You didn't mention a country, and precise rules will be different from country to country. The usual rules are:  Shares that you didn't sell don't count. If you buy shares, there is no taxable gain until you sell them.  When you sell shares, it is assumed that the shares you are selling are the last ones that you bought.  In many places, if you sell shares, and buy the same shares back very quickly, the tax office may have rules to pretend you never sold the shares. For example in the UK, where a good amount of profit per year is tax free, you can't just sell enough shares to stay below your tax limit and then buy them back to take profits out of the shares you own.  In your case, you made $30 profit on every share you sold, and that is what you will be taxed for in most countries. According to the rules of your country.


There isn't a general reason why you should not be able to do this, but it is hard to answer without knowing the specifics of your variable annuity.   I would start by calling Hartford and asking them how to go about rolling your money to a different IRA and what fees would be assessed.


> Ideas have no inherit value, so they can't be cheap or expensive  I really don't know where you get this idea. This comment shows some ignorance of how business works, and doesn't give me much confidence in the value of your upcoming suggestions.


If your credit card's interest rates are not more than your 35% (25% for your tax bracket and 10% penalty), there is no way I would consider this. If you boil it down to the numbers, you are asking whether you should borrow money at a 35% interest to pay off your credit cards. I would say Absolutely Not! $20K of auto loans which equal $1100 a month in payments. Also we purchased a car for me a year ago which is 375 a month. Probably shouldn't have done it but the car I was driving was on it's last leg. Where is the $805 difference going? You've got to make sacrifices, and right now you are leaning towards sacrificing your future for your present. It would take years of Large Contributions to make up for the money lost in early withdraw penalties and taxes, not to mention the loss in growth these accounts would have been earning if left alone. This plan is similar to saying you want to spend $60k to pay off $40k. Don't do it! If it was me, I'd get a couple $3,000 cars. That should free up at least $600 a month and reduces your debt by $14k. I'd also pull my child out of private school unless there is really no public option, which based upon your refusal to consider selling your house, I image there's a decent public school near your neighborhood. That's an extra $500 a month. Next, I'd sell anything that I could through craigslist or garage sales. I'd get on a written budget and the envelope system, to make sure you are really as 'tight' as you are presenting in your question. Hating Debt is a great motivator, but you shouldn't let it lead you to make even bigger financial mistakes. I think you started doing well and got promotions and did what almost everyone else does; you increased your standard of living. No matter what you choose to do, you will never build your retirement or have financial stability without living on a budget and spending less than you make.  Maybe attacking this debt the old-fashioned way will give you the tools you need to gain financial stability long-term. Updated to address calculations Assuming 18% CC interest and 10% IRA Growth. And always spending at least $1500 on CC debt until it's gone, then $1,500 back into retirement after that. If you continued paying $1,500 a month the credit cards would take about 71 months to pay off. In that time, you'd spend a total of $106,500 on the debt.  Your plan would spend $60k upfront to reduce the debt by $40k. The new balance of $25k would be paid off in 20 months and would cost $30k total. Total cost on your plan would be $90k. Your plan pays $16.5k less in total, and it would be 51 months quicker. However, you would have no retirement at age 40.  If you then saved $1500 a month in retirement, you would catch up to the $70k loss in your IRA at age 49 (I'm including growth in both accounts to calculate this). If you had instead just left the IRA alone, you'd be done with the CCs at age 44. If after age 44, you put in $1500 month into retirement your plan would never catch up to this plan. It seems to me that cashing out your IRA is a 5 year detour.


This would be better posted in /r/personalfinance. But since I'm here, you need to seriously consider selling anything you can possibly part with and pick up a second and/or third job. I hope you didn't charge that whiteboard purchase.


"Figured it out.  Vertical spreads significantly reduce the amount of ""buying power"" on the account needed vs. buying / selling pure calls / puts.  So even though the transaction fees may more double in some instances, it may be worth it in order to operate with pricier underlying instruments. Spreads are also considered ""defined risk"" trades where both the profit and loss are capped per how the spreads are setup.  This is compared to single calls / puts where either the upside or the downside can be unlimited.  So for times when the expected move is not as pronounced, a spread may be a better fit depending on environment and other factors."


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"Yes, you must file North Carolina AND South Carolina income tax. If you live in one state and work in another, the income is potentially taxed twice. Most states give a credit for taxes paid to the other state. Often you pay the tax in the state where you worked, and then if the tax rate in the state where you live is higher, you pay the difference. But the details depend on the tax laws of the two states involved. I'm not an expert on either Carolina's tax laws. Start by getting the forms and instructions from both states and see what they say. Or if you're using tax software, see if it handles this case. If someone else on here knows the specifics of the tax laws for the Carolinas, I gladly yield. :-) Many states establish ""reciprocity agreements"" with other states, usually the neighboring states, that generally say that if the state you live in and the state you work in are both party to the agreement, then you only pay tax in the state you live in. This simplifies things a lot. Unfortunately, neither North Carolina nor South Carolina have such agreements with each other or with any other state."


"It does depend, but in the effort to be efficient we usually just add back Depreciation, Amortization, and Stock Based Comp.  [Although adding back SBC is hotly debated](https://www.wallstreetprep.com/blog/stock-based-compensation-treatment-dcf-almost-always-wrong/), we usually still add it back at my firm.  Keep in mind I'm in M&A, so we don't really concern ourselves with creating the ""purest"" valuation...  * EBIAT * Add Depreciation * Add Amort * Add SBC * Subtract Capex * Add the decrease in NWC * Subtract the increase in NWC * = FCFF"


If you ever own a home (which sounds doubtful), or your parents sell their home after 20 years of ownership,  you will appreciate those capital gains taxes.   They don't just apply to the rich.     Now go,  shoo, scram.... back to your dorm room, you filthy college freshman.


I see some merit in the other answers, which are all based on the snowball method. However, I would like to present an alternative approach which would be the optimal way in case you have perfect self-control. (Given your amount of debt, most likely you currently do not have perfect self-control, but we will come to that.) The first step is to think about what the minimum amount of emergency funds are that you need and to compare this number with your credit card limit. If your limits are such that your credit cards can still cover potential emergency expenses, use all of the 4000$ to repay the debt on the loan with the higher interest rate. Some answer wrote that Others may disagree as it is more efficient to pay down the 26%er. However, if you pay it all of within the year the difference only comes to $260. This is bad advice because you will probably not pay back the loan within one year. Where would you miraculously obtain 20 000$ for that? Thus, paying back the higher interest loan will save you more money than just 260$. Next, follow @Chris 's advice and refinance your debt under a lower rate. This is much more impactful than choosing the right loan to repay. Make sure to consult with different banks to get the best rate. Reducing your interest rate has utmost priority! From your accumulated debt we can probably infer that you do not have perfect self-control and will be able to minimize your spending/maximize your debt repayments. Thus, you need to incentivize yourself to follow such behavior. A powerful way to do this is to have a family member or very close friend monitor your purchase and saving behavior. If you cannot control yourself, someone else must. It should rather be a a person you trust than the banks you owe money.


Why would it not make more sense to invest in a handful of these   heavyweights instead of also having to carry the weight of the other   450 (some of which are mostly just baggage)? First, a cap-weighted index fund will invest more heavily in larger cap companies, so the 'baggage' you speak of does take up a smaller percentage of the portfolio's value (not that cap always equates to better performance). There are also equal-weighted index funds where each company in the index is given equal weight in the portfolio. If you could accurately pick winners and losers, then of course you could beat index funds, but on average they've performed well enough that there's little incentive for the average investor to look elsewhere.  A handful of stocks opens you up to more risk, an Enron in your handful would be pretty devastating if it comprised a large percentage of your portfolio. Additionally, since you pay a fee on each transaction ($5 in your example), you have to out-perform a low-fee index fund significantly, or be investing a very large amount of money to come out ahead. You get diversification and low-fees with an index fund.


This refers to the shape of the yield curve. The greater the spread, the steeper the yield curve (difference between short term rates and long term rates).   The shape of the yield curve has huge impacts on bank earnings, as they borrow short term (deposits) and lend long term (loans). The greater the spread the bigger their margins.


I am not required to hold any company stock. I also have an ESOP plan carrying a similar number of shares in company stock.  So if it were to be sold, what would the recommendation be to replace it? I can move the shares into any option shown, and have quite a few others.  Not dealing with any huge amounts, just a 4.5% contribution over three years (so far).


You sold all shares? The potential wash sale effect goes away after 30 days from the dividend date. Selling all shares of a stock where a wash existed effectively negates the wash and you can take the loss.


"CDS spreads have little to do with the already issued debt itself. CDS spreads broadcast ""riskiness"" for current and future market participants.  Since existing debt is constantly bought and sold, higher CDS spreads mean the existing debt becomes ever more illiquid. It means that those who do hold that debt cannot price it accurately as a result of said illiquidity and cannot sell it without taking a haircut.  It also means that new debt cannot be issued without the existing debt taking a haircut or being defaulted on because at least part of the new debt would ostensibly be used to pay off the old debt.   If shares are used to securitize debt than a fall in those shares puts into question the ability to fully service that debt. The collateral is the balance sheet of the debtor.   MF global doesn't issue their own currency. They cannot devalue their debt."


