do). This can be good if finances are tight, or if you just like having absolute control of the payment. The risk, though, is that if some circumstance increases the amount that you need to pay one month, you'll have to proactively adjust your auto-pay setting before it fires off. Whereas, if you've set the auto-pay up through the receiving bank, they would most likely submit the transaction to your bank for the higher amount automatically. I'll give an example based on something I saw fairly often when I worked for Dish Network on recovery (customers in early disconnect, the goal being to take a payment and restore service). If you had set up auto-pay through your bank based on your package price, and then the price increased by $2/month, you might not notice at first (your service stays on, and your bill doesn't have any red stamps on it), but the difference will slowly add up until it exceeds a full month's payment, at which point a late fee starts being assessed. From there, it quickly snowballs until the service is turned off. Whereas if you had set that auto-pay up through the provider, when the rate increased, they would simply submit an EFT for the new, higher amount to your bank. On the opposite side of the spectrum: if you've set up the auto-pay through the sending bank, and you're not paying close enough attention when you finally pay off the mortgage, you might accidentally overpay by either making an extra payment or because the final payment is smaller than the rest. Then you'd have to wait a few days (or weeks?) for the receiving bank to issue a refund, leaving those funds unavailable to you in the interim. For these reasons, I personally prefer to always set up automatic payments through the receiving bank, rather than the sending bank. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Setting up auto-pay. Should I use my bank that holds mortage or my personal bank? ### Answer: Depending on your bank you may receive an ACH discount for doing automatic withdrawals from a deposit account at that bank. Now, this depends on your bank and you need to do independent research on that topic. As far as dictating what your extra money goes towards each month (early payments, principal payments, interest payments) you need to discuss that with your bank. I'm sure it's not too difficult to find. In my experience most banks, so long as you didn't sign a contract on your mortgage where you're penalized for sending additional money, will apply extra money toward early payments, and not principal. I would suggest calling them. I know for my student loans I have to send a detailed list of my loans and in what order I want my extra payments toward each, otherwise it will be considered an early payment, or it will be spread evenly among them all. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Real estate agent best practice ### Answer: This question is a bit off-topic, might be better moved to another SE site. But I'll answer anyway: Sounds like the problem is that your wife is potentially being taken advantage of by people who may not really be prospects. Keep in mind no one can take advantage of you without your permission. There are also some things you and she can do to reduce the amount of wasted time while minimizing the risk of giving up on a potential sale. Qualify your leads: make sure these potential clients are really, truly potential customers. Ask whatever questions you have to ask in order to qualify them as real house hunters. It doesn't have to be binary: you can have hot leads ready to buy now, and lukewarm leads who may not buy for 12 months or more. Treat each one accordingly. Set limits: a lukewarm lead is not allowed to call you 20 times a day. Answer their calls just once per day. By answering the phone every time they call you are training them to call as often as they like! If you only return calls once per day they'll quickly learn to save their questions up and ask them all at once. Showing 10 houses sounds a bit silly. How can you remember any details after seeing 10 houses? By asking more questions and learning more about what your clients want in a house, you can reduce the footwork. Me, I'd flat out limit it to three houses per outing, and I wouldn't even hesitate to tell the client why. I think all these things will come in time. Like any new venture, she needs some experience to learn how to maximize her efficiency and effectiveness. Keep in mind it's better to have the phone ringing too much than not at all! ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Real estate agent best practice ### Answer: There are people that make up a small segment of the population that have an unsatisfied need to see the insides of other people's houses. There's also a segment of the population that don't quite understand the "big picture" of how service professions work... for example, any group of friends going into a restaurant and requesting a table and sitting at it for over an hour, but feel they don't need to leave a tip because they only ordered espressos or shared a desert. Sure, you're paying for the service of a service professional, but it should also include their time and resources you consume outside of the actual service but many don't have that perspective. Why should I pay you if you aren't providing your actual "service" to me even though I'm consuming your time and resources that would be earning you your expected salary otherwise, is their justification. So when you encounter an individual from both small segments of the population mentioned above, the result is the problem your wife faces with perspective buyers. I look at the Agent / Buyer relationship from a different perspective when I encounter these no-harm intended individuals. I don't see it as the buyer is hiring the agent... for if that was the case, a contract of some sorts would be involved detailing the menu of services provided by the agent with associated costs, the buyer would make selections from the menu, pay the costs, and services rendered. but that's not how it works. so its important to understand the perspective of the agent looking to hire the buyer.. you're not paying the buyer to be your client, but you are looking to select the prospective buyer that's going to generate cash flow. In a commissions based work force that is also your main source of income, you have to look at prospective clients as that.. simply prospects..but who are a vital component of your salary. So when allocating your time and resources, especially if you're dealing with several prospects, you literally have to turn away these cold leads who are just looking for design tips and paint color pattern suggestions and you as their escort. If I was in the shoe-making business, i wouldn't hire a walk-in, give him access to materials and work space with the assumption that if its to his liking, it'll generate profit towards my salary needs, if the only thing he's interested in doing is looking around at all the other shoes, a behavior that requires my presence, time, and resources. You almost can't even justify it as "looking at it as possible income in the future" if it's costing you revenue now, whether its in the form of having to neglect actual buyers or you could be investing your time in things that would impact salary needs, such as advance course work (attending optional trainings offered by your broker), or investing time finding more serious leads. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What is a better way for an American resident in a foreign country to file tax? ### Answer: If you live outside the US, then you probably need to deal with foreign tax credits, foreign income exclusions, FBAR forms (you probably have bank account balances enough for the 10K threshold) , various monsters the Congress enacted against you like form 8939 (if you have enough banking and investment accounts), form 3520 (if you have a IRA-like local pension), form 5471 (if you have a stake in a foreign business), form 8833 (if you have treaty claims) etc ect - that's just what I had the pleasure of coming across, there's more. TurboTax/H&R Block At Home/etc/etc are not for you. These programs are developed for a "mainstream" American citizen and resident who has nothing, or practically nothing, abroad. They may support the FBAR/FATCA forms (IIRC H&R Block has a problem with Fatca, didn't check if they fixed it for 2013. Heard reports that TurboTax support is not perfect as well), but nothing more than that. If you know the stuff well enough to fill the forms manually - go for it (I'm not sure they even provide all these forms in the software though). Now, specifically to your questions: Turbo tax doesn't seem to like the fact that my wife is a foreigner and doesn't have a social security number. It keeps bugging me to input a valid Ssn for her. I input all zeros for now. Not sure what to do. No, you cannot do that. You need to think whether you even want to include your wife in the return. Does she have income? Do you want to pay US taxes on her income? If she's not a US citizen/green card holder, why would you want that? Consider it again. If you decide to include here after all - you have to get an ITIN for her (instead of SSN). If you hire a professional to do your taxes, that professional will also guide you through the ITIN process. Turbo tax forces me to fill out a 29something form that establishes bonafide residency. Is this really necessary? Again in here it bugs me about wife's Ssn Form 2555 probably. Yes, it is, and yes, you have to have a ITIN for your wife if she's included. My previous state is California, and for my present state I input Foreign. When I get to the state tax portion turbo doesn't seem to realize that I have input foreign and it wants me to choose a valid state. However I think my first question is do i have to file a California tax now that I am not it's resident anymore? I do not have any assets in California. No house, no phone bill etc If you're not a resident in California, then why would you file? But you might be a partial resident, if you lived in CA part of the year. If so, you need to file 540NR for the part of the year you were a resident. If you have a better way to file tax based on this situation could you please share with me? As I said - hire a professional, preferably one that practices in your country of residence and knows the provisions of that country's tax treaty with the US. You can also hire a professional in the US, but get a good one, that specializes on expats. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Selling equities for real-estate down payment ### Answer: My suggestion would be to do the math. That is the best advice you can get when considering any investment. There are other factors you haven't considered, too... like the fact that interest rates are at extremely low levels right now, so borrowing money is relatively cheap. If you're outside the US though, that may be less of a consideration as the mortgage lending institutions in Europe only tend to give 5-year locks on loan rates without requiring a premium. You may be somewhere else in the world. You will probably struggle to do the actual math about the probability of the market going down or up, but what you can do is this: Figure out what it would cost you to cash out the investments. You say your balance is $53,000 in various items. (Congrats! That's a nice chunk of money.) But with commissions and taxes and etc., it may reduce the value of your investments by 10% - 25% when you try to cash out those investments. Paying $3,000 to get that money out of the investments is one thing... but if you're sending $10,000 to the tax man when you sell this all off, that changes the economics of your investments a LOT. In that case you might be better off seeing what happens if the markets correct by 10%... you'd still have more than if you sold out and paid major taxes. Once you know your down payment, calculate the amount of property you could afford. You know your down payment could be somewhere around $50,000 after taxes and other items... At an 80:20 loan-to-value ratio that's about $250,000 of a property that you can qualify for, assuming you could obtain the loan for $200,000. What could you buy for that? Do some shopping and figure out what your options are... Once you have two or three potential properties, figure out the answer to "What would the property give you?" Is it going to be rented out? Are you going to live there? Both? If you're living in it, then you come out ahead if the costs for the mortgage debt and the ongoing maintenance and repairs are less than what you currently pay in rent. Figure out what you pay right now to put a roof over your head. Will the place you could buy need repairs? Will you pay more on a mortgage for $200,000 USD (in your local currency) than what you currently do for housing? Don't even factor in the possible appreciation of a house you inhabit when you're making this kind of investment decision... it could just as easily burn down as go up in value. If you would rent it, what kind of rental would that be? Long-term rental? Expect to pay for other people to break your stuff. Short-term rental? You can collect more money per tenant per day, but you'll end up with higher vacancy rates. And people still break your stuff. But do the math and see if you could collect enough in rent from a tenant (person or business or whatever the properties are you could buy) to cover the amount you are paying in debt, plus what you would pay in taxes (rent is income), plus what you would need for maintenance, plus insurance. IF the numbers make sense, then real estate can be a phenomenally lucrative investment. I own some investment properties myself. It is a great hedge against inflation (you can raise rents when contracts lapse... usually) and it is an excellent way to own a tangible item. But if you don't know the numbers and exactly how it would make you better off than sitting and hoping that the markets go up, because they generally do over time, then don't take the jump. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Working Capital Definition ### Answer: As you say, if you delay paying your bills, your liabilities will increase. Like say your bills total $10,000 per month. If you normally pay after 30 days, then your short-term liabilities will be $10,000. If you stretch that out to pay after 60 days, then you will be carrying two months worth of bills as a short-term liability, or $20,000. Your liabilities go up. Assume you keep the same amount of cash on hand after you stretch out your payments like this as you did before. Now your liabilities are higher but your assets are the same, so your working capital goes down. For example, suppose you kept $25,000 in the bank before this change and you still keep $30,000 after. Then before your working capital was $25,000 minus $10,000, or $15,000. After it is $25,000 minus $20,000, or only $5,000. So how does this relate to cash flow? While presumably if the company has $10,000 per month in bills, and their bank balance remains at $25,000 month after month, then they must have $10,000 per month in income that's going to pay those bills, or the bank balance would be going down. So now if they DON'T pay that $10,000 in bills this month, but the bank account doesn't go up by $10,000, then they must have spent the $10,000 on something else. That is, they have converted that money from an on-going balance into cash flow. Note that this is a one-time trick. If you stretch out your payment time from 30 days to 60 days, then you are now carrying 2 months worth of bills on your books instead of 1. So the first month that you do this -- if you did it all at once for all your bills -- you would just not pay any bills that month. But then you would have to resume paying the bills the next month. It's not like you're adding $10,000 to your cash flow every month. You're adding $10,000 to your cash flow the month that you make the change. Then you return to equilibrium. To increase your cash flow every month this way, you would have to continually increase the time it takes you to pay your bills: 30 days this month, 45 days the next, 60 the next, then 75, 90, etc. Pretty soon your bills are 20 years past due and no one wants to do business with you any more. Normally people see an action like this as an emergency measure to get over a short-term cash crunch. Adopting it as a long-term policy seems very short-sighted to me, creating a long-term relationship problem with your suppliers in exchange for a one-shot gain. But then, I'm not a big corporate finance officer. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? ### Answer: Several, actually: Maintenance costs. As landlord, you are liable for maintaining the basic systems of the dwelling - structure, electrical, plumbing, HVAC. On top of that, you typically also have to maintain anything that comes with the space, so if you're including appliances like a W/D or fridge, if they crap out you could spend a months' rent or more replacing them. You are also required to keep the property up to city codes as far as groundskeeping unless you specifically assign those responsibilities to your tenant (and in some states you are not allowed to do so, and in many cases renters expect groundskeeping to come out of their rent one way or the other). Failure to do these things can put you in danger of giving your tenant a free out on the lease contract, and even expose you to civil and criminal penalties if you're running a real slum. Escrow payments. The combination of property tax and homeowner's insurance usually doubles the monthly housing payment over principal and interest, and that's if you got a mortgage for 20% down. Also, because this is not your primary residence, it's ineligible for Homestead Act exemptions (where available; states like Texas are considering extending Homestead exemptions to landlords, with the expectation it will trickle down to renters), however mortgage interest and state taxes do count as "rental expenses" and can be deducted on Schedule C as ordinary business expenses offsetting revenues. Income tax. The money you make in rent on this property is taxable as self-employment income tax; you're effectively running a sole proprietorship real-estate management company, so not only does any profit (you are allowed to deduct maintenance and administrative costs from the rent revenues) get added to whatever you make in salary at your day job, you're also liable for the full employee and employer portions of Medicare/Medicaid/SS taxes. You are, however, also allowed to depreciate the property over its expected life and deduct depreciation; the life of a house is pretty long, and if you depreciate more than the house's actual loss of value, you take a huge hit if/when you sell because any amount of the sale price above the depreciated price of the house is a capital gain (though, it can work to your advantage by depreciating the maximum allowable to reduce ordinary income, then paying lower capital gains rates on the sale). Legal costs. The rental agreement typically has to be drafted by a lawyer in order to avoid things that can cause the entire contract to be thrown out (though there are boilerplate contracts available from state landlords' associations). This will cost you a few hundred dollars up front and to update it every few years. It is deductible as an ordinary expense. Advertising. Putting up a "For Rent" sign out front is typically just the tip of the iceberg. Online and print ads, an ad agency, these things cost money. It's deductible as an ordinary expense. Add this all up and you may end up losing money in the first year you rent the property, when legal, advertising, initial maintenance/purchases to get the place tenant-ready, etc are first spent; deduct it properly and it'll save you some taxes, but you better have the nest egg to cover these things on top of everything your lender will expect you to bring to closing (assuming you don't have $100k+ lying around to buy the house in cash). ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? ### Answer: There are those who are knowledgable in real estate who offer rules of thumb: Don't pay more that 50X the rent for the house. Here, $972 x 50 is $48600. Assume half the rent goes to expenses. So from $972, you net $486, and after that mortgage, you have $111 in profit. Zillow usually assumes 20% down, here $20K. So you are seeing a 6.67% return on your 20K. (Plus appreciation and principal paydown.) For the record, I just bought a 3 family, under renovation now. Expecting total cost to be $160K, and total rent $2500. I missed ratio a by a bit, but $1250 to go toward a $120K mortgage works out fine. $550 profit/mo on the 25% down ($40K). (By the way, a turnover of tenants can cost (a) a month of no rent, (b) a cost to the real estate agent, if you use one, and the cost to paint/repair. This is generally considered 10%. So if the 50% of rent seemed high, here's 10 of it.) ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? ### Answer: The other thing to remember is seasonality. Just because monthly rent is $900/month doesn't guarantee that you'll bring in $900/month. Plenty of university towns have peak demand during the months of Aug/Sept when students are moving in, but you have to beg//plead//give discounted rent to keep units full during 'off-season' times. Assuming vacancy during 3 months/year, your average monthly rent is only $675. ($900 * 9 / 12) This may change the economics of your investment. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? ### Answer: More possible considerations: Comparability with other properties. Maybe properties that rent for $972 have more amenities than this one (parking, laundry, yard, etc) or are in better repair. Or maybe the $972 property is a block closer to campus and thus commands 30% higher rent (that can happen). Condition of property. You know nothing about this until you see it. It could be in such bad shape that you can't legally rent it until you spend a lot of money fixing it. Or it may just be run down or outdated: still inhabitable but not as attractive to renters, leading to lower rent and/or longer vacancy periods. Do you accept that, or spend a lot of money to renovate? Collecting the rent. Tenants don't necessarily always pay their rent on time, or at all. If a tenant quits paying, you incur significant expenses to evict them and then find a new tenant, and all the while, you collect no rent. There could be a tenant in place paying a much lower rent. Rent control or a long lease may prevent you from raising it. If you are able to raise it, and the tenant doesn't want to pay, see above. Maintenance and more maintenance. College students could be hard on the property; one good kegger could easily cause more damage than their security deposits will cover. Being near a university doesn't guarantee you an easy time renting it. It suggests the demand is high, but maybe the supply is even higher. Renting to college students has additional issues. They are less likely to have incomes large enough to satisfy you that they can pay the rent. Are you willing to deal with cosigners? If a student quits paying, are you willing to try to collect from their cosigning parents in another state? And you'll probably have many tenants (roommates) living in the house. They will come and go separately and unexpectedly, complicating your leasing arrangements. And you may well get drawn in to disputes between them. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? ### Answer: There are several things that are missing from your estimate: The terms for the mortgage for a rental property will be different. You may be required to have a larger down payment. When approving you for the mortgage they will not count all the rental income as income, they will assume periodic vacancies. This difference may impact other credit you will be getting in the near future. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? ### Answer: There is a positive not being mentioned above: the depreciation vs your regular earned income. Disclaimer: I am not a tax attorney or an accountant, nor do I play one on the internet. I am however a landlord. With that important caveat out of the way: Rental properties (and improvements to them) depreciate in value on a well-defined schedule. You can claim that depreciation as a phantom loss to lower the amount of your taxable regular income. If you make a substantial amount of the latter, it can be a huge boon in the first few years you own the property. You can claim the depreciation as if the property were new. So take the advice of a random stranger on the internet to your accountant/attorney and see how much it helps you. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? ### Answer: It is easier to get a loan on a rental than a flip, which is a huge advantage to rental properties. Leverage allows you to increase your returns and make more money off appreciation and higher rents. I use ARMs to finance my rental properties that are amortized over 30 years. I have to put 20 percent down, but my portfolio lender lets me get as many loans as I want. Because I put 20 percent down on my rental properties and they still have great cash flow I can buy three times as many properties as I could with cash purchases. Buying more rental properties amplifies the other advantages like cash flow, equity pay down and the tax advantages. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent? ### Answer: Don't over analyze it - check with some local landlords that are willing to share some information and resources Then analyze the Worst Case Scenarios and the likelihood of them happening and if you could deal with it if it did happen Then Dive In - Real Estate is a long term investment so you have plenty of time to learn everything..... Most people fail.... because they fail to take the first leap of faith !!! ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How is it possible that a preauth sticks to a credit card for 30 days, even though the goods have already been delivered? ### Answer: It is barely possible that this is Citi's fault, but it sounds more like it is on the Costco end. The way that this is supposed to work is that they preauthorize your card for the necessary amount. That reserves the payment, removing the money from your credit line. On delivery, they are supposed to capture the preauthorization. That causes the money to transfer to them. Until that point, they've reserved your payment but not actually received it. If you cancel, then they don't have to pay processing fees. The capture should allow for a larger sale so as to provide for tips, upsells, and unanticipated taxes and fees. In this case, instead of capturing the preauthorization, they seem to have simply generated a new transaction. Citi could be doing something wrong and processing the capture incorrectly. Or Costco could be doing a purchase when they should be doing a capture. From outside, we can't really say. The thirty days would seem to be how long Costco can schedule in advance. So the preauthorization can last that long for them. Costco should also have the ability to cancel a preauthorization. However, they may not know how to trigger that. With smaller merchants, they usually have an interface where they can view preauthorizations and capture or cancel them. Costco may have those messages sent automatically from their system. Note that a common use for this pattern is with things like gasoline or delivery purchases. If this has been Citi/Costco both times, I'd try ordering a pizza or some other delivery food and see if they do it correctly. If it was Citi both times and a different merchant the other time, then it's probably a Citi problem rather than a merchant problem. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How is it possible that a preauth sticks to a credit card for 30 days, even though the goods have already been delivered? ### Answer: This is not a normal occurrence, and you have every right to be annoyed, but the technical way it usually happens goes like this: What can happen is when the merchant incorrectly completes the transaction without referencing the pre-authorization transaction. The bank effectively doesn't "know" this is the same transaction, so they process it the same way they process any other purchase, and it has no effect on the pre-authorization and related held/pending transaction. As far as the bank knows, you purchased a second set of blinds in the store for $200 and are still waiting on the first order to come in, they have no idea the store screwed up. The reason this is possible is the purpose of the pre-auth in the first place is that it is a contractual agreement between the bank (credit card) and the merchant that the funds are available, will be available except under rare special circumstances, and thus they can go ahead and process the order. This lets the merchant be secure in the knowledge that they can collect their payment, but you aren't paying interest or monthly payments on something you haven't even gotten yet! This system works reasonably well for everyone - right up until someone screws up and fails to properly release a hold, makes a second transaction instead of properly referencing the first one, or the bank screws up their system and fails to correctly match referenced pre-authorization codes to purchases. The problem is that this should not be a normal occurrence, and the people you are speaking with to try to sort out the issue often do not have the authority or knowledge necessary to properly fix the issue, or its such a hassle for them that they hope you just go away and time fixes the issue on its own. The only sure-fire solution to this is: make sure you have so much extra credit line that this doesn't effect you and you can safely let it time out on its own, or stop doing business with this combination of merchant/payment that creates the problem. Back when my credit limits were being pushed, I would never pay at gas pumps because their hold polices were so weird and unpredictable, and I would only pre-pay inside or with cash to avoid the holds. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How is it possible that a preauth sticks to a credit card for 30 days, even though the goods have already been delivered? ### Answer: The answer to your question is very simple: The preauth and the shipment of the goods have no connection within the credit card system. It is possible to process a payment that does not cancel a preauthorization. This is needed for the case where you place two orders and the one you placed second ships first. A preauth can remain active for some time unless it is captured or cancelled. So in your case a preauth was placed and remained active. That you were shipped and billed for some goods had no effect on the preauth because one side or the other failed to attach them. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How is it possible that a preauth sticks to a credit card for 30 days, even though the goods have already been delivered? ### Answer: Open a dispute for the preauth. It is effectively a double charge, since you have already paid for the item. You can provide evidence of the other transaction. This forces them to go through some hassle and waste some time on the issue. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Do I need to report to FInCEN if I had greater than $10,000 worth of bitcoin in a foreign bitcoin exchange? ### Answer: Yes, I'd say you do. This is similar to reporting a brokerage account. Also, don't forget the requirements for form 8938. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Do I need to report to FInCEN if I had greater than $10,000 worth of bitcoin in a foreign bitcoin exchange? ### Answer: Lets look at possible use cases: If you ever converted your cryptocurrency to cash on a foreign exchange, then YES you had to report. That means if you ever daytraded and the US dollar (or other fiat) amount was $10,000 or greater when you went out of crypto, then you need to report. Because the regulations stipulate you need to report over $10,000 at any point in the year. If you DID NOT convert your cryptocurrency to cash, and only had them on an exchange's servers, perhaps traded for other cryptocurrency pairs, then NO this did not fall under the regulations. Example, In 2013 I wanted to cash out of a cryptocurrency that didn't have a USD market in the United States, but I didn't want to go to cash on a foreign exchange specifically for this reason (amongst others). So I sold my Litecoin on BTC-E (Slovakia) for Bitcoin, and then I sold the Bitcoin on Coinbase (USA). (even though BTC-E had a Litecoin/USD market, and then I could day trade the swings easily to make more capital gains, but I wanted cash in my bank account AND didn't want the reporting overhead). Read the regulations yourself. Financial instruments that are reportable: Cash (fiat), securities, futures and options. Also, http://www.bna.com/irs-no-bitcoin-n17179891056/ whether it is just in the blockchain or on a server, IRS and FINCEN said bitcoin is not reportable on FBAR. When they update their guidance, it'll be in the news. The director of FinCEN is very active in cryptocurrency developments and guidance. Bitcoin has been around for six years, it isn't that esoteric and the government isn't that confused on what it is (IRS and FinCEN's hands are tied by Congress in how to more realistically categorize cryptocurrency) Although at this point in time, there are several very liquid exchanges within the United States, such as the one NYSE/ICE hosts (Coinbase). ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Do I need to report to FInCEN if I had greater than $10,000 worth of bitcoin in a foreign bitcoin exchange? ### Answer: Firstly you have to know exactly what you are asking here. What you have if you "own" bitcoins is a private key that allows you to make a change to the blockchain that can assign a piece of information from yourself to the next person. Nothing more nothing less. The fact that this small piece of information is considered to have a market value, is a matter of opinion, and is analagous to owning a domain name. A domain name is an entry in a register, that has equal weight to all other entries, but the market determines if that information (eg: CocaCola.com) has any more value than say another less well know domain. Bitcoin is the same - an entry in a register, and the market decides which entry is more valuable than another. So what exactly are you wanting to declare to FinCEN? Are you willing to declare the ownership of private key? Of course not. So what then? An uncrackable private key can be generated at will by anyone, without even needing to "own" or transact in bitcoins, and that same private key would be equally valid on any of the 1000's of other bitcoin clones. The point I want to make is that owning a private key in itself is not valuable. Therefore you do not need, nor would anyone advise notifying FinCEN of that fact. To put this into context, every time you connect to online banking, your computer secretly generates a new random private key to secure your communications with the bank. Theoretically that same private key could also be used to sign a bitcoin transaction. Do you need to declare every private key your computer generates? No. Secondly, if you are using any of the latest generation of HD wallets, your private key changes with every single transaction. Are you seriously saying that you want to take it on your shoulders to inform FinCEN every time you move information (bitcoin amounts) around even in your own wallets? The fact is FinCEN could never "discover" your ownership of bitcoins (or any of the 1000s of alt coins) other than by you informing them of this fact. You may want to carefully consider the personal implications of starting down this road especially as all FinCEN would need to do is subpoena your bitcoin private key to steal your so-called funds, as they have done recently to other more prominent persons in the community. EDIT to clarify the points raised in comments. You do not own the private key to the bitcoins stored on a foreign exchange, nor can you discover it. The exchange owns the private key. You therefore do not either technically have control over the coins (MtGox is a very good example here - they went out of business because they allowed their private keys to be used by some other party who was able to siphon off the coins). Your balance is only yours when you own the private keys and the ability to spend. Any other situation you can neither recover the bitcoin to sell (to pay for any taxes due). So you do not either have the legal right nor the technical right to consider those coins in your possession. For those who do not understand the technical or legal implications of private key ownership, please do not speculate about what "owning" bitcoin actually means, or how ownership can be discovered. Holding Bitcoin is not illegal, and the US government who until recently were the single largest holder of Bitcoin demonstrate simply by this fact alone that there is nothing untoward here. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How to get started with savings, paying off debt, and retirement? ### Answer: The word you are looking for is "budget" You can't pay off debt if you are spending more than you earn. Therefore, start a budget that you both work on at the same time, and both agree 100% with. Evaluate your progress on that budget on a regular basis. From your question, you understand what your obligations are and you seem to manage money pretty well. Therefore your key to retirement is just the ticket you need. As newlyweds, you both have to be VERY aware that the main reason a marriage fails in the US is money issues. Starting out with a groundwork where you both agree to your budget and can keep it will help you a lot in your upcoming life. Then, for some details Sprinkle your charitable donations anywhere in the list where you feel it is important. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How to get started with savings, paying off debt, and retirement? ### Answer: You have a small emergency fund. Good! Be open about your finances with each other. No secrets, except around gift-giving holidays. Pay off the debts ASAP. Don't accumulate more consumer debt after it's paid off. I wouldn't contribute anything more to the 401k beyond what gives you a maximum match. Free money is free money, but there are lots of strings attached to tax-advantaged accounts. Be sure you understand what you're investing in. If your only option is an annuity for the 401k, learn what that is. Retire into something. Don't just retire from something. (Put another way: Don't retire.) Don't wait until you're old to figure out what you want to retire into. Save like crazy before you have kids. It's much harder afterwards. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How to get started with savings, paying off debt, and retirement? ### Answer: I agree with the other answers here. You need to pay off your debts first, so that you can take the money you would have been spending on debt payments and make retirement contributions instead. The longer they hang around, the more you pay in interest and the more they are a risk to you. Imagine if you or your spouse were laid off, which is better scenario: having to pay for your necessities plus debts or your necessities alone? Just focus on one goal at a time, and you will do well. And the best way for you and your new spouse is to have the same financial goals and a huge part of that agreeing on a budget each month and being flexible. Don't use it to control your spouse, you each have a vote. I have not used Vangaurd, but have heard good things about them. I would do some research before investing with them or anyone else for that matter. What you want to find when it comes to investing is someone with the heart of a teacher, not a product peddler. If you have someone who is pushing financial products, without explaining (A) how they work, and (B) how they fit your situation, then RUN AWAY and find someone else who will do those two things. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How to get started with savings, paying off debt, and retirement? ### Answer: Communicate. I would recommend taking a course together on effective communications, and I would also suggest taking a course on budgeting and family financial planning. You need to be able to effectively communicate your financial plans and goals, your financial actions, and learn to both be honest and open with your partner. You also need to be certain that you come to an agreement. The first step is to draft a budget that you both agree to follow. The following is a rough outline that you could use to begin. There are online budgeting tools, and a spreadsheet where you can track planned versus actuals may better inform your decisions. Depending upon your agreed priorities, you may adjust the following percentages, Essentials (<50% of net income) Financial (>20%) Lifestyle (<30%) - this is your discretionary income, where you spend on the things you want Certain expense categories are large and deserve special advice. Try to limit your housing costs to 25% of your income, unless you live in a high-cost/rent area (where you might budget as high as 35%). Limit your expenses for vehicles below 10% of income. And expensive vehicle might be budgeted (partly) from Lifestyle. Limiting your auto payment to 5% of your income may be a wise choice (when possible). Some families spend $200-300/month on cable TV, and $200-300/month on cellphones. These are Lifestyle decisions, and those on constrained budgets might examine the value from those expenses against the benefit. Dining out can be a budget buster, and those on constrained budgets might consider paying less for convenience, and preparing more meals at home. An average family might spend 8-10% of their income on food. Once you have a budget, you want to handle the following steps, Many of the steps are choices based upon your specific priorities. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Why do new car loans, used car loans, and refinanced loans have different rates and terms? ### Answer: New car loans, used car loans, and refinances have different rates because they have different risks associated with them, different levels of ability to recoup losses if there is a default, and different customer profiles. (I'm assuming third party lender for all of these questions, not financing the dealer arranges, as that has other considerations built into it.) A new car loan is both safer to some extent (as the car is a "known" risk, having no risk of damage/etc. prior to purchase), but also harder to recoup losses (because new cars immediately devalue significantly, while used cars keep more of their value). Thus the APRs are a little different; in general for the same amount a new car will be a bit lower APR, but of course used car loans are typically lower amounts. Refinance is also different; customer profile wise, the customer who is refinancing in these times is likely someone who is a higher risk (as why are they asking for a loan when they're mostly paid off their car?). Otherwise it's fairly similar to a used car, though probably a bit newer than the average used car. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Why do new car loans, used car loans, and refinanced loans have different rates and terms? ### Answer: According to AutoTrader, there are many different reasons, but here are three: New cars have a better resale value and it's easier to predict its resale value in case you default on the loan and they repossess the car. Lenders that are through auto makers can use different incentives for getting you to buy a new car. Used car financing is usually through other banks. People with higher credit scores tend to buy new cars, and therefore can get a lower rate because of their higher credit score. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Why do new car loans, used car loans, and refinanced loans have different rates and terms? ### Answer: There are normally three key factors that define different kinds of loans, these factors affect the risk that the lender takes on and so the interest rate. The interest rate on any loan is linked to market interest rates; the lender shouldn't be able to receive a higher rate of interest for lending the money at no risk, and the level of risk that the lender believes the borrower to have. The three features of a particular loan are: These reduce the risk of complete or total non-payment (default) of the principal or any missed interest payments. Taken in order: Amortising Here some of the monthly payment pays a proportion of the underlying principal of the loan. This reduces the amount outstanding and so reduces the capacity for default on the full principal as part of the principal has already been paid. Security In a secured loan there is an asset such as a car, house, boat, gold, shares etc. that has a value on resale that is held against the loan. The lender may repossess the security if the borrower defaults and recover their money that way. This also acts as a "stick" using the loss of property to convince the borrower that it is better to keep paying the interest. The future value of the security will be taken into account when deciding how much this reduces the interest rate. Guarantor A guarantor to a loan guarantees that the borrower will repay the loan and interest in full and, if the borrower does not fulfil that obligation, the lender is able to seek legal redress from the guarantor for the borrower's debts. Each of these reduce the risk of the loan as detailed and so reduce the interest rate. The interest rate, then, is made up of three parts; the market interest rate (m) plus the interest rate premium for the borrower's own credit worthiness (c) minus the value of the features of the loan that help to reduce risk (l). The interest rate of the loan (r) is categorised as: r = m + c - l. Credit ratings themselves are an inexact science and even when two lenders are looking at the same credit score for the same person they will give a different interest rate premium. This is mostly for business reasons, and the shape of their loan book, that are too tedious to go through here. All in all the different types of loan give flexibility at the cost of a different interest rate. If you don't want the chance of your car being repossessed you don't take a secured loan, if you have a family member who can help and doesn't mind taking on your risk take a guaranteed loan. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What did John Templeton mean when he said that the four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different'? ### Answer: Essentially, he means "one ignores history at their own peril". We often hear people arguing that "the old rules no longer apply". Whether it be to valuations, borrowing, or any of the other common metrics, to ignore the lessons of the past is to invite disaster. History shows us that major crises in the markets usually occur when the old rules are ignored and people believe that current exceptional market conditions are justified by special circumstances. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What did John Templeton mean when he said that the four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different'? ### Answer: This refers to the faulty idea that the stock market will behave differently than it has in the past. For example, in the late 1990s, internet stocks rose to ridiculous heights in price, to be followed soon after with the Dot-Com Bubble crash. In the future, it's likely that there will be another such bubble with another hot stock - we just don't know what kind. Saying that "this time it will be different" could mean that you expect this bubble not to burst when, historically, that is never the case. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What did John Templeton mean when he said that the four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different'? ### Answer: It's a statement that seems to be true about our tendency to believe we won't make the same mistake twice, even though we do, and that somehow what's occurring in the present is completely different, even when the underlying fundamentals of the situation may be nearly identical. It's a form of self-delusion and, sometimes, mass-delusion, and it has been a major contributing factor to many of our worst financial disasters. If you look at every housing bubble, for instance, we examine the aftermath, put new regulations and procedures into place, theoretically to prevent it from happening again, and then move forward. When the cycle starts to repeat itself, we ignore the signals, telling ourselves, "oh, that can't happen again -- this time it's different." When investors begin to ignore the warning signs because they think the current situation is somehow totally different and therefore there will be a different outcome than the last disaster, that's when things actually do go bad. The 2008 housing crisis was caused by the same essential forces that brought about similar (albeit smaller scale) housing disasters in the 80's and 90's -- greed caused banks and other participants in the housing sector to make loans they knew were no good (an oversimplification to be sure, but apt nonetheless), and eventually the roof caved in on the market. In 2008, the essential dynamics were the same, but everyone had convinced themselves that the markets were more sophisticated and could never allow things like that to happen again. So, everyone told themselves this was different, and they dove into the markets headlong, ignoring all of the warning signs along the way that clearly told the story of what was coming had anyone bothered to notice. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What did John Templeton mean when he said that the four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different'? ### Answer: There's an elephant in the room that no one is addressing: Suckers. Usually when there's a bubble, many people are fully aware that its a bubble. "This time its different" is a sales pitch to the outsiders. It the dotcom boom for example a lot of people knew that the P/E was ridiculous but bought objectively valueless tech stocks with the idea of unloading them later to even bigger fools. People view it like the children's game musical chairs: as long as I'm not standing when the music ends some other sucker gets left holding the bag. But once you get that first hit of easy money, its sooo tempting to keep playing the game. Sometimes, if it lasts long enough, you start to drink your own kool-aid: gee maybe it really is different this time. The best way to win a crooked game is not to play. Just in case someone thinks I'm advising against the stock market in general, I'm not: I'm advocating not buying stocks that you know are worthless with the hope of unloading them on some other sucker. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What did John Templeton mean when he said that the four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different'? ### Answer: A brief review of the financial collapses in the last 30 years will show that the following events take place in a fairly typical cycle: Overuse of that innovation (resulting in inadequate supply to meet demand, in most cases) Inadequate capacity in regulatory oversight for the new volume of demand, resulting in significant unregulated activity, and non-observance of regulations to a greater extent than normal Confusion regarding shifting standards and regulations, leading to inadequate regulatory reviews and/or lenient sanctions for infractions, in turn resulting in a more aggressive industry "Gaming" of investment vehicles, markets and/or buyers to generate additional demand once the market is saturated "Chickens coming home to roost" - A breakdown in financial stability, operational accuracy, or legality of the actions of one or more significant players in the market, leading to one or more investigations A reduction in demand due to the tarnished reputation of the instrument and/or market players, leading to an anticipation of a glut of excess product in the market "Cold feet" - Existing customers seeking to dump assets, and refusing to buy additional product in the pipeline, resulting in a glut of excess product "Wasteland" - Illiquid markets of product at collapsed prices, cratering of associated portfolio values, retirees living below subsistence incomes Such investment bubbles are not limited to the last 30 years, of course; there was a bubble in silver prices (a 700% increase through one year, 1979) when the Hunt brothers attempted to corner the market, followed by a collapse on Silver Thursday in 1980. The "poster child" of investment bubbles is the Tulip Mania that gripped the Netherlands in the early 1600's, in which a single tulip bulb was reported to command a price 16 times the annual salary of a skilled worker. The same cycle of events took place in each of these bubbles as well. Templeton's caution is intended to alert new (especially younger) players in the market that these patterns are doomed to repeat, and that market cycles cannot be prevented or eradicated; they are an intrinsic effect of the cycles of supply and demand that are not in synch, and in which one or both are being influenced by intermediaries. Such influences have beneficial effects on short-term profits for the players, but adverse effects on the long-term viability of the market's profitability for investors who are ill-equipped to shed the investments before the trouble starts. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What did John Templeton mean when he said that the four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different'? ### Answer: To play devil’s advocate to much of what has been written before, it's also worth noting that this is quite an important quote for a sort of reverse reason to what has been discussed before us, that of that fact that virtually every economic situation is different. As it's such a reflexive problem, each and every set of exact circumstances is always different from before. Technology radically changes, monetary policy and economic thinking shift, social needs and market expectations change and thus change the very fabric of markets as they do. It's only in its most basic miss projections of growth that economics repeats, and much like warfare, has constant shifts that radically change the core assumptions about it and do create completely new circumstances that we have to struggle to deal with predicting. People betting on the endless large scale mechanised warfare between western powers continuing post nuclear weapons would have been very, very wrong for example. That time it actually was different, and this actually happens with surprisingly often in finance in ways people quickly bury in the memories and adopt to the new norm. Remember when public ownership of stock wasn't a thing? When bonds didn't exist? No mortgages? Pre insurance? These are all inventions and changes that did change the world forever and were genuinely different and have been ever since, creating huge structural changes in economies, growth rates and societies interactions. As the endless aim of the game is predicting growth well, we often see people/groups over extend on one new thing, and/or under extend on another as they struggle to model these shifts and step changes. Talking as if the fact that people do this consistently as if it is some kind of obvious thing we can easily learn from (or easily take advantage of) in the context of such a vague and complex problem could be argued to be highly naïve and largely useless. This time it is different. Last time it was too. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are there any risks from using mint.com? ### Answer: Mint.com uses something called OFX (Open Financial Exchange) to get the information in your bank account. If someone accessed your mint account they would not be able to perform any transactions with your bank. All they would be able to do is view the same information you do, which some of it could be personal <- that's up to you. Generally the weakest point in security is with the user. An "attacker" is far more likely to get your account information from you then he is from the site your registered with. Why you're the weakest point: When you enter your account information, your password is never saved exactly how you enter it. It's passed through what is called a "one way function", these functions are easy to compute one way but given the end-result is EXTREMELY difficult to compute in reverse. So in a database if someone looked up your password they would see it something like this "31435008693ce6976f45dedc5532e2c1". When you log in to an account your password is sent through this function and then the result is checked against what is saved in the database, if they match you are granted access. The way an attacker would go about getting your password is by entering values into the function and checking the values against yours, this is known as a brute force attack. For our example (31435008693ce6976f45dedc5532e2c1) it would take someone 5 million years to decry-pt using a basic brute force attack. I used "thisismypassword" as my example password, it's 12 characters long. This is why most sites urge you to create long passwords with a mix of numbers, uppercase, lowercase and symbols. This is a very basic explanation of security and both sides have better tools then the one explained but this gives you an idea of how security works for sites like these. You're far more likely to get a virus or a key logger steal your information. I do use Mint. Edit: From the Mint FAQ: Do you store my bank login information on your servers? Your bank login credentials are stored securely in a separate database using multi-layered hardware and software encryption. We only store the information needed to save you the trouble of updating, syncing or uploading financial information manually. Edit 2: From OFX About Security Open Financial Exchange (OFX) is a unified specification for the electronic exchange of financial data between financial institutions, businesses and consumers via the Internet. This is how mint is able to communicate with even your small local bank. FINAL EDIT: ( This answers everything ) For passwords to Mint itself, we compute a secure hash of the user's chosen password and store only the hash (the hash is also salted - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal... ). Hashing is a one-way function and cannot be reversed. It is not possible to ever see or recover the password itself. When the user tries to login, we compute the hash of the password they are attempting to use and compare it to the hashed value on record. (This is a standard technique which every site should use). For banking credentials, we generally must use reversible encryption for which we have special procedures and secure hardware kept in our secure and guarded datacenter. The decryption keys never leave the hardware device (which is built to destroy the key material if the tamper protection is attacked). This device will only decrypt after it is activated by a quorum of other keys, each of which is stored on a smartcard and also encrypted by a password known to only one person. Furthermore the device requires a time-limited cryptographically-signed permission token for each decryption. The system (which I designed and patented) also has facilities for secure remote auditing of each decryption. Source: David K Michaels, VP Engineering, Mint.com - http://www.quora.com/How-do-mint-com-and-similar-websites-avoid-storing-passwords-in-plain-text ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are there any risks from using mint.com? ### Answer: Some banks allow mint.com read-only access via a separate "access code" that a customer can create. This would still allow an attacker to find out how much money you have and transaction details, and may have knowledge of some other information (your account number perhaps, your address, etc). The problem with even this read-only access is that many banks also allow users at other banks to set up a direct debit authorization which allows withdrawals. And to set the direct debit link up, the main hurdle is to be able to correctly identify the dates and amounts of two small test deposit transactions, which could be done with just read-only access. Most banks only support a single full access password per account, and there you have a bigger potential risk of actual fraudulent activity. But if you discover such activity and report it in a timely manner, you should be refunded. Make sure to check your account frequently. Also make sure to change your passwords once in a while. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are there any risks from using mint.com? ### Answer: With Mint you are without a doubt telling a third party your username and password. If mint gets compromised, or hires a bad actor, technically there isn't anything to stop shenanigans. You simply must be vigilant and be aware of your rights and the legal protections you have against fraud. For all the technical expertise and careful security they put in place, we the customers have to know that there is not, nor will there ever be, a perfectly secure system. The trade off is what you can do for the increased risk. And when taken into the picture of all the Other* ways you banking information is exposed, and how little you can do about it, mint.com is only a minor increase in risk in my opinion. *See paypal, a check's routing numbers, any e-commerce site you shop at, every bank that has an online facing system, your HR dept's direct deposit and every time you swipe your debit / credit card somewhere. These are all technically risks, some of which are beyond your control to change. Short of keeping your money in your mattress you can't avoid risk. (And then your mattress catches fire.) ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are there any risks from using mint.com? ### Answer: Here's a very simple answer, ask your broker/bank. Mine uses ofx. When asked if they would reimburse me for any unauthorized activity, the answer was no. Simple enough, the banks that use it don't feel its secure enough. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Is www.onetwotrade.com a scam? ### Answer: OneTwoTrade is a binary option seller, and they are officially licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority. They are not in any way licensed or regulated as an investment, because they don't do actual investing. Is your money safe? If you mean will they take your money and run off with it, then no they probably won't just take your deposit and refuse to return any money to you for nothing - that would be a terrible way to make money for the long-term. If you mean "will I lose my money?" - oh yeah, you probably will! Binary options - outside of special sophisticate financial applications - are for people who think day trading has too little risk, or who would prefer online poker with a thin veneer of "it's an investment!" In the words of Forbes, Don't Gamble On Binary Options: If people want to gamble, that’s their choice. But let’s not confuse that with investing. Binary options are a crapshoot, pure and simple. These kinds of businesses run like a casino - there's a built-in house advantage, you are playing odds (which are against you), and the fundamental product is trying to bet on short-term volatility in financial markets. This is often ridiculously short-terms, measured in minutes. It's often called "all or nothing options", because if you bet wrong you lose almost everything - they give you a little bit of the money you bet back (so you will bet again, preferably with more of your own money). If you bet correctly you get a pay-out, just like in craps or roulette. If you are looking to gamble online, this is one method to do it. But this isn't investing, you are as mathematically likely to lose your money and/or become addicted as any other form of money-based gambling, and absolutely treat it the same way you would a casino: decide how much money you are willing to spend on the adventure before you start, and expect you'll likely not get much or any of that money back. However, I will moralize on this point - I really hate being lied to. Casinos, sports betting, and poker all generally have the common decency to call it what it is - a game where you are playing/betting. These sorts of "investment" providers are woefully dishonest: they say it's an exciting financial market, a new type of investment, investors are moving to this to secure their futures, etc. It's utterly deceptive and vile, and it's all about as up-front and honest as penny auction websites. If you are going to gamble, I'd urge you to do it with people who have the decency to to call it gambling and not lie to you and ask for a "minimum investment". ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Is www.onetwotrade.com a scam? ### Answer: It is a binary options market licensed by the "gaming authority" of Malta. One of the most liberal "pay to play" jurisdictions in the European Union. It sells access to tighter regulatory regimes. This is distinctly a gambling website, not licensed or protected by securities regulations. But that aside, even if they were able to masquerade more as a financial service, none of that dictates whether you will lose your money. Therefore try to find reviews from people that already use the site. This is not investing, a distinction I am able to make because no product they offer has positive expected value. Cash settled binary options do sound like a lot of fun though! And maybe you can make successful predictions in the allotted time period of the option. The things I would expect are issues withdrawing your funds, or unexplained fees. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What prices are compared to decide a security is over-valued, fairly valued or under-valued? ### Answer: I was wondering how "future cash flows of the asset" are predicted? Are they also predicted using fundamental and/or technical analysis? There are a many ways to forecast the future cash flows of assets. For example, for companies: It seems like calculating expected/required rate using CAPM does not belong to either fundamental or technical analysis, does it? I would qualify the CAPM as quantitative analysis because it's mathematics and statistics. It's not really fundamental since its does not relies on economical data (except the prices). And as for technical analysis, the term is often used as a synonym for graphical analysis or chartism, but quantitative analysis can also be referred as technical analysis. the present value of future cash flows [...] (called intrinsic price/value, if I am correct?) Yes you are correct. I wonder when deciding whether an asset is over/fair/under-valued, ususally what kind of price is compared to what other kind of price? If it's only to compare with the price, usually, the Net asset value (which is the book value), the Discount Cash flows (the intrinsic value) and the price of comparable companies and the CAPM are used in comparison to current market price of the asset that you are studying. Why is it in the quote to compare the first two kinds of prices, instead of comparing the current real price on the markets to any of the other three kinds? Actually the last line of the quote says that the comparison is done on the observed price which is the market price (the other prices can't really be observed). But, think that the part: an asset is correctly priced when its estimated price is the same as the present value of future cash flows of the asset means that, since the CAPM gives you an expected rate of return, by using this rate to compute the present value of future cash flows of the asset, you should have the same predicted price. I wrote this post explaining some valuation strategies. Maybe you can find some more information by reading it. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Am I exposed to currency risk when I invest in shares of a foreign company that are listed domestically? ### Answer: Yes, you're still exposed to currency risk when you purchase the stock on company B's exchange. I'm assuming you're buying the shares on B's stock exchange through an ADR, GDR, or similar instrument. The risk occurs as a result of the process through which the ADR is created. In its simplest form, the process works like this: I'll illustrate this with an example. I've separated the conversion rate into the exchange rate and a generic "ADR conversion rate" which includes all other factors the bank takes into account when deciding how many ADR shares to sell. The fact that the units line up is a nice check to make sure the calculation is logically correct. My example starts with these assumptions: I made up the generic ADR conversion rate; it will remain constant throughout this example. This is the simplified version of the calculation of the ADR share price from the European share price: Let's assume that the euro appreciates against the US dollar, and is now worth 1.4 USD (this is a major appreciation, but it makes a good example): The currency appreciation alone raised the share price of the ADR, even though the price of the share on the European exchange was unchanged. Now let's look at what happens if the euro appreciates further to 1.5 USD/EUR, but the company's share price on the European exchange falls: Even though the euro appreciated, the decline in the share price on the European exchange offset the currency risk in this case, leaving the ADR's share price on the US exchange unchanged. Finally, what happens if the euro experiences a major depreciation and the company's share price decreases significantly in the European market? This is a realistic situation that has occurred several times during the European sovereign debt crisis. Assuming this occurred immediately after the first example, European shareholders in the company experienced a (43.50 - 50) / 50 = -13% return, but American holders of the ADR experienced a (15.95 - 21.5093) / 21.5093 = -25.9% return. The currency shock was the primary cause of this magnified loss. Another point to keep in mind is that the foreign company itself may be exposed to currency risk if it conducts a lot of business in market with different currencies. Ideally the company has hedged against this, but if you invest in a foreign company through an ADR (or a GDR or another similar instrument), you may take on whatever risk the company hasn't hedged in addition to the currency risk that's present in the ADR/GDR conversion process. Here are a few articles that discuss currency risk specifically in the context of ADR's: (1), (2). Nestle, a Swiss company that is traded on US exchanges through an ADR, even addresses this issue in their FAQ for investors. There are other risks associated with instruments like ADR's and cross-listed companies, but normally arbitrageurs will remove these discontinuities quickly. Especially for cross-listed companies, this should keep the prices of highly liquid securities relatively synchronized. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Difference between Edward Jones or Betterment ### Answer: Instead of saying which one is better, which is too subjective, I think it is more important to understand what these institutions are. They are kind of different animals. Edward Jones pretty much a full service wealth manager. They meet with you in person, advise you on what retirement and savings accounts to get, they talk to you to evaluate your risk preferences. They will talk to you about planning for your kids' college and about your insurance situation. They will probably attend your kids' bar mitzvahs and stuff too. Of course, this isn't free. With Edward Jones you will pay a fixed percentage of your managed wealth to them every year. And they will likely put your money in expensive mutual funds. And those mutual funds will charge a special 12b-1 fee, which is a kickback to the wealth manager. Plan on giving 2% or so of your total wealth to the manager per year, plus whatever the mutual funds charge. I don't have experience with Betterment, but they appear to be a robo advisor. Robo advisors attempt to do the same kinds of things as wealth managers, but rely on computer algorithms and web pages to give you advice whenever possible. This makes some sense because most people aren't actually that special in terms of their financial situation. I don't know their cost structure, but presumably it will be significantly cheaper than Edward Jones. They will almost certainly put you in cheaper funds (index funds and ETF's). Think of it as a cost-conscious alternative to Edward Jones. Vanguard is a discount broker and a mutual fund family. Their funds are among the biggest and cheapest in the world. Fees on many of these funds will be a fraction of the equivalent funds Edward Jones will put you in. They will charge you nothing at all to manage your money. They will give you some assistance and advice if you call them but don't expect any house calls. They aren't particularly in the business of giving advice. If you know what you want to invest in, this is the cheapest way to do it by far. Basically you won't have to pay anything at all except the actual cost of the assets you are investing in. Which is the best? Depends on your own preferences and ability. If you do not want to learn about personal finance and don't particularly care about whether you are getting the best return--if you don't mind paying for a personal touch--Edward Jones might be a good choice. For most people who are comfortable asking this type of question online and interested in learning about finance even a little bit, I'd expect that Betterment or Vanguard will be a better choice. For people who are willing to learn a bit of finance and manage their own affairs, using Vanguard (or a close competitor, like Fidelity) will ultimately result in the most wealth generated (the least given away to the financial industry). ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What kind news or information would make the price of a stock go up? ### Answer: There is a highly related question which is much easier to answer: what normally value-increasing news about a company would cause that company to fall in value in the public stock market? By answering that, we can answer your question by proxy. The answer to that question being: anything that makes investors believe that the company won't be able to maintain the level of profit. For example, let's say a company announces a 300% profit growth compared to the previous year. This should push the stock upwards; maybe not by 300%, but certainly by quite a bit. Let's also say that this company is in the business of designing, manufacturing and selling some highly useful gadget that lots of people want to buy. Now suppose that the company managed such an profit increase by one of: In scenario 1 (firing the engineering department), it is highly unlikely that the company will be able to come up with, manufacture and sell a Next Generation Gadget. Hence, while profit is up now, it is highly likely to go down in the months and years coming up. Because stock market investors are more interested in future profits than in past profits, this should push the value of the company down. In scenario 2 (selling off the machinery), the company may very well be able to come up with a Next Generation Gadget, and if they can manufacture it, they might very well be able to sell it. However, no matter how you slice it, the short-term costs for manufacturing either their current generation Gadget, or the Next Generation Gadget, are bound to go up because the company will either need to rent machinery, or buy new machinery. Neither is good for future profits, so the value of the company again should go down in response. In scenario 3 (their product getting a large boost), the company still has all the things that allowed them to come up with, produce and sell Gadgets. They also have every opportunity to come up with, manufacture and sell Next Generation Gadgets, which implies that future profits, while far from guaranteed, are likely. In this case, the probability remains high that the company can actually maintain a higher level of profit. Hence, the value of the company should rise. Now apply this to a slightly more realistic scenario, and you can see why the value of a company can fall even if the company announces, for example, record profits. Hence, you are looking for news which indicate a present and sustained raised ability to turn a profit. This is the type of news that should drive any stock up in price, all else being equal. Obviously, buyer beware, your mileage may vary, all else is never equal, nothing ever hits the average, you are fighting people who do this type of analysis for a living and have every tool known available to them, etc etc. But that's the general idea. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What kind news or information would make the price of a stock go up? ### Answer: You should not trade based on what news is just released, if you try you will be too slow to react most of the time. In many cases the news is already priced into the stock during the anticipation of the news being released. Other times as soon as the news is released the price will gap up or down in response to the news. Some times when you think that the news is good, like new record profits have been achieved, but the share price goes down instead of up. This may be due to the expectation of the record profits by analysts to be 20% more than last year, but the company only achieves 10% more than last year. So the news is actually seen as bad because, even though record profits, it hasn't met expectations. The same can happen in the other direction, a company may make a loss and the share price goes up. This may be because it was expected to make a 50% loss but only made a 20% loss due to cost cutting, so this is seen as a good thing and the price can shoot up, especially if it had been beaten down for months. An other example is when the Federal Reserve in the USA put up interest rates earlier this month. Some may have seen this as bad news and expected share prices to fall, but instead prices rallied. This was actually seen as good news, firstly because it had been expected for a long time, and secondly and more importantly because a small rise in interest rates after many years of near zero rates is a sign of the economy finally starting to improve. If the economy is improving, that means more people will have jobs, more people will be spending more money, companies will start to make higher revenues and start to expand, which means higher profits and higher share prices. A better way to trade is to have a written trading plan and use technical analysis to develop a set of buy and sell criteria that you follow to the tea. Then back test your trading plan through various market conditions to make sure you get a positive expectancy. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Weekly budgets based on (a variable) monthly budget ### Answer: I think the real problem here is dealing with the variable income. The envelope solution suggests the problem is that your brother doesn't have the discipline to avoid spending all his money immediately, but maybe that's not it. Maybe he could regulate his expenses just fine, but with such a variable income, he can't settle into a "normal" spending pattern. Without any savings, any budget would have to be based on the worst possible income for a month. This isn't a great: it means a poor quality of life. And what do you do with the extra money in the better-than-worst months? While it's easy to say "plan for the worst, then when it's better, save that money", that's just not going to happen. No one will want to live at their worst-case standard of living all the time. Someone would have to be a real miser to have the discipline to not use that extra money for something. You can say to save it for emergencies or unexpected events, but there's always a way to rationalize spending it. "I'm a musician, so this new guitar is a necessary business expense!" Or maybe the car is broken. Surely this is a necessary expense! But, do you buy a $1000 car or a $20000 car? There's always a way to rationalize what's necessary, but it doesn't change financial reality. With a highly variable income, he will need some cash saved up to fill in the bad months, which is replenished in the good months. For success, you need a reasonable plan for making that happen: one that includes provisions for spending it other than "please try not to spend it". I would suggest tracking income accurately for several months. Then you will have a real number (not a guess) of what an average month is. Then, you can budget on that. You will also have real numbers that allow you to calculate how long the bad stretches are, and thus determine how much cash reserve is necessary to make the odds of going broke in a bad period unlikely. Having that, you can make a budget based on average income, which should have some allowance for enjoying life. Of course initially the cash reserve doesn't exist, but knowing exactly what will happen when it does provides a good motivation for building the reserve rather than spending it today. Knowing that the budget includes rules for spending the reserves reduces the incentive to cheat. Of course, the eventual budget should also include provisions for long term savings for retirement, medical expenses, car maintenance, etc. You can do the envelope thing if that's helpful. The point here is to solve the problem of the variable income, so you can have an average income that doesn't result in a budget that delivers a soul crushing decrease in quality of living. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Weekly budgets based on (a variable) monthly budget ### Answer: If you know, approximately, the minimum he would get in a month, his budget should be planned based on this amount. In months where he gets more than this, the excess should be put aside. In really bad months where the income drops below the expected minimum, he can use the money put aside. After a year of putting money aside, he can plan to use and budget this for any other expenses. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Weekly budgets based on (a variable) monthly budget ### Answer: Try reading about budgeting. Make a list of all income coming in and all expenses going out. Eliminate any unnecessary expenses and try to increase income, which could include a part-time second job. Try to always put a portion of the income away as savings - try 10%, but if this is too hard to start with try saving at least 5% of the income. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Weekly budgets based on (a variable) monthly budget ### Answer: Developing self-discipline in his spending habits is a prerequisite for dealing with a (sometimes low) variable income. While it might feel like a roller coaster ride going from boom to bust, develop steady frugal spending habits will ease a lot of that pressure. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: 1.4 million cash. What do I do? ### Answer: For now, park it in a mix of cash and short term bond funds like the Vanguard Short Term Investment Grade fund. The short term fund will help with the inflation issue. Make sure the cash positions are FDIC insured. Then either educate yourself about investing or start interviewing potential advisors. Look for referrals, and stay away from people peddling annuities or people who will not fully disclose how they get paid. Your goal should be to have a long-term plan within 6-12 months. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: 1.4 million cash. What do I do? ### Answer: You can get an investment manager through firms like Fidelity or E*Trade to manage your account. It won't be someone dedicated exclusively to you, but you're in the range where they'd take you as a managed account customer. Another option would be to get a financial planner (CFP or something) help you to identify your needs and figure out what your investments portfolio should look like. This is not a whole lot of money, but is definitely enough to have an early retirement if managed and invested properly. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: 1.4 million cash. What do I do? ### Answer: I'm still recommending that you go to a professional. However, I'm going to talk about what you should probably expect the professional to be telling you. These are generalities. It sounds like you're going to keep working for a while. (If nothing else, it'll stave off boredom.) If that's the case, and you don't touch that $1.4 million otherwise, you're pretty much set for retirement and never need to save another penny, and you can afford to treat your girl to a nice dinner on the rest of your income. If you're going to buy expensive things, though - like California real estate and boats and fancy cars and college educations and small businesses - you can dip into that money but things will get trickier. If not, then it's a question of "how do I structure my savings?". A typical structure: Anywho. If you can research general principles in advance, you'll be better prepared. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: 1.4 million cash. What do I do? ### Answer: First--congratulations! I certainly wish I could create something worth buying for $1.4 million. In addition to what @duffbeer703 recommended, consider putting some of the money in Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS). I second the advice on staying away from annuities as well. @littleadv is right about certified financial planners. A good one will put those funds in a mix of investments that minimize your potential tax exposure. They will also look at whether you're properly insured. Research what is FDIC-insured (and what isn't) here. Since you're still making a six-figure income in your salaried job, be sure not to neglect things like contributing to your 401(k)--especially if it's a matching one. At your salary level, I think you're still eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA (taxable income goes in, so withdrawals are tax-free). A good adviser will know which options are best. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: 1.4 million cash. What do I do? ### Answer: At 1.4 Million, you can definately afford a professional advisor who would give you the best advice taking into account all your goals and risk appetite. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: 1.4 million cash. What do I do? ### Answer: Have you considered investing in real estate? Property is cheap now and you have enough money for several properties. The income from tenants could be very helpful. If you find it's not for you, you can also sell your property and recover your initial investment, assuming house prices go up in the next few years. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: 1.4 million cash. What do I do? ### Answer: For what it's worth, the distribution I'm currently using is roughly ... with about 2/3 of the money sitting in my 401(k). I should note that this is actually considered a moderately aggressive position. I need to phone my advisor (NOT a broker, so they aren't biased toward things which are more profitable for them) and check whether I've gotten close enough to retirement that I should readjust those numbers. Could I do better? Maybe, at higher risk and higher fees that would be likely to eat most of the improved returns. Or by spending far more time micromanaging my money than I have any interest in. I've validated this distribution using the various stochastic models and it seems to work well enough that I'm generally content with it. (As I noted in a comment elsewhere, many of us will want to get up into this range before we retire -- I figure that if I hit $1.8M I can probably sustain my lifestyle solely on the income, despite expected inflation, and thus be safely covered for life -- so this isn't all that huge a chunk of cash by today's standards. Cue Daffy Duck: "I'm rich! I'm wealthy! I'm comfortably well off!" -- $2M, these days, is "comfortably well off.") ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: 1.4 million cash. What do I do? ### Answer: you should invest in a range of stock market indexes. Ex : Dow jones, S&P500, Nasdaq and keep it there until you are ready to retire. I'm invested half in SLYV and SLYG (S&P600 small cap value and S&P600 small cap growth; Respectively). It brings on average between 8-13% a year (since 1971). This is not investment advice. Talk to your broker before doing this. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What effect would currency devaluation have on my investments? ### Answer: Stocks, gold, commodities, and physical real estate will not be affected by currency changes, regardless of whether those changes are fast or slow. All bonds except those that are indexed to inflation will be demolished by sudden, unexpected devaluation. Notice: The above is true if devaluation is the only thing going on but this will not be the case. Unfortunately, if the currency devalued rapidly it would be because something else is happening in the economy or government. How these asset values are affected by that other thing would depend on what the other thing is. In other words, you must tell us what you think will cause devaluation, then we can guess how it might affect stock, real estate, and commodity prices. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What effect would currency devaluation have on my investments? ### Answer: First, a clarification. No assets are immune to inflation, apart from inflation-indexed securities like TIPS or inflation-indexed gilts (well, if held to maturity, these are at least close). Inflation causes a decline in the future purchasing power of a given dollar1 amount, and it certainly doesn't just affect government bonds, either. Regardless of whether you hold equity, bonds, derivatives, etc., the real value of those assets is declining because of inflation, all else being equal. For example, if I invest $100 in an asset that pays a 10% rate of return over the next year, and I sell my entire position at the end of the year, I have $110 in nominal terms. Inflation affects the real value of this asset regardless of its asset class because those $110 aren't worth as much in a year as they are today, assuming inflation is positive. An easy way to incorporate inflation into your calculations of rate of return is to simply subtract the rate of inflation from your rate of return. Using the previous example with inflation of 3%, you could estimate that although the nominal value of your investment at the end of one year is $110, the real value is $100(1 + 10% - 3%) = $107. In other words, you only gained $7 of purchasing power, even though you gained $10 in nominal terms. This back-of-the-envelope calculation works for securities that don't pay fixed returns as well. Consider an example retirement portfolio. Say I make a one-time investment of $50,000 today in a portfolio that pays, on average, 8% annually. I plan to retire in 30 years, without making any further contributions (yes, this is an over-simplified example). I calculate that my portfolio will have a value of 50000 (1 + 0.08)^30, or $503,132. That looks like a nice amount, but how much is it really worth? I don't care how many dollars I have; I care about what I can buy with those dollars. If I use the same rough estimate of the effect of inflation and use a 8% - 3% = 5% rate of return instead, I get an estimate of what I'll have at retirement, in today's dollars. That allows me to make an easy comparison to my current standard of living, and see if my portfolio is up to scratch. Repeating the calculation with 5% instead of 8% yields 50000 * (1 + 0.05)^30, or $21,6097. As you can see, the amount is significantly different. If I'm accustomed to living off $50,000 a year now, my calculation that doesn't take inflation into account tells me that I'll have over 10 years of living expenses at retirement. The new calculation tells me I'll only have a little over 4 years. Now that I've clarified the basics of inflation, I'll respond to the rest of the answer. I want to know if I need to be making sure my investments span multiple currencies to protect against a single country's currency failing. As others have pointed out, currency doesn't inflate; prices denominated in that currency inflate. Also, a currency failing is significantly different from a prices denominated in a currency inflating. If you're worried about prices inflating and decreasing the purchasing power of your dollars (which usually occurs in modern economies) then it's a good idea to look for investments and asset allocations that, over time, have outpaced the rate of inflation and that even with the effects of inflation, still give you a high enough rate of return to meet your investment goals in real, inflation-adjusted terms. If you have legitimate reason to worry about your currency failing, perhaps because your country doesn't maintain stable monetary or fiscal policies, there are a few things you can do. First, define what you mean by "failing." Do you mean ceasing to exist, or simply falling in unit purchasing power because of inflation? If it's the latter, see the previous paragraph. If the former, investing in other currencies abroad may be a good idea. Questions about currencies actually failing are quite general, however, and (in my opinion) require significant economic analysis before deciding on a course of action/hedging. I would ask the same question about my home's value against an inflated currency as well. Would it keep the same real value. Your home may or may not keep the same real value over time. In some time periods, average home prices have risen at rates significantly higher than the rate of inflation, in which case on paper, their real value has increased. However, if you need to make substantial investments in your home to keep its price rising at the same rate as inflation, you may actually be losing money because your total investment is higher than what you paid for the house initially. Of course, if you own your home and don't have plans to move, you may not be concerned if its value isn't keeping up with inflation at all times. You're deriving additional satisfaction/utility from it, mainly because it's a place for you to live, and you spend money maintaining it in order to maintain your physical standard of living, not just its price at some future sale date. 1) I use dollars as an example. This applies to all currencies. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: What effect would currency devaluation have on my investments? ### Answer: My question boiled down: Do stock mutual funds behave more like treasury bonds or commodities? When I think about it, it seems that they should respond the devaluation like a commodity. I own a quantity of company shares (not tied to a currency), and let's assume that the company only holds immune assets. Does the real value of my stock ownership go down? Why? On December 20, 1994, newly inaugurated President Ernesto Zedillo announced the Mexican central bank's devaluation of the peso between 13% and 15%. Devaluing the peso after previous promises not to do so led investors to be skeptical of policymakers and fearful of additional devaluations. Investors flocked to foreign investments and placed even higher risk premia on domestic assets. This increase in risk premia placed additional upward market pressure on Mexican interest rates as well as downward market pressure on the Mexican peso. Foreign investors anticipating further currency devaluations began rapidly withdrawing capital from Mexican investments and selling off shares of stock as the Mexican Stock Exchange plummeted. To discourage such capital flight, particularly from debt instruments, the Mexican central bank raised interest rates, but higher borrowing costs ultimately hindered economic growth prospects. The question is how would they pull this off if it's a floatable currency. For instance, the US government devalued the US Dollar against gold in the 30s, moving one ounce of gold from $20 to $35. The Gold Reserve Act outlawed most private possession of gold, forcing individuals to sell it to the Treasury, after which it was stored in United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox and other locations. The act also changed the nominal price of gold from $20.67 per troy ounce to $35. But now, the US Dollar is not backed by anything, so how do they devalue it now (outside of intentionally inflating it)? The Hong Kong Dollar, since it is fixed to the US Dollar, could be devalued relative to the Dollar, going from 7.75 to 9.75 or something similar, so it depends on the currency. As for the final part, "does the real value of my stock ownership go down" the answer is yes if the stock ownership is in the currency devalued, though it may rise over the longer term if investors think that the value of the company will rise relative to devaluation and if they trust the market (remember a devaluation can scare investors, even if a company has value). Sorry that there's too much "it depends" in the answer; there are many variables at stake for this. The best answer is to say, "Look at history and what happened" and you might see a pattern emerge; what I see is a lot of uncertainty in past devaluations that cause panics. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: I have more than $250,000 in a US Bank account… mistake? ### Answer: First, what's the reason? Why do you have that much in cash at all - are you concerned about market volatility, are you planning to buy a house, do you have tens of millions of dollars and this is your slush fund? Are you a house flipper and this is part of business for you? If you need the money for short term use - ie, you're buying a house in cash next month - then as long as you're in a sound bank (one of the big national ones, for example) it seems reasonable. You can never predict a crash like 2008, but it seems unlikely that Chase or Citibank will go under in the next few weeks. If you like to have a cash position, then split the money among multiple banks. Buy a CD at one major bank with some of the amount. My in-laws have a trust which is partially invested in CDs, and they use multiple banks for this purpose to keep their accounts fully insured. Each separate bank you're covered up to 250k, so if you have $150k at Chase and $150k at a local bank, you're covered. (You're also covered in a much larger amount - up to 1MM potentially - if you are married, as you can have a separate account each for $250k and a joint account up to $500k.) Otherwise, why do you have that much in cash? You should invest it in something that will return more than inflation, at a minimum... Edit post-clarifications: $350k is around my level of 'Maybe, maybe not'. You're risking $100k on a pretty low risk (assuming this isn't a small local bank, and even those are pretty low still). In order to remove that risk you have to do something active - ie, take 100k somewhere else, open a new bank account, etc. - which isn't exactly the hardest thing in the world, but it does take effort. Is it worth the 0.001% chance (entirely made up) you lose the 100k? That's $10, if you agree with that risk chance. Up to you. It wouldn't be particularly hard, though, to open an account with an online bank, deposit $100k in there in a 6 month CD, then pay the IRS from your other account and when the 6 month CD expires take the cash back into your active account. Assuming you're not planning on buying a house in the next six months this should be fine, I'd think (and even then you'd still have $150k for the downpayment up front, which is enough to buy a $750k house w/o PMI). Additionally, as several commenters note: if you can reasonably do so, and your money won't be making significant interest, you might choose to pay your taxes now rather than later. This removes the risk entirely; the likely small interest you earn over 3 months may be similar to the amount you'd spend (mostly of your time, plus possibly actual expenses) moving it to another bank. If you're making 2% or 3% this may not be true, but if you're in a 0.25% account like my accounts are, $100k * 0.25% * 0.25 is $62.50, after all. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: I have more than $250,000 in a US Bank account… mistake? ### Answer: Yes. Although I imagine the risk is small, you can remove the risk by splitting your money amongst multiple accounts at different banks so that none of the account totals exceed the FDIC Insurance limit. There are several banks or financial institutions that deposit money in multiple banks to double or triple the effective insurance limit (Fidelity has an account like this, for example) ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: I have more than $250,000 in a US Bank account… mistake? ### Answer: If you were married the 250K protection can be expanded by the use of joint and individual accounts. A separate limit also exists for IRA accounts. With out those options you will have to put some additional money into another banking institution. This could be a bank or credit union. You have to be careful to make sure that any additional accounts have FDIC or NCUA (for Credit Unions) coverage. Some banking institutions try and turn customers to non-covered accounts that are either investment accounts or use a 3rd party to protect them. You could also use it to invest in US government bonds through Treasury direct. Though for just the few months that you will be in the excess position it probably isn't worth the hassle of treasury direct. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: I have more than $250,000 in a US Bank account… mistake? ### Answer: Many brokerage accounts for trading stocks are covered under SIPC insurance, which is up to $500,000 You can also have multiple checking and savings accounts with the $250,000 balance split up. You can also check your bank's capital ratio on the FDIC website, somewhere. The FDIC won't move on them unless it falls under 3% and even then FDIC will force them into receivership and sell them to a bigger bank before they go bust and experience losses of customer deposits. This is what mostly happened when hundreds of banks failed during the crisis from 2008-2010. There were very isolated events where customers actually lost their cash balances, and that was mostly because those customers had completely uninsured accounts. As that was the most extreme moment in US and global financial history, you should be able to judge risk with the aforementioned information in mind. You can stay in a cash balance easily and be fully insured. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: I have more than $250,000 in a US Bank account… mistake? ### Answer: Build a trust. I have a trust account under my name and 3 dependents, FDIC confirmed we're good to 1m. Then I have personal accounts for the 4 of us and a corp account, all at the same bank, each also insured. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Can expense ratios on investment options in a 401(k) plan contain part of the overall 401(k) plan fees? ### Answer: There are several things being mixed up in the questions being asked. The expense ratio charged by the mutual fund is built into the NAV per share of the fund, and you do not see the charge explicitly mentioned as a deduction on your 401k statement (or in the statement received from the mutual fund in a non-401k situation). The expense ratio is listed in the fund's prospectus, and should also have been made available to you in the literature about the new 401k plan that your employer is setting up. Mutual fund fees (for things like having a small balance, or for that matter, sales charges if any of the funds in the 401k are load funds, God forbid) are different. Some load mutual funds waive the sales charge load for 401k participants, while some may not. Actually, it all depends on how hard the employer negotiates with the 401k administration company who handles all the paperwork and the mutual fund company with which the 401k administration company negotiates. (In the 1980s, Fidelity Magellan (3% sales load) was a hot fund, but my employer managed to get it as an option in our plan with no sales load: it helped that my employer was large and could twist arms more easily than a mom-and-pop outfit or Solo 401k plan could). A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, my first ever IRA contribution of $2000 into a no-load mutual fund resulted in a $25 annual maintenance fee, but the law allowed the payment of this fee separately from the $2000 if the IRA owner wished to do so. (If not, the $25 would reduce the IRA balance (and no, this did not count as a premature distribution from the IRA). Plan expenses are what the 401k administration company charges the employer for running the plan (and these expenses are not necessarily peanuts; a 401k plan is not something that needs just a spreadsheet -- there is lots of other paperwork that the employee never gets to see). In some cases, the employer pays the entire expense as a cost of doing business; in other cases, part is paid by the employer and the rest is passed on to the employees. As far as I know, there is no mechanism for the employee to pay these expenses outside the 401k plan (that is, these expenses are (visibly) deducted from the 401k plan balance). Finally, with regard to the question asked: how are plan fees divided among the investment options? I don't believe that anyone other than the 401k plan administrator or the employer can answer this. Even if the employer simply adopts one of the pre-packaged plans offered by a big 401k administrator (many brokerages and mutual fund companies offer these), the exact numbers depend on which pre-packaged plan has been chosen. (I do think the answers the OP has received are rubbish). ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Can expense ratios on investment options in a 401(k) plan contain part of the overall 401(k) plan fees? ### Answer: I question the reliability of the information you received. Of course, it's possible the former 401(k) provider happened to charge lower expense ratios on its index funds than other available funds and lower the new provider's fees. There are many many many financial institutions and fees are not fixed between them. I think the information you received is simply an assumptive justification for the difference in fees. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How to pay bills for one month while waiting for new job? ### Answer: A traditional bank is not likely to give you a loan if you have no source of income. Credit card application forms also ask for your current income level and may reject you based on not having a job. You might want to make a list of income and expenses and look closely at which expenses can be reduced or eliminated. Use 6 months of your actual bills to calculate this list. Also make a list of your assets and liabilities. A sheet that lists income/expenses and assets/liabilities is called a Financial Statement. This is the most basic tool you'll need to get your expenses under control. There are many other options for raising capital to pay for your monthly expenses: Sell off your possessions that you no longer need or can't afford Ask for short term loan help from family and friends Advertise for short term loan help on websites such as Kijiji Start a part-time business doing something that you like and people need. Tutoring, dog-walking, photography, you make the list and pick from it. Look into unemployment insurance. Apply as soon as you are out of work. The folks at the unemployment office are willing to answer all your questions and help you get what you need. Dip into your retirement fund. To reduce your expenses, here are a few things you may not have considered: If you own your home, make an appointment with your bank to discuss renegotiation of your mortgage payments. The bank will be more interested in helping you before you start missing payments than after. Depending on how much equity you have in your home, you may be able to significantly reduce payments by extending the life of the mortgage. Your banker will be impressed if you can bring them a balance sheet that shows your assets, liabilities, income and expenses. As above, for car payments as well. Call your phone, cable, credit card, and internet service providers and tell them you want to cancel your service. This will immediately connect you to Customer Retention. Let them know that you are having a hard time paying your bill and will either have to negotiate a lower payment or cancel the service. This tactic can significantly reduce your payments. When you have your new job, there are some things you can do to make sure this doesn't happen again: Set aside 10% of your income in a savings account. Have it automatically deducted from your income at source if you can. 75% of Americans are 4 weeks away from bankruptcy. You can avoid this by forcing yourself to save enough to manage your household finances for 3 - 6 months, a year is better. If you own your own home, take out a line of credit against it based on the available equity. Your bank can help you with that. It won't cost you anything as long as you don't use it. This is emergency money; do not use it for vacations or car repairs. There will always be little emergencies in life, this line of credit is not for that. Pay off your credit cards and loans, most expensive rate first. Use 10% of your income to do this. When the first one is paid off, use the 10% plus the interest you are now saving to pay off the next most expensive card/loan. Create a budget you can stick to. You can find a great budget calculator here: http://www.gailvazoxlade.com/resources/interactive_budget_worksheet.html Note I have no affiliation with the above-mentioned site, and have a great respect for this woman's ability to teach people about how to handle money. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How to pay bills for one month while waiting for new job? ### Answer: The first thing I would try is to take out a loan from a local credit union. If you don't know of any that you're eligible for, start looking at the National Credit Union Administration's Credit Union Locator. You should be able to get a good rate since your credit is so good. If for whatever reason you can't get the credit union loan, I would open another credit card. Try hard to get the loan though, because using a credit card will most likely be significantly more expensive. If you can't cover your cash-only expenses with cash you already have, make sure that you can get cash from the card. For example, one of my cards regularly sends me checks that I could write to myself to get cash, but be careful with this strategy. Usually the interest is much higher than normal purchases. Either way, until you've paid off this emergency debt and built up an emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses, cut your expenses as much as possible. This Experian article has some good tips: ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How to pay bills for one month while waiting for new job? ### Answer: This is just a partial answer, but I believe the following observations are relevant: ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: How to pay bills for one month while waiting for new job? ### Answer: What is my best course of action, trying to minimize future debt? Minimizing expenses is the best thing you can do. The first step to financial independence is making do with less. Assuming I receive this $3500, am I better off using the bulk to pay off my credit cards, or should I keep as much cash available as I can? This would depend on the interest rate that is associated with the credit cards and the $3500. If the $3500 has a higher interest rate than your credit cards, then do not use any of it to pay your credit cards. Paying back the money you borrow hurts but it's the interest rate that does you in. If the interest rate for the $3500 is lower than the credit card interest, then placing some of it on the credit cards may be a wise course of action. But this depends on how long you are out of work. If you could be out of work for an extended period of time, I would recommend holding on to all of the funds. Note on saving I know this goes against the grain, but I would actually not recommend saving several months worth of funds (maybe one month though). Most employers offer some type of retirement savings account (401(k), Thrift Savings Plan, etc.). I contribute 5% to this fund instead of putting the money in savings. This is an especially effective strategy if your employer offers matching contributions such as mine. Because the divedends for a savings account are so low, it is not a wise place to store your money in the long run. If I had placed my Thrift Savings Plan contributions in a standard savings account, I would now be $12,000 poorer. In addition to this, most long term investment accounts allow you to withdraw the money early in case of emergency, such as being without work. (I also find it too temping to have huge amounts of funds on hand). ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Is it better for a public company to increase its dividends, or institute a share buyback? ### Answer: In some sense, the share repurchasing program is better if the company does not foresee the same profit levels down the road. Paying a dividend for several years and then suddenly not paying or reducing a dividend is viewed as a "slap in the face" by investors. Executing a share repurchase program one year and then not the next is not viewed as negatively. From an investor's standpoint, I would say a dividend is preferred over a share repurchase program for a similar reason. Typically companies that pay a dividend have been doing so for quite some time and even increasing it over time as the company increases profits. So, it can be assumed that if a company starts paying a dividend, it will do so for the long-run. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Is it better for a public company to increase its dividends, or institute a share buyback? ### Answer: I feel dividends are better for shareholders. The idea behind buy backs is that future profits are split between fewer shares, thereby increasing the value (not necessarily price -- that's a market function) of the remaining shares. This presupposes that the company then retires the shares it repurchases. But quite often buybacks simply offset dilution from stock option compensation programs. In my opinion, some stock option compensation is acceptable, but overuse of this becomes a form of wealth transfer -- from the shareholder to management. The opposite of shareholder friendly! But let's assume the shares are being retired. That's good, but at what cost? The company must use cashflow (cash) to pay for the shares. The buyback is only a positive for shareholders if the shares are undervalued. Managers can be very astute in their own sphere: running their business. Estimating a reasonable range of intrinsic value for their shares is a difficult, and very subjective task, requiring many assumptions about future revenue and margins. A few managers, like Warren Buffett, are very competent capital allocators. But most managers aren't that good in this area. And being so close to the company, they're often overly optimistic. So they end up overpaying. If a company's shares are worth, say, $30, it's not unreasonable to assume they may trade all around that number, maybe as low as $15, and as high as $50. This is overly simplistic, but assuming the value doesn't change -- that the company is in steady-state mode, then the $30 point, the intrinsic value estimate, will act as a magnet for the market price. Eventually it regresses toward the value point. Well, if management doesn't understand this, they could easily pay $50 for the repurchased stock (heck, companies routinely just continue buying stock, with no apparent regard for the price they're paying). This is one of the quickest ways to vaporize shareholder capital (overpaying for dubious acquisitions is another). Dividends, on the other hand, require no estimates. They can't mask other activities, other agendas. They don't transfer wealth from shareholders to management. US companies traditionally pay quarterly, and they try very hard not to cut the dividend. Many companies grow the dividend steadily, at a rate several times that of inflation. The dividend is an actual cash expenditure. There's no GAAP reporting constructs to get in the way of what's really going on. The company must be fiscally conservative and responsible, or risk not having the cash when they need to pay it out. The shareholder gets the cash, and can then reinvest as he/she sees fit with available opportunities at the time, including buying more shares of the company, if undervalued. But if overvalued, the money can be invested in a better, safer opportunity. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Is it better for a public company to increase its dividends, or institute a share buyback? ### Answer: I would prefer a dividend paying company, rather than share appreciation. And I would prefer that the dividends increase over time. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Does the sale of personal items need to be declared as income on my income taxes? ### Answer: Books would be considered Personal-Use Property according to Canada's income tax laws. The most detailed IT I was able to find is IT-332R, which says: GAINS AND LOSSES 3. A gain on the disposition of personal-use property is normally a capital gain within the meaning of paragraph 39(1)(a). Where the property is a principal residence, the gain > is computed under paragraph 40(2)(b) or (c). 4. Under subparagraph 40(2)(g)(iii), a loss on a disposition of personal-use property, other than listed personal property, is deemed to be nil. [...] This part of the bulletin indicates that a gain might be considered a capital gain - not income. However, you don't get to book a loss as a capital loss. This is the first hint that your book sale - which is actually an exempt capital loss - shouldn't go on your tax return unless it's one of the "listed" items: LISTED PERSONAL PROPERTY 7. Listed personal property is defined in paragraph 54(e) to mean personal-use property that is all or any portion of, or any interest in or right to, any (a) print, etching, drawing, painting, sculpture, or other similar work of art, (b) jewellery, (c) rare folio, rare manuscript, or rare book, (d) stamp, or (e) coin. So unless you're selling rare books, the disposition (sale) of them is essentially exempt as income, regardless of whether you sold it at a profit or at a loss. If it is rare, then you might be able to consider it a capital loss, which doesn't help you much unless you had other capital gains, but you can carry over capital losses to future years. There's also a newer IT related to hobbies and "collecting" items, IT-334R2. This one says: 11. In order for any activity or pursuit to be regarded as a source of income, there must be a reasonable expectation of profit. Where such an expectation does not exist (as is the case with most hobbies), neither amounts received nor expenses incurred are included in the income computation for tax purposes and any excess of expenses over receipts is a personal or living expense, the deduction of which is denied by paragraph 18(1)(h). On the other hand, if the hobby or pastime results in receipts of revenue in excess of expenses, that fact is a strong indication that the hobby is a venture with an expectation of profit; if so, the net income may be taxable as income from a business. The current version of IT-504, Visual Artists and Writers, discusses the concept of "a reasonable expectation of profit" in greater detail. Where a hobby consists of collecting personal-use property or listed personal property, dispositions should be accounted for as described in the current version of IT-332, Personal-Use Property. (emphasis mine) In other words, if it's not the type of thing where you'd make a tax deduction when you bought it in the first place, then you clearly don't need to report it as income when you sell it. Just to be absolutely clear here: The fact that you are selling them at a loss is not actually what's important here. What's important is that, if the books aren't collectibles, then you would have had no expectation of profit. If you did have that expectation then you could have made a tax deduction when you first purchased them. So in this case, it is probably not necessary for you to report the income; however, for the benefit of other readers, in some cases you might need to report it under "other income" or book it as a capital gain/loss, depending on what those personal items are and whether or not you made a net profit. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Does the sale of personal items need to be declared as income on my income taxes? ### Answer: I doubt it. In the States you would only owe tax if you sold such an item at a profit. "garage sales" aren't taxable as they are nearly always common household items and sale is more about clearing out one's attic/garage than about profit. Keep in mind, if I pay for a book, and immediately sell it for the same price, there's no tax due, why would tax be due if I sell for a loss? ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are stock index fund likely to keep being a reliable long-term investment option? ### Answer: When you are putting your money in an index fund, you are not betting your performance against other asset classes but rather against competing investments withing the SAME asset class. The index fund always wins due to two factors: diversity, and lower cost. The lower cost attribute is essentially where you get your performance edge over the longer run. That is why if you look at the universe of mutual funds (where you get your diversification), very few will have beaten the index, assuming they have survived. -Ralph Winters ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are stock index fund likely to keep being a reliable long-term investment option? ### Answer: For index funds to be a poor investment, they would have to perform worse than your alternative investments. In this case, we'll assume the alternative to be the individual stocks. Obviously, it must be possible to pick just the winning stocks and avoid the losing stocks, raising your rate of return... however, several studies have shown that individuals are horrible at picking winners. We let our emotions, are biases, and are suppositions get in the way. You could literally throw a dart, but then you either win big or lose big. Picking the fund evens that out for you, so you don't win or lose big, but just get a consistently boring (yet consistently good) return. If you have a lot of time to put into the research, and are confident in your ability to pick winning stocks, then you can do better than the index funds. Otherwise, sticking with the index fund is probably a smart choice. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are stock index fund likely to keep being a reliable long-term investment option? ### Answer: Stock index funds are likely, but not certainly, to be a good long-term investment. In countries other than the USA, there have been 30+ year periods where stocks either underperformed compared to bonds, or even lost value in absolute terms. This suggests that it may be an overgeneralization to assume that they always do well in the long term. Furthermore, it may suggest that they are persistently overvalued for the risk, and perhaps due for a long-term correction. (If everybody assumes they're safe, the equity risk premium is likely to be eaten up.) Putting all of your money into them would, for most people, be taking an unnecessary risk. You should cover some other asset classes too. If stocks do very well, a portfolio with some allocation to more stable assets will still do fairly well. If they crash, a portfolio with less risky assets will have a better chance of being at least adequate. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are stock index fund likely to keep being a reliable long-term investment option? ### Answer: I think you need a diversified portfolio, and index funds can be a part of that. Make sure that you understand the composition of your funds and that they are in fact invested in different investments. ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are stock index fund likely to keep being a reliable long-term investment option? ### Answer: The idea behind investing in index funds is that you will not under perform the market but also at the same time not over perform against the market either. It is meant for those (majority of the investing population) who do not or cannot invest more time in actively researching different investment options. So even considering for a moment that the yields on the index funds will drop significantly in the future, since the fund is supposed to be replication of the whole market itself, the market too can be assumed to be giving significantly lower future yields. In my opinion the question that you ask is confusing/contradictory because, its like pegging the fund performance to an avg and then asking if it will be higher or lower in the future. But rather its always going to be exactly the average, even if the absolute yields turn higher or lower ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Are stock index fund likely to keep being a reliable long-term investment option? ### Answer: A diversified portfolio (such as a 60% stocks / 40% bonds balanced fund) is much more predictable and reliable than an all-stocks portfolio, and the returns are perfectly adequate. The extra returns on 100% stocks vs. 60% are 1.2% per year (historically) according to https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/saving-investing/model-portfolio-allocations To get those average higher stock returns, you need to be thinking 20-30 years (even 10 years is too short-term). Over the 20-30 years, you must never panic and go to cash, or you will destroy the higher returns. You must never get discouraged and stop saving, or you will destroy the higher returns. You have to avoid the panic and discouragement despite the likelihood that some 10-year period in your 20-30 years the stock market will go nowhere. You also must never have an emergency or other reason to withdraw money early. If you look at "dry periods" in stocks, like 2000 to 2011, a 60/40 portfolio made significant money and stocks went nowhere. A diversified portfolio means that price volatility makes you money (due to rebalancing) while a 100% stocks portfolio means that price volatility is just a lot of stress with no benefit. It's somewhat possible, probably, to predict dry periods in stocks; if I remember the statistics, about 50% of the variability in the market price 10 years out can be explained by normalized market valuation (normalized = adjusted for business cycle and abnormal profit margins). Some funds such as http://hussmanfunds.com/ are completely based on this, though a lot of money managers consider it. With a balanced portfolio and rebalancing, though, you don't have to worry about it very much. In my view, the proper goal is not to beat the market, nor match the market, nor is it to earn the absolute highest possible returns. Instead, the goal is to have the highest chance of financing your non-financial goals (such as retirement, or buying a house). To maximize your chances of supporting your life goals with your financial decisions, predictability is more important than maximized returns. Your results are primarily determined by your savings rate - which realistic investment returns will never compensate for if it's too low. You can certainly make a 40-year projection in which 1.2% difference in returns makes a big difference. But you have to remember that a projection in which value steadily and predictably compounds is not the same as real life, where you could have emergency or emotional factors, where the market will move erratically and might have a big plunge at just the wrong time (end of the 40 years), and so on. If your plan "relies" on the extra 1.2% returns then it's not a reasonable plan anyhow, in my opinion, since you can't count on them. So why suffer the stress and extra risk created by an all-stocks portfolio? ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: In the UK what are citizens legally obliged to do (in order to not be fined) ### Answer: Edited to add an important one that I forgot, because I don't have a TV myself. You need to: That's really about it, unless you're employing people or running a business turning over more than £81,000 per year (or doing one of a number of relatively unlikely things that require specific paperwork, such as owning a horse or farm animal (but not a dog or cat or similar)). It's not a bureaucratic country. None of those things except the driving licence/car tax/MOT test/car insurance will be a police matter if omitted, but you could be fined for them (although it's vanishingly unlikely that you'd be fined for not registering to vote and for jury service). You don't need to understand the law before being on a jury, because it's the judge's job to ensure that the jury understand the law as it relates to the case in front of them. A few pieces of paperwork jargon for you: ###end
Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request. ### Question: Why are Rausch Coleman houses so cheap? Is it because they don't have gas? ### Answer: In northwest Arkansas, most of the houses this company offers do cost about 90 - 110 dollars per square foot. The exceptions use the Whitney plan, which has the following design features (and/or problems) which happen to save the builder a lot of money: One very nice feature is the U-shaped stairway in the center of the house. It is easy to find, and has an angled landing. It might be a bit narrow, though. Does the builder bother to put rebar in the brickwork? Arkansas is in earthquake country. What are the floors like? Is the first floor a slab concrete floor with vinyl flooring (and/or carpet on thin pad) immediately above the concrete? Is the second floor bouncy, due to using long-span joists of code-minimum size? Does the builder bother to make the rear windows look as nice as the front windows? As mentioned earlier, the builder only bothers to have one side window. Where to learn more: Fernando Pagés Ruiz is a Nebraska homebuilder who wrote a book on Building the Affordable House: Trade Secrets for High-Value, Low-Cost Construction (The Taunton Press, 2005). He has also written many articles in Fine Homebuilding, including "Building Affordable Houses". True North Consulting specializes in helping builders eliminate waste and "value-engineer" their designs. True North often works with Tim Garrison, the self-proclaimed "builder's engineer". ###end

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