"The point is that government controlled institutions could do the lending instead. Right now banks are able to lend and create money out of ""thin air"" by loaning more than they have. These banks make lots of money doing this. What if that money was used to lower taxes instead of line the pockets of old banking families?  It is not totally ludicrous"


"To understand the Twist, you need to understand what the Yield Curve is.  You must also understand that the price of debt is inverse to the interest rate. So when the price of bonds (or notes or bills) rises, that means the current price goes up, and the yield to maturity has gone down.  Currently (Early 2012) the short term rate is low, close to zero. The tools the fed uses, setting short term rates for one, is exhausted, as their current target is basically zero for this debt. But, my mortgage is based on 10yr rates, not 1 yr, or 30 day money. The next step in the fed's effort is to try to pull longer term rates down. By buying back 10 year notes in this quantity, the fed impacts the yield at that point on the curve. Buying (remember supply/demand) pushes the price up, and for debt, a higher price equates to lower yield. To raise the money to do this, they will sell short term debt. These two transactions effectively try to ""twist"" the curve to pull long term rates lower and push the economy."


"Many years ago, I worked on software that had to print the date, payee, and amounts on pre-printed checks.  Other than the MICR line (which had a particular placement with respect to the bottom edge and required a particular font in a particular point size), most aspects of the check layout and format were up to the particular check provider. Then there was a desire to start using optical character recognition to further automate check handling.  A standard came out, that most checks I see now seem to follow.  The standard dictated the exact dollar sign glyph to be printed to the left of the amount box.  This glyph was used by the OCR to locate the amount.  There were specific tolerances for where you could print/write the amount relative to that dollar sign.  There were also some requirements for the box containing the amount to have some clearance from the noisy backgrounds pre-printed on many checks.  But what font you used inside the amount box was, as far as I could tell, unspecified.  After all, customers could always hand-write the amount. Interestingly, the part of the check where you spell out the amount is known as the ""legal amount.""  If the amount in numerals and the amount in words don't match, the spelled version takes precedence, legally.  (The theory being that it's easier to doctor the numerals to change the apparent value of the check than it is to change the words.)  I always found it ironic that the layout standard to enable OCR standard was focused on reading the numerals rather than the legal amount.  OCR has come a long way since then, so I wouldn't be surprised if, nowadays, both amounts are read, even on hand-written checks. A little search shows that current (voluntary) standards are put out by the ANSI X9 group."


Since the 2 existing answers addressed the question as asked. Let me offer a warning. You have 10,000 options at $1. You've worked four years and the options are vested. The stock is worth $101 when you get a job offer (at another company) which you accept. So you put up $10k and buy the shares. At this moment, you put up $10K for stock worth $1.01M, a $1M profit and ordinary income.  You got out of the company just in time. For whatever reason, the stock drops to $21 and at tax time you realize the $1M gain was ordinary income, but now the $800k loss is a capital loss, limited to $3000/yr above capital gains. In other words you have $210k worth of stock but a tax bill on $1M.  This is not a contrived story, but a common one from the dotcon bubble. It's a warning that 'buy and hold' has the potential to blow up in your face, even if the shares you buy retain some value.


Long term gains are taxed at 15% maximum.  Losses, up to the $3K/yr you cited, can offset ordinary income, so 25% or higher, depending on your income. Better to take the loss that way. With my usual disclaimer: Do not let the tax tail wag the investing dog.


Your dividend should show up in one of a few methods: (1) Cash in your trading account (2) A check mailed to you (3) A deposit to a linked bank account (4) As additional new shares in the stock, as the result of a DRIP setup.


Edit3: Regarding the usefulness of the bare number itself, it is not useful unless, for example, an employer uses that average in the computation of how many options the employer grants to the employee as part of the compensation paid. One of my employers used just such an average. What is far more common is to use two or more moving averages, of different periods, plotted on a chart.  My original response continues below... Assuming there are 252 trading days a year, the following chart does what you have done but with a moving average: AAPL on Stockcharts.com  Edit: BTW, I looked up the number of Federal holidays, there are 9. The average year has 365.2422 days. 365.2422 × 5/7 = 260.8873. Subtract 9 and you get 251.8873 trading days in the average year. So 252 is a better number for the SMA than 250 if you want to average a year.  Edit2: Here is the same chart with more than one average included: AAPL chart w/indicators


"Your confusion is that that answerer is not comparing a $5500 Roth IRA contribution to a $5500 Traditional IRA contribution. Rather, they were comparing a $3600 Roth IRA contribution to a $5000 Traditional IRA contribution. It is fairer to do such a comparison because (assuming that this person's marginal tax rate is 28%) both of them start with the same amount of pre-tax money ($5000 of pre-tax money is equivalent to $3600 of post-tax money in 28% tax bracket). As a result, both a $5000 Traditional IRA contribution and a $3600 Roth IRA contribution will leave you with the same amount of cash in your bank account at the end (after taxes are filed). That's why it's a fair comparison. And when you do such a comparison, it will mathematically indeed always turn out to the same result for Traditional and Roth if the contribution and withdrawal are at the same tax rate. On the other hand, if you were to compare a $5000 Roth IRA contribution to a $5000 Traditional IRA contribution, even though it's the same nominal dollar figure, you would be comparing apples and oranges because in one case it's a post-tax dollar amount and in the other case a pre-tax dollar amount. The Roth IRA contribution actually leaves you with less in your bank account at the end (after taxes are filed) than the same nominal dollar amount of Traditional IRA contribution. So you are comparing an (effectively) ""larger"" Roth IRA contribution to a ""smaller"" Traditional IRA contribution. Of course the ""larger"" contribution gets more tax advantages over time, and so the result looks better. Note that since Traditional IRA contribution and Roth IRA contributions share the same nominal dollar amount annual limit, but we know that $1 of Roth IRA contributions is effectively larger than $1 of Traditional IRA contributions, that means that Roth IRA contributions has an effectively ""higher"" annual limit than Traditional IRA contributions. For example, a $5500 Traditional IRA contribution is equivalent to a $3960 Roth IRA contribution for someone in the 28% bracket; whereas a $5500 Roth IRA contribution would be equivalent to a $7638.89 Traditional IRA contribution, which you can't do. So it's not possible to do a fair comparison when you go near the limit. If it is important to you to tax-advantage the ""largest"" amount of money, then that is a reason to go for Roth IRA, since it has an effectively higher annual limit. You cannot replicate the tax advantage of a $5500 Roth IRA contribution with a Traditional IRA contribution, because that money in pre-tax dollars is beyond the limit of a Traditional IRA contribution."


In many ESPP programs (i.e. every one I've had the opportunity to be a part of in my career), your purchase is at a discount from the lower of the stock prices at the start and end of the period. So a before-tax 5% return is the minimum you should expect; if the price of the stock appreciates between July 1 and December 31, you benefit from that gain as well. More concretely: Stock closes at $10/share on July 1, and $11/share on December 31. The plan buys for you at $9.50/share. If you sell immediately, you clear $1.50/share in profit, or a nearly 16% pre-tax gain. If the price declines instead of increases, though, you still see that 5% guaranteed profit. Combine that with the fact that you're contributing every paycheck, not all at once at the start, and your implied annual rate of return starts to look pretty good. So if it was me, I'd pay the minimum on the student loan and put the excess into the ESPP.


"If it's an active stock, the Yahoo message boards are inhabited by some clueful people. But the signal-to-noise ratio is relatively low, and there are a lot of ""interesting"" characters who inhabit the boards as well."


Are you being paid through a limited company or an umbrella company ? Are you self employed If not what they are doing is illegal. If you are being paid a salary, then the employer has to contribute their part of National Insurance. I believe they are treating you as self employed, hence asking you to generate invoices. Check your contract wordings properly. Or get help from Citizens Advice. Call them or visit their local office. Or else do call up HMRC.  But if you are invoicing them, I would assume you are self employed and you have to do your self assessment. Get in contact with HMRC and ask them to generate your Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR). THey will send you the UTR and using this you can fill your tax returns.  It looks like cumbersome now, but it isn't so. You can do it yourself, I do mine. Or at the end of the financial year, get an accountant to do the returns for you, probably should charge you £100-£150. Keep all your invoices, bills, bank statements safely. This is some help from HMRC website


Because it makes money for all parties, and because the general public is reluctant to any change. Who should have an interest to change that? People. And they have no say in it. You can actually do a lot without paper checks nowadays (I only use one per year for car taxes, as they do not accept anything else), but many people shake their heads about even online banking and would never trust it.


Is your question academic curiosity or are you thinking of buying bonds?  Be aware that bond interest rates are near all-time lows, and if interest rates were to rise, the prices of bonds could fall.  Those buying bonds today are taking unusually large risk of capital loss.


Wrong sub. You're looking for /r/personalfinance   >will freezing just that credit report hurt them in any way?  No, but it will help prevent an identity thief from wrecking your credit.   >Can I still get a loan with only one of the three frozen?  Depends, but yes. You should freeze your credit at all 5 credit bureaus for personal financial protections.


"When the buyout happens, the $30 strike is worth $10, as it's in the money, you get $10 ($1000 per contract). Yes, the $40 strike is pretty worthless, it actually dropped in value today. Some deals are worded as an offer or intention, so a new offer can come in. This appears to be a done deal. From Chapter 8 of CHARACTERISTICS AND RISKS OF STANDARDIZED OPTIONS - FEB 1994 with supplemental updates 1997 through 2012; ""In certain unusual circumstances, it might not be possible for uncovered call writers of physical delivery stock and stock index options to obtain the underlying equity securities in order to meet their settlement obligations following exercise. This could happen, for example, in the event of a successful tender offer for all or substantially all of the outstanding shares of an underlying security or if trading in an underlying security were enjoined or suspended. In situations of that type, OCC may impose special exercise settlement procedures. These special procedures, applicable only to calls and only when an assigned writer is unable to obtain the underlying security, may involve the suspension of the settlement obligations of the holder and writer and/or the fixing of cash settlement prices in lieu of delivery of the underlying security. In such circumstances, OCC might also prohibit the exercise of puts by holders who would be unable to deliver the underlying security on the exercise settlement date. When special exercise settlement procedures are imposed, OCC will announce to its Clearing Members how settlements are to be handled. Investors may obtain that information from their brokerage firms."" I believe this confirms my observation. Happy to discuss if a reader feels otherwise."


"Not at all. The Millionaire Next Door offers a book full of anecdotes on couples that earned money and saved their way to being millionaires. I believe about 1/3 or so had businesses, but the rest were employed and simply saved wisely.  $3860/yr saved for 40 years at 8% will return $1M. Adjust the numbers to hit a million sooner or reach a higher goal.  The Author might be accused of survey bias. This is the phenomenon of studying the final results without looking at the pool of people years prior. Little Adv' is correct that while 1/3 of millionaires may have gotten that way by starting a business, that says nothing about how many businesses need to start to find the one millionaire that resulted.  I view the book more as a lesson of ""spend beneath your means"" and focus on his anecdotes of the dual income couples who saved their way to this status. If you are in no rush, get this book from your library and spend the few hours to read it. In response to my Friend Dilip's comment, MoneyChimp offers a good look at compound growth (for the S&P) over time. The 40 years ending 2012, which obviously include the 'lost decade,' returned a CAGR of 9.78%. Not to be confused with the average 11.43%. When I pull the numbers for each year's return and apply an annual $3860 deposit, the 40 years ends with $2.2M. A 1% fee, or 1% lower return resulted in $1.6M.  If 8% isn't conservative, of course you can run the numbers you wish. The 40 years contained both a lost decade and two great ones. Will the 3 decades post-lost average to get the Quad-Decade period to 8%+? I don't know."


No. You will be penalized for taking your 25k out so you will only get like 18k out. Plus you can slowly pay back the credit cards but you can't build up the 401k as fast. You can also try a service that can negotiate the amount down for you (so you would only pay 16k or something).   Protect the 401k.


You could do a voluntary repossession. While a repossession never looks good on your credit a voluntary repossession is slightly better. A good friend of mine had a situation like this about 11 years ago.  She was in an accident didn't have replacement coverage insurance and was left with a large chunk of debt on a wrecked vehicle that she then rolled into a new car. In the end it came down to the simple fact that she could not afford a car loan on a vehicle that never was worth as much as she owed.  Since the car was worth less than the loan she really couldn't sell it to fix the problem. She called and arranged a voluntary repossession.  She stopped making payments, and parked the car till they came and picked it up.  (Took about 4 months and 20 phone calls from her for them to come get it.)  In the mean time, I purchased her a much older used but decent car for a couple thousand and she paid me back over the next year.  The total she paid me back was less than the money she would have paid in the 4 months it took them to come get the car.  In fact by the time they picked up the car she had paid back over half on the car I bought her. Yes the repossession did stay on her credit for seven years but during that time she was approved for a mortgage, cellphone plans, and credit cards etc.  Therefore I don't know that it did that much damage to her credit. When her car was sold at auction by the repo company it sold for much less than the loan amount. Technically she was on the hook for the remaining amount. The outstanding balance on the loan was then sold several times to several different collection agencies. Over the years since then she has gotten letters every now and then demanding she pay the amount off, she ignores these.  Most of these letters even included very favorable terms (full forgiveness for 20% of the amount)  At this point the statute time has run out on the debt so there is no recourse for anyone to collect from her. The statute time limit varies from state to state.  Some states it is as long as 10 years in others it is as short as 3 years. What this means is that counting from the date of the repossession, incurrance of debt, last payment, or agreement to pay whichever is later if the statute period has elapsed and the lender/collector has not filed a suit against you by the end of the period then they have effectively abandoned the debt and cannot collect.   Find out what that period of time is in your state.  If you can avoid the collection agencies till that period runs out you are scott free. You just have to make sure that you do not ever send them any money, or agree to pay them anything as this resets the calendar. If you do not want to wait for the calendar to run out if you wait long enough you will probably be offered favorable terms to pay only a fraction of the remaining amount, you just have to wait it out. Note, I normally would not endorse anyone not paying off their debts.  However sometimes it is necessary and it is for this type of situation that we have things like this and bankruptcy.


I believe it.  I'm in IT in a company that I've been trying desperately to push to go 100% digital.  We're being cockblocked by several board members and one of our accreditation firms is saying it's a no-go.  The accreditation firm still makes us respond to letters by filling them in with a typewriter.  It's not on special paper or even any sort of letterhead.  It doesn't make any sense.  Our HR director that was fired several months ago was solely advertising job openings in newspapers.  They were hiring people that don't even know how to copy and paste or add two cells in excel.  Then they wonder why important billing gets fucked up after these people handle those documents.


Let's break this into two parts, the future value of the initial deposit, and the future value of the payments: D(1 + i)n For the future value of the payments A((1+i)n-1) / i) Adding those two formulas together will give you the amount of money that should be in your account at the end.  Remember to make the appropriate adjustments to interest rate and the number of payments.  Divide the interest rate by the number of periods in a year (four for quarterly, twelve for monthly), and multiply the number of periods (p) by the same number.  Of course the monthly deposit amount will need to be in the same terms. See also: Annuity (finance theory) - Wikipedia


Your best approach is to assess rent levels in your local area for offices of a similar size. You need to take into account all the usuals - amenities, parking, etc, just as if your home-office was provided by a third-party. Get your $/sq ft and work out the monthly amount. With this figure, you need to then work out what % of it you can charge. If the space is used exclusively for the business, charge 100%. If it's used about half the time, charge 50%, etc. I would strongly advise you to do two things - 1. make sure your accountant and your attorney help you get this squared away. 2. document everything about how you arrived at the cost. Nothing fancy, but dates, realtors, addresses, $/sq foot. A simple table will do. By doing these two things, if the IRS should come around to chat, you should be covered.


Lets assume you put the max of 5000 per year in a Roth IRA.  You have your home and all other debt paid off, and your investment earns 10%, a few points below the market average.  You will have $822,470 at 65, 1005K at 67 that you can draw on tax free.  It is a fairly tidy sum and should keep you from working as the greeter in WalMart. This kind of return should be expected from most mutual funds, and you could invest some time in reading about how to pick good returning funds.  An index fund, which shadows a market index, should have that kind of return.  And yes that is 10% per year.  In investing it is about momentum. I too write software for a living, and would suggest you should be able to contribute about double that amount and still be comfortable.  That would set you up for a pretty comfortable post-work life style. You understand the value of building passive income.  Traditionally that is accomplished through dividends of reliable companies, but are now accomplished a variety of ways.  Keep in mind the way you are asking this question opens you to many scams.


You actually don't need an accountant. They'll be expensive and at this early a stage unnecessary - what you need is a good bookkeeper who can keep track of what comes in and what goes out. You'll need that to know if you're making money or not and to show the government at the end of the year. Get a copy of QuickBooks and pick up Bookkeeping for Dummies to at least get a sense for what's going on.  Have you registered as a sole proprietorship? Make sure you have a vendor's permit so you can legally sell your services in Ontario. You may need to collect HST, in which case you'll need to register for an HST # and submit it on a quarterly basis.   Whatever you do, don't fuck with the government - they can freeze your bank accounts to get money they're owed. You need to keep money on hand to pay for any taxes you might owe on the business, ESPECIALLY if it's a sole proprietorship where you'll be tempted to treat profit as income. You don't want to end up with nothing in the bank at the end of the year and $40k owing to the CRA.  Get a separate bank account - don't mix personal and business, it's messy.  Expense everything you reasonably can.


"Your bank's fund is not an index fund.  From your link: To provide a balanced portfolio of primarily Canadian securities that produce income and capital appreciation by investing primarily in Canadian money market instruments, debt securities and common and preferred shares. This is a very broad actively managed fund.  Compare this to the investment objective listed for Vanguard's VOO: Invests in stocks in the S&P 500 Index, representing 500 of the largest U.S. companies. There are loads of market indices with varying formulas that are supposed to track the performance of a market or market segment that they intend to track.  The Russel 2000, The Wilshire 1000, The S&P 500, the Dow Industrial Average, there is even the SSGA Gender Diversity Index.  Some body comes up with a market index.  An ""Index Fund"" is simply a Mutual Fund or Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that uses a market index formula to make it's investment decisions enabling an investor to track the performance of the index without having to buy and sell the constituent securities on their own.  These ""index funds"" are able to charge lower fees because they spend $0 on research, and only make investment decisions in order to track the holdings of the index. I think 1.2% is too high, but I'm coming from the US investing world it might not be that high compared to Canadian offerings.  Additionally, comparing this fund's expense ratio to the Vanguard 500 or Total Market index fund is nonsensical. Similarly, comparing the investment returns is nonsensical because one tracks the S&P 500 and one does not, nor does it seek to (as an example the #5 largest holding of the CIBC fund is a Government of Canada 2045 3.5% bond). Everyone should diversify their holdings and adjust their investment allocations as they age.  As you age you should be reallocating away from highly volatile common stock and in to assets classes that are historically more stable/less volatile like national government debt and high grade corporate/local government debt.  This fund is already diversified in to some debt instruments, depending on your age and other asset allocations this might not be the best place to put your money regardless of the fees. Personally, I handle my own asset allocations and I'm split between Large, Mid and Small cap low-fee index funds, and the lowest cost high grade debt funds available to me."


If you do not need the money in the 401k right away and are interested in avoiding penalties on the amounts accumulated, roll over the 401k monies into a Roth IRA (your contributions and growth thereof) and a Traditional IRA (company match a d growth thereof). You can choose to take out money from the Traditional IRA not as a lump sum (penalties in addition to lots of income tax in the year of taking the distribution) but as series of equal payments over your life expectancy (no penalty but US income tax is still due each year). Be aware that he who rides a tiger cannot dismount: if you opt for this method, you must take a distribution every year whether you need the money or not, and the amount of the distribution must match what the IRS wants you to take exactly; excess withdrawals lead to penalties etc.  Publication 590 says Annuity. You can receive distributions from your traditional IRA that are part of a series of substantially equal payments over your life (or your life expectancy), or over the lives (or the joint life expectancies) of you and your beneficiary, without having to pay the 10% additional tax, even if you receive such distributions before you are age 59.5. You must use an IRS-approved distribution method and you must take at least one distribution annually for this exception to apply. The “required minimum distribution method,” when used for this purpose, results in the exact amount required to be distributed, not the minimum amount. Be aware that, depending on your country of residence/citizenship, you may be required to close all foreign accounts within x months of return, and if so, this stratagem will not work.


"The major pros tend to be: The major cons tend to be: Being in California, you've got state income tax to worry about as well.  It might be worth using some of that extra cash to hire someone who knows what they're doing to handle your taxes the first year, at least.  I've always maxed mine out, because it's always seemed like a solid way to make a few extra dollars.  If you can live without the money in your regular paycheck, it's always seemed that the rewards outweighed the risks.   I've also always immediately sold the stock, since I usually feel like being employed at the company is enough ""eggs in that basket"" without holding investments in the same company. (NB: I've participated in several of these ESPP programs at large international US-based software companies, so this is from my personal experience.  You should carefully review the terms of your ESPP before signing up, and I'm a software engineer and not a financial advisor.)"


Obviously, we're assuming the company can pay it back, which is why you may only have five to twenty policies via the most renowned five to twenty companies at one time.  *edit: Besides, an immediate boost in purchasing power is pretty advantageous (from my last post)-- *(if someone invests $500 of capital at a 5% interest rate for a one year bond, they immediately get back a note with the purchasing power of $525, which they can spend right away if they wish (if inflation is going to happen anyway, why not beat it to the punch?)).*


You can get audited for anything Business owners are more likely to get audited than people filing 1040-EZ's for their simplistic income tax obligation. According to HR Block I hope you enjoy the process where you explain the source of your earnings


In most cases, the brand on the card, eg Visa or MasterCard, is a middleman. The company processes the transaction, transferring $xx from the bank to the seller, and telling the bank to debit the buyer's account. The bank is at risk, not the company transacting the purchase. What's interesting is that American Express started as both. My first Amex card, issued in 1979 (long expired, but in my box of memorabilia) had no bank. American Express offered a card that offered no extended credit, it was pay in full each month. Since then, Amex started offering extended credit, i.e. with annual interest, and minimum payments, and more recently, offering transaction processing for banks which take on the credit risk, essentially becoming very similar to MasterCard and Visa.


"You need to negotiate with your broker to allow you to do more exotic order types.  One in particular I recommend is a ""hidden"" aka iceberg order.  You enter two numbers.  The first is the number of shares for your entire order, the second is the amount that will be displayed in the book (this is the tip of the iceberg, the remaining shares are hidden below the surface). The maker/taker rule applies as follows: The amount displayed will receive the rebate for providing liquidity.  The amount hidden will be charged the fee for taking liquidity. Example: You want to sell 10,000 shares total.  You enter a hidden order for 10,000 shares with 1,000 displayed.  On the level 2 screen traders will see 1,000 shares, and those shares will stay displayed there until the entire order is filled.  You receive a rebate for 1,000 shares, you pay the brokerage fee for 9,000 shares. Also, like one of the previous posters mentioned, only trade high liquidity stocks.  Large market cap companies with high volume.  This is why day traders love Tesla, Amazon, Netflix, etc. Large market cap, high volume, and high volatility.  Easy to catch $10+ moves in price. Hope this helps Happy trading"


Congratulations on seeing your situation clearly! That's half the battle. To prevent yourself from going back into debt, you should get rid of any credit cards you have and close the accounts. Just use your debit card. Your post indicates you're not the type to splurge and get stuff just because you want it, so saving for a larger purchase and paying cash for it is probably something you're willing to do. Contrary to popular belief, you can live just fine without a credit card and without a credit score. If you're never going back into debt, you don't need a credit score. Buying a house is possible without one, but is admittedly more work for you and for the underwriters because they can't just ask the FICO god to bless you -- they have to actually see your finances, and you have to actually have some. (I realize many folks will hate this advice, but I am actually living it, and life is pretty good.) If you're in school, look at how much you spend on food while on campus. $5-$10/day for lunch adds up to $100-$200 over a month (M-F, four weeks). Buy groceries and pack a lunch if you can. If your expenses cannot be reduced anymore, you're going to have to get a job. There is nothing wrong with slowing down your studies and working a job to get your income up above your expenses. It stinks being a poor student, but it stinks even more to be a poor student with a mountain of debt. You'll find that working a job doesn't slow you down all that much. Tons of students work their way through school and graduate in plenty of time to get a good job.  Good luck to you! You can do it.


"Good for you! At your age, you should definitely consider investing some of your hard-earned and un-needed money in stocks with the long-term goal of having your retirement funded. The time horizon that you'd have would be vastly superior to that of millions of others, who will wait until their thirties or even forties to begin investing in stocks, giving your compound interest prospects the extra time anyone needs for a spectacular vertical incline in your later years. Make sure to sign up to automatically re-invest the dividend payouts of your stocks, please. (If you don't already know how being young and investing well in your early years is more powerful than starting out ten to twenty years later, do a little research on ""Compound Interest""). Make sure you monitor your investments. Being young means you have time to correct your investments (sell and buy other assets) if the businesses you initially selected are no longer good investments."


The partition is more or less ok, the specific products are questionable. Partition. It's usually advised to keep 2-3 monthly income liquid. In your case, 40-45 kEUR is ca. 24-27 kEUR netto, i.e. 2000-2250 a month, thus, the range is 4-7 kEUR, as you are strongly risk-averse then 7k is still ok. Then they propose you to invest 60% in low-risk, but illiquid and  15% in middle or high risk which is also ok. However, it doesn't have to be real estate, but could be. Specifics. Be aware that a lot (most?) of the banks (including local banks, they are, however, less aggressive) often sell the products that promise high commissions to them (often with a part flowing directly to your client advisor). Especially now, when the interest rates are low, they stand under extra pressure. You should rather switch to passively managed funds with low fees. If you stick up to the actively managed funds with their fees, you should choose them yourself.


"The company was paying ""only"" $1 a share in dividends, compared to $10 a share in earnings. That is a so-called payout ratio of 10%, which is low. A more normal payout ratio would be 40%, something like $4 a share. If a $13 stock had a $4 dividend, the dividend yield would be about 30%, which would be ""too high,"" meaning that the price would go up to drive down the resulting yield. Even $1 a share on a $13 stock is a high dividend of about 7%, allowing for appreciation to say, the $20-$25 range. Graham was a great believer in the theory that management should pay out ""most"" of its earnings in dividends. He believed that by holding dividends so far below earnings, the company was either being ""stingy,"" or signalling that the $10 a share of earnings was unsustainable. Either of these would be bad for the stock. For instance, if $1 a share in dividends actually represented a 40% payout ratio, it would signal management's belief that they could normally earn only $2.50 a year instead of $10."


Firstly 795 is not even. Secondly - generally you would pay tax on the sale of the 122 shares, whether you buy them back or not, even one minute later, has nothing to do with it. The only reason this would not create a capital gains event is if your country (which you haven't specified) has some odd rules or laws about this that I, and most others, have never heard of before.


Shhh...  I have an idea.  Hey let's you and me - the only owners of the public gold mines we don't mine fully to keep prices high - appear to make more gold available by making a swap agreement tied with pricing deals designed to have the affect of keeping prices high.  Then maybe the government won't demand the public gold mines back that they only sold to us with the caveat we actually mine them fully.


"I am not a Financial Advisor, but I an tell you what I did in exactly this situation - which is pretty much what you are proposing.  I put money into the offset savings account until I had only a small amount of mortgage ""balance"" left (less than a year's worth of mortgage payments), then I set it up so that each month I did the transfer from the offset savings pot into the mortgage itself. This depleted the offset savings in line with the mortgage debt, and the interest on the two balanced out almost to zero. This was self-sustaining and meant that I kept the same margin owing over time (i.e. if I was in this situation for 5 years, for the whole 5 years I would effectively have 1 year remaining on the mortgage). Meanwhile, since I now didn't have any mortgage outgoings from my regular income, I put any spare money into ISA savings. No need to withdraw money from the mortgage to move to the ISA. The benefits of this (as opposed to just paying off the damn mortgage already) were that I kept the full liquidity of the mortgage amount - I could withdraw all the offset savings pot if I wanted to, although I would then have to have funded the mortgage payments differently, and as that liquidity went down over time I was building up other savings in parallel. It worked well for me. It almost doesn't matter what the offset mortgage rate is since you are effectively paying it off by keeping the offset savings pot so high."


Not seeing Marginal Revenue = Marginal Cost, nor the components of GDP.   Marginal thinking is one of the cornerstones of economics and just calculating.   And calculating GDP is more important I would say than just a mention of interest rates, monetary policy or fiscal policy.


Actually the Fidelity hypothetical example (with same marginal tax rates) is super misleading.  They are putting the money saved up front from the traditional 401k in to at taxable account. Why? If you put the actual money used for the Roth that would be saved into traditional 401k they look the same no matter the timeline (with a hypothetical unchanging tax rate). Check this out.  So there are only two things to consider when choosing traditional vs roth.


"If you're a US citizen, money earned while in the US is sourced to the US. So you can't apply FTC/FEIE to the amounts attributable to the periods of your work while in the US even if it is a short business trip. Tax treaties may affect this. Most tax treaties have explicit provisions to exclude short trips from the sourcing rules, however due to the ""saving clause"" these would probably not apply to you if you're a US citizen - you'll need to read the relevant treaty. Your home country should allow credit for the US taxes paid on the US-sourced income, and the double-taxation avoidance provision should apply in this case. The technicalities depend on your specific country. You would probably not just remove it from the taxable income, there probably is a form similar to the US form 1116 to calculate the available credit."


For the record, now that 2011 is here we know that the capital gains tax rate didn't change. Congress extended it for two more years. This shows the uncertainty in trying to maximize earnings based on future changes to the tax code.


Why is that? With all the successful investors (including myself on a not-infrequent basis) going for individual companies directly, wouldn't it make more sense to suggest that new investors learn how to analyse companies and then make their best guess after taking into account those factors? I have a different perspective here than the other answers.  I recently started investing in a Roth IRA for retirement. I do not have interest in micromanaging individual company research (I don't find this enjoyable at all) but I know I want to save for retirement. Could I learn all the details? Probably, as an engineer/software person I suspect I could. But I really don't want to. But here's the thing: For anyone else in a similar situation to me, the net return on investing into a mutual fund type arrangement (even if it returns only 4%) is still likely considerably higher than the return on trying to invest in stocks (which likely results in $0 invested, and a return of 0%). I suspect the overwhelming majority of people in the world are more similar to me than you - in that they have minimal interest in spending hours managing their money. For us, mutual funds or ETFs are perfect for this.


I think an IOPT is a Dutch warrant.  Someone else might understand what this is.


If you have the expired check in hand and take it back to the bank that issued it to you, I'd think they could do something for you.  (I'd hope they would, anyway.) But automatically?  I don't think so.


If it were me, I would get a new checking account at potentially a new bank, but certainly with a new account number. As Nathan said, there is no need for you to cross her name off the check, but potentially, she could use those checks, or have new checks printed to use.  Having her name on the check makes it seem like she is a legitimate signer on the account. In the end you can fight and possibly win with your bank that they should not have accepted a check signed by her as payment, but why bother?  Also you will potentially alienate any merchant that accepts a check by her.  It is a total mess that can be relatively easily solved with very little money ($25-$40 for check reprinting) proactively.   Close the account, shred any existing checks, and move on.   Heck you can actually make money by doing this and receiving a bonus.  Check Nerd Wallet for current bank promotions.


> Fourth, even if they ever did go bankrupt, since you already used up your share of their bonds, the other firms can't blame you for that, because you honestly went about using them with no knowledge that the firm would go bankrupt ever.   What if you had knowledge it would, and did this as a scam?  The mere possibility of the above would limit the third-hand user's willingness to accept bonds from unknown companies. It's that simple.


Amazing. I applaud your clear an concise way of explaining such a complex matter. I personally have been baffled by many financial matters and you sir have made it all the more clearer. I am sincerely grateful that you have spent the time to write this, thank you.


ETFs are a type of investment, not a specific choice. In other words, there are good ETFs and bad. What you see is the general statement that ETFs are preferable to most mutual funds, if only for the fact that they are low cost. An index ETF such as SPY (which reflects the S&P 500 index) has a .09% annual expense, vs a mutual fund which average a full percent or more.  sheegaon isn't wrong, I just have a different spin to offer you. Given a long term return of say even 8% (note - this question is not a debate of the long term return, and I purposely chose a low number compared to the long term average, closer to 10%) and the current CD rate of <1%, a 1% hit for the commission on the buy side doesn't bother me. The sell won't occur for a long time, and $8 on a $10K sale is no big deal. I'd not expect you to save $1K/yr in cash/CDs for the years it would take to make that $8 fee look tiny. Not when over time the growth will overshaddow this.  One day you will be in a position where the swings in the market will produce the random increase or decrease to your net worth in the $10s of thousands. Do you know why you won't lose a night's sleep over this? Because when you invested your first $1K, and started to pay attention to the market, you saw how some days had swings of 3 or 4%, and you built up an immunity to the day to day noise. You stayed invested and as you gained wealth, you stuck to the right rebalancing each year, so a market crash which took others down by 30%, only impacted you by 15-20, and you were ready for the next move to the upside. And you also saw that since mutual funds with their 1% fees never beat the index over time, you were happy to say you lagged the S&P by .09%, or 1% over 11 year's time vs those whose funds had some great years, but lost it all in the bad years.  And by the way, right until you are in the 25% bracket, Roth is the way to go. When you are at 25%, that's the time to use pre-tax accounts to get just below the cuttoff.  Last, welcome to SE.    Edit - see sheegaon's answer below. I agree, I missed the cost of the bid/ask spread. Going with the lowest cost (index) funds may make better sense for you.  To clarify, Sheehan points out that ETFs trade like a stock, a commission, and a bid/ask, both add to transaction cost. So, agreeing this is the case, an indexed-based mutual fund can provide the best of possible options. Reflecting the S&P (for example) less a small anual expense, .1% or less.


The 1.09% is per year, not per month, so you will be getting about 1K per year just for sitting around on your backside. Some important things. It is almost certain that you can earn a better interest rate elsewhere, if you are prepared to leave your 100K untouched. For example, even in Natwest you can earn 3.2% over the next year if you buy a fixed rate bond. For 100K that is certainly worth looking at. Or maybe put 90K in a fixed rate bond and leave 10K in an instant access account. Taxes should not be a problem since you can earn around 7K before you start paying taxes. However be aware that in the UK most bank accounts deduct tax at source. That means they send the tax they think you should have paid to the government, and you then have to claim it back from them. Accounts for young people may work differently. Ask your bank.


"Here, check out my updated reply above - I added an example that might clarify some of your questions?  Also, to answer the ""to whom"" question, you're signaling those things to the market. By trading at what you believe to be fair value, you're helping the market price all of those ""events"" contained in a futures contract."


"What percent of my salary should I save? is tightly coupled with its companion, What size “nest egg” should my husband and I have, and by what age? Interestingly, Mr.Christer's answer, 10%, is the number that plugs into the equation that I reference. Jay's 25X rule is part of this. We start with the assumption that one's required income at retirement will be 80% of their pre-retirement income. That's high by some observations, low by others. A quick look at the expenses that go away in retirement - The above can total 35-40% It would be great if it ended there, but there are costs that go up. The above extra spending is tough to nail down, after all, you knew what you spent, and what's going away, but the new items? Crapshoot. (For non-native speakers - this refers to a game with dice, meaning a random event) Again, referencing Mr Christer's answer ""financial planners whom you could pay to give you a very accurate number,"" I'm going to disagree with that soundbyte. Consider, when retirement is 30 years away, you don't know much If I can offer an analogy. I once had the pleasure of hearing Jim Lovell (The astronaut played by Tom Hanks in Apollo 13) give a speech. He said that for the first 99% of the trip to the moon, they simply aimed ahead of their target, never directly at the moon. In this manner, I suggest that with so many variables, accuracy is impossible, it's a moving target. Start young, take the 10% MrC offered, and keep saving. Every few years, stop and see if you are on target, if not, bump the number a bit.  Better to turn 50 and find that after a good decade you've reached your number and can drop your savings to a minimum, perhaps just to capture a 401(k) match, than to turn 50 and realize you've undersaved and need to bump to an unsustainable level. Imagine planning ahead in 1999. You've seen 2 great decades of returns, and even realizing that 18%/yr couldn't continue, you plan for a below average 7%, this would double your 1999 balance in 10 years. Instead you saw zero return. For a decade. In sum, when each variable has an accuracy of +/-50% you are not going to combine them all and get a number with even 10% accuracy (as if MrC were wrong, but the pro would tell you 11% is right for you?). This is as absurd as packaging up a bunch of C rated debt, and thinking that enough of this paper would yield a final product that was AAA."


If you buy a stock and it goes up, you can sell it and make money. But if you buy a stock and it goes down, you can lose money.


I'm assuming you are in the US here. From a tax perspective you don't need to take any action to start a business and deduct expenses.  If you have earned income coming from a source other than a W2 paying job, then you have a business.  On your taxes, this means you file a schedule C (which is where you will deduct business expenses) and schedule SE (which computes how much FICA tax you will owe on your business income).  When we talk about starting a business, we usually are talking about creating a corporation or LLC.  No particular tax advantage to that in your case, but there could be liability advantages, if you are concerned about that. If you file losses consistently year after year, the IRS might try and classify your business as a hobby.  That's what you should worry about.  I suppose incorporating might reduce the probability of that, but it might not.  Keep good records in case you need to argue with the IRS.  If you do have to argue with them, they will want to ensure that you only used the laptop and internet for your business.  That's a big if, but it's a potentially scary one. IRS Guidelines on hobby vs. business income Note: besides deducting expenses, another advantage of self-employment is opening a solo-401(k) or SEP or SIMPLE IRA.  These potentially allow you to set aside a lot more money than the typical IRA and 401(k) arrangement.  Thing is, you have to have a lot more earned income to really take advantage of them, but let's hope your app gets you there.


"There are two distinct questions that may be of interest to you. Both questions are relevant for funds that need to buy or sell large orders that you are talking about. The answer depends on your order type and the current market state such as the level 2 order book. Suppose there are no iceberg or hidden orders and the order book (image courtesy of this question) currently is:  An unlimited (""at market"") buy order for 12,000 shares gets filled immediately: it gets 1,100 shares at 180.03 (1,100@180.03), 9,700 at 180.04 and 1,200 at 180.05. After this order, the lowest ask price becomes 180.05 and the highest bid is obviously still 180.02 (because the previous order was a 'market order'). A limited buy order for 12,000 shares with a price limit of 180.04 gets the first two fills just like the market order: 1,100 shares at 180.03 and 9,700 at 180.04. However, the remainder of the order will establish a new bid price level for 1,200 shares at 180.04. It is possible to enter an unlimited buy order that exhausts the book. However, such a trade would often be considered a mis-trade and either (i) be cancelled by the broker, (ii) be cancelled or undone by the exchange, or (iii) hit the maximum price move a stock is allowed per day (""limit up""). Funds and banks often have to buy or sell large quantities, just like you have described. However they usually do not punch through order book levels as I described before. Instead they would spread out the order over time and buy a smaller quantity several times throughout the day. Simple algorithms attempt to get a price close to the time-weighted average price (TWAP) or volume-weighted average price (VWAP) and would buy a smaller amount every N minutes. Despite splitting the order into smaller pieces the price usually moves against the trader for many reasons. There are many models to estimate the market impact of an order before executing it and many brokers have their own model, for example Deutsche Bank. There is considerable research on ""market impact"" if you are interested. I understand the general principal that when significant buy orders   comes in relative to the sell orders price goes up and when a   significant sell order comes in relative to buy orders it goes down. I consider this statement wrong or at least misleading. First, stocks can jump in price without or with very little volume. Consider a company that releases a negative earnings surprise over night. On the next day the stock may open 20% lower without any orders having matched for any price in between. The price moved because the perception of the stocks value changed, not because of buy or sell pressure. Second, buy and sell pressure have an effect on the price because of the underlying reason, and not necessarily/only because of the mechanics of the market. Assume you were prepared to sell HyperNanoTech stock, but suddenly there's a lot of buzz and your colleagues are talking about buying it. Would you still sell it for the same price? I wouldn't. I would try to find out how much they are prepared to buy it for. In other words, buy pressure can be the consequence of successful marketing of the stock and the marketing buzz is what changes the price."


The answer is generally yes.  Depending on your circumstances and where you live, you may be able to   get help through a federal, state, or lender program that:


"The same author wrote in that article “they have a trillion? Really?” But that’s what happens when ten   million dollars compounds at 2% over 200 years. Really? 2% compounded over 200 years produces a return of 52.5X, multiply that by 10M and you have $525 million. The author is off by a factor of nearly 2000 fold. Let's skip this minor math error.  The article is not about 401(k)s. His next line is ""The whole myth of savings is gone."" And the article itself, ""10 Reasons You Have To Quit Your Job In 2014"" is really a manifesto about why working for the man is not the way to succeed long term. And in that regard, he certainly makes good points. I've read this author over the years, and respect his views. 9 of the 10 points he lists are clear and valuable. This one point is a bit ambiguous and falls into the overgeneraluzation ""Our 401(k) have failed us."" But keep in mind, even the self employed need to save, and in fact, have similar options to those working for others. I have a Solo 401(k) for my self employment income.  To be clear, there are good 401(k) accounts and bad. The 401(k) with fees above 1%/yr, and no matching, awful. The 401(k) I have from my job before I retired has an S&P index with .02%/yr cost. (That's $200/$million invested per year.) The 401(k) is not dead."


HCE is defined as being above 120k$ or in the top 20 % of the company. The exact cutoff point might be different for each company. Typically, only the base salary is considered for that, but it's the company's (and 401(k)-plan's) decision. The IRS does not require HCE treatment; the IRS requires that 401(k) plans have a 'fair' distribution of usage between all employees. Very often, employees with lower income save (over-proportionally) less in their 401(k), and there is a line where the 401(k) plan is no longer acceptable to the IRS. HCE is a way for companies to ensure this forced balance; by limiting the amount of 401(k) savings for HCE, the companies ensure that the share of all contributions by below-HCE is appropriate. They will calculate/define the HCE cutoff point so that the required distribution is surely achieved. One of the consequences is that when you move over the HCE cutoff point, you can suddenly save a lot less in your 401(k). Nothing can be done about that. See this IRS page: https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employee/definitions Highly Compensated Employee - An individual who: Owned more than 5% of   the interest in the business at any time during the year or the   preceding year, regardless of how much compensation that person earned   or received, or For the preceding year, received compensation from the   business of more than $115,000 (if the preceding year is 2014;   $120,000 if the preceding year is 2015 or 2016), and, if the employer   so chooses, was in the top 20% of employees when ranked by   compensation.


"Everything I have read here sounds good except for one small detail.  My bank does indeed identify ATM rebates as taxable income.  They, in fact, seemed to have begun this practice several years ago but somehow forgot to send 1099's to their own customers despite sending them to the IRS.  This ended up costing me nearly $2,000 in back taxes to cover 2012, 2013 and 2014.  My bank sent a letter of apology and will cover any penalties and interest accrued ""due to their error"". No one from the bank ever told me that these rebates could be taxable when I signed on for this special checking account for which I pay a fee each month to continue.  So what is the truth, is it taxable income or not?  I have now paid for the 2012 and 2013 tax years for something I still say is not income.  I am about to pay the 2014 tax bill and will have to pay another $850 or so due to this ruling by my bank.  How can this be right??"


"It is called ""Credit card installments"" or ""Equal pay installments"", and I am not aware of them being widely used in the USA. While in other countries they are supported by banks directly (right?), in US you may find this option only in some big stores like home improvement stores, car dealerships, cell phone operators (so that you can buy a new phone) etc. Some stores allow 0% financing for, say, 12 months which is not exactly the same as installments but close, if you have discipline to pay $250 each month and not wait for 12 months to end. Splitting the big payment in parts means that the seller gets money in parts as well, and it adds risks of customer default, introduces debt collection possibility etc. That's why it's usually up to the merchants to support it - bank does not care in this case, from the bank point of view the store just charges the same card another $250 every month. In other countries banks support this option directly, I think, taking over or dividing the risk with the merchants. This has not happened in US. There is a company SplitIt which automates installments if stores want to support it but again, it means stores need to agree to it. Here is a simple article describing how credit cards work: https://www.usbank.com/credit-cards/how-credit-cards-work.html In general, if you move to US, you are unlikely to be able to get a regular credit card because you will not have any ""credit history"" which is a system designed to track each customer ability to get & pay off debt. The easiest way to build the history - request ""secured credit card"", which means you have to give the bank money up front and then they will give you a credit card with a credit limit equal to that amount. It's like a ""practice credit card"". You use it for 6-12 months and the bank will report your usage to credit bureaus, establishing your ""credit score"". After that you should be able to get your money back and convert your secured card into a regular credit card. Credit history can be also built by paying rent and utilities but that requires companies who collect money to report the payments to credit bureaus and very few do that. As anything else in US, there are some businesses which help to solve this problem for extra money."


The mathematical answer is for you to have a diversified portfolio in your ISA.  But that's easier said than done.


"Always use limit orders never market orders. Period. Do that and you will always pay what you said you would when the transaction goes through. Whichever broker you use is not going to ""negotiate"" for the best price on your trade if you choose a market order.  Their job is to fill that order so they will always buy it for more than market and sell it for less to ensure the order goes through. It is not even a factor when choosing between TradeKing and Scottrade. I use Trade King and my friend uses ScottTrade.  Besides the transaction fee (TK is a few $$ cheaper), the only other things to consider are the tools and research (and customer service if you need it) that each site offers. I went with TK and the lower transaction fee since tools and research can be had from other sources. I basically only use it when I want to make a trade since I don't find the tools particularly useful and I never take an analyst's opinion of a stock at face value anyway since everybody always has their own agenda."


>And a lot of people that have communist party wealth are afraid that there will be an uprising against them so they are preparing escape plans.  My guess would be more along these lines (albeit maybe a bit less dramatic).  There were a lot of dubious things that Party members did over the past hundred years to stash away cash for themselves.  Siphoning off public resources, investing with them, and as long as the investments made money, keeping the results, for example, played a significant role in some of the complaints that farmers had about local officials.  If they keep money in China, and there's some sort of fallout or charges that go through, my guess is that it's a lot easier to seize a corrupt official's resources.  On the other hand, if you just bought a bunch of land in the US...that's a lot less easily-seizable and harder to immediately get ahold of for Chinese officials.  There's also the more legit possibility that China quite arguably has a real estate bubble in investable real estate, and the result is that if you want to invest in land and reduce your risk to a bubble deflating, you want to do so overseas.


One thing to be aware of when choosing mutual funds and index ETFs is the total fees and costs. The TD Ameritrade site almost certainly had links that would let you see the total fees (as an annual percentage) for each of the funds. Within a category, the lowest fees percentage is best, since that is directly subtracted from your performance. As an aside, your allocation seems overly conservative to me for someone that is 25 years old. You will likely work for 40 or so years and the average stock market cycle is about 7 years. So you will likely see 5 or so complete cycles. Worrying about stability of principal too young will really cut into your returns. My daughter is your age and I have advised her to be 100% in equities and then to start dialing that back in about 25 years or so.


The rental income is indeed taxable income, but you reduce the taxable portion of it by deducting expenses (including mortgage interest, maintenance, insurance, HOA, real estate tax, and of course depreciation). Due to the depreciation, you may end up breaking even, or having very little taxable income. Note that when you sell the property, your basis is reduced by the depreciation you were allowed to deduct (even if you haven't deducted it for whatever reason), and also the personal residence exclusion might no longer be applicable - i.e.: you'll have to pay capital gains tax. You will not be able to deduct a loss though if you sell now, so it may be better to depreciate it as a rental, rather then sell at a loss that won't affect your taxes. Also, consider the fact that the basis for the depreciation is not the basis you currently have in the property (because you're under water). You have to remember that when calculating the taxes. This is not a tax advice, and you should seek a professional help.


Even if you're paying a lot of taxes now, you're talking marginal dollars when you look at current contribution, and average tax rate when making withdrawals.  IE, if you currently pay 28% on your last dollar (and assuming your contribution is entirely in your marginal rate), then you're paying 28% on all of the Roth contributions, but probably paying a lower average tax rate, due to the lower tax rates on the first many dollars.   Look at the overall average tax rate of your expected retirement income - if you're expecting to pull out $100k a year, you're probably paying less than 20% in average taxes, because the first third or so is taxed at a very low rate (0 or 15%), assuming things don't change in our tax code.  Comparing that to your 28% and you have a net gain of 8% by paying the taxes later - nothing to shake a stick at. At minimum, have enough in your traditional IRA to max out the zero tax bucket (at least $12k).  Realistically you probably should have enough to max out the 15% bucket, as you presumably are well above that bucket now.  Any Roth savings will be more than eliminated by this difference: 28% tax now, 15% tax later?  Yes please. A diversified combination is usually best for those expecting to have a lot of retirement savings - enough in Traditional to get at least $35k or so a year out, say, and then enough in Roth to keep your comfortable lifestyle after that. The one caveat here is in the case when you max out your contribution levels, you may gain by using money that is not in your IRA to pay the taxes on the conversion.  Talk to your tax professional or accountant to verify this will be helpful in your particular instance.


An update for anyone looking this up, I am still working through all the details but I can answer the question as far as Stack Exchange will go. In this situation the answer and processes involved greatly differs based on the personal circumstances of the person asking the question. Best to seek qualified tax advice than relying only on a forum as they are able to be more accurate and descriptive than any reply that you might receive.


You mentioned depositing the check and then sending a personal check. Be sure to account for time, since any deposit over $10,000 the money will be made available in increments, so it may take 10-14 days to get the full amount in your account before you could send a personal check. I would not recommend this option regardless, but if you do, just a heads up.


okay, I was thinking of an investment advisor. I believe in not doing it alone too. But i don't believe in just one more person. Investing advisors, tax advisors, business and law. I don't go to an advisor bc I can't balance my monthly budget and also want to save, you know. Questions more like, highest growth sectors, diversified strategies, etc.  And right, they wouldn't get fired bc their client is still happy, (even though their losing money during a record bull market). Guy must be a good sales man. I'd just want to know that my advisors performance is decent relative to the market. But again, I'm not handing over checks to people, only speaking with them.  edit: Yes, the average person should worry about making their kids soccer games and shit, not necessarily the markets and what their investment is worth in 30yrs


Principal has probably distributed your money to a company that holds dormant retirement plan account balances. I work for a third-party administrator and we usually use a company called Penchecks. They receive dormant accounts and try to locate the people they belong to. They don't do this for free though, so the sooner you find your account the better. Principal would have to keep a record of where they sent your money, although I don't know for how long they are required to keep that record. For example, doctors are only required to keep records for 7 years. The PBGC will help you find your lost balance. They are a gov't agency that protects retirement plan participants. They have a search engine for this kind of thing: http://search.pbgc.gov/mp/ Also https://www.unclaimedretirementbenefits.com/ is a registry of unclaimed retirement plan benefits.


I would echo @Victor's comments. One book and 1000 web pages doesnt make you a good investor/trader. There are some basic things you should be aware of and read up on There are a few books that I would recommend I have been trading for over 10 years, my dad for over 30 years and we are both continually learning new things. Don't read one book and assume you know it all. Bear in mind that there are always new indicators being thought up and new ways of using and interpreting the same information, so keep reading and educating yourself.


I suspect that the payments were originally due near the end of each quarter (March 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15) but then the December payment was extended to January 15 to allow for end-of-year totals to be calculated, and then the March payment was extended to April 15 to coincide with Income Tax Return filing.


Unless you spend a lot of money on the TD Gold Elite Visa, and are interested in the Deluxe TD Auto Club, the $99 annual fee is probably not worth it. Instead, the Citi Enrich MasterCard provides the same 1% cash back on all purchases without an annual fee. There's also an unadvertised Platinum version of the card, which includes other perks like car rental insurance, etc. From what I calculated a while back, The PC Financial MasterCard PC Points system works out to a 1% return as well. Unless there are extra deals like 5x point sales that I'm not aware of, cold hard cash would be a better option. Also check out the RFD Credit Card Head to Head article for way more options.


For tax purposes you will need to file as an employee (T4 slips and tax withheld automatically), but also as an entrepreneur. I had the same situation myself last year. Employee and self-employed is a publication from Revenue Canada that will help you. You need to fill out the statement of business activity form and keep detailed records of all your deductible expenses. Make photocopies and keep them 7 years. May I suggest you take an accountant to file your income tax form. More expensive but makes you less susceptible to receive Revenue Canada inspectors for a check-in.  If you can read french, you can use this simple spreadsheet for your expenses. Your accountant will be happy.


The Sharpe ratio is, perhaps, the method you are looking for.  That said, not really sure beta is a meaningful metric, as there are plenty of safe bets to be made on volatile stocks (and, conversely, unsafe bets to be made on non-volatile ones).


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-third-of-american-households-cant-afford-food-shelter-or-medical-care-2017-09-27) reduced by 63%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Nearly half of Americans have a tough time paying their bills, and over one-third have faced hardships such as running out of food, not being able to afford a place to live, or not having enough money to pay for medical treatment.  > The State of the American Wallet shows how Americans are saddled with mounting car loan and credit card debt and not saving enough money - even enough to cover emergency expenses.  > The survey included questions on whether respondents could &quot;Enjoy life&quot; because of the way they managed their money, and how often respondents had money left over at the end of the month.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/75tq9p/onethird_of_american_households_cant_afford_food/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~226611 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **survey**^#1 **American**^#2 **respondent**^#3 **money**^#4 **how**^#5"


Your answer looks correct.  It's the buyer of the option that's long, not the seller (you). If you're doing a lot of trading, you might get hit with wash-sale rules and you could be taxed at the short-term capital gains rate, which is higher than for long-term gains.  But those aren't direct fees.


In India there is a new trend is running  for Building a home or office by using new concepts or new design. But it's not possible for everyone because no one has that much of the time so that we contact to the Building Contractors in Delhi that will build all that on the basis of our demands


1. Rebate  2. Bid-Ask spread  3. Tactically increasing/decreasing inventory based on their view of the market  4. Picking off idiot traders (OTC markets, basically not passing orders on to the market when the counterparty has a low performance history).


As others have suggested, if you're considering taking a 50% discount on a revenue stream you feel is low risk because you're having cash flow issues paying those property taxes - I'd recommend you seriously separating these two unrelated concerns and deal with each in most financially astute manner individually. You'll keep more of your hard earned cash You don't have the hassle factor and uncertainty of trying to become proficient in an esoteric field of financial knowledge by Christmas!


I would not hold any company stock for the company that provides your income.   This is a too many eggs in one basket kind of problem. With a discounted stock purchase plan, I would buy the shares at a 10% discount and immediately resell for a profit.   If the company prevents you from immediately reselling, I  don't know if I would invest. The risk is too great that you'll see your job lost and your 401k/investments emptied due to a single cause.


Adding to webdevduck's answer: Before you calculate your profits, you can pay money tax-free into a pension fund for the company director (that is you). Then if you pay yourself dividends, if you made lots of profit you don't have to pay it all as dividends. You can take some where the taxes are low, and then pay more money in later years.   What you must NOT do is just take the money. The company may be yours, but the money isn't. It has to be paid as salary or dividend. (You can give the company director a loan, but that loan has to be repaid. Especially if a limited company goes bankrupt, the creditors would insist that loans from the company are repaid).  After a bit more checking, here's the optimal approach, perfectly legal, expected and ethical:  You pay yourself a salary of £676 per month. That's the point where you get all the advantages of national insurance without having to pay; above that you would have to pay 13.8% employers NI contributions and 12% employee's NI contributions, so for £100 salary the company has to pay £113.80 and you receive £88.00. Below £676 you pay nothing.  You deduct the salary from your revenue, then you deduct all the deductible business costs (be wise in what you try to deduct), then you pay whatever you want into a pension fund. Well, up to I think £25,000 per year.  The rest is profit. The company pays 19% corporation tax on profits. Then you pay yourself dividends. Any dividends until your income is £11,500 per year are tax free. Then the next £5,000 per year are tax free. Then any dividends until income + dividends = £45,000 per year is taxed at 7.5%. It's illegal to pay so much in dividends that the company can't pay its bills.  Above £45,000 you decide if you want your money now and pay more tax, or wait and get it tax free. Every pound of dividend above £45,000 a year you pay 32.5% tax, but there is nobody forcing you to take the money. You can wait until business is bad, or you want a loooong holiday, or you retire. So at that time you will stay below £45,000 per year and pay only 7.5% tax.


From your own [post in this discussion thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/6yfcxu/the_debt_trap_how_the_student_loan_industry/dmnfcfs/)  >In any case, an educated populace is crucial to avoid things like our current political climate, where people fall for propaganda and think satire websites are true news.


According to TurboTax, it is perfectly legal to final as an individual with zero income. But, alas, according to Entities, by the IRS, you must file as a partnership or a corporation even if you have zero income.  As for my two cents, I can only see it being advantageous for filing on expense purposes, but as you have no income, the point is mute. Hope it all goes over well as the forms are due March 15.


Probably more like ELI10.  Bob gets 10$ a week in lunch money from his parents.  Jim's dad works as a travelling salesman and makes a fixed salary plus a weekly commission, jim gets 5$ in allowance + whatever extra his dad makes, some weeks 20$ some 5$ some 7.  So Jim wants to make his allowance a bit more constant and bob wants a piece of the commission.  Mathematically: Bob's allowance = 10$/week  Jim's allowance = 5$ + C / week  C is unknown.   So they make a deal. Jim will receive 5$ from Bob every week. In return Jim will pay bob the  extra allowance every week.  The new deal is  Bob = 5$ + C  Jim = 10$   How they get to this arrangement is every week they sit at the lunch table. Bob takes out 5$, jim takes out his extra commission. They net the amount and pay whomever profits.


Carrying $5k debt would cost you $400 per year at an 8% interest rate. At 19%, that would be $950 per year. Pay off your cc debt, put the other 2k on your student loans, and the money you save in interest on your cc debt goes toward your student loans too. When all your debts are paid off, you have an emergency fund saved up (usually 3 months' living expenses), you've met all your other goals (car, house, college fund for the kids, retirement fund), and you still have some money to spend, then go to Vegas and enjoy yourself while probably losing it all.


A person name Matthew Drury or a similar name owes money on their loan, and it has gone to collections. The collections company is trying to match the account to a real person with money. They sent a letter to somebody (your grandmother) with the same last name. The debtor may have even lived in that town at sometime.  The reason you received the letter is because your grandmother forward it on. Because the rest of your info (SSN and birth date) don't match the loan it is unlikely they can attach the debt to you. Unless you provided your address to the company you could in the future receive a letter from them. But I doubt they are going to send letters to everybody with the same name. I would not worry about it unless they actually send a letter or call you directly.


It would be better to use a bank account and have the refund deposited directly to it. But you said you never had a bank account, so that may be a problem. Another option is to have the refund check mailed to you, and you deposit it in your local bank, converting to your home currency (or not, depending on local laws). Generally, for another person to cash a check made out to you - you need to endorse it first. Physically, on the back of the check. That means you have to see the check. Specifically with tax refund checks there's much more scrutiny since there's a lot of fraud going on with regards to tax refunds. Thus, I doubt a bank would allow a third party cash a check made out to you, without you actually being present there.


For the employee, this is an identical tax situation to an at-the-money option purchase. They're buying an asset with a specific cost basis. For the company, you are just issuing shares from treasury as authorized... debit cash, credit additional paid-in-capital and equity. There is no tax consequence for this money received.


Consider inflation. If you invest $10,000 today, you need to make a few hundred dollars interest just to make up for inflation - if there is 3% inflation then a change from $10,000 to $10,300 means you didn't actually make any money.


It's simple, really: Practice. Fiscal responsibility is not a trick you can learn look up on Google, or a service you can buy from your accountant.  Being responsible with your money is a skill that is learned over a lifetime.  The only way to get better at it is to practice, and not get discouraged when you make mistakes.


I didn't mean as a legal maximum, but rather how many hours they choose to work & get scheduled for. Some youth are lucky, and their parents pay their bills.   I didn't have as expensive bills as you. Only cell phone, and my bus pass in high school. But I did have to pay for all of my graduation costs myself and post-secondary application fees. So keeping a savings amount really helps. (I also had 4 jobs simultaneously in high school. )


This doesn't look particularly unreasonable, but a few notes: It's a little misleading to say that 45% of his paycheck is gone. Roughly 6% of his gross pay went to his 401(k). That money is still his; he's just chosen to save it in a particular way. Depending on the choices he's made for his retirement savings, he'll also reduce his tax bill right now and/or during retirement by making these contributions. Some of the other costs also go to social programs that may pay you back (granted, they may not always be as good as those in Europe, but it's not that you'd get nothing in return): In any case, $130K/year is certainly a lot on a global scale, but San Francisco is a very expensive city, and housing costs in SF have risen a lot lately. You've nicely summed up why a lot of families unfortunately leave the city.


The company that runs the fund (Vanguard) on their website has the information on the general breakdown of their investments of that fund. They tell you that as of July 31st 2016 it is 8.7% emerging markets. They even specifically list the 7000+ companies they have purchased stocks in. Of course the actual investment and percentages could [change every day]. Vanguard may publish on this Site, in the fund's holdings on the   webpages, a detailed list of the securities (aggregated by issuer for   money market funds) held in a Vanguard fund (portfolio holdings) as of   the most recent calendar-quarter-end, 30 days after the end of the   calendar quarter, except for Vanguard Market Neutral Fund (60 calendar   days after the end of the calendar quarter), Vanguard index funds (15   calendar days after the end of the month), and Vanguard Money Market   Funds (within five [5] business days after the last business day of   the preceding month). Except with respect to Vanguard Money Market   Funds, Vanguard may exclude any portion of these portfolio holdings   from publication on this Site when deemed in the best interest of the   fund.


With InteractiveBrokers there is no minimum trade amount, they also offer Australian Equities.


I completely agree with Pete that a 401(k) loan is not the answer, but I have an alternate proposal: Reduce your 401(k) contribution down to the 4% that you get a match on.  If you are cash poor now and have debts to be cleaned up, those need to be addressed before retirement savings.  You'll have plenty of time to make up the lost savings after you get the debts paid off.   If your company matches 50% (meaning you have to contribute 8% to get the 4% match), then consider temporarily stopping your 401(k) altogether. A 100% match is very hard to give up, but a 50% match is less difficult.  You have plenty of years left ahead of you to make up the lost match.  Plus, the pain of knowing you're leaving money on the table will incentivize you to get the loans paid as quickly as possible.  It seems to me that I would be reducing middle to high interest debt while also saving myself $150 per month.  No, you'd be deferring $150 per month for an additional two years, and not reducing debt at all, just moving it to a different lender. Interest rate is not your problem.  Right now you're paying less than $30 per month in interest on these 3 loans and about $270 in principal, and at the current rate should have them paid off in about 2 years.  You're wanting to extend these loans to 4 years by borrowing from your retirement savings.   I would buckle down, reduce expenses wherever possible (cable? cell phone? coffee? movies? restaurants?) until you get these debts paid off.  You make $70,000 per year, or almost $6,000 per month.  I bet if you try hard enough you can come up with $1,100 fairly quickly. Then the next $1,200 should come twice as fast. Then attack the next $4,000. (You can argue whether the $1,200 should come first because of the interest rate, but in the end it doesn't matter - either one should be paid off very quickly, so the interest saved is negligible) Maybe you can get one of them paid off, get yourself some breathing room, then loosen up a little bit, but extending the pain for an additional two years is not wise. Some more drastic measures:


"This page from simplestockinvesting.com gives details of total returns for the S&P500 for each decade over the last 60 years, including total returns for the entire 60 year period. It is important to understand that, from an investors point of view, the total return includes both the change in index value (capital gain) plus dividends received.  This total then needs to be adjusted for inflation to give the ""total real return"". As noted in the analysis provided, 44% of the total return from the S&P500 over the last 80 years comes from dividends.  For the DowJones30, this site provides a calculator for total returns and inflation adjusted total returns for user selected periods. Finding comparable analysis for the NASDAQ market is more difficult.  The NASDAQ market site provides gross values for total returns over fixed periods, but you will then need to do the arithmetic to calculate the equivalent average annual total returns.  No inflation adjusted values for ""real"" returns are provided, so again you will need to combine inflation data from elsewhere and do the arithmetic."


"I was I a similar position as you, and sometimes credit bureaus might be difficult to deal with, especially when high amounts of money are involved. To make the long story short, someone opened a store credit card under my name and made a charge of around 3k. After reporting this to the bureaus, they did not want to remove the account from my credit report citing that the claim was ""frivolous"". After filing a police report, the police officer gave me the phone number for the fraud department of this store credit card, and after they investigated, they removed the account from my credit. I would suggest to do the following: Communicating with Creditors and Debt Collectors You have the right to:  Stop creditors and debt collectors from   reporting fraudulent accounts. After you give them a copy of a valid   identity theft report, they may not report fraudulent accounts to the   credit reporting companies. Get copies of documents related to the   theft of your identity, like transaction records or applications for   new accounts. Write to the company that has the documents, and include   a copy of your identity theft report. You also can tell the company to   give the documents to a specific law enforcement agency. Stop a debt   collector from contacting you. In most cases, debt collectors must   stop contacting you after you send them a letter telling them to stop.   Get written information from a debt collector about a debt, including   the name of the creditor and the amount you supposedly owe. If a debt   collector contacts you about a debt, request this information in   writing. I know that you said that the main problem was that your credit account was combined with another. But there might be a chance that identity theft was involved. If this is the case, and you can prove it, then you might have access to more tools to help you. For example, you can file a report with the FTC, and along with a police report, this can be a powerful tool in stopping these charges. Feel free to go to the identitytheft.gov website for more information